IBM Consulting introduces AI Center of Excellence to support business transformation

IBM advise recently unveiled its Center of Excellence (CoE) for artificial intelligence, which aims to advance artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities and capitalize on its transformative potential. artificial intelligence for business results. Working in tandem with IBM Consulting’s global AI and Automation operations, CoE comprises an extensive network of more than 21,000 skilled data and AI consultants who have completed more than 40,000 engagements with corporate clients. Karma.

The company states that the main goals of the Center of Excellence (CoE) include enhancing customer experience, transforming core business processes, and facilitating innovative business models. .

The Center of Excellence (CoE) will leverage IBM’s expertise in enterprise-grade AI, including the recently announced solution IBM watsonx and cutting-edge technology from IBM’s highly regarded ecosystem of business partners, to actively accelerate customers’ business transformation. It will also develop new solutions and assets with customers and partners.

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“Our Center of Excellence for Innovative AI employs more than 1,000 consultants globally with innovative AI expertise that are helping clients increase productivity in core business processes and IT operations such as human resources and human resources. or marketing, enhancing the customer experience and creating new business models,” Glenn Finch, global partner in management, data transformation and technology at IBM Consulting, told VentureBeat. “It goes hand-in-hand with IBM Consulting’s existing data and AI practices and will focus on solving customer challenges using the entire AI technology stack, including background models. platform and over 50 domain-specific classical machine learning accelerators.”

Finch added that CoE has made significant strides since its inception, actively collaborating with more than 100 clients and successfully implementing countless projects throughout 2023. Furthermore, these initiatives seamlessly integrated general AI with classic machine learning AI strategies, exemplifying this disruptive technology’s immense adaptability and potential.

According to the company, key milestones CoE has achieved include delivering AI-generated voice sports commentary to millions of fans during the Masters; synergistic combination of artificial intelligence AI with IBM Watson to discover new applications of Mitsui Chemicals products; and implemented an overarching AI strategy to optimize the customer relationship process at Bouygues Telecom.

Streamline business workloads through generative AI

ONE learn from IDC predicts that the AI ​​services market will see significant growth, expanding from around $36 billion in 2023 to an estimated $65 billion in 2026. However, IBM says it recognizes that to Achieving enterprise-scale AI requires a holistic and adaptable approach.

IBM Consulting emphasizes that it will follow an open and collaborative approach in designing, building, implementing, and managing generic AI solutions. This approach involves integrating multiple models from industry-leading vendors across various cloud platforms.

Additionally, with cutting-edge innovations from IBM Research and IBM Garage capabilities, it strives to provide customized solutions tailored to each customer’s unique business requirements.

“A recent IBV survey by IBM found that executives surveyed expect nearly half (48%) of employees in their organization to use generalized AI to enhance their day-to-day tasks. theirs next year. Our years of AI experience shows us that achieving enterprise AI at scale requires a multi-paradigm, composable strategy and a principled, human-centered approach. mind,” Finch told VentureBeat. “It is also important to note that we treat our customers’ data as their own and will not monetize it. Unlike many IT systems integrators, we will not create foundational models by aggregating data from (multiple) customers.”

According to the company, early use of platform models has yielded impressive results, with certain customers seeing a significant 70% increase in time to value creation compared to conventional AI approaches.

“Much of AI in manufacturing today is machine learning, and adoption — while accelerating — is slow and expensive,” says Finch. “Many businesses are using AI today, but the complexity and cost of creating and training new AI models has made it difficult to successfully transition AI projects from test to production. harder.”

The tools in CoE’s general AI technology stack are designed to enhance productivity and drive innovation for customers. Additionally, CoE will harness the power of IBM’s proprietary AI “advisor” toolkit, integrating it seamlessly into its internal operations and customer-centric efforts.

“Emerging use cases get many leaders excited about the potential of generalized AI applications for creating sales boards or writing emails. But the use cases go beyond that, in recruiting, generating code, or converting services to the effect of agency intent,” he said. “By adopting and integrating multi-paradigm generalized AI solutions specific to each business need, businesses can augment their teams with innovative capabilities such as creative and innovative content. code generation, content summary, and search.”

Finch added that the company has seen a notable increase in customer interest in various C-suite roles and industries as organizations look to explore the potential of artificial intelligence. create AI in enhancing productivity, driving employee satisfaction, and unlocking new business models.

In terms of human resources, organizations are using generalized AI to reimagine their promotion processes, reducing support requests by 85%, he noted. “The masters used generalized AI for AI-generated sports commentary to improve the fan experience and NASA is working with IBM to create AI-powered models that analyze petabytes of text and remote sensing data to make it easy to build AI applications tailored to specific questions and tasks than.”

Ensure responsible and ethical AI implementation

Finch believes that business leaders prioritize reliability and trustworthiness in the AI ​​systems they rely on to support decision-making and rationalization. He emphasized that the effectiveness of AI depends on the quality of the input data, as the AI ​​system itself will faithfully reproduce any biases present in the data.

“At IBM Consulting, we know that gaining trust in AI — including general AI — is a social engineering challenge that cannot be solved by technology alone. Instead, you need to consider people, processes and technology,” Finch told VentureBeat. “We help clients establish their organizational culture around AI governance and Responsible AIbuild multidisciplinary and diverse teams, and consider the risks and unintended impacts of AI applications.”

He stated that just as IBM succeeded in establishing a hybrid cloud services business using the Red Hat OpenShift platform, IBM Consulting aspires to become the leading consulting service provider for the total AI platform. its own. Watsonx.

The company envisions the growth of a specialized operation around Watsonx while expanding its consulting business in collaboration with strategic partners.

He predicts that platform models, in particular, will propel us into a new era of enterprise AI.

“We see an incredible opportunity for AI to transform the fundamentals of how work is done in the enterprise,” said Finch. “Platform models will create exceptional customer experiences, bring new types of productivity to core processes like HR or finance, and create entirely new business models. IBM is well positioned to help customers thrive in this new era, with our deep technology and field expertise in IBM Consulting as well as one of our hybrid cloud technology portfolios. and the most comprehensive AI in the business, and we are dedicated to advancing the artificial intelligence business.”