Preparing for the Future: Creating a Scalable GenAI Budget Strategy
Over the course of the past two years, GenAI-powered technologies have become an intrinsic aspect of operations for business across countless verticals; including healthcare, finance, and marketing.
Their capabilities enable enterprises to benefit from improved efficiency, workflow optimization, and innovation; but these impacts can only be properly realized when GenAI budgets are planned strategically. As with any new investment, a GenAI spend needs to be developed to scale, as successful adoption will create even more opportunities for usage to evolve.
We’re going to explore the importance of establishing a scalable GenAI budget strategy, helping businesses to devise an approach that helps them to reap the advantages of this fast-growing technology.
Understanding the need for scalable GenAI budgets
While GenAI is still in its infancy in terms of regular deployment for many enterprises, one of the biggest snags that comes with this kind of investment is not structuring the spend correctly – or rather, flexibly. Decision makers that see the technology as a one-off expenditure tend to be part of organizations that never fully unleash the potential that GenAI can have; as their budget ends once the tool is live. Conversely, businesses that understand the technology is in its first wave and perceive GenAI as an investment that needs regular iteration and accompanying provisions are seeing far better outcomes. Budget flexibility allows the ability to enable further strategic spending on the technology.
When referring to ‘accompanying provisions’ for GenAI, we’re talking about all of the necessary insights and capabilities that enterprises need to have access to, in order to optimize their tool usage. A well-executed GenAI budget isn’t used solely on buying a license for an expensive tool – it considers the longevity behind the investment, and this includes factors such as GenAI visibility, security, governance and training for deployment of the technology. All of these factors need to be built into the budget, and they should be scalable throughout your journey; as without them, your organization will not see the most meaningful advantages of GenAI.
When all of these aspects have been factored into the broader budget, GenAI systems have the potential to continuously grow and adapt without posing any risk to compliance or regulation. Each aspect should be able to scale to meet the needs of the enterprise, and underestimating the importance of having a flexible GenAI budget can pose significant risks. Most prominently, it can also give enterprises a diluted, limited impact of what could otherwise be a ‘turning point’ tool for their own operational success.
Can enterprises overinvest or underinvest in their GenAI budgets?
Yes – it’s possible for enterprises to skew their priorities when it comes to GenAI budgets, by overinvesting or underinvesting in certain infrastructure regarding the technology.
Overinvesting in the technology itself, without accounting for the provisions needed to monitor usage, might result in wasted resources on unproven technologies. On the flip side, underinvesting in these provisions could leave an organization vulnerable to security breaches and competitive disadvantages.
A scalable budget strategy can effectively mitigate these risks by ensuring that funds are allocated efficiently across all necessary areas, and can be adjusted as needed.
Strategies for creating scalable GenAI budgets
There are several steps that the enterprise should take to create a scalable budget that can act as a safeguard against potential risks. We’ve outlined them below.
1. Regularly assess organizational structure, needs, and objectives
Funds should be allocated based on the organization’s size and specific objectives, and both of these factors are prone to change.
For instance, a healthcare provider might focus on using GenAI for predictive analytics for patient care initially, but this could evolve into into a comprehensive AI-driven system that not only predicts patient outcomes but also generates personalized treatment plans, automates administrative tasks such as medical record-keeping, and enhances telemedicine services with virtual health assistants. This is where a scalable GenAI budget strategy proves beneficial, as organizations can tweak their priorities accordingly; in this instance, GenAI development would become the priority for funds, in order to build these new capabilities into the existing infrastructure.
As another example, some organizational needs depend on more isolated usage of GenAI than others do. Organizations in this category might rely on their GenAI system at a specific point during their supply chain, and other organizations will use it to power complete processes. Each kind of structure warrants a different degree of resources to ensure optimal deployment; in the latter scenario, GenAI employee training will need to cover a broader curriculum, and in the former, training can be targeted at staff who are required for deployment.
Similarly, any new hires will also need to receive the same level of training for using existing GenAI tools, and all staff will likely need to top up their knowledge of the technology they’re using. In this way, changes to the structure of the organization will dictate exactly where the budget needs to scale up (or down) to allow for consistent progress.
2. Conduct periodic risk assessments and auditability
Enterprises are wholly responsible when it comes to evaluating potential threats and vulnerabilities associated with GenAI implementation. These kinds of risk assessments will involve dissecting GenAI usage within the organization, looking to identify critical areas that will require investment and those that can be deprioritized. For example, a periodic audit might highlight shortcomings in GenAI governance if there are any usage anomalies. The enterprise is also responsible for taking the necessary measures to ensure their outputs aren’t impacted by these types of influencing factors, and a scalable GenAI budget strategy will allow for this.
In the bigger picture and post-implementation, ensuring you have a clear view of your GenAI auditability trail will serve to ensure your budget is scalable enough. These in-depth reviews and forensics insights can pinpoint inefficiencies and highlight areas needing more investment.
3. Embrace budget elasticity
The ultimate goal for organizations should be to develop a budget with built-in flexibility that can accommodate changing circumstances. This might involve setting aside contingency funds, or creating a dynamic allocation model that can scale up or down based on real-time needs.
This allows enterprises to be responsive and proactive in light of the results their GenAI systems generate – if deployment is going well, but the next step for growth involves processing IP data, model training will need to be reinforced with more risk mitigation protocols.
4. Continuous evaluation, adaptation, and agility
It’s worth highlighting the fact that a scalable GenAI budget is not a one-time setup, but a continuous process that requires regular evaluation and adaptation. Given the fast-moving nature of GenAI, some systems can be susceptible to getting left in the dust, overtaken by the latest developments. A scalable budget can act as a means of preventing this, as it gives enterprises total flexibility to grow and enhance their existing GenAI technologies, keeping them up to date with the changing landscape.
In a similar vein, enterprises should use their scalable budget to stay agile in response to new GenAI security threats. This might involve reallocating funds to address vulnerabilities, or investing in a capable insights tool.
Choose the Portal26 GenAI TRiSM platform for your enterprise
With Portal26’s GenAI TRiSM platform, enterprises can access all of the necessary pillars of a scalable budget – visibility, security, governance, model training and education. Our platform provides a centralized point for monitoring and improving each aspect of your GenAI budget, helping you to see optimal results and to manage risks accordingly. If you’re interested in experiencing these capabilities first-hand, simply schedule a demo online now.
We’ve outlined the fact that GenAI budget planning needs to be adaptable enough to accommodate, protect and grow the impact that the technology has within enterprises; and we’re here to help organizations reach this point. Follow the approaches we’ve outlined to ensure your GenAI budget strategy is in-tune with your wider business objectives.