Realize What’s Possible with AI Before Deciding its Business Use — Airlines Reporting Corporation Director of Data Services

(US & Canada) Wendy Gilbert, Director of Data Services at Airlines Reporting Corporation, speaks with Kristopher Moniz, Director of Data and Analytics, Partner at Centric Consulting, in a video interview about the company, data strategies, managing the art of the possible with data and AI, strategy building approaches and finding the right tools, and the role of people, processes, and technology in accomplishing organizational strategies.

The Airlines Reporting Corporation (ARC) is a company that provides ticket transaction settlement services between airlines and travel agencies (both traditional and online) and travel management companies that sell their products in the U.S.

Introducing the company, Gilbert states that ARC provides data settlement, distribution, and financial services to the air travel industry. The core business of facilitating transactions between travel agencies and airlines has helped the company build a global data set containing 68% of global air travel data.

Gilbert has been the Director of Data Services at ARC for a little over a year. Sharing about her career trajectory, she mentions working at Expedia and with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation prior to this role.

After being in data management for over two decades, Gilbert manages both data engineers and represents business technology across different data products for ARC.

When asked about her perspective on data strategies, she notes that data strategies differ based on industries and their sizes. The reason, says Gilbert, is because from retail to healthcare, from banking to hospitality, what organizations try to do with the data varies.

Adding on, she says that while some organizations use data internally to support business processes, others use it externally to build data products, front-end systems, and personalized systems. ARC does both by being a big data proponent internally to support business needs and organizational decision-making, while also having a massive customer offering for data products.

Therefore, Gilbert states that ARC’s data strategy is driven by customers’ wants, organizational needs for decision-making, and company strategy. She shares that ARC has a three-year organizational strategy that is being regularly updated and that drives the data strategy.

Next, Gilbert discusses the art of the possible while building data strategy and how it has become increasingly critical in the new era of GenAI. The art of the possible sheds light on what can be done with the data that one does not know about.

The data and business strategies focus on the company's accomplishments and how data and AI can aid in that, says Gilbert. Whereas, the art of the possible asks how a business would decide if it did not know what was possible with data.

Therefore, organizations must be able to ensure that product designers and customer representatives are aware of the market offering regarding the art of possible and how they could use the data.

As an organization, ARC does not want people to build AI products for the sake of AI or new technologies, says Gilbert. She affirms that one needs to know what is possible with AI before deciding whether it is needed for business.

Speaking of the approach to building strategies and choosing the right tools, Gilbert refers to the machine learning, artificial intelligence, and data (MAD) landscape. She discusses how challenging it has become to choose the right set of tools for business needs.

Elaborating, Gilbert maintains that over 500 companies were added to that list between the past year and this year, and it gets increasingly difficult to know which companies are offering which products and their best utilization.

In continuation, Gilbert mentions how the landscape cautions against the fast fall of companies because of the massive proliferation. In this scenario, organizations must not invest in solutions that will not stand the test of time.

Regarding how ARC explores AI opportunities, Gilbert notes that the company has vendors who are adding AI to its existing product offerings. The company is in conversation with such vendors to understand the offerings and AI capabilities that they add.

Then, by utilizing that information, ARC educates its teams based on the art of the possible. Further, with AI summits and training, the organization is becoming familiar with what is available.

However, Gilbert remarks that just because something is interesting, it does not mean there will be a use case for it. Especially with generative AI, everything seems interesting, and everyone wants to be a part of it.

Moving forward, Gilbert recalls writing her Master’s thesis in Neural Networks and Artificial Intelligence 20 years ago, and finding a job was harder afterward. She affirms going through that hype cycle after that, where now traditional AI is everywhere.

With GenAI, the growth has been quicker, but the use cases still need to be explored. Luckily, ARC has focused leadership and the company has put together an AI Innovation Council and a governance council to use data carefully with GenAI and LLMs.

When it comes to accomplishing strategies, people and processes are critical. She states that without people, there would not be products or the need for products.

People and processes, according to Gilbert, have played a massive role in getting through hype cycles. People make the decisions taken by organizations around data and technology. She concurs that technology enables people and processes, but it is not the hard part.

The hard part is figuring out what to do with the technology, says Gilbert. Regarding data strategy, the building requires an understanding of the needs of people and processes, which is not related to technology.

For instance, Gilbert mentions attending a CIO conference, wherein a CIO remarked that his business users did not know what they wanted. As the then-Director of Product Management for Expedia’s data platforms, she knew that a product manager could solve the issue.

In conclusion, Gilbert states that ARC has a solid product management team that works through things such as customers’ wants and leverages technology to enable that. This, in turn, elevates the company’s data strategy.

CDO Magazine appreciates Wendy Gilbert for sharing her insights with our global community.