80% of AI Projects Fail - Here's How to avoid the trap

Hi, I’m Danielle Turner, Welcome to the Property AI Tools newsletter where I share weekly deep dives into AI topics, the latest AI tools and news, all specifically for real estate.

If you’re at a roadblock and don’t know where to start with using AI in your real estate business, schedule a 1-1 discovery call.

Today I’ll be exploring:

• The top 5 reasons AI projects fail

• How to stop your project from facing the same fate

• Red flags to look out for

Are you on the verge of diving into a new AI project? Below, I discuss how to avoid falling into the 80% failure trap and the steps you need to take to ensure your AI project is a success.

1. The Threat of Job Loss

A core element of a successful AI project is company culture. If there is a resoundingly negative perception of AI within your organisation and a lack of understanding of what you’re trying to achieve with a new project, it will have a knock-on effect on any AI project that you implement.

For example, If you deploy a new email sifting system to handle incoming queries and customer enquiries without consulting your administration and client management team members during the discovery phase, it is unlikely to be well received; they will sense that it’s only a matter of time before they are replaced. This brings me onto another point; You must make a difficult decision from the beginning.

Are you trying to replace staff with AI or are you trying to make their jobs less admin heavy and shift their responsibilities onto more revenue generating activities?

When your team sees AI as a threat, they will have a strong aversion to change. After all, it is human nature to be fearful of things we do not understand. Read AI is Coming for Your Job - Here's How to Make Yourself Irreplaceable to go down the rabbit hole of this topic.

2. Lack of Training

In order to improve understanding, you need to address AI fluency within your company. Team members who don’t understand how AI works and are not properly trained on new AI systems, won’t be able to use them optimally, meaning you’ll never actually hit the savings targets and ROI you set out to achieve with the AI project.

When planning your AI roadmap, always consider upskilling and training in your timeline for a successful rollout and launch. Important topics to cover include, effective prompt writing, responsible AI use (i.e. not dumping company IP and data into ChatGPT) and AI basics like the Introduction to AI in Real Estate sessions I host every month. If team training is something that you want to explore, simply schedule a discovery call with me to discuss options.

3. Big Changes, No Foundation

Are you attempting to implement high effort transformations as your first AI project?. Doing so may land you in hot water and overwhelm your operations. Instead, try starting with projects that help you to achieve quick wins and optimisations with an immediate ROI.

For example, start off with setting up AI assistants for report writing, automating research tasks, content creation and repetitive data entry tasks. Although they may seem small, tackling the smaller challenges first can have a big impact on team morale, productivity and output. This will solidify the foundation of AI being seen as asset from the core of your business, whilst having a positive effect on the perception and benefits of AI across teams.

4. Substandard Guardrails

When your sole focus is on speed of execution, you end up implementing solutions so fast that you bypass all the red flags and research you would usually prepare for a non-AI project. You skip risk assessment, don’t spend enough time on validation and ignore standard procedure, leading to unpredictable project outcomes, lack of accountability and minimal recourse when things go wrong.

In your rush to jump on the next AI trend, you can make mistakes that compromise company IP, client data and don’t allow enough time to stress test new AI systems. Avoid these mistakes by having a solid strategy, roadmap and discovery phase that gives you full oversight of the project’s objectives and goals.

5. AI Trends Have Moved On Without You

Imagine this scenario. You’ve spent a large amount of time and money on a transformative project and haven’t kept up with current trends. What took you 6months+ to build can now be achieved in weeks with a new technological advancement.

By launch, your innovation is already out of date, simply because you’ve had no oversight over the constantly moving market. In my opinion, the rate at which this happens is understated and should not be ignored. Something to think about is, How flexible can you be?. 

AI is developing at an unbelievable rate, can you keep up?

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Round-Up

Ultimately, there’s three red flags that all of these points have in common,

1. No strategy

2. Lack of consideration for the humans currently doing the work

3. No AI fluency within the company

For some reason, organisations approach AI as if it’s a shiny new toy, all standard project management procedure goes out the window and it becomes a race to the finish line. This approach is detrimental to successfully implementing AI into the core of your business.

= AI Project Failure

Spend some time on refining your strategy, talk to employees and discover the real problems and inefficiencies, before leaping into using the latest AI app. Doing so will save you from being part of the 80% failure club and throwing resources down the drain.

If you’re ready to take the next step and want to work towards creating a clear AI roadmap, defined strategy and responsible AI project, book a 1-1 discovery call with me to discuss the AI Strategy Launchpad

Thanks for Reading!

Danielle 
Property AI Tools Founder | AI Consultant @ Caique

P.S. If you’ve enjoyed today’s newsletter, forward it to your colleagues and peers. I’m also interested in hearing about your own project failures. Respond to this email if you have any interesting stories to share.