virtualCAIO stands for Virtual Chief AI Officer. We think that Chief AI Officers are going to be part of the C-Suite of the future alongside CEOs, CFOs, COOs etc. We also know that small and medium-sized companies don’t have the luxury of being able to afford a complete C-Suite and so they need to outsource CAIO functions or use a fractional CAIO service instead.
AI is permeating all aspects of business and, in each case, someone in your organisation needs to be alert to what’s going on, work out whether AI developments are opportunities or threats, and planning what to do about them. A CFO looks after all the financial aspects of a business and a COO looks after all the operational aspects of a business. A CAIO looks after all the ways AI can impact a business, positively and negatively, and works across departments to implement appropriate responses.
virtualCAIO.com aims to be an AI resource for smaller businesses that can’t afford a full time CAIO but who recognise the need to be kept up to date.
virtual CAIO was started in 2023 by William Charlwood. He has 22 years experience consulting to small and medium-sized businesses (as well as the occasional Fortune 500 and FTSE-100 company). Most of this time he was focused on internet marketing and optimising paid search campaigns on Google and Bing. Seven of his clients grew substantially and exited by means of trade sales making their founders very wealthy along the way.
In parallel, he’s been a non-executive director of an ecommerce business for the last 8 years. He also wrote the first book on Google’s AdSense system and created an emailing list with over 25,000 subscribers.
He has worked as a senior consultant for Ernst & Young, as a systems engineer for IBM and as a sales rep for Oxford Instruments.
He has developed a deep understanding of the pressures and challenges faced by smaller businesses and how much of the day job for owner-managers can revolve around problem solving rather than on growing the business. AI can help solve problems better and faster. It can also make businesses more productive and profitable, less prone to error making and more innovative.
One of William’s long-term interests is combining technology with business which is where virtualCAIO.com comes in.
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