How to Identify and Scale the GenAI Use Cases That Truly Matter
The evolution of GenAI is transforming how organizations approach innovation and operational efficiency. Yet, while adoption remains a challenge for the majority of companies. To read more about this, please download our “The Value of Adoption" white paper, discovering and prioritizing the most valuable use cases remains a challenge for many others.
By giving employees the tools and autonomy (with appropriate guardrails) to experiment with the GenAI, Orange was able to surface innovative solutions, operationalize them efficiently, and unlock hidden value. While some might think identifying GenAI opportunities is a matter of luck – a game of "pin the tail on the donkey" – our experience demonstrates that it can be a strategic, systematic process that leverages the expertise of those closest to the work.
Creating a Culture of Collaboration and Transparency
Adoption is critical to use case discovery – if employees aren’t using GenAI, they can’t identify the areas it can add value. Crucially, our commitments to privacy and ethical use of data – such as ensuring that our internal GenAI tool – Live Intelligence – holds no personally identifiable information – built trust and encouraged participation. Transparency was further reinforced by making the objectives of GenAI initiatives explicit and reassuring employees that these projects aim to empower rather than replace them. Text Box 1, Textbox
By equipping employees with secure, intuitive GenAI tools, we sparked grassroots engagement and accelerated widespread adoption. The enthusiastic response to Live Intelligence—evidenced by its impressive satisfaction rate of 8,3/10—has empowered early adopters to inspire their peers, resulting in organic initiatives like Live Intelligence cafés and team hackathons that further fuel innovation and collective learning.
Platforms like Live Intelligence further amplify this bottom-up power by enabling employees to create, share, and refine AI assistants openly. With settings and prompt systems visible to all, Live Intelligence has fostered an environment that has created over 20,000 AI assistants.
Creating a Culture of Collaboration and Transparency
Adoption is critical to use case discovery – if employees aren’t using GenAI, they can’t identify the areas it can add value. Crucially, our commitments to privacy and ethical use of data – such as ensuring that our internal GenAI tool – Live Intelligence – holds no personally identifiable information – built trust and encouraged participation. Transparency was further reinforced by making the objectives of GenAI initiatives explicit and reassuring employees that these projects aim to empower rather than replace them. Text Box 1, Textbox
By equipping employees with secure, intuitive GenAI tools, we sparked grassroots engagement and accelerated widespread adoption. The enthusiastic response to Live Intelligence—evidenced by its impressive satisfaction rate of 8,3/10—has empowered early adopters to inspire their peers, resulting in organic initiatives like Live Intelligence cafés and team hackathons that further fuel innovation and collective learning.
Platforms like Live Intelligence further amplify this bottom-up power by enabling employees to create, share, and refine AI assistants openly. With settings and prompt systems visible to all, Live Intelligence has fostered an environment that has created over 20,000 AI assistants.
The Power of a Bottom-Up Approach
Orange Business has found that a blended approach—combining leadership-driven governance (see Governance is the difference between democracy and anarchy for more information) (link blog 5) with democratized access to GenAI tools—is pivotal. We always understood that those employees who are working day-to-day with business processes are the ones best positioned to understand where GenAI can make a difference. Rather than limiting training to a small group of "elite" power users, we opened our internal GenAI tool — Live Intelligence — to nearly 70% of all Orange employees. Remarkably, 55% of them now use it daily. This approach taps into practical, grassroots knowledge, ensuring that real-world challenges are addressed and adoption is driven by enthusiastic participation. Employees become active contributors, uncovering transformative use cases that might otherwise be missed.
Tales from the frontline: Anne (Agile Transformation Coach – Orange France)
"I need to stay informed about current practices that might help our agile development teams, and we were already testing ChatGPT, but our IT Director recommended using Live Intelligence as an internal, secure, and officially sanctioned solution. It’s very simple and intuitive – you get the hang of it immediately. To build skills, I also co-led a practice community for a year with colleagues: sharing tips, feedback, and comparing different language models. With regular meetings over the course of a year, we built a wonderful, shared skills base."
Taking our own advice
Orange Business has identified and is implementing several Generative AI (GenAI) use cases focused on enhancing customer experience, improving employee operational efficiency, and enhancing the efficiency of its network operations.
GenAI enhances employee operational efficiency and collaboration by enabling document summarization, content generation, and key information extraction. It also supports developers with coding assistance similar to GitHub Copilot, aids in technical and sales documentation creation, and provides instant audio translation for virtual meetings.
In our call center operations, we use GenAI for customer self-service, agent assistance, and performance analysis. These initiatives are designed to improve efficiency, enhance customer experience, and free up human agents for more complex tasks.
In our infrastructure operations, we use (Gen) AI to achieve smarter networks, improve operational efficiency, and meet sustainability goals. This includes using machine learning for predictive maintenance, automating network management, and reducing energy consumption.
Aligning with Core Business Strategy
A critical element in moving beyond guesswork is aligning GenAI initiatives with the organization's core business strategy. Orange Business ensures that GenAI projects are deliberately synchronized with strategic objectives, such as improving network operations, customer interactions, and employee productivity. By clearly articulating expected outcomes and maintaining transparency about the program’s intent, the organization builds trust and secures buy-in from employees.
This strategic alignment makes GenAI initiatives purposeful, focused, and relevant to the company's long-term vision, transforming them from isolated experiments into integral parts of business growth and transformation.
From Discovery to Scalable Value
Rather than relying on guesswork, Orange Business uses its robust knowledge base to inform which use cases to "industrialize" and promote across the company. By analyzing how employees interact with AI assistants and tracking which innovations gain traction, the organization ensures that successful experiments are identified and evolved into standard, impactful services. Monitoring usage and adoption rates helps operationalize the most broadly useful solutions, ensuring that GenAI initiatives are both strategic and repeatable.
If you need some help in this area, our AI & GenAI Lab provides a structured, hands-on environment to test and validate high-value Generative AI and advanced AI use cases. Through the use of leading-edge tools and methodologies, the Lab rapidly delivers functional prototypes that directly address your organization’s most pressing challenges. This not only mitigates investment risks but also drives faster realization of tangible value. (Click here to sign up). (link to YAssmina landing page)
Strategic Discovery, Not Blind Luck
By combining bottom-up insight, expert guidance, strategic alignment, and a culture of transparency, the process of GenAI use case discovery becomes a repeatable, strategic endeavor—far removed from mere guesswork. Organizations that follow this approach not only maximize their GenAI investments but also empower their teams to drive meaningful, lasting transformation.
Mahdi El Bahi
As a AI & Data Product Manager at Orange Innovation, Mahdi is driving strategy and adoption of Orange’s GenAI platforms and scaling impactful AI use cases.
