Four years ago, the company had just five data scientists dedicated to AI. Now it has 100 who’ve completed four key tracks. But the training isn’t limited to any specific group — it was extended to people across the company who don’t necessarily want to become hardcore specialists. So people from HR, finance, manufacturing, and other lines of business who have a desire to learn and invest in themselves enroll, and even if they have no programming background, they’re taught Python to get a feel for how to create an AI application.
Vishal Gupta, CITO, Lexmark
Lexmark
Volunteers from within the company attend three-hour classes four nights a week for a year, and are assigned mentors within Lexmark and given projects, which not only complement the programs, but target business objectives within the company. According to Gupta, nobody has dropped out of the course and very few participants have left the company. “People are happy to have the opportunity to invest in themselves and apply what they learn,” he says.
So far, six cohorts of people have gone through Lexmark’s training program, helping the company not only develop a talent base, but find the use cases for AI. “After somebody from manufacturing, customer service, sales, or any other business area completes the course, they know exactly which problems they can bring to us to solve with AI,” says Gupta.
