Last week I had an opportunity to interact with leaders from Indian Global Capability Centers (GCCs) at the MACHINECON GCC Summit 2024. They were an eclectic mix from GCCs in Retail, Media, Banking, Manufacturing and Technology Products. The one thing that was common with them all was their enthusiasm for Artificial Intelligence and its various applications in their industry and the GCCs they lead.
Abhishek from KPMG who moderated one of the Roundtables that I joined, was particularly well informed not just in matters of GCCs but also on the advances in AI. He drew out information and insights from the participants.
It was clear that Indian GCCs are working to unlock the benefits of generative AI features that are built into Service Management platforms like ServiceNow and Jeera Service Management. And most of the use cases other than Service Management that were discussed, were again focused on conversational AI. Probably low hanging fruits and reflective of the recent strides made in the NLP cluster.
Abhishek quizzed the participants on adoption and success in functions that have a top-line impact. Except for the Retail and Media GCCs, there was no mention of any significant work being done by other GCCs to enable their sales teams with AI. Employing Recommender Systems to render personalized carousels by e-tailers and media (including social media) has definitely helped, thanks to some excellent work done by their technology teams. But unlike in Retail and Media, selling is a regulated activity in Banking and Financial Products and mis-selling invites fines and sanctions. And this is one reason why the "AI Tribe" is not so visible in the Sales functions at Banks and Investment firms, unlike in Retail and Media. A point I made.
The AI lead from a large UK retailer on the panel also shared how AI has still not found success in the Sourcing function because solving a global sourcing problem involves dealing with a large number of parameters and huge data that might need to be shared between producers, buyers and sellers across continents. Very similar to the complexities of building an Expert Systems in Anti Money Laundering, Fraud Detection or related Risk Management systems that can be informed by AI but will still need humans.
All the participants were unanimous in their view that Data is the key in functions and in systems where the power of AI is not yet unlocked. Businesses and corporations that get their Data Strategy right and invest in platforms and architectures that allow efficient storing, sharing, scaling, compute, metadata management, governance and interoperability across clouds will lead the way.
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