AI can be a daunting yet exciting prospect for many businesses. At our recent AI Forum in London, we gathered leaders from across our portfolio companies to network and share insights into how they are leveraging AI tools and data analytics to disrupt their markets and boost productivity. Here we share some key takeaways from the Forum:
AI is already disrupting entire industries and markets, including education and the law. Two Oakley portfolio companies at the vanguard of this disruption are IU Group, Germany’s largest and fastest growing university, and vLex, a legal information platform with the largest collection of legal information in the world. Over the last two months, each company has launched a new AI-powered product to help its end-customers work more effectively. In the case of IU, its AI-powered teaching assistant Syntea offers a more personalised learning experience for students. Early indications are that students using Syntea can complete their course with 27% reduced study time. Meanwhile, vLex’s AI-powered legal assistant Vincent allows lawyers to ask complex legal questions in natural language and receive a well-constructed answer complete with sources. As vLex’s Head of Product puts it: “Vincent is now the flagship of our company. This once in a generation technology has allowed us to build question-answering systems that were a pipedream only a few years ago, and unlock the holy grail of legal research technology.”
The right data platform is the foundation for trustworthy data, the bedrock of any AI tool. For North Sails, that meant matching on and offline records across its multiple businesses, from sail making to masts, sports apparel to kite-surfing. And then setting out a new data warehouse structure to be implemented across the group to enable meaningful analysis. Machine learning then provided useful insights on customer segmentation, audience targeting and pricing. Gen AI has helped optimise email marketing, while causal AI (which helps explain cause and effect and therefore, decision making) has provided insights into value drivers. Anna Semens, North’s Head of Data, can point to concrete results: “AI has helped us decrease the age demographic of our followers by nearly 12 years, while also increasing female engagement by 16%, widening our total available market and boosting sales.”
It can be tempting to unleash AI across your entire business. But ‘doing’ AI can be expensive and time-consuming, from hiring in tech talent to training existing teams and crunching endless reams of data. A good approach is to split your AI aspirations into low value but easy to do, and high value but complex. The first may very well be accomplished in house while the latter may require you to outsource. Still, leveraging in-house engagement can be very fruitful. IU launched an open call across the business asking teams to name their most time-consuming tasks and offering GPT workshops to teach teams how to prompt. 25 teams have followed through and on average report 10-20% efficiencies achieved. One example is the production of webpages. Previously, when responding to particular Google searches, multiple teams would take several weeks to produce and host a relevant webpage to capture that traffic. Using GPT has reduced this to hours, with a knock-on, positive impact on sales.
Embarking on your AI journey can feel like hard work – and it often is! But that doesn’t mean you always need to do all the work on your own. One of the key decisions businesses need to make is whether to build their own solution or buy off the shelf. There are different advantages in each case; “Buy” enables you to move faster and reduce risk by using a more tested product, whereas “Build” provides more flexibility and adaptability to your needs. Making the right choice means thinking more holistically about the role of AI in your organisation. Aris Valtazanos, Head of Data and Analytics at Oakley Capital says: “AI is not just about the technology, but people and process too. It is important to involve the end-users from the early stages, and understand what solution will create the biggest impact for them”. It is also worth acknowledging that the field of AI solutions is a rapidly evolving one, and as it grows it keeps addressing new areas and needs. As Samir Kumar, General Partner at Touring Capital says: “the next generation of AI-powered software businesses will be productivity multipliers for all kinds of workers.”
Endorsement from the top will unlock financing for AI spend. But it also fosters a culture of innovation and experimentation. It provides confidence for teams to take risks and fail without fear. Not everything will work out, and what does work can take time. In IU’s case, the team began work on the data platform that underpins so many of the company’s AI projects, in early 2020 and completed it over a year later. Mark Zakhvatkin is Director of AI and Data at IU Group: “Our Founder & CEO Sven Schutt is an evangelist for AI: he truly believes it can help deliver our mission to democratise access to quality education. For him, this isn’t just about using a new technology, but about reimagining the entire way we educate.” In vLex’s case, management were the linchpin for the company’s entire AI endeavour. “On the 9th of April 2023 our CTO and co-founder emailed a small group of us to launch our LLM-powered research memo feature. The first public demonstration of what became our legal assistant followed just four months later.”
