You’ve probably had a conversation about ChatGPT recently; maybe you’ve even played around with this buzzed-about new AI tool. ChatGPT reportedly reached 100 million users in January.
We decided to ask our community of experts how they envision this tool helping CIOs and IT leaders tackle challenges big and small. Tod Loofbourrow, CEO of ViralGains, said, "One programmer I know who suffers from minor dyslexia is four times as productive because he’s using ChatGPT for small coding tasks, annotation, and documentation. Imagine that level of productivity gains spread throughout a large development organization."
Don't assume this new technology will replace your job. As Mark Lambert, a senior consultant at netlogx, says, "CIOs shouldn’t view ChatGPT as a replacement for humans but as a new and exciting tool that their IT teams can utilize. From troubleshooting IT issues to creating content for the company’s knowledge base, artificial intelligence can help teams operate more efficiently and effectively.”
CIOs must ensure that technology investments are delivering measurable business value. ChatGPT may be able to help by taking tedious tasks off their plate. “The technology can automate repetitive tasks, providing users instant information and freeing human employees to focus on higher-level tasks,” says Tamarah Usher, Senior Director, Strategy and Innovation at Slalom.
Read on to discover nine ways CIOs can use ChatGPT.
Shoulder administrative burdens
“ChatGPT is very powerful out of the box, so it doesn’t require extensive training or teaching to get up to speed and handle specific business processes. A valuable initial business application for ChatGPT should be directed towards routine tasks, such as filling out a contract. It can effectively review the document and answer the necessary fields using the data and context provided by the organization. With that said, ChatGPT has the potential to shoulder administrative burdens for CIOs quickly, but it’s important to regularly measure the accuracy of its work, especially if an organization plans to use it regularly.
The best way for CIOs to get started with ChatGPT is to take the time to grasp how it would work within the context of their organization before rushing to widespread adoption. At these early stages of the technology, it’s better to let it complement existing workflows under close supervision instead of restructuring around it as an end-to-end solution. It’s like having an intern; they take care of the “busy work” while you keep a close eye to ensure everything is going well. Even more importantly, you are on hand to address any complications.” -Petr Baudis, CTO & Chief AI Architect, Rossum
Improve operational efficiency
“CIOs can use ChatGPT in several ways, including:
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Customer service automation: CIOs can use ChatGPT to automate customer service interactions, reducing response times and improving customer satisfaction.
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Knowledge management: ChatGPT can create a comprehensive knowledge base for an organization, helping employees access information quickly and easily.
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Employee training: CIOs can use ChatGPT to provide employees with on-demand training and support, improving efficiency and reducing the need for in-person training.
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Virtual assistant: ChatGPT can be integrated into enterprise systems to provide employees with a virtual assistant that can answer questions, provide recommendations, and complete tasks.
These are just a few examples of the many ways in which CIOs can use ChatGPT to drive business value and improve operational efficiency.” -Jorge Yinat, Ph.D., EnterprisIO
Assist externally with customer experience and internally as a digital assistant
“Externally, ChatGPT and other generative AIs will revolutionize the customer experience. Between self-service portals and private relationship management, AI-powered bots can assist with repetitive documentation, questions, and form submissions. At the same time, humans can focus on the highest-value tasks and conversations. This stands especially true in high-touch businesses like finance, legal, or healthcare, where clients demand the convenience of digital without sacrificing the personalization that comes from human interaction.
Internally, ChatGPT can be a practical digital assistant to co-pilot your business operations and align employees toward the common goal. Whereas human attention might wane throughout a meeting, AI is always listening and can provide suggested action items for the project owner. Because ChatGPT can collect answers from real conversations, CIOs can use it to inform future conversations and deliver a premier experience for customers and partners.
ChatGPT is as revolutionary a technology as the internet was 30 years ago. But to be clear, it’s most effective as an assistant that can make suggestions rather than a sole decision maker that can take action. If CIOs and CTOs can harness its power, they will have at their disposal a knowledge base that can create more customer-centric experiences and unleash the full potential of employees with minimal cost to the business.” -Stanley Huang, Co-founder & CTO, Moxo
Lower barriers to communication
“ChatGPT and other generative AI tools are creating new ways for people to connect by lowering the barrier to communication. As a result, CIOs have an opportunity to radically rethink the tools they use for their workforce and their customers. Tools like chatbots powered by generative AI will increase self-service capabilities, reduce the cost-to-serve for organizations, improve workforce efficiencies, strategic thinking, and all communications organizations need to be effective." -Pablo Alejo, Managing Director Product Experience & Engineering Lab, Dallas, West Monroe
Streamline business inquiries
"Especially for lean engineering teams or startups, creating clear, actionable documentation for business systems and processes can be a significant challenge. I expect we’ll see more CIOs leveraging ChatGPT to generate documentation on business processes, develop technical design and training, write requirements, insert code comments, and create test cases. This will not only accelerate delivery but also reduce time-to-value for businesses significantly. Business inquiries often make up the majority of support tickets. Now teams can leverage ChatGPT to respond to those tickets to spend more time on larger business transformation projects instead of day-to-day operations." -Chetna Mahajan, Chief Digital & Information Officer, Amplitude
Human-computer collaboration
“The most promising immediate opportunity for enterprises may be a human-computer collaboration model for marketing copy, as a sort of 'GPT sandwich' with human bread: the would-be human author writes a short prompt, ChatGPT writes many draft versions of a longer text, and then the human acts as a reviewer and editor, thus saving lots of time. In some ways, ChatGPT can augment human creativity by analyzing dozens of suggestions that people wouldn’t have time to flesh out themselves. But that final review step is critical. Getting ChatGPT to 'write a thousand-word white paper in energetic yet technically-credible prose' in a few seconds is a huge time-saver. But without the human component, you might wind up recommending your competitor’s product over yours or going off on a tangent about broccoli.” -Aaron Kalb, Co-founder & Chief Strategy Officer, Alation
Digest and synthesize data
“The real power behind ChatGPT is its ability to digest and synthesize enormous amounts of data efficiently. Harnessing this capability prudently can yield powerful outcomes. For example, non-mission-critical applications like as a colleague in paired-programming, a summarization of vast repositories, a re-writer of technical material into more readable form, a generator of test scripts, or as a tool for test suite optimization.” -Dr. Bonnie Holub, Chief Architect & Associate Partner, Infosys Consulting
Help determine KPIs and budgets
“ChatGPT can assist with defining KPIs for a successful IT organization. Based on the current status of the IT operation, it can offer insights into the number of employees and other data points. It can also assist with creating personalized RFPs for customers to ensure customer and business success.
Many organizations need help with budget and cost estimating, traffic and expected growth, and exploring existing licenses and subscriptions, which are often-times redundant. ChatGPT could help determine better/cheaper alternatives." -Rachel Shehori, VP of Engineering, Optimove
Boost IT systems
“ChatGPT and algorithms like it are changing how we interact with IT systems and applications. It can be used in simulation and training environments, code review and analysis, translation, and localization, and as a very powerful search tool that can assist analysts in correlating intelligence and disparate data points together. It can even synthesize and generate reports based on the preliminary analysis.” -Steve Orrin, Chief Technology Officer, Intel Federal
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