2024 Mastering ERP Summit Agenda
Wellesley and ERP Today recently completed a significant research project with ERP leaders on AI. We’ll share our most critical and insightful findings with you so you can benchmark your progress and understand where your peers are along this journey, and where they’re struggling and succeeding. As you know, AI is dominating the headlines in business, tech, and most consumer markets, but did you know that most ERP leaders and their teams are still at the beginning of their journey? Nearly half of CIOs and ERP heads in our recent study have yet to execute an AI project or pilot and the other half have done just a handful or less. Join us for this Summit kickoff to hear more of our key research findings and set benchmarks for your company.
This keynote explores how technical experts can ensure AI trustworthiness by focusing on system reliability, institutional processes, and stakeholder engagement. Through rigorous testing, robust frameworks, and transparent communication, experts play a pivotal role in aligning AI systems with ethical standards and societal needs, fostering trust throughout the AI lifecycle.
This track dives into critical AI concepts and considerations, demystifying key topics and separating hype from reality. We unpack the core AI pieces, focusing on the impact on ERP systems, and your business and answer the following key questions:
- What are the most important concepts, trends and concerns to be aware of to navigate the AI road ahead?
- What are the best practices for creating a compelling AI business case?
- In delivering AI enabled functionality, should I build or buy or partner?
- What critical new security issues does AI introduce and what governance strategies do I need to put in place?
- How will AI reshape my IT department and my workforce overall?
Before you can embark on the journey to enable AI in your ERP landscape, it's critical to understand the road ahead. This session dives into key AI concepts, emerging trends, and essential terms you need to know for a successful adoption into your organisation. Set the stage so you're prepared before you get too far down the road.
This session explores the crucial steps and strategies you need to leverage when building a compelling business case for AI integration. Dive into the critical KPI's you need to establish and the investments you need to make in people, processes, and platforms to realize the benefits of improved decision-making, reduced costs, and streamlined operations. See how you can deliver a competitive edge by strategically aligning your AI investments with your organisational goals.
Build, buy, partner...? Whether you’re thinking about leveraging embedded AI, considering external experts, or building from scratch internally, this session will discuss several crucial factors to consider before taking the plunge. By carefully evaluating your options for different areas of your business, you can ensure your approach is strategic and sustainable. Join our discussion as we explore the key considerations when strategically selecting the most suitable approach to leverage AI in your ERP systems.
As AI becomes ingrained in ERP and other business systems, it requires a rethinking of your workforce and their skills. Understanding how AI will reshape your IT department, assessing current team capabilities, and identifying gaps are crucial aspects of this journey. Learn how to ensure your team’s AI readiness and adapt team structures - does your current team possess the skills necessary for AI integration? Learn how to foster collaboration among IT, data science, and business domains to facilitate holistic AI integration tailored to your organizational needs.
The implications of AI on the security of ERP systems are complex as AI introduces more input and output space into the equation. Hackers can also create AI 'hallucinations' by manipulating and underlying LLM, causing the GenAI bot to behave nefariously (think recent airline and automaker attacks). This session dives into the multitude of critical security exposures that AI can introduce and the key guardrails you need to put in place. This session delivers key best practices for a robust security and governance framework around AI capabilities that are an integral part of compliance effort.
Building an enterprise integration strategy to support AI requires several critical components including aligning with current business goals, assessing future needs, skill development, and more. This session will help you craft a strategic roadmap to support your organisation's AI integration and sustain innovation. Learn how to ensure seamless data flow to enhance the reliability and accuracy of AI-driven insights and how to align your integration efforts with your strategic objectives.
This track focuses on preparing your data, landscape, business processes, and more for AI in ERP readiness and will answer the following questions:
- How do I assess my ERP environment for AI readiness and how can I adapt my landscape without a complete overhaul?
- How do I identify my current business processes that are ideal candidates for AI automation?
- What are best practices for building essential data foundations and enhancing data-readiness for AI?
- How do I navigate the complexities and nuances of Large Language Models (LLMs) to drive AI?
- What is essential to know about a clean core in relation to AI and what do experts recommend for how I get there?
- What is ethical AI and responsible AI and how do I balance the two to eliminate bias from my AI applications?
This session examines strategies for modernising ERP landscapes to prepare for AI integration, ensuring enhanced efficiency, data utilization, and decision-making capabilities. Learn how to perform a thorough assessment of the current ERP environment, identifying areas of improvement and potential integration points for AI technologies. Assess key strategies such as migrating to cloud-based ERP solutions, which offer scalability, flexibility, and improved data accessibility. Know why you want to consider adopting modular ERP architecture that allow for incremental upgrades, and the addition of AI capabilities without overhauling the entire ERP landscape.
Join us for an insightful exploration into how to methodically assess your current business processes and achieve desired outcomes with Artificial intelligence. Learn how to identify, evaluate, and optimise your business processes that are ideal candidates for improvement with AI for more efficiency, productivity, and cost reduction. Discover specific use cases where AI can deliver significant value with automation tailored to your organisational needs.
The successful deployment of AI is fundamentally contingent upon the robustness of an organisation's data foundations. This talk explores the essential strategies for building effective data foundations that are not only AI-ready but also resilient and scalable. Whether you are at the beginning of your AI journey or looking to refine your AI strategy this session will provide valuable insights and practical approaches to enhance your organisational data-readiness for AI.
We'll cover:
- Kick starting an effective Data Strategy to support AI deployment.
- Building an effective data-driven culture - real-world examples and lessons learnt.
- identifying business value drivers to enable your data strategy.
- Data Quality in the age of AI.
Large Language Models (LLMs) present transformative opportunities across industries, yet navigating their deployment requires a nuanced understanding of capabilities, ethical implications, and security concerns. In this session you will learn that LLMs provide the foundational capabilities needed to drive AI. Discover how Large Language Models (LLMs) enable you to fully leverage the potential of Generative AI, explore practical applications of LLMs in automating workflows and driving decision-making, and gain expert tips and best practices to kick-start your own projects
The advent of Artificial Intelligence necessitates a streamlined and efficient ERP system to fully harness AI's potential. This session discusses the importance of achieving a clean ERP core and minimizing customisations as a preparatory step for AI integration, highlighting the benefits of standardisation, improved data quality, and enhanced system performance. Find out how a lean, clean ERP core provides a robust foundation for implementing AI, ensuring that the underlying system is not bogged down by bespoke modifications that can hinder AI effectiveness. Learn the steps needed to achieve a clean ERP core that reduces unnecessary customisations that often lead to system complexity, increased maintenance costs, and integration challenges. Discover the value of standardising ERP processes according to industry best practices to enhance system stability and performance. Understand how to perform a comprehensive review of existing customisations to determine its business value and necessity so that you reduce technical debt and simplify your overall ERP environment.
Don't miss this opportunity to gain deep insight and enjoy lively debate and discussion on the critical issues surrounding AI in your technology landscape. Learn how to balance Ethical AI and Responsible AI and navigate each for a best practice approach. Understand how human bias can have a huge impact on AI outcomes and how you can eliminate it from your AI deployments. Find out why transparency, fairness, accountability, and other factors are key to ethical AI deployment and how data, algorithms, design and training all contribute to desired outcomes. This panel discussion provides clarity on why ethical AI is not just a moral must but how it can also be a strategic advantage.