True potential of AI can be accessed with strong data foundation: Resulticks

Resulticks, built from the ground up by marketers for marketers, is a truly integrated real-time conversation cloud enabled by the world's first marketing data blockchain. With its big data-driven, AI-powered, omnichannel approach Resulticks is pioneering the change in the marketing automation landscape worldwide.

Resulticks is designed to give marketers the capability to dynamically target, engage, analyse and respond to audiences across multiple touch points in real-time. It aims to deliver consistent, compelling, highly personalized communication throughout the entire customer lifecycle from awareness to engagement to conversion to brand loyalty.

Mani Gopalaratnam, Chief Technology Officer, Resulticks, tells us more. Excerpts from an interview:

DQ: How can organisations build a steady pipeline of future talents with expertise in AI?

Mani Gopalaratnam: Embracing AI is not strictly about developing a large technical workforce. It is a multidisciplinary endeavour, one that should be rooted in and geared towards the brand's specific business outcomes. To properly incorporate AI into products and services—as well as how they will be delivered—a strong focus on the customer's point of view must also be maintained.

It makes sense to have a small core team with extensive knowledge of relevant AI and machine learning models and techniques. The brand also needs to upskill them on the existing and emerging tools that will aid their modelling efforts.

Also, instead of building the models from scratch, it might be a lot more cost-effective and convenient for leveraging existing SaaS solutions, many of which can minimize programming efforts and improve the team's ability for AI modelling and interpretation.

DQ: Do you think businesses are currently investing heavily on AI?

Mani Gopalaratnam: AI and machine learning are all the hype now, but rushing into them, as with most things, might not be the best idea. The true potential of AI can only be accessed with a strong data foundation, so the brand needs to first map out its data, think about how best to consolidate it, and identify means for improving its quality.

Investing in AI for its own sake should not be the goal. Instead, focus on the business outcomes it is supposed to deliver. And again, after identifying the outcomes, determine the processes that needs to be created, or the solutions that can be adopted, to plough your data for patterns and trends that can be translated into actionable insights.

DQ: The traditional roles of employees in an organisation are rapidly changing as they are expected to stay in step with the developments in the world of AI. What strategies/practices is Resulticks applying to ensure this?

Mani Gopalaratnam: A good employee is one who can identify insights that will enable the brand's success. That won't change, but what AI does is that it makes achieving this easier. However, the brand needs to be cautious so it does not confuse automation with AI, and there needs to be better differentiation between the different stage of tech adoption.

Broadly, there is firstly digitization; which simply involves the introduction of technology to make existing manual processes more efficient. And there is a second part, which entails converting of certain manual processes into automated ones or self-services.

Lastly, we have the AI and machine learning-driven stage. Here we move beyond simply automation towards mass-customization. When brands do acquire all the necessary technology and reach this stage, they would ideally be able to tailor their processes and offerings to the individual customer, instead of trying to make a set range of experiences work for everyone.

At Resulticks, we are always refining and augmenting our solution so that it can empower the brands with actionable insights that can drive their business goals, improve their operational efficiency, and deliver more relevant experiences—a win-win for the brand and the customer.

DQ: How are the technology leaders at Resulticks ensuring that the organisations adopt and harness the power of AI?

Mani Gopalaratnam: Resulticks was built to help brands orchestrate, optimize, and analyse omnichannel, individualised customer engagement at scale and in real-time. We've incorporated a diverse array of AI and machine learning models at the core of the solution to enable and enhance our capabilities that will help brands achieve that goal.

DQ: Share your views on how organizations across have sensed the need to urgently upskill the present and future workforce.

Mani Gopalaratnam: As digital transformation takes centre stage for a growing number of the businesses, it will be increasingly critical for them to upskill their workforces. They need to ensure those driving the transformation have the bandwidth to experiment with different job parts that can be improved through AI.

In other words, it's about acquiring the necessary skills and mapping out the manual efforts that can be transformed with lateral hires or the adoption of innovative technology.

A massive technology makeover is not for everyone. For most brands, it's about investing in new processes and solutions that can deliver immediate results, all while facilitating long-term innovations.