AI Enters the Manager Training Room

Long confined to laboratories, artificial intelligence is now establishing itself as a strategic decision-making tool. In Morocco, it is no longer a topic reserved for developers, but a lever for competitiveness that managers themselves are seeking to master.

Faced with this evolution, training has become a mandatory step to transform a complex technology into a concrete asset for the company.

It is in this spirit that the Holmarcom Group’s AI Institute launched “AI for Managers,” a program designed as a veritable toolbox. “Our mission is clear: to enable managers to appropriate AI without any prior technical background,” explains Meryem Benjelloun, Project Manager at Holmarcom.

For her, the AI revolution is as much cultural as it is technological: “Many companies talk about digital transformation, but AI is still perceived as abstract. Our role is to make it tangible, applicable, and immediately useful.”

Out with theoretical courses, in with practice. Participants explore benchmark solutions like Copilot, ChatGPT, Gemini, or TensorFlow, as well as creative tools such as DALL-E, MidJourney, or Synthesia.

Concrete case studies illustrate the applications: fraud detection and scoring in banking, predictive maintenance in industry, customer personalization for retail, and chatbots and optimized marketing in telecoms.

The program targets a wide audience: executives, directors, project managers, data analysts, or professionals in career transition. Each progresses according to their level and needs through flexible learning paths.

This dynamic responds to a growing demand in Morocco. “AI is no longer a futuristic concept, but an operational reality that is reshaping professions,” insists Benjelloun.

Three factors are driving this acceleration: strategic awareness, international competitive pressure, and sector-wide transformation that is pushing every field—from finance to healthcare—to identify its own use cases.

Various actors are seizing the topic

Another dynamic player: Inkway, which offers the training “Manager in the AI Era.” Here, the focus is on managerial posture and augmented performance.

How to support one’s teams through this transition? How to adopt an ethical approach to AI? The modules are designed so that managers leave with a ready-to-deploy roadmap for their company.

Short formats are also appealing. Skills Campus offers a training course of a few hours, entirely dedicated to generative AI, with interactive workshops to learn how to write effective prompts and create one’s own virtual assistants.

Within the firm, the training offering is structured around several levels. For the general public, the primary goal is to understand the fundamental workings of AI to avoid remaining passive users.

Awareness modules are thus offered to demystify AI, clarify its uses and its limits. For technical profiles, the bar is set higher: mastery of the Python language, specialized libraries, and even the development of custom models.

Finally, for top-level managers and executives in audit or quality, the essential focus is on training in AI governance, anticipating regulatory norms, and keeping up with the rapid evolution of international standards.

Others, like AI Crafters, bet on intra-company training, calibrated according to the needs of a department or an executive committee. Grandes écoles are not left behind. Centrale Casablanca has launched a “Data Science for Managers” masterclass, which blends technical concepts with the strategic steering of AI projects.

HR, industry, marketing: AI is making its way everywhere

Sector-specific training is multiplying. At CIFpro, a module specifically designed for HR directors explores the potential of AI in recruitment, talent management, and the employee experience. ENSA Kénitra goes even further with its specialized master’s in AI and the Internet of Things, oriented towards Industry 4.0.

These offerings reflect a growing demand: according to sector players, managers are now seeking concrete and rapid answers. The goal is no longer just to “understand AI,” but to know how to put it into practice the very next day.

“The priority remains to initiate audiences from the earliest levels of education,” emphasizes Mourad El Baz, Director General of the Skills Campus firm, convinced that acculturation must start early.

He distinguishes three tiers in this new skills tower. First, the technical level, intended for engineers and researchers, where one dives into algorithms, machine learning, and databases. “Without big data, no AI,” he says, reminding that artificial intelligence only exists thanks to the massive data that fuels it.

Next, the managerial level, aimed at executives: they don’t code, but they must understand, guide, and oversee projects. “ISO 42000 sets a framework for AI implementation. You cannot deploy an AI randomly,” he insists, especially in sensitive sectors like banking or telecoms.

Finally, generative AI, already familiar through ChatGPT or MidJourney, but whose use must remain contextualized: “The generative AI of a journalist is not that of a doctor or a lawyer.”

This segmentation reflects a deep trend: the end of generic training. “We need programs tailored to each sector and each profession,” believes El Baz, citing the international ITS certification, which initiates, over three days, the fundamentals of AI and prompt writing.

That said, the observation is clear: as in Europe, the training deficit remains glaring. In Morocco, the road is still long. While some large companies are beginning to develop their own large language models (LLMs) and define internal regulatory frameworks, the majority of executives are not yet prepared for the transformations that AI imposes.

Beyond skills, a confusion persists: generative AI is not AI in its entirety. It is only one facet, focused on the generation of text, images, or videos. Other hybrid and complementary branches are under development and should become widespread in the coming years.

Then there is the ethical question. Can we entrust a medical or legal decision to an AI? To what extent should the machine replace the human? Behind the technological fascination, the debate on responsibility and data confidentiality remains open.

The protection of privacy and the traceability of uses are becoming priorities, even as the speed of development of these tools disrupts existing legal frameworks.

Two years after the explosion of ChatGPT, generative AI is still in a phase of collective learning. Tailor-made training, adapted to sectors like health, law, education, or industry, now appears as a necessity. One thing is certain: it’s impossible to remain a mere spectator.

The question is not whether generative AI should be used, but how to integrate it intelligently into our professions and our decisions.