February 3 (SeeNews) - A company's capacity to put together personalised offers to clients based on big data and artificial intelligence (AI) will determine whether it will be successful, Georgi Ganev, IBM country leader Bulgaria, told SeeNews.
"In Bulgaria, due to globalisation and digitalisation, our clients also follow global trends and successfully run digitalisation projects. They are working on 'custom built', personalised offers for each client based on big data, recognising behavior and offering a personalised service based on AI - this is the difference that will decide in the future who will be the winners and who the losers," Ganev told SeeNews in an emailed interview on Tuesday.
The pandemic is a powerful force of disruption but also a critical turning point in the digital transformation of business and society, he stressed.
"Hybrid cloud and AI will remain the two dominant forces driving digital transformation + underline with Security. With this crisis, transformation journeys that were going to last a few years are now being compacted into the space of a few weeks or months," Ganev noted.
Some industries, like telecommunications are already making important steps on this road, while others are still lagging behind.
"Education has a chance to transform and we continue to stimulate the innovation in this field through our ongoing projects. Also, we see the logistics area that embraces digital transformation with more and more innovations in supply chains," Ganev said.
To help organisations build strategies to address the new challenges in the current context IBM has launched a COVID-19 Action Guide focused on how to empower a remote workforce, engage customers virtually, ensure remote access to everything, accelerate agility and efficiency, protect against new cybersecurity risks, reduce operational costs and enhance supply chain continuity, and support health providers and government services.
According to an IBM study, 99% of respondents report an increase in customer satisfaction as a result of using AI-driven virtual agent technology. The research showed organisations that are early adopters of AI and cloud technology are reaping significant benefits from AI-driven virtual agents. As many as 94% of the respondents defined as 'leaders', i.e. those who implemented AI-driven virtual agents early, integrated them with backend systems and trained them with many contacts, have already achieved or exceeded their expected return on investment, compared to 49% of others.
"In Bulgaria, we are working with companies across industries to deploy AI solutions into their companies," Ganev said. As an example he pointed to DSK Bank, which has selected an IBM solution to accelerate customer service and control risk with rapid, accurate credit risk assessments.
IBM is also helping organisations locally and globally build a resilient security environment, Ganev said, adding that the pandemic-induced global shift to remote work has opened new loopholes for cybercriminals to exploit since many displaced workers lack the secure equipment or protocols to optimise digital safety.
"Cyber-resilient organisations do three things well: organise and deploy resources, communicate regularly and coordinate responses," he commented.