At a time when technologies like natural language processing (NLP), robotic process automation (RPA), and machine learning (ML) are transforming the traditional enterprise, businesses are left with two choices: adopt artificial intelligence (AI) or get left behind.
In the Benelux region, AI is topping the corporate agenda across all industries. The Benelux region is already in a strong position as an innovation hub for AI. As ports of AI expansion, countries like Belgium and the Netherlands are witnessing a rapid increase in AI development and adoption. In many ways, now is the best time for enterprises in this region to renew their focus on AI and start doubling their efforts.
Is Your Enterprise Ready for the AI Revolution? That said, organizations striving to scale up their AI efforts must understand that executing ad hoc projects or applying AI in a single business function or process will not cut it. At the outset, enterprises must address strategy, change management, and investment-related challenges to turn their workforce from AI skeptics into proponents. This is where they need to confront and address AI’s biggest stumbling block: trust.
The Nemesis: Trust
Despite years of research and successful implementations in the enterprise world, AI remains a black box for many, convincing leaders that smarter-than-human machines will replace their existing workforce. The reality is that AI will displace some jobs, making human workers more efficient at work. In essence, enterprises need to observe the benefits of AI through the lens of trust and should have the confidence that their AI initiatives will deliver the outcomes they expect. The key is to lower the formidable organizational and cultural barriers, and by extension, realize the scope and purview of AI-driven functions and processes. AI’s latest conquests are enough evidence that the technology promises transcendence in businesses.
For instance, the first deep integration of lighting and music demonstrates an innovative use case of AI. With such use-cases, companies are leveraging AI to perform real-time analysis of the metadata of each song. Even newer algorithms help to deliver an immersive experience, whereby lights can brighten, dim, flash, or even change color according to the beat, tempo, or genre of music played.
AI also helps develop intelligent recommendation systems for online retailers and fuels many insurance and drug discovery platforms. Customer-centric companies in the Benelux region can take a cue from these successful adoptions of AI to add yet another dimension to the overall customer experience.
The Promise of AI: Do More with Less
AI is rapidly turning into a competitive advantage for customer-driven businesses, by amplifying the opportunities to reduce cost, increase agility and flexibility, and drive superior customer experiences. Companies are applying AI to detect problems automatically without human intervention, increase productivity and efficiency of the existing workforce, and even increase revenue without reducing headcount.
Companies getting started with their AI journey must define the specific goal they want to achieve through AI, followed by meeting the need for data availability for the analysis. By following a model-building and validation approach, they must measure the performance of algorithms before rolling them out into production. To detect implementation issues early and extract value faster, enterprises can assemble interdisciplinary teams that can collate diverse perspectives together while building, deploying, and monitoring new AI capabilities. The foundational step towards this approach lies in establishing a center of excellence around AI, comprising AI engineers and thought leaders who can direct and provide vision to enterprises in leveraging AI.
That said, deploying an AI platform that paves the way for the enterprise to deliver intelligent services and products is equally essential. Unlike a patchwork of standalone tools, an AI platform enables enterprises to fortify their positions for advanced AI use cases and other emerging and supporting technologies.
The AI Experts
Here at Tech Mahindra, we continue to explore the enormous potential of AI for the digital enterprise through our design thinking-led approach and frameworks. With an evolved AI center of excellence framework that weaves industry best practices and principles of AI ethics, our experts identify the right AI strategy and roadmap for organizations across diverse industries. With NXT.NOWTM we aim to empower our customers with tailor-made, transformative, and agile solutions along their digital acceleration journeys. Enterprises can seamlessly democratize and scale AI deployments across the workforce, and capitalize on the latest developments in the technology.
It goes without saying that AI-driven organizations will find themselves at a significant advantage in a world where human potential amplified with machines will outperform either humans or machines working on their own.
About the Author
Sandeep Agarwal
Vice President and Country Head – Benelux, Enterprise Business, Tech Mahindra
Sandeep is currently the Vice President and Country Head – Benelux, Enterprise Business, Tech Mahindra, and is responsible for nurturing and handling CXO level relationships, P&L ownership, strategic, sales, delivery, operational, M&A of major clients & businesses as well as penetrating into new clients. With over 12 years of experience in leading sales team, delivery, managing CXO relationship across Europe, he has a proven track record of growing customer base and consistently exceeding revenue targets and company goals.
