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IBM: Redesigning processes to unlock the value of AI
July 12, 2024
Companies in the Asia-Pacific (APAC) region need to rethink their business processes to fully reap the benefits of artificial intelligence (AI), according to a senior IBM executive.
“Simply replacing a human in an existing process with a robot may reduce costs, but in the Asia-Pacific region that human is not going to disappear,” said Paul Burton, IBM’s general manager for Asia-Pacific, in an interview with Computer Weekly in Singapore.
“Labour laws here do not allow the number of employees to be increased or decreased as quickly as in the US, so companies may even face cost increases if they invest more in technology,” he added.
Instead of just automating existing processes, Burton advocated a complete redesign of workflows to realize the full potential of AI. “If you don’t change your business processes to fully exploit the potential of the technology, you won’t get the benefits you want,” he emphasized.
Burton compared the need to rethink business processes to the time when the orientation of steam-powered machines in factory halls remained unchanged after the introduction of electricity.
“Nothing changed because they didn’t change the machines. But when they changed the machines to fit the workflow and switched to electricity, the machines became more efficient,” he explains.
But this process redesign is challenging for many companies, Burton said. “It requires different skills and imagination that I don’t often see in Asia. But when that happens, you’ll see leaps in productivity.”
Another key hurdle for APAC organizations is data management, Burton noted. This encompasses the entire AI lifecycle, from data collection, curation and cleaning to deploying and managing AI models.
“Data management has been around for 15 to 20 years. What’s different today is that in the past, data was used for business intelligence and machine learning. With generative AI, however, data is used much more extensively and there is a more urgent need today than before.”
CEOs are willing to be more aggressive with generative AI because they feel that if they don’t get it under control, they will be at a competitive disadvantage and that it will be very difficult to close the gap with competitors who do.
Paul Burton, IBM
Burton noted that more advanced markets in the Asia-Pacific region, such as Singapore, are better placed to address these challenges, particularly in terms of process redesign. “In other countries, however, you don’t see the integration of business and technology through cross-functional teams – it’s a question of organizational structure,” he added.
Watsonx gains importance in the Asia-Pacific region
IBM has invested heavily in hybrid cloud and AI in recent years and is focused on delivering enterprise-level AI capabilities with built-in security and privacy protections.
In 2023, the company launched the Watsonx AI and data platform for base models and generative AI, which offers capabilities such as model training, optimization and deployment, a data lakehouse for AI workloads, governance tools and the Watsonx Code Assistant.
Burton said Watsonx has “received a lot of traction around the world,” including in the Asia-Pacific region, where it generates significant revenue for IBM. “I won’t give specific numbers, but they are well above our targets. With Watsonx, we are exceeding our expectations every quarter.”
One driver for Watsonx adoption in the Asia Pacific region is mainframe modernization initiatives. “There’s a lot of Cobol code and mainframes in the region, so the idea that the Watsonx Code Assistant can help companies understand that code and port it to Java, for example, is a huge benefit,” Burton explained.
Another key factor is governance. “Once models are deployed across the organization, you need to make sure they are well managed and can withstand scrutiny if there is a problem,” Burton said.
According to a study by Enterprise Strategy Group and TechTarget, 75% of respondents in Asia Pacific plan to adopt generative AI, with nearly a third already running generative AI workloads in production or testing the technology.
Burton said: “CEOs are willing to be more aggressive with generative AI because they feel that if they don’t get it under control, they will be at a competitive disadvantage and that it will be very difficult to close the gap with competitors who do get it.”
