Before starting her own consulting work, Kellen Winters worked at Microsoft for about six years.
“before I started my own consulting work, I was working at Microsoft for about six years.”
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Kellen Winters
1 episodes · 17 quoted claims
Winters says Microsoft Copilot customers wanted proof tied to their existing workflows rather than small daily time savings.
“we don't necessarily care if I'm saving people five minutes of time a day. So really show me on paper something that's tied to my existing workflows”
Winters says Microsoft's business value dashboard came out of customer conversations about proving AI value.
“things like the business value dashboard came out of a lot of those conversations at Microsoft”
Winters says Novartis saw almost a 200% increase within a year in employees wanting to use AI for things like agents.
“we saw almost 200% increase in folks wanting to use AI for things like agents.”
Novartis ranked seven or eight AI opportunity areas and narrowed them to two where incremental value could be measured over time.
“stack rank the top seven or eight different areas where we saw those opportunities. Really whittle it down to two where that we could really show and measure the incremental value over time.”
Winters says disconnected systems make becoming data driven challenging, especially in regulated industries like pharma.
“there's a lot of challenging aspects of that, because there's disconnected systems, especially within regulated industries like pharma”
Winters says chief marketing officers and chief technology officers generally have a rough idea of where processes are breaking.
“if you talk to, you know, a C M O of an organization or a C T O, they'll generally kind of have a rough idea of where things are breaking.”
Winters suggests looking for heavy headcount spending and manual processes as signs of where AI could help.
“are we putting a ton of money in things like headcount or additional resources to solve a problem? Are there very manual processes that we're conducting through our organization today?”
Novartis collected AI ideas by email and messages and set up a monthly quorum meeting to review them.
“We're getting emails, pings from everybody who has these ideas, and we stood up a quorum where we would meet every single month.”
Winters says Novartis's idea intake process has evolved from a spreadsheet and meetings into an AI agent.
“And now this has kind of transformed into an agent. Because not only again, to your point, is it empowering people to really think in an A I first way”
Winters says the intake system lets Novartis track incremental value through proof-of-concept phases.
“once we start to work through the P O C phases of this, we're actually able to track that incremental value over time”
Winters says vendors and teams often claim initially that their agent will save $5 million.
“everybody is gonna say initially that they're gonna save your $5 million with their agent.”
Winters says guardrails for vendors clarify what they use AI to create, which affects spend.
“So we understand what they're using A I to create versus not, and that also will impact your spend.”
Winters says a mentor at Novartis told her that the company will always be a little behind.
“One of my mentors at Novartis said to me in the most earnest way that we're always gonna be a little bit behind.”
Winters says it took roughly nine months to a year to start ironing out the process.
“It's taken us roughly nine months to a year to really start ironing everything out and getting what we need.”
Winters says savings are projected through 2030 and describes the projections as ambitious across her clients.
“in terms of the savings that we're trying to project, we're saying through twenty thirty. So we have pretty ambitious projections with the savings across all my clients”
Winters says a proof of concept should be judged on what it delivers in ninety days.
“if we're running a P O C market for ninety days, what is this thing delivered in ninety days?”