I'm excited to bring you this conversation with Spurthi Kommajosula. Spurthi is a portfolio product manager at IBM. During this conversation, she shared her thoughts on the types of exploratory questions an AI PM could ask to discover optimal use cases, how to communicate effectively with other stakeholders, and AI governance.

Links

Spurthi On LinkedIn

Transcript

[00:00:00 ] Spurthi: The first question as product managers, we should ask ourselves, and really anybody who you're involving within your AI conversation, is what data is available right now? 

[00:00:10 ] Himakara Pieris: I'm, Himakara Pieris. You're listening to smart products. A show where we, recognize, celebrate, and learn from industry leaders who are solving real-world problems. Using AI.

[00:00:20 ] Himakara Pieris: I'm excited to bring you this conversation with 

[00:00:24 ] Himakara Pieris: is a portfolio product manager at IBM. During this conversation, she shared her thoughts on the types of extra for the questions an AI PM could ask to discover optimal use cases, how to effectively communicate with all the stakeholders, and AI governance. check the show notes for links. Enjoy the show. 

[00:00:42 ] Himakara Pieris: welcome to the show. 

[00:00:44 ] Spurthi: thank you so much for having me. It's very exciting. 

[00:00:47 ] Himakara Pieris: Tell us a little bit about your background and what you're working on.

[00:00:51 ] Spurthi: I currently am a PR portfolio product manager for business analytics at IBM. So essentially what that means is I manage a portfolio [00:01:00 ] consisting of Cognos Analytics, planning, analytics, analytics, content hub, business analytics, enterprise and Cognos controller. If you've been in the analytics space , you probably have heard of at least one of these products given at their longevity and how how involved they are in the analytics space.

[00:01:16 ] Spurthi: It's been an exciting role. I get to touch upon a lot of these products. They fall under the scope of data and AI at IBM which is a very exciting place to be in. Apart from that, I'm also an adjunct professor at Conestoga College where I focus in on analytics and data and AI based courses, so that's been really exciting to convey to people the importance of AI in this world. 

[00:01:40 ] Himakara Pieris: Sounds like the product Suite is focused on making the power of AI available to the masses to the sems, et cetera. Is that right? 

[00:01:48 ] Spurthi: Yes, that's exactly what it is. These products are more so b2b. So they target medium and large base card organizations or enterprises that really want to, in, in like improve their, [00:02:00 ] I would say, BI ecosystems their planning ecosystems. So that way not only are you just planning and forecasting and improving how you handle your data within your organization, but also you're incorporating AI when you do that.

[00:02:13 ] Spurthi: So what that essentially means is when you do your forecasting or when you do your budgeting, you're involving AI to in ensure and help you predict and get more information from the data and insights that you have, and use that to really drive the decision making within your organization. So the best case example that I can give you is say for instance, you are a small time retailer that essentially retails in, say, coffee.

[00:02:37 ] Spurthi: So if you're in the coffee space, you really wanna know how much coffee products you need to buy, how many cost of what's the cost of goods sold within this month. Et cetera. But at the same time, you need to plan how much to buy for the remaining year. What are my main months of sale? What are my sales looking like?

[00:02:53 ] Spurthi: How should I be targeting to meet my goals by the end of the year, et cetera? So when you [00:03:00 ] do that kind of level of planning, you really want to be able to use reliable insights to get that. Level of confidence to make your decisions in a more effective way. So that's essentially where my type of products come in.

[00:03:12 ] Spurthi: We really ensure that your entire business intelligence suite and your data and AI suite is set up to give you as reliable insights as possible. Insights that can really drive to make your decision making easier. 

[00:03:27 ] Himakara Pieris: What would be a good example use case that we can get into?

[00:03:30 ] Spurthi: Let's take the example of L'Oreal Paris a big manufacturer and retailer of cosmetic products within the world. So typically during red carpet events, you would see a lot of different looks, a lot of different trends that come up in makeup and fashion, et cetera. So what L'Oreal saw this as a business opportunity, but essentially in order for them to know what was trending, what was Going to be sold later on.

[00:03:54 ] Spurthi: What would essentially be the product of the year that people would go after? They would need to analyze thousands, [00:04:00 ] if not millions, of data trends of trends within the red carpet at a very real time basis. So that's where business analytics comes in, helps them essentially target these data sources, these trends, and give them the insights that they need.

[00:04:16 ] Spurthi: To do their demand and supply planning so that way they're set up for the rest of the year following the trends that have been seen in red carpet events, et cetera. So that's essentially given them that opportunity of pursuing that business that business opportunity in a very, very reliable and fast paced manner with data backing up their decisions.

[00:04:35 ] Spurthi: That way they know what product to make more of, what product to essentially stock up on. So that way when they do go to market, they have enough sources to sell enough products to sell without any issues. And their planning and budgeting for all of this is done in a more seamless manner. So I think that's one of the best case examples that I can give you.

[00:04:54 ] Spurthi: Another really key one that's used AI in the last couple of years to make their [00:05:00 ] processes better has been this financial institution that's incorporated data discovery. Within their audit modules, so that way when auditors come in and take and do their audit processes, et cetera, they're able to automate and rely on AI to drive certain in insights and automate some of their redundant tasks and administrative tasks, which is essentially save them thousands of hours.

[00:05:23 ] Spurthi: And thousands of auditors have been able to essentially incorporate that and improve their audit processes. So not only are they able to audit better, but they're also able to audit faster and essentially save billable hours for a lot of the organizations. So if you look at, you know, AI right now in any of the spaces, you know, you pick supply chain or if you pick retail consumer goods, really just any aspect outside or even inside your organization, you can see that there is a space for ai.

[00:05:52 ] Spurthi: It's just how you kind of. Pave the path to get that space set up and utilized for you to ensure that [00:06:00 ] AI really just adds a value to your organization. 

[00:06:02 ] Himakara Pieris: What are some of the challenges that you experience as a PM in the, AI space? 

[00:06:10 ] Spurthi: Everybody wants to be involved with AI because it's become such a big buzzword. And what that essentially means is as product managers, you wanna cater to this demand, but you also want your clients to incorporate their data and AI-based solutions in the best way possible.

[00:06:26 ] Spurthi: Taking the example of say the audit example that I'd mentioned with the financial institution, they knew that they had to incorporate AI in some form or the other, but showing that they're such a niche place and incorporating it with audit. What's the best way for them to go forward? And the best way you can do that and have your clients understand where they can incorporate AI is through.

[00:06:49 ] Spurthi: Constantly having a conversation with them, understanding where the pain points are, and then trying to see where they, where your products can add value to it. If, you know, you go [00:07:00 ] into incorporating AI with the mindset of this is going to solve all of my organization's problems, then you're not really using AI to its capacity or its full potential.

[00:07:09 ] Spurthi: Really understanding the vision of what you wanna do with AI is, The best way to go forward, you know, and that may mean you have to incorporate it at some form or the other, or that may mean you may not exactly need ai, but you might need like an analytics based solution or you might need maybe a data management solution.

[00:07:27 ] Spurthi: So incorporating it really just depends on. Where your pain point is as an organization and how effectively can data and AI solve that? And the second aspect, I think the second challenge of it is, while people wanna get into the space of ai, they're also very scared of what that means. And they're very, very of of what the AI piece could mean, especially with the conversations of AI being unpredictable or not trustworthy or not explainable being so relevant in this day and age.[00:08:00 ]

[00:08:00 ] Spurthi: Again, all of these just co