Our Recommendation: Use OpenAI ChatGPT Teams version with Confidential Data to Accelerate Learning
It is time to get serious about accelerating senior team GenAI learning.
Executive Summary
CEOs and leadership teams must collectively experience and apply GenAI with their own confidential business data to truly understand its transformational potential.
This article recommends implementing OpenAI ChatGPT Teams version of ChatGPT (not the $20/month consumer version) for the CEO and their key leaders. For a group of 40 leaders, this yields 10,000 hours of additional leadership capacity per year at a cost of $30,000 – a no-brainer ROI.
CEO and Leadership Must Learn Together
In this age of exploding AI innovation and disruption, CEOs and their management teams are not aggressively learning and applying AI. Far too many business leaders don't have an intuitive feel for the power of GenAI and view GenAI as an IT project.
Learning the power of GenAI is a contact sport (like swimming or riding a bike). You cannot learn GenAI via delegation. GenAI projects buried in the organization and the support of a handful of GenAI enthusiasts at lower levels are not sufficient efforts.
Often cited adoption barriers of cost and security are red herrings.
Our Recommendation
OpenAI has both consumer and business versions of its products:
Consumer versions of its product (free, Plus ($20/mo) and Pro ($200/mo)).
Business versions: ChatGPT Teams and ChatGPT Enterprise.
This article focuses on the Teams version. Both business versions don't use your data to train their models, and both versions have enterprise-class security.
Use OpenAI ChatGPT Teams ($30/mo/employee) with company confidential data for CEO and leadership teams to drive value and accelerate learning.
The OpenAI ChatGPT Teams version is similar at user level as the popular $20 plus consumer version.
OpenAI ChatGPT Teams looks like the consumer version ($20/mo). but your company name is in the footer and logo in top right corner.
OpenAI ChatGPT Teams Doesn't Use Your Data to Train and Has Enterprise-Class Security
If you use a hosted or SaaS application like Salesforce, Microsoft Office, NetSuite, HubSpot with confidential employee information, then you can, with the same confidence, use ChatGPT Teams.
Data ownership and control
Your company retains full ownership of their data
Data is not used for training OpenAI's models
Security features
End-to-End Encryption: All data encrypted both at rest and in transit
SOC 2 Type 2 Compliance
Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA)
Administration and governance
Granular Workspace Administration
Customizable Data Retention Policies
Third-Party API Integration Controls
Compliance
Regulatory compliance support for GDPR and CCPA
Regular third-party penetration testing
Persistent memory with user control
For $30/month per employee, you get a company-specific "ChatGPT" that can be used confidently with company sensitive information like proposals, contracts, customer purchase history from your CRM, analysis of business plans, contracts, etc.
Use OpenAI ChatGPT Teams and Not Microsoft Copilot
Our GAI Insights community and our work with companies consistently find that users prefer OpenAI ChatGPT over other AI chatbots like Microsoft Copilot. ChatGPT has the most advanced AI models, the most features, and remains the market leader. Dozens and dozens of people have told us that they have access to both OpenAI ChatGPT and Microsoft Copilot, and consistently prefer the former.
Moreover, using the market leader secure chatbot (OpenAI) instills confidence in your employees, especially since their kids, grandkids, and neighbors are all using it for personal, work, and school use.
Stop jumping from AI tool to AI tool and obsessing over learning multiple AI products. Pick one to "major" in. AI innovation is changing so fast that a feature that is missing in one secure employee chatbot (Claude, Gemini, Copilot, ChatGPT, etc.) is often added in weeks or months.
Our Recommendation
The CEO commits to group training and use of ChatGPT Teams for 12 months for the top leaders and directors of the company
Work with IT to ensure a written Employee GenAI Use Policy that is updated and names AI tools so there is no confusion
Schedule a 6-hour hands-on workshop with an outside facilitator. An instructor-led GenAI training is the only effective way for rapid learning -- emailing links to YouTube videos and relying on self-learning doesn't work. Half of the agenda is dedicated to working in small teams on department-specific use cases with confidential company data
Implement change management follow-up: regular "office hours" to learn, celebrate, department-specific training, etc.
ROI and Benefits
Assume 40 top executives and leaders.
Software and training cost:
40 employees use ChatGPT Teams at $30/mo for 12 months: $14,400
GenAI Training (initial and ongoing support): $25,000
Total: $39,400
Assumptions
Assume 40 employees average fully loaded costs of $150K, equals $6,000,000 labor cost per year.
Assume each employee works 2,080 hours per year, so 83,200 total hours
Assume average 5 hours saved per week per employee (5 hours/week × 50 weeks × 40 employees) = 10,000 additional hours of capacity for your top 40 employees. 5 hours is the average as power user will save 10-15 hours.
Benefits
What value do you put on 10,000 hours of additional capacity for your top 40 employees?
5 hours saved on average per employee drives a payback of <12 months
Better decision making on profiting from larger AI investments
Improved employee satisfaction and retention
Prompts Examples to Use with Company Confidential Data
Legal Analysis: "You are an outstanding lawyer. Analyze this confidential customer or vendor contract. Identify top legal risks and suggest ways to improve."
Board Preparation: "You are an excellent and savvy board member of publicly traded companies. Critique my board presentation. What are likely 3 questions that Board members will ask?"
Sales Enhancement: "You are an expert HVAC salesperson. Review this confidential $4M proposal. Identify weaknesses in the argument and top 5 questions"
Strategic Pricing: "You are a pricing expert. Here is our current price list. Create 3 different pricing strategies for a recession."
Customer Analysis: "You are an expert financial analyst. Here is data from our Salesforce CRM about our top customer purchasing history. Analyze for trends."
HR Support: "You are an expert HR and manager. Here are the last two written performance reviews for a key employee. Summarize their strengths and weaknesses. Compare to this new job description."
Business Planning: "You are an expert business strategist. Here is our confidential 3-year business plan. What are the logical inconsistencies? Identify the biggest risks and opportunities."
Summary
CEO and leaders need to jumpstart their collective learning and AI adoption. Incremental "tweaks" to learning are no longer sufficient in this Age of AI Disruption.
This is best done as a group using a secure employee chatbot. We strongly recommend OpenAI ChatGPT Teams with instructor-led training. An investment of $30K will jumpstart organizational learning, improve AI project identification and prioritization, enhance attraction and retention of key employees, and drive millions in value to the company.
Let us know your thoughts and also join us next Monday May 12 for a discussion on this topic.
Join us for a discussion of ROI, implementation and common questions of using OpenAI Chat Teams version ($30/mo/user) with company confidential data. Signup via Meetup.
Sponsor or attend our 3rd annual conference, GAI World 2025, celebrating and learning from corporate leaders IN PRODUCTION with GenAI applications. Our conference is Sep 29-30 in Boston (we sold out the last 2 years).
This conference focus on celebrating and learning from companies in-production with enterprise GenAI.
Audience titles; Board member, CEO, SVP Digital, Chief Innovation Office, CTO, CDO, and AI team leads
800 attendees, 120 speakers, 60 case studies, 15 AI startups, 35 exhibitors
The conference includes multiple networking events including a Women in AI breakfast and a Celebrating Black Pioneers lunch
Watch highlight video and all the energy from our 2024 sold-out conference here. Confirmed speakers for 2025 so far
Dr. John John Halamka, President, Mayo Clinic Platform
Shikhar Ghosh, Professor, Harvard Business School
Ulrike Hoffmann-Burchardi, Chief Investment Officer for Global Equities, UBS
Melissa Smith, CEO, WEX (NYSE: WEX)
Karen Stroup, Chief Digital Officer, WEX (NYSE: WEX)
Heather Lavoie EVP and CIO, Horizon Blue Cross Blue Shield of New Jersey
Barbara Widholm, VP of AI, State Street Bank (NYSE: STT)
Kausar Riaz Ahmed, Director, Generative AI, Pfizer (NYSE: PFE)
Vivek Mukhatyar, Generative AI Medical Engagement Lead, Pfizer (NYSE: PFE)
Jean Olive, CIO, John Hancock, division of Manulife Financial Corp (NYSE: MFC)
Dr. Thomas Kingsley, Director Epidemiology AI Lab, UCLA Health
Gaye Bok, Partner, AI and Digital Innovation Fund, Mass General Brigham
Ramesh Raskar, Professor and Director Media Lab, MIT
Parag Shah, VP Data, CarGurus (NASDAQ: CARG)
Ben Kasdon, VP Products, CarGurus (NASDAQ: CARG)
Veronika Durgin, VP Data, Saks (NYSEL SKS)
Nina Lee Grooms, Board Member, Alamo Group (NYSE: ALG)
Andy Stetzler, Enterprise AI Lead, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
Randy Bean, Senior Advisor, Data & AI Leadership Exchange
Ian Roberton, Director Technology/AI, American Securities
David Edelman, Professor, Harvard Business School
Andy Roberts, AI Architect, Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT)
Ashish Bhatia, Principal Producct Manager, Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT)
Kevin Shatzkamer, CVP, Microsoft Customer Experience, Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT)
Pete Blackshaw, CEO, BrandRank.AI
Christopher Boone, Group VP of Life Sciences, Oracle (NYSE: ORCL)
Jeffrey Rayport, Professor, Harvard Business School
Rizwan Mallal, COO, Quantum Gears
Dr. Ryan Vega, Chief Health Officer, Vantiq
Gamiel Gran, Chief Commercial Officer, Mayfield Fund
Mike Grandinetti, Serial Tech Entrepreneur & Faculty, Harvard
Vladimir Jacimovic, CEO, AlgoVerde
Chris McKay, CEO, Maginative
Anthony Hill, CEO and Founder, Adaptix Corp
Kent Lucas, Founding Partner, Non Sibi Ventures
Dr. Tamara Nall, CEO, The Leading Niche
Tom Davenport, Professor, Babson College
Rudina Seseri, Managing Partner, Glasswing Ventures
John Werner, Founder, Imagination in Action
Adam Rappaport, Founder and AI Analyst, GAI Insights
“The only skill that will be important in the 21st century is the skill of learning new skills. Everything else will become obsolete over time.” - Peter Drucker
Onward,
Paul
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