#232 How are Businesses Really Using AI? With Tathagat Varma, Global TechOps Leader at Walmart Global Tech

5 snips

Aug 5, 2024

Tathagat Varma, Global TechOps Leader at Walmart Global Tech, discusses the complexities of AI adoption in businesses. He highlights the dual challenges organizations face: either struggling to get started or failing from rushed implementation. Tathagat emphasizes the need for a coherent AI strategy, leadership alignment, and choosing the right pilot projects to address specific problems. He also addresses the importance of balancing short-term returns with long-term customer satisfaction, and the essential skills required for a successful AI journey.

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INSIGHT

AI Scaling Failures

AI projects often fail because they are scaled up prematurely.
Solutions developed in controlled environments don't always translate to real-world complexities.

ADVICE

Leadership in AI Adoption

Leaders must actively guide AI adoption, not just support it.
They should take a systemic view, foresee roadblocks, and ensure everyone works towards a shared objective.

INSIGHT

Chief AI Officer Role

A dedicated Chief AI Officer isn't always necessary for successful AI integration.
A central coordinating body or a CXO with added AI responsibility can also provide effective leadership.

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There’s been a lot of pressure to add AI to almost every digital tool and service recently, and two years into the AI hype cycle, we’re seeing two types of problems. The first is organizations that haven’t done much yet with AI because they don’t know where to start. The second is organizations that rushed into AI and failed because they didn’t know what they were doing. Both are symptoms of the same problem: not having an AI strategy and not understanding how to tactically implement AI. There’s a lot to consider around choosing the right project and putting processes and skilled talent in place, not to mention worrying about costs and return on investment.

Tathagat Varma is the Global TechOps Leader at Walmart Global Tech. Tathagat is responsible for leading strategic business initiatives, enterprise agile transformation, technical learning and enablement, strategic technical initiatives, startup ecosystem engagement, and internal events across Walmart Global Tech. He also provides support to horizontal technical and internal innovation programs in the company. Starting as a Computer Scientist with DRDO, and with an overall experience of 27 years, Tathagat has played significant technical and leadership roles in establishing and growing organizations like NerdWallet, ChinaSoft International, McAfee, Huawei, Network General, NetScout System, [24]7 Innovations Labs and Yahoo!, and played key engineering roles at Siemens and Philips.

In the episode, Richie and Tathagat explore failures in AI adoption, the role of leadership in AI adoption, AI strategy and business objective alignment, investment and timeline for AI projects, identifying starter AI projects, skills for AI success, building a culture of AI adoption, the potential of AI and much more.

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