A Four-Pronged Gen AI Strategy
At Experian, where data forms the lifeblood of both consumer and business services, integrating generative AI was never a matter of following trends. It was a deliberate, strategic decision to amplify the value of one of the most significant consumer data sets on the planet. Shri Santhanam, Executive Vice President and General Manager of Platforms, Software, and AI at Experian, has been at the forefront of this transformation. In an era where the pace of innovation accelerates with breathtaking speed, Santhanam told me in our interview about how Experian crafted a structured, four-pronged approach to Gen AI integration: Products, Productivity, Platform and Governance, and Education and Adoption.
Their AI journey did not start with ChatGPT’s 2022 debut. Long before the world took notice, Experian’s innovation labs were already exploring advanced machine learning, transformers, and natural language applications. Yet, the public awakening to Gen AI’s potential marked a pivotal inflection point. Experian seized the moment not with scattered pilots but with a clear-eyed, enterprise-wide strategy that positioned the company to move at scale rather than get trapped in endless proofs of concept.
Products and Productivity: AI That Enhances Human Potential
On the product front, Experian focused sharply on creating tangible, high-impact outcomes for both its consumer and business segments. For consumers, the major breakthrough was a virtual assistant. Designed to offer personalized, sophisticated financial guidance, it moves beyond basic chatbot functionality. It mirrors the insights and professionalism of top-tier credit advisors, answering questions about credit scores and financial management with accuracy and nuance. Already interacting with 16 million consumers, this assistant is strengthening Experian’s mission to empower financial health at scale.
Meanwhile, on the B2B side, Experian’s leadership identified a persistent challenge: how to democratize access to their deep well of proprietary data expertise. The solution came in the form of a 24/7 digital data advisor, branded as the Experian Assistant. This agentic AI framework provides clients with on-demand insights that previously required direct interaction with top data scientists. Not only has it dramatically improved client engagement, but it has also earned multiple innovation awards, underscoring its transformative impact.
Productivity gains within the organization have also been substantial. Experian embedded Gen AI tools across engineering, customer service, and knowledge work teams, unleashing measurable efficiency improvements. Whether through code generation or customer query resolution, Experian’s approach to productivity is proving that AI is less about replacing workers and more about empowering them to focus on higher-value tasks.
Platform and Governance: Scaling with Trust
From the outset, Experian recognized that the rush to deploy Gen AI would expose companies to significant risks—ethical, regulatory, and reputational. Many organizations have found themselves mired in fragmented pilots, unable to cross the chasm to scaled, trusted applications. Experian avoided that fate by committing early to building a robust internal platform for AI services, coupled with rigorous governance structures.
A dedicated risk council reviews every AI use case against strict data privacy, compliance, and ethical standards. This system ensures that innovations align with Experian’s deeply entrenched values around responsible data stewardship. By creating this strong backbone, Experian has been able to confidently move AI initiatives from proof-of-concept to production, maintaining the integrity of its brand while capitalizing on the advantages of technological advancement.
Education and Adoption: Building a Grassroots Innovation Culture
No matter how powerful the platform or how sophisticated the product, without widespread adoption, AI initiatives stagnate. Recognizing this, Experian’s leadership made education and grassroots empowerment central pillars of its strategy. Rather than relegating Gen AI experimentation to a handful of experts, Experian launched organization-wide hackathons, established weekly AI seminars, and created interactive training agents to facilitate personalized upskilling.
This democratization of innovation is already bearing fruit. New ideas and applications are not only emerging from corporate leadership but also bubbling up from Experian’s 20,000 employees worldwide. The company’s internal forums and collaborative exercises have fostered a sense of shared ownership over AI’s future, helping to reduce anxieties about job displacement. As Santhanam emphasized, Experian’s core message to employees has been one of amplification, not replacement: AI is here to empower human creativity, not to eliminate it.
Measuring Success and Anticipating the Future
Experian’s disciplined approach to measuring ROI ensures that their Gen AI investments remain tightly aligned with strategic objectives. On the consumer side, metrics like the number of monthly active users, conversation volumes, and rising NPS scores reveal a strong trajectory of engagement and satisfaction. In the B2B space, the Experian Assistant is delivering tangible efficiency gains, cutting time spent on key tasks by as much as 75 percent in some cases.
Internally, productivity metrics, usage growth rates, and adoption rates among employees serve as KPIs that inform ongoing refinement. The company is not resting on early wins; it is continuously calibrating its programs to ensure sustained momentum.
Looking ahead, Santhanam envisions a future shaped by “trusted agents”—AI systems that not only perform complex tasks but also operate with transparency, ethics, and reliability. He predicts that while the last two decades were defined by how fast technology could move, the next phase will demand a new focus: ensuring that trust in AI keeps pace with its technical capabilities.
At Experian, the foundations for this future are already in place. With a four-pronged Gen AI strategy that balances ambition with responsibility, Experian stands as a model for how enterprises can harness the transformative power of AI—deliberately, thoughtfully, and with an unwavering commitment to both innovation and trust.
Key Take-Away
Experian’s Gen AI strategy is structured around four pillars: Products, Productivity, Platform and Governance, and Education and Adoption. Share on XImage credit: Gustavo Fring/pexels
Dr. Gleb Tsipursky was lauded as “Office Whisperer” and “Hybrid Expert” by The New York Times for helping leaders use hybrid work to improve retention and productivity while cutting costs. He serves as the CEO of the boutique future-of-work consultancy Disaster Avoidance Experts. Dr. Gleb wrote the first book on returning to the office and leading hybrid teams after the pandemic, his best-seller Returning to the Office and Leading Hybrid and Remote Teams: A Manual on Benchmarking to Best Practices for Competitive Advantage (Intentional Insights, 2021). He authored seven books in total, and is best know for his global bestseller, Never Go With Your Gut: How Pioneering Leaders Make the Best Decisions and Avoid Business Disasters (Career Press, 2019). His cutting-edge thought leadership was featured in over 650 articles and 550 interviews in Harvard Business Review, Forbes, Inc. Magazine, USA Today, CBS News, Fox News, Time, Business Insider, Fortune, and elsewhere. His writing was translated into Chinese, Korean, German, Russian, Polish, Spanish, French, and other languages. His expertise comes from over 20 years of consulting, coaching, and speaking and training for Fortune 500 companies from Aflac to Xerox. It also comes from over 15 years in academia as a behavioral scientist, with 8 years as a lecturer at UNC-Chapel Hill and 7 years as a professor at Ohio State. A proud Ukrainian American, Dr. Gleb lives in Columbus, Ohio. In his free time, he makes sure to spend abundant quality time with his wife to avoid his personal life turning into a disaster. Contact him at Gleb[at]DisasterAvoidanceExperts[dot]com, follow him on LinkedIn @dr-gleb-tsipursky, Twitter @gleb_tsipursky, Instagram @dr_gleb_tsipursky, Facebook @DrGlebTsipursky, Medium @dr_gleb_tsipursky, YouTube, and RSS, and get a free copy of the Assessment on Dangerous Judgment Errors in the Workplace by signing up for the free Wise Decision Maker Course at https://disasteravoidanceexperts.com/newsletter/.