Building an AI-First organization with Francis Brero, VP AI and Strategy HG Insights

Ray Rike (0:08)

Welcome to the AI to ROI Podcast.

Today I am joined by Francis Brero, the Vice President of AI Strategy and HG Insights. We're going to be covering four main topics today with Francis. First, how Francis and HG Insights defines an AI-first organization, how to organize around that AI-first ethos, who actually owns the execution of an AI initiative in HG Insights, and lastly, who owns the AI to ROI measurements and success of their AI journey. So with that, Francis, can you please take a moment to give a brief overview of your journey to becoming a guest here on the AI to ROI podcast.

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Francis Brero (2:14)

Yeah, absolutely. And thanks for having me, Ray. I'm excited to be here and to share a little bit of what I've learned along the way.

My journey started about 20 years ago. I studied applied math and came to the US to work for a startup as a data scientist. So very early on, we were working on building predictive models for B2C companies. So I really quickly got a sense for how applying mathematical models and these regression algorithms could be helpful in the business context. And it became very apparent really quickly that as we were digitizing our lives essentially, the ability to process, mine that data and find insights out of it was going to become kind of a battleground for companies out there. So then a few years later, I started a company, MadKudu, where our whole purpose was to bring data science capabilities to help bring together cells and marketing by having them align over a revenue truth using data and without needing to hire expensive data scientists.

That company got acquired by HG Insights, where fortunately I was given the role to transform the company both internally and externally and infuse AI really at the core of it. And that's what led me today to this great conversation.

Ray Rike (3:36)

Okay. Well, we're going to go wide and deep simultaneously, but let's start. You kind of just indicated why, but how did the role of the executive in charge of AI strategy, come about at HG Insights? Was it operationally driven, product driven, acquisition driven? How did it come about?

Francis Brero (3:56)

I think it was a combination of both. I do think the acquisition, a big part of the acquisition was bringing this kind of AI DNA into the company. So HG Insights is P owned. So efficiency is typically the kind of metrics that matters more than in your typical venture backed company. And one of the things that they saw at MadKudu was that we were a small but mighty team. We had few employees, but our employees were able to do a lot because we had structured a lot of automation and agentic processes around us to be able to multiply the amount that what our employees were able to do. And so part of the goal here was to bring these kind of capabilities and apply them to a much larger organization, which means that you get a much bigger result out of it. And the second part was really understanding that we had seen a little bit into the future. And I think the leadership of HG was starting to sense that the world was turning towards agents and our customers were becoming agents more than humans, maybe not today, but a year or two years from now. And so bringing a team that had that deeply ingrained in them was a core component. So I would say a lot of it was like operational, but there was a big element of an aspirational leap into the future that the leadership team made saying like we need to be able to play this game. And so we need to bring some, you know, someone and a team that can radically transform our organization.