Fractal had its second virtual US Client Advisory Board (CAB) on September 29 and 30th. The two-day event welcomed pioneering leaders from Fortune 500 companies, offering a platform for open discussions, candid peer-to-peer knowledge sharing, and inspiring leadership sessions.

Digital acceleration is a priority for enterprises today. How can businesses align their approach to drive results at scale to enable better decisions in the enterprise? Here are a few key insights to answer that.

  • Successful AI implementations use a user-focused, decision backward, narrow framing approach.
  • Enterprises must be nimble and agile to make changes to their cloud strategy that continue to connect with evolving business strategies.
  • Creating the Next Best Experience is the big thing in customer analytics today.
  • The path to data-to-decision is all about building momentum, scaling, and creating an analytical ecosystem.
  • Bringing all this together is Trust. The one thing that changes everything.

CAB Day 1

CAB 2021 opened with a keynote session by Srikanth Velamakanni, Co-founder, Group Chief Executive & Vice Chairman of Fractal, sharing how we can rethink adoption to accelerate AI advantage. He illustrated how successful AI implementations use a user-focused, decision backward, and narrow framing approach. The focus is to drive from data-to-decisions with the right human-machine collaboration. However, to drive this change, it is not just about rules and mandates or rewards. Instead, it is about behavioral changes to make things simple to adopt. Lastly, it is about driving responsible AI that transcends morality, ethics, and legality.

Following this insightful keynote, Satish Raman, Chief Strategy Officer, Fractal, facilitated an engaging panel discussion with Eric H Rosenkranz, from Google Cloud, Sid Jatia, from Microsoft and Kyle Rourke from Snowflake on how enterprises can be nimble and agile on the cloud. The pandemic made cloud adoption hit the fast-forward button. It is now about taking advantage of the elastic cloud ecosystem and scaling while embracing third-party data outside the enterprise. It’s changing the defined cloud strategy that continues to connect and evolve with the larger business strategy.

CAB day one also discussed a new analytical paradigm for the customer-obsessed insights-driven enterprise, the Next Best Experience (NBX), with Brandon Purcell, from Forrester. There are three key trends that enterprises can use to future-proof their analytics strategy. It’s making data scientists and designers BFF, putting AI in fairness metrics that assess equality and focus on the customer lifetime value with NBX.

The day came to a wrap with a session sharing how connecting advanced analytics to business operations can drive data to decisions for the enterprise.

Day 2

Day 2 of CAB 2021 opened with a strategy session by Srikanth Velamakanni, Co-founder, Group Chief Executive & Vice Chairman, Fractal and Pranay Agrawal, Co-founder and CEO, Fractal. The session mentioned how Fractal is working towards long term and scale, with client centricity, and a great place to work and engines of scale as its pillars to the journey ahead.

A conversation with Diana Schildhouse from Colgate, Murli Buluswar, Citibank, and Pranay Agarwal, Co-founder and CEO, Fractal, followed this up on winning with AI and analytics .

Today, the biggest challenge in front of businesses is to pick the right focus areas for AI applications and then partner with the right organization to deliver at scale. The very first step in this direction is to identify the problem and not just the symptom. Often, we make the mistake of defining the right problem statement. It’s about defining and re-defining the problem and then working decision-backward. However, this is alone not enough. Enterprises today need to focus on process mapping and make it relevant to the end-user while having a business alignment to ensure results. Finally, the key lies in understanding the user’s emotional and behavioral aspects, inculcating radical empathy, and building Trust.

Day two of CAB ended with an inspiring session on the Speed of Trust by Stephen M. R. Covey, Leadership Coach and Bestselling Author. Trust is an essential pillar in all that we do. It is that one thing that changes everything. It’s not just a social virtue but an economic driver and #1 competency that leaders need today. What’s the best part? It is a learnable skill. Leaders can lead change with agility, develop high-performing teams, and create a diverse, equitable, and inclusive environment with Trust. All that one needs is a chance.

Digital acceleration doesn’t look like the earlier changes in strategy that leaders have experienced. Business and operating models are shifting; budgets are relocating, spending priorities changing. Above all, the demands on enterprise leaders are changing. We need AI, engineering, and design to ride this change. With the application of human-centered & behavioral design principles to problems, we can improve user-centricity, simplicity, and drive adoption​ , enabling #betterdecisions for the enterprise.

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