Fresno Unified School District drives data strategy forward with AI workshop 

Fresno Unified School District is responsible for the oversight and management of over 100 schools providing education to approximately 70,000 students, from preschool through grade 12.

Knowing how crucial it is to advance departments efficiency with the use of AI, Fresno Unified turned to Pythian to explore AI for their financial departments. As part of Pythian’s AI workshops, the Field CTO team asks our customers to complete a pre-workshop survey. Fresno Unified School District indicated through their answers, they wanted to leverage AI to improve analytical work within their financial operations team, hoping AI could alleviate some of their reporting burdens.

Our AI workshops use an "educate and activate" approach, where Pythian’s team of Field CTOs dive into the current state of the AI market to initiate discussions around potential AI use cases. The workshop and discussions revealed that approximately 75% of Fresno Unified’s initial concepts were rooted in traditional analytics and reporting, rather than AI. Through the educational portion, new, more appropriate AI use cases were uncovered, and the team learned to distinguish between analytics, traditional machine learning, and genuine AI solutions, including both custom-built and embedded AI options within their existing platforms like Microsoft Copilot.

A key outcome of the workshop was the realization that Fresno Unified's immediate barrier to AI adoption was not a lack of understanding of AI itself, but rather challenges with their underlying data infrastructure. Specifically, their Databricks deployment, intended as the central corporate data record, was essentially a test environment with data scattered across multiple locations. Pythian’s team of Field CTOs primary recommendation was to prioritize establishing an optimized data strategy. Pythian proposed a follow-up five-day data strategy and governance workshop to address these foundational data issues, which is anticipated to lead to data implementation projects. The AI workshop, while not immediately resulting in AI deployment, served as a crucial enablement exercise, providing a comprehensive view of Fresno Unified’s IT landscape, building trust and alignment across their executive teams, and outlining clear next steps toward their future AI adoption—starting with developing a more comprehensive data strategy and governance process.

Fresno Unified needed to begin the process of adopting AI, but was uncertain where to start

The first challenge that Fresno Unified faced was where to begin with AI. They knew they wanted to stay ahead of the curve by leveraging the most innovative technology to solve unique business challenges, but were unsure how to meaningfully kickstart this initiative and where to focus effort and investment.

After discovering Pythian, and engaging with the Field CTO team, Fresno Unified shared that they’d like to build up their AI competency. Fresno Unified approached the AI workshop with the intention that AI may be able to alleviate their financial operations teams' burden of generating reports and analytical work, seeking operational efficiencies.

However, the AI workshop revealed that a significant portion of their perceived AI use cases were actually analytics or basic reporting. Furthermore, while they had a Databricks deployment intended as their central data repository, it was essentially a test environment with data scattered across multiple locations. This fragmented and challenging data landscape became the primary obstacle to immediate AI adoption.

Consequently, the core challenge for Fresno Unified was not a lack of desire to implement AI, but rather their underlying data infrastructure. Their existing data environment, including the underutilized Databricks instance and data silos, prevented them from effectively leveraging AI for the operational efficiencies they initially sought. This necessitated a shift in focus toward establishing a robust data strategy and platform as the foundational step toward future AI adoption.

Pythian’s AI workshop established a need for data governance strategy ahead of AI adoption

Pythian’s AI workshop with Fresno Unified's executive team explored whether their financial operations team would benefit from AI adoption. They initially hoped AI could automate their analytic reporting.

However, the workshop clarified the distinctions between AI, traditional machine learning and basic analytics, finding that a significant portion of their perceived AI use cases fell into the latter analytics and machine learning categories. Through collaborative analysis of potential use cases, participants learned to differentiate AI opportunities, recognizing that AI-driven solutions were less prevalent than initially thought.

The AI workshop facilitated the realization that Fresno Unified needed to prepare their data ahead of AI adoption. Pythian's recommendation was to prioritize establishing a robust data strategy and infrastructure. To address this, Pythian proposed a follow-up five-day data strategy and governance workshop aimed at enhancing the grasp over their data. This workshop is expected to lead to data implementation services. Data strategy and governance is essential for AI enablement. Pythian emphasized that a clean data foundation is a prerequisite for successful AI adoption. The initial AI workshop, therefore, served as a crucial diagnostic step, guiding Fresno Unified toward the necessary data maturity before they could effectively leverage AI.

• Google Gemini
• Microsoft Copilot
• Einstein
• Salesforce
• Rovo
• Atlassian
• Databricks
• Power BI
• Azure
• Oracle
• OCI
• Microsoft Fabric