Elements of artificial intelligence, such as machine learning models, have been embedded in the software that powers our work and daily lives for years, but the spring 2023 release of surprising tools to consumers will bring the public Captivated the imagination. Those technologies are here to stay, and strategic business leaders must consider how best to harness their power to enhance the capabilities of their teams.
Senior living executives have two key decisions to make moving forward with AI-powered solutions:
- What functions will those AI tools perform within your organization?
- Who will provide your organization with artificial intelligence tools?
What jobs should AI perform within your organization?
It is tempting to apply AI tools to existing tech services (eg, hands-off email inbox management) or to envision AI as an independent companion. As users and engineers of these tools, we advise senior living leaders to consider AI as augmenting and augmenting their talented teams, not a fully automated replacement.
AI has some very clear strengths and weaknesses, and housing leaders must look for matches between its capabilities and their teams’ workloads or blind spots. Three core AI capabilities to remember:
- AI can speed up repetitive or cumbersome tasks. AI has the potential to accelerate and strengthen the decision-making process for senior living leaders, providing critical data-driven tasks for senior housing investments, market research and operations. These tasks can be cumbersome and time-consuming for teams but can be easily automated with AI tools. For example, we’ve found that AI is a real boon for workers responsible for quality communications around regulatory compliance. Multiply this convenience by several other routine tasks each week and you begin to see how time is saved, freeing up your talented staff for higher-value activities.
- AI is a powerful approach to best practice. Tasks where human attention to detail can flag, or unwanted variations in analysis can lead to bad decisions, are rich opportunities to apply AI’s agility and speed. Examples include rent roll analysis, investment due diligence, contract comparison and job description drafting. If every employee taps into an enterprise AI toolkit, you can define rules of the road for specific AI tasks, with each employee performing best practices for that task.
- AI unlocks the richness of data-driven decisions. Enterprise AI offers the ability to embed contextual data into decision support within your organization. Consider when you want benchmark data, such as market averages, presented to you with your own organization’s data analysis for added context. If the information is made available to AI, it can be instantly queried and provide your decision makers with a wealth of information to base decisions on.
Who should provide AI to your organization?
Your existing suppliers, vendors and partners will incorporate these powerful tools into their services for you. For example, expect suppliers to continue to improve and improve their supply chain management with AI-powered tools, or consider how healthcare providers can use AI. Will use proactive forecasting tools. But you will be responsible for choosing the AI tools provider for your team. Choose wisely, and make sure your partners are focused on the business of senior living.
Part of the attraction of AI tools is the intuitive user experience in the latest version of the natural language interface. Those easy-to-use experiences democratize access to powerful computing even for non-technical users and are a pure joy to use. However, high-quality results require skilled engineering. That’s why we always recommend working with an AI partner who truly understands the luxury industry and who separates the elite from the mediocre.
Technology providers are eager to capitalize on the artificial intelligence boom, and enterprise software companies promise that their tools can be configured to serve any business in any industry. But AI models work best and improve the most when they are aimed at well-matched tasks in a business and focus on industry-specific best practices.
A generic tool will return a generic result and put more burden on the end user to guide the AI to improve itself or validate the results. Most senior living organizations would be best served by a senior living-specific platform that is scalable to the enterprise level but still specific to senior living’s unique challenges and data sources.
Our industry is data-rich and carries the unique burden of caring for residents. We should not miss the opportunity to develop and deploy AI tools that are deeply customized to our needs. Connecting with an AI partner that deeply understands our industry is critical to success.
Arick Morton is the CEO of NIC MAP Vision, a provider of advanced life supply, demand and operational data.
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