Is Your HA Ready for AI?

For many Housing Associations and councils, harnessing the full potential of artificial intelligence (AI) begins with tentatively exploring using a chat bot for general enquiries or repairs management. While it’s possible to gain valuable insights into what AI can do through this approach, there’s a lot more value that can be achieved with AI, and in particular, machine learning.

For an organisation to become an AI power house, it’s technical leaders should consider how machines interact with humans in the working environment. Managers and execs must consider how they can best deploy machine learning and similar cognitive tools across the core business processes and operations to best support decision making driven by data. The company has to be open to allowing AI to create new operating models and business offerings.

“While survival isn’t something that we regularly consider in the not-for-profit sector, there are some lessons we can learn from the private sector.”

These are major steps for any business, but as AI technology becomes more widely adopted, becoming an organisation that adopts digital technology will likely stop being just a success strategy and will be something a business has to do in order to survive. While survival isn’t something that we regularly consider in the not-for-profit sector, there are some lessons we can learn from the private sector in order to offer the best possible service for our customers.

Different Housing Associations and Local Authorities adopt tech in different ways. Every organisation will have their own individual strengths, weaknesses, and goals to consider before going through a digital transformation like this. If you aren’t sure about what adopting AI offers your organisation – or demands of it – then here are some questions to ponder;

“The role that AI is playing in social housing is growing and Fuzzlab is helping the sector implement it well.”

1. What Objectives Can I Achieve with Artificial Intelligence?

Artificial intelligence offers plenty of potential benefits for an organisation, but these benefits can be maximised when AI is looked at to deliver strategic business solutions. You should collaborate across different functions to identify the main objectives of an organisation, and then define the AI strategy with a view to achieve these goals. You might choose to use AI to reduce costs, boost productivity, improve customer experience, or get more meaning out of your data. Every AI journey begins with the single step of establishing end goals that allow you to create a more detailed and actionable roadmap for AI.

2. How Can I Gain a Competitive Advantage with AI?

AI includes a lot of different things such as machine learning, computer vision, and natural language processing, among other things. All these features can enhance back-office as well as customer-facing systems. Having your eyes on the trends in social housing helps to ensure that you’re able to meet the needs of customers and be competitive in the new marketplace. Speaking with AI specialists about the capabilities of the technology and combining this with housing knowledge can provide you with inspiration and ideas on how to make use of the technology and your data.

3. How Can I Find the Right Partner to Deliver my AI Projects?

You may find that the current talent pool and technology of your organisation isn’t ready to meet the demands of developing AI systems. You might want to bring in some next generation products, solutions, and intellectual property to broaden that ecosystem. After establishing how AI will support the business processes, you can start to look at your existing expertise, talent, and technology to identify any potential gaps. If there are gaps, then you could consider augmenting your resources through investing in a startup that has progressed further with AI than you have, such as Fuzzlab. You might also wish to find vendors and industry partners that you can collaborate with and possibly co-invest in sharing resources to create market-ready applications.

4. Should I Start Small or Go All In?

The most important thing isn’t deciding how big to go at the start, it’s moving with purpose. CIOs and business leaders understand the value of establishing long-term AI strategies to reach their goals. Remain focused on the desired outcome you want, employ some design thinking, and you’ll find the plan practically makes itself. Start by finding opportunities for AI within your organisation. This could be taking care of transactional, time-consuming tasks or managing data-heavy processes that require some housing knowledge. Perform a cost-benefit analysis to determine if the AI solution is feasible for this process. Then, put together a pilot program around one of the transactions and let it run for two to three months. If you get good results from the trial, then you’re ready to determine how to best move forward to scale the solution to production and start expanding AI to your other products and services.

The role that AI is playing in social housing is growing and Fuzzlab is helping the sector implement it well. If you’d like to speak with one of our consultants about how Artificial Intelligence and chat bots can add value to your systems and your customers, email us at hello@fuzzlab.co.uk.