Treat Your AI Strategy Like Setting Up a New Department

With the current wave of excitement surrounding Artificial Intelligence, it’s completely understandable that many businesses are rushing to implement some form of AI. Whether it’s to enhance internal processes, gain deeper operational insights, or create new customer experiences, the desire to jump in is palpable.

However, this rush carries a significant risk: a dangerous blind spot. Without proper structure, businesses can find themselves implementing solutions without truly knowing if they are working, what improvements they are driving, or how they integrate with the existing organizational flow.

We can speak so loudly about this because we’ve been there. At RANDEMRETAIL, we’ve successfully integrated AI into our day-to-day processes—from development and requirement gathering to final release notes. We learned quickly that this transition is less about adopting a tool and more about establishing a new, critical business function.

We couldn’t have achieved this smooth, measured integration without implementing an operational blueprint—a governance structure with strict checks and balances to ensure everything we use and deliver is done in a controlled, measured, and value-driven way.

3 Critical Considerations Before Embarking on Your AI Implementation

An AI tool is only as good as the governance that surrounds it. Before you commit time and resources, pause and thoughtfully address these three essential questions:

1. What Problem Are You Truly Trying to Solve?

AI is a solution, not a goal. Are you genuinely seeking better team efficiency, or are you hoping for something more strategic?

• Define Your ‘Why’:
  
  • At RANDEMRETAIL, our aim was to give our team the support and tools needed for them to perform their daily tasks in a more creative way. We wanted them to spend more time to think and less time doing the ‘doing’..

• Establish Your Baseline:
  
  • We began by rigorously measuring our current performance against specific tasks and sprints. Once we had a measurable baseline, we worked backward. This allowed us to design our AI governance to ensure minimal disruption to our existing, successful delivery process. Your governance must be an enabler, not a blocker.

2. What Is the Measurable Outcome You Want?

Defining the desired outcome goes beyond “we want to use AI.” It’s about creating a quantifiable target derived from your answer to point 1.

• Quantify Success:
  • What does success look like for the problem you identified? How quickly do you want to achieve the first visible impact?
    

• Embrace Milestones: 

  •   Breaking down your implementation into smaller, achievable milestones is vital. This provides quick wins for team morale, allows for continuous testing, and ensures you can measure progress in a controlled, objective way. If your goal is a 20% reduction in time spent on requirement gathering, define the three smaller steps that get you there.
    

3. Implement a Rigorous Review and Enhance Cycle

We are extremely excited about the final stage of our blueprint. Phase 3 opens up RANDEM-ED to the broader ecosystem of enterprise AI.

• The Governance Imperative:
  
  • This should be the biggest and most important check within your operational blueprint. You must have proper measures in place to review the outcomes you’re getting against your defined milestones.
    
• The Iterative Mindset:  
  • The success of your AI program hinges on your ability to continuously review, gather feedback, and enhance your AI tools to drive increasingly better outcomes. This cycle is how an initial tool becomes a sustainable, high-performing asset.
    

     

The Department Blueprint: Your Path to Controlled Success

These three considerations are only the tip of the iceberg. The true work lies in creating the governance and blueprint to implement them—just as you would when establishing a new Finance, HR, or IT department. You need policies, roles, budgets, and clear lines of accountability.

This blueprint will either need to be created from scratch, tailored to your specific organizational needs, or you can leverage a third-party partner like RANDEMRETAIL that has already gone through the process, providing proven application examples of successful, controlled AI integration.

If you are looking to embark on this journey and need expert guidance on where or how to start, reach out to our consultants. They would be happy to guide you through developing a rigorous operational blueprint for your AI future..