The new normal has led organisations to rethink their approach towards digital transformation to ensure business resiliency, by achieving scale and creating democratised systems.

When businesses embark on their digital transformation phase, they need to focus on reimagining their customer journeys by breaking the silos across various business functions. Technology facilitates real-time flow of data across the enterprise and enables faster decision-making. Organisations are leveraging AI in confluence with technologies like cloud, analytics, machine learning to transform themselves into a data-driven enterprise for efficient operations, scalability, improved customer experience, and innovative solutions. Skilling and reskilling the workforce to adapt to new models help in accelerating adoption and implementation.

The possibilities for AI implementation are endless and its success lies in identifying the right opportunities to unlock business value. Organisations can expand their AI implementation by creating a structured approach to discover, develop, and democratise the technology.

Discover

Each industry has its set of challenges and we need to identify how a resilient digital foundation can be built to address these challenges. For example, AI can be leveraged in the insurance sector to provide a differentiated user experience. Several clients are already leveraging automation and AI to reimagine claim processing, fraud detection, regulatory compliance, risk evaluation, adjudication, among other uses. Similarly, digital transformation in banks include AI-enabled KYC validation, anti-money laundering measures, regulatory reporting, profile-based customer servicing, fraud detection, and many more processes

Likewise, AI and blockchain are creating heightened visibility across the supply chain for all stakeholders right from the manufacturer to the distributor to the retailer, and even the end-customer. AI can bring agility to reroute consignments in this distributed marketplace while maintaining transparency for all stakeholders. Moreover, AI can play a major role in areas such as warehouse management, inventory control, loyalty programmes, procurement optimisation, and many more.

Enterprises must use a well-defined approach to assess current AI and automation maturity levels across multiple dimensions using data-based discovery with levers such as value stream mapping (VSM), day in the life of (DILO), individual variability, demand capacity, and more.

Develop and deploy

To build a resilient digital foundation, enterprises need to choose technology that is user-friendly, compatible with the existing IT infrastructure, futuristic, and scalable. An enterprise can power its core using AI by infusing in its business operations, applications, and infrastructure.

AIOps (AI in Operations) can detect application failure before it occurs, allowing support teams enough time to fix the problem or allow zero-touch self-healing without business disruption. This can be accomplished using bot factories that produce armies of digital workers: sensing bots, analytical bots, and action bots.

Conversational AI and process bots can create virtual agents to manage business operations. This significantly improves efficiency and increases customer satisfaction by reviewing customer histories, asking relevant questions, and providing fast responses.

Democratise and de-risk

Democratising AI across the enterprise is essential to building a strong digital foundation. Creating the right ecosystem includes having the correct data set to train AI models, methodologies for handling data privacy, and tackling AI bias.

Enabling behavioural change amongst employees is critical towards creating an AI and automation-first culture. Employees must be reskilled in new-age AI and automation methodologies and tools so that they can seamlessly work alongside machines.

Agility, meeting dynamic customer needs, maintaining strong data security protocols, and ensuring business continuity will help organisations strengthen its foundations. Future-ready organisations must focus on building an AI-powered core to drive transformation, and ensure it fits well with their legacy systems, be scalable and reusable and create the right environment within the organisation to make it widespread.

The writer is Senior Vice President, Service Offering Head - Energy, Communications and Services, AI and Automation, Infosys

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