How to Optimize Data for AI Innovation

AI isn’t a magic fix. If the processes are broken and the data is messy, AI will only accelerate the chaos. That’s why over 80% of organizations aren’t seeing clear ROI from GenAI (McKinsey report, 2025). The risk is even greater in the construction sector. Because in most firms, data is still: - Siloed across teams - Buried in spreadsheets - Entered inconsistently (or not at all) As I spoke with Amine Nabi, CTO of BNMA, who has 30+ years of experience building software solutions for Fortune 500 and SMEs, here’s how you can build a solid foundation and prepare the data for real AI adoption and future ROI: 1. 𝐄𝐬𝐭𝐚𝐛𝐥𝐢𝐬𝐡 𝐚 𝐒𝐢𝐧𝐠𝐥𝐞 𝐒𝐨𝐮𝐫𝐜𝐞 𝐨𝐟 𝐓𝐫𝐮𝐭𝐡 (𝐒𝐒𝐎𝐓) This should be a system, a one place, where all key data is stored (either pick one, or build one). Relying on three systems that all say something slightly different will lead to confusion aand decisions based on incomplete or conflicting information. Define where your project, schedule, or delivery data lives, and make sure everyone is referencing the same source. 2. 𝐂𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐭𝐞 𝐂𝐨𝐧𝐬𝐢𝐬𝐭𝐞𝐧𝐭 𝐃𝐚𝐭𝐚 𝐄𝐧𝐭𝐫𝐲 𝐒𝐭𝐚𝐧𝐝𝐚𝐫𝐝𝐬 If one person writes “Project A" and another writes “Tower-A,” automation will break. Some examples of consistent data entry standards: - naming conventions - formats - required fields - regular update intervals Consistency makes your data usable and reliable. 3. 𝐄𝐬𝐭𝐚𝐛𝐥𝐢𝐬𝐡 𝐃𝐚𝐭𝐚 𝐕𝐚𝐥𝐢𝐝𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 𝐑𝐮𝐥𝐞𝐬 Good data starts at the front door. Data needs to be entered correctly and consistently. Some examples of these rules: - required fields must be filled out (you can use the pre-filled options for similar fields) - drop-downs instead of free text - date and currency formats enforced - duplicate entries flagged in real time The benefit: validation rules will save you time from cleaning up later. 4. 𝐑𝐮𝐧 𝐑𝐞𝐠𝐮𝐥𝐚𝐫 𝐃𝐚𝐭𝐚 𝐀𝐮𝐝𝐢𝐭𝐬 (𝐀𝐈 𝐜𝐚𝐧 𝐡𝐞𝐥𝐩 𝐡𝐞𝐫𝐞) Use AI to detect anomalies, catch duplicates, or flag inaccuracies. You don’t need a massive team to clean your data, you just need visibility and structure. 5. 𝐈𝐧𝐭𝐞𝐠𝐫𝐚𝐭𝐞 𝐀𝐥𝐥 𝐘𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐒𝐲𝐬𝐭𝐞𝐦𝐬 Data should flow seamlessly across your systems. Your ERP, project management tool, and field systems should talk to each other. AI only works when it can “see” across your workflows. Whether you use off-the-shelf integrations or build a custom software layer, the goal is clear: Your systems should share data, not hoard it. _________________ TL;DR: If you want to future-ready your organization for AI adoption, it's crucial to start with the foundation first by having: 1. Clean, connected, consistent data 2. Clear workflows that tech can actually support 3. One version of the truth Once your data and workflows are aligned, AI adoption becomes not just possible, but far more likely to deliver real, measurable ROI. Agree? #enterprisesoftware #construction

*𝑆𝑖𝑔ℎ* Yet again, I hear another company excitedly talking about implementing AI—integrating it, scaling it, “revolutionizing everything”—and yet they gloss over the need for a robust data strategy. It takes all my energy not to pull my hair out as I cringe, listening to the words. But instead of yelling into the void, I’ve learned a better approach: I ask questions. Good ones. The kind that make leaders pause and realize that AI without solid data foundations is just a very expensive experiment. 𝐐𝐮𝐞𝐬𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐬 𝐥𝐢𝐤𝐞: 1) What percentage of your data is truly usable—normalized, contextualized, indexed, and properly mapped? 2) How much of your data is “dark” (produced but unused), and what’s your plan to leverage it? 3) Do you have a defined data governance and data management framework, or is it mostly ad hoc? 4) What’s your process for ensuring data accuracy, completeness, and relevance for AI models? 5) How scalable is your data infrastructure to support AI at an enterprise level? 6) If AI solutions depend on a continuous flow of clean data, how confident are you that your processes can deliver that over time? This is when the lightbulb flickers. Because here’s the reality: You already produce more data than you know what to do with. And yet, no one is asking whether your data is reliable, clean, and strategically aligned. Oh, and let’s not forget—you’re probably not even collecting the right strategic data yet to unlock AI’s full potential. AI doesn’t live in isolation. It thrives on organized, high-quality data. Your first step to scaling AI shouldn’t be building models—it should be building a foundation: ✅ 𝐃𝐚𝐭𝐚 𝐢𝐧𝐟𝐫𝐚𝐬𝐭𝐫𝐮𝐜𝐭𝐮𝐫𝐞 ✅ 𝐃𝐚𝐭𝐚 𝐠𝐨𝐯𝐞𝐫𝐧𝐚𝐧𝐜𝐞 ✅ 𝐃𝐚𝐭𝐚 𝐦𝐚𝐧𝐚𝐠𝐞𝐦𝐞𝐧𝐭 ✅ And, most importantly, a 𝐝𝐚𝐭𝐚 𝐬𝐭𝐫𝐚𝐭𝐞𝐠𝐲. 𝐒𝐨 𝐛𝐞𝐟𝐨𝐫𝐞 𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐝𝐢𝐯𝐞 𝐢𝐧𝐭𝐨 𝐀𝐈, 𝐚𝐬𝐤 𝐲𝐨𝐮𝐫𝐬𝐞𝐥𝐟: “If AI is the engine of innovation, do we even have the fuel to power it?” (Trust me, the answer might surprise you.) ******************************************* • Visit www.jeffwinterinsights.com for access to all my content and to stay current on Industry 4.0 and other cool tech trends • Ring the 🔔 for notifications!

If you’re leading AI initiatives, here is a strategic cheat sheet to move from "𝗰𝗼𝗼𝗹 𝗱𝗲𝗺𝗼" to 𝗲𝗻𝘁𝗲𝗿𝗽𝗿𝗶𝘀𝗲 𝘃𝗮𝗹𝘂𝗲. Think Risk, ROI, and Scalability. This strategy moves you from "𝘄𝗲 𝗵𝗮𝘃𝗲 𝗮 𝗺𝗼𝗱𝗲𝗹" to "𝘄𝗲 𝗵𝗮𝘃𝗲 𝗮 𝗯𝘂𝘀𝗶𝗻𝗲𝘀𝘀 𝗮𝘀𝘀𝗲𝘁." 𝟭. 𝗧𝗵𝗲 "𝗪𝗵𝘆" 𝗚𝗮𝘁𝗲 (𝗣𝗿𝗲-𝗣𝗼𝗖) • Don’t build just because you can. Define the Business Problem first • Success: Is the potential value > 10x the estimated cost? • Decision: If the problem can be solved with Regex or SQL, kill the AI project now. 𝟮. 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗣𝗿𝗼𝗼𝗳 𝗼𝗳 𝗖𝗼𝗻𝗰𝗲𝗽𝘁 (𝗣𝗼𝗖) • Goal: Prove feasibility, not scalability. • Timebox: 4–6 weeks max. • Team: 1-2 AI Engineers + 1 Domain Expert (Data Scientist alone is not enough). • Metric: Technical feasibility (e.g., "Can the model actually predict X with >80% accuracy on historical data?") 𝟯. 𝗧𝗵𝗲 "𝗠𝗩𝗣" 𝗧𝗿𝗮𝗻𝘀𝗶𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 (𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗩𝗮𝗹𝗹𝗲𝘆 𝗼𝗳 𝗗𝗲𝗮𝘁𝗵) • Shift from "Notebook" to "System." • Infrastructure: Move off local GPUs to a dev cloud environment. Containerize. • Data Pipeline: Replace manual CSV dumps with automated data ingestion. • Decision: Does the model work on new, unseen data? If accuracy drops >10%, halt and investigate "Data Drift." 𝟰. 𝗥𝗶𝘀𝗸 & 𝗚𝗼𝘃𝗲𝗿𝗻𝗮𝗻𝗰𝗲 (𝗧𝗵𝗲 "𝗟𝗮𝘄𝘆𝗲𝗿" 𝗣𝗵𝗮𝘀𝗲) • Compliance is not an afterthought. • Guardrails: Implement checks to prevent hallucination or toxic output (e.g., NeMo Guardrails, Guidance). • Risk Decision: What is the cost of a wrong answer? If high (e.g., medical advice), keep a "Human-in-the-Loop." 𝟱. 𝗣𝗿𝗼𝗱𝘂𝗰𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝗔𝗿𝗰𝗵𝗶𝘁𝗲𝗰𝘁𝘂𝗿𝗲 • Scalability & Latency: Users won’t wait 10 seconds for a token. • Serving: Use optimized inference engines (vLLM, TGI, Triton) • Cost Control: Implement token limits and caching. "Pay-as-you-go" can bankrupt you overnight if an API loop goes rogue. 𝟲. 𝗘𝘃𝗮𝗹𝘂𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 • Automated Eval: Use "LLM-as-a-Judge" to score outputs against a golden dataset. • Feedback Loops: Build a mechanism for users to Thumbs Up/Down outcomes. Gold for fine-tuning later. 𝟳. 𝗢𝗽𝗲𝗿𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻𝘀 (𝗟𝗟𝗠𝗢𝗽𝘀) • Day 2 is harder than Day 1. • Observability: Trace chains and monitor latency/cost per request (LangSmith, Arize). • Retraining: Models rot. Define when to retrain (e.g., "When accuracy drops below 85%" or "Monthly"). 𝗧𝗲𝗮𝗺 𝗘𝘃𝗼𝗹𝘂𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 • PoC Phase: AI Engineer + Subject Matter Expert. • MVP Phase: + Data Engineer + Backend Engineer. • Production Phase: + MLOps Engineer + Product Manager + Legal/Compliance. 𝗛𝗼𝘄 𝘁𝗼 𝗺𝗮𝗻𝗮𝗴𝗲 𝗔𝗜 𝗣𝗿𝗼𝗷𝗲𝗰𝘁𝘀 (𝗺𝘆 𝗮𝗱𝘃𝗶𝗰𝗲): → Treat AI as a Product, not a Research Project. → Fail fast: A failed PoC cost $10k; a failed Production rollout costs $1M+. → Cost Modeling: Estimate inference costs at peak scale before you write a line of production code. What decision gates do you use in your AI roadmap? Follow Priyanka for more cloud and AI tips and tools #ai #aiforbusiness #aileadership

My AI was ‘perfect’—until bad data turned it into my worst nightmare. 📉 By the numbers: 85% of AI projects fail due to poor data quality (Gartner). Data scientists spend 80% of their time fixing bad data instead of building models. 📊 What’s driving the disconnect? Incomplete or outdated datasets Duplicate or inconsistent records Noise from irrelevant or poorly labeled data Data quality The result? Faulty predictions, bad decisions, and a loss of trust in AI. Without addressing the root cause—data quality—your AI ambitions will never reach their full potential. Building Data Muscle: AI-Ready Data Done Right Preparing data for AI isn’t just about cleaning up a few errors—it’s about creating a robust, scalable pipeline. Here’s how: 1️⃣ Audit Your Data: Identify gaps, inconsistencies, and irrelevance in your datasets. 2️⃣ Automate Data Cleaning: Use advanced tools to deduplicate, normalize, and enrich your data. 3️⃣ Prioritize Relevance: Not all data is useful. Focus on high-quality, contextually relevant data. 4️⃣ Monitor Continuously: Build systems to detect and fix bad data after deployment. These steps lay the foundation for successful, reliable AI systems. Why It Matters Bad #data doesn’t just hinder #AI—it amplifies its flaws. Even the most sophisticated models can’t overcome the challenges of poor-quality data. To unlock AI’s potential, you need to invest in a data-first approach. 💡 What’s Next? It’s time to ask yourself: Is your data AI-ready? The key to avoiding AI failure lies in your preparation(#innovation #machinelearning). What strategies are you using to ensure your data is up to the task? Let’s learn from each other. ♻️ Let’s shape the future together: 👍 React 💭 Comment 🔗 Share

The bottleneck isn't GPUs or architecture. It's your dataset. Three ways to customize an LLM: 1. Fine-tuning: Teaches behavior. 1K-10K examples. Shows how to respond. Cheapest option. 2. Continued pretraining: Adds knowledge. Large unlabeled corpus. Extends what model knows. Medium cost. 3. Training from scratch: Full control. Trillions of tokens. Only for national AI projects. Rarely necessary. Most companies only need fine-tuning. How to collect quality data: For fine-tuning, start small. Support tickets with PII removed. Internal Q&A logs. Public instruction datasets. For continued pretraining, go big. Domain archives. Technical standards. Mix 70% domain, 30% general text. The 5-step data pipeline: 1. Normalize. Convert everything to UTF-8 plain text. Remove markup and headers. 2. Filter. Drop short fragments. Remove repeated templates. Redact PII. 3. Deduplicate. Hash for identical content. Find near-duplicates. Do before splitting datasets. 4. Tag with metadata. Language, domain, source. Makes dataset searchable. 5. Validate quality. Check perplexity. Track metrics. Run small pilot first. When your dataset is ready: All sources documented. PII removed. Stats match targets. Splits balanced. Pilot converges cleanly. If any fail, fix data first. What good data does: Models converge faster. Hallucinate less. Cost less to serve. The reality: Building LLMs is a data problem. Not a training problem. Most teams spend 80% of time on data. That's the actual work. Your data is your differentiator. Not your model architecture. Found this helpful? Follow Arturo Ferreira.

Fix your data, then trust your AI. Operationalizing AI is a big task for all companies, The key is to start right by focusing on the right data foundation. What if you do all this work to realize answers aren’t accurate?   Different sources Different metrics, different stories. Here’s how you build the right Data foundation: 1. Align & Design Understand what's truly important. Define the critical KPIs, customer segments, and business logic. → Gives everyone a clear blueprint of what success means. 2. Collect All Sources of Data Data is everywhere - tools, teams, platforms. → Centralize it. No more blind spots. 3. Clean, Map & Organize Strip out the noise. Standardize formats. Map data to the views you need. → Now the data is stable, usable, and meaningful. 4. Optimize for Performance Ensure efficient data retrieval, storage, and processing. → Everything is available quickly and reliably. 5. Maintain that new Single Source of Truth Keep data structured, consistent, and aligned. → Now it’s ready for AI agents and reporting needs to help you spot real signals and drive fast action. Now you have the right foundation to build or understand anything. Without it? You’re guessing. You’re building on sand. And eventually - everyone will work in silos. * * * I talk about the real mechanics of growth, data, and execution. If that’s what you care about, let’s connect

84% say data is their AI edge. Only 26% trust it. From 1,700 CDOs across 27 countries. That gap is where AI ROI collapses. And where most enterprises fall behind. The IBM CDO Study makes one thing clear. Companies don’t fail because their models are weak. They fail because their data is unusable. Here is what actually matters 👇 1️⃣ 𝗗𝗔𝗧𝗔 𝗔𝗦 𝗣𝗥𝗢𝗗𝗨𝗖𝗧 Proprietary data creates advantage only when it is packaged. Reusable. Interoperable. Agent ready. Customer signals. Operational telemetry. Financial and risk signals. Unstructured conversations and documents. Leaders turn these into data products with clear ownership and distribution. This is how proprietary data becomes defensible. 2️⃣ 𝗣𝗜𝗣𝗘𝗟𝗜𝗡𝗘𝗦 𝗙𝗢𝗥 𝗔𝗜 𝗔𝗚𝗘𝗡𝗧𝗦 The study shows the core barrier to AI scale is fragmentation. Silos. Inconsistent taxonomies. Incomplete lineage. Slow access. AI multiplies value only when data is engineered for flow. Decision ready. Context rich. Available in real time to both humans and agents. Pipelines replace warehouses. Movement replaces storage. Flow replaces accumulation. 3️⃣ 𝗚𝗢𝗩𝗘𝗥𝗡𝗔𝗡𝗖𝗘 𝗔𝗦 𝗔𝗖𝗖𝗘𝗦𝗦 Leaders converge on one idea. The risk of restricting data now exceeds the risk of sharing it with controls. Federated access. Role based models. AI agent marketplaces. Guardrails without bottlenecks. This is how organizations convert proprietary data into competitive motion. 𝗠𝗬 𝗧𝗔𝗞𝗘𝗔𝗪𝗔𝗬 The next winners will not be the companies with the most data. They will be the companies that turn their proprietary data into 𝗽𝗿𝗼𝗱𝘂𝗰𝘁𝘀 𝗮𝗴𝗲𝗻𝘁𝘀 𝗰𝗮𝗻 𝘂𝘀𝗲 𝗶𝗺𝗺𝗲𝗱𝗶𝗮𝘁𝗲𝗹𝘆. This is the real competitive moat. And most enterprises are years behind. The AI multiplier appears only when data stops being stored and starts being operationalized. 👉 If you’re defining your AI strategy, let’s talk. I help leaders turn data into operating models that scale intelligent workflows across the enterprise. Save 💾 React 👍 Share ♻️ Follow