Mid West conference hears AI to change organisational structure for businesses

Shannon Chamber CEO Helen Downes (centre) with Brian Moroney, Orla Duffy, Vikram Kunnath, Maurice Foley, Megan Conway, Tim Cush, and Tim Bergin. Photo: Eamon Ward.

ORGANISATIONAL culture will change as artificial intelligence (AI) becomes more prominent, a Mid West business conference has heard.

The conference, held by Shannon Chamber, heard that the rise of AI will bring challenges for businesses, but that it can also bring benefits when implemented correctly.

A team of experts from EY Consulting took to the stage at the Future Mobility Campus Ireland in Shannon to discuss and advise companies in the Mid West of the best ways to unlock the power of digitalisation and utilise AI for competitive advantage.

At the conference, attendees were told that digitisation brings transformation challenges to businesses that need to be navigated, and that generative AI can also bring uncertainty with many companies struggling to know where to start, balancing the art of the possible to gain competitive advantage versus what regulatory and legal constraints may exist.

One of the speakers, Vikram Kunnath, said that for companies, the benefits that a fully connected site bring would pay for the investment in digitisation software.

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“A digitally skilled and fluent workforce is the future, and it will create new revenue streams for business.  People and machines will work smarter and there will be lower manual intervention,” Mr Kunnath said.

Another speaker at the conference, Tim Cush, said that 65 per cent of company CEOs recognise the potential of AI to drive productivity.

“Research shows that 82 per cent of corporate leaders recognise that employees will need new skills for AI, and that initially, 76 per cent of people will use AI for administrative tasks. They also understand that any new technology can be disruptive in the workplace but that they need to create the energy to encourage its adoption acknowledging that AI can deliver benefits across all functions,” Mr Cush said.

Shannon Chamber CEO Helen Downes said after the event that “technology and data are becoming more critical to a company’s success which, as stated at the seminar, will generate a requirement for a new chief digital and transformation officer role within organisations”.

“Employees will have to upskill, driven internally at company level as well as allocating time to self-learning to a level where they are not regarded as passive resistors to change. The future will be different, but exciting,” Ms Downes added.

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