You do not need technical knowledge to start. You do need these three things:
- a view of where your people are already quietly using ChatGPT
- one page describing the problem you are going to solve
- a management team that gives you room for it
The technology itself is almost always an existing subscription at the start.
Start with the informal use, the shadow AI. In practically every company the best people have been using ChatGPT or Claude on a personal account for a long time, for emails, summaries and proposal text. Treat that as a compass: their behaviour already shows you exactly where the work gets stuck. Ask about it without judgement, even when it is not allowed, otherwise nobody will tell you what they do, what works and what does not. List who uses what and for which task. That gives you a useful longlist of possible first projects.
Then a one-page project brief. It states which problem you are solving, how the process currently works, which team it sits in, who decides whether it goes ahead, and which KPIs will tell you the new solution works. If it does not fit on one page, your plan is too big. Make it smaller. This costs an afternoon and not a line of code.
Technology last. Nine out of ten AI initiatives are about understanding your own processes. Once that is clear, the technology, certainly for your first projects, is very manageable.