At know-how and manufacturing firm Honeywell, generative AI is all over the place.
“Every function and every strategic business unit is now using gen AI,” Sheila Jordan, the corporate’s chief digital know-how officer, who oversees AI integration internally throughout the group, advised Fortune. “And the other thing I’m super proud of is that we have it available to all 100,000 employees,”
As firms throughout completely different enterprise sectors incorporate AI into their operations, an rising set of greatest practices reveals quite a lot of approaches, from decentralized, experimentation-driven cultures to tightly choreographed methods that may scale throughout a company. Honeywell, which ranked at No. 17 within the Fortune AIQ 50 record of Fortune 500 firms with essentially the most “mature” AI capabilities, is a case research in find out how to excel by taking the latter strategy.
Jordan and CTO Suresh Venkatarayalu, who oversees AI product efforts, imagine the corporate’s success in maturing its AI capabilities immediately stems from its “six-chapter AI framework.” Together with the group’s top-down strategy to AI, adhering to the framework has allowed them to give attention to efforts with instant influence with the intention to kick off the flywheel impact.
“What are the use cases? And can I measure and track them?” mentioned Venkatarayalu, describing how the corporate zeroes in on influence. “In fact, tomorrow we have a meeting with Sheila and the CFO looking at the 2026 road map and to ask me the real question: ‘Could we track it to the P&L?’ And we should track it to the P&L. That’s the way it’s set up.”
The six-point technique
Within the fast-moving world of AI, it may be tough to prioritize, keep on monitor, and resist making an attempt to do every thing without delay. That’s why Honeywell’s management created a six-chapter framework in early 2024 to information the group’s AI efforts and hold it centered strictly on use instances it believes will really transfer the needle.
“We could get distracted by the long, long, long tail and all the noise and all the things people might want to do, but we have a whole program to prioritize those things that are going to move the needle in business value, both on productivity and growth and innovation,” mentioned Jordan, including that the group “would have been confused and lost” with out the framework and readability from her and Venkatarayalu about which generative AI capabilities had been match for implementation.
The primary chapter of the framework is in regards to the instruments—reminiscent of Purple and Honeywell GPT—designed to help staff of their on a regular basis workflows. Then there’s chapter two, centered on the usage of generative AI for engineering. Chapter three is how the agency “thinks about cognitive automation,” Jordan mentioned, particularly the way it’s utilizing completely different LLMs (massive language fashions) from Azure, Google, AWS, and others for particular use instances. Subsequent, chapter 4 is all about generative AI within the industrial purposes they buy and use, like Salesforce and different platforms. Chapter 5 facilities on the corporate’s personal services. And lastly, chapter six focuses on gross sales effectiveness.
“I think our chapters will work for any enterprise,” mentioned Venkatarayalu. “It’s productivity, it’s growth, and it’s margins.”
Chasing the flywheel impact
Jordan mentioned the truth that the know-how might be utilized to so many use instances is without doubt one of the largest challenges to beat, so it helps to begin with ones which have the most important instant influence. That manner, these early successes can drive the hassle ahead.
For instance, she mentioned early work with GitHub and Copilot had been the “first movers” and delivered the worth they thought it could, which began the AI efforts off on a robust word.
“If it works, the flywheel takes off. If it doesn’t work, it dies its death, right? So I wanted the flywheel effect where we could do something and show the organization the value of gen AI,” she mentioned.
This implies moving into with a enterprise case and worth proposition in thoughts, however being open to worth coming by way of otherwise than assumed, she mentioned.
“We could say [the value] was going to be productivity, but in reality, it was a sales effectiveness play. We got a higher conversion from something. So I would just say to stay super open to the business benefits, because they can morph based upon your customer and partner interactions,” Jordan added.
The highest-down strategy
One other key component to maintaining the group on course and adhering to its AI framework is its top-down strategy.
Venkatarayalu pointed to how different firms begin with a variety of proof of ideas, letting enterprise items pursue their very own methods and democratizing the AI efforts. However not Honeywell, which he mentioned is “predominantly top-down-driven” relating to AI.
“I think this company looks at use cases first, value second,” he mentioned. “And once we believe—along with our CEO and chairman and the business unit leaders—[that a use case will deliver value], we drive that. I think that’s a very different [mindset] than many of my peers.”
Correction: A earlier model of this text misstated the variety of Honeywell’s enterprise items.
