Artificial intelligence is the talk of the town, especially as it relates to the rise of virtual assistants and smart home hubs. But a new study from Infosys indicates telcos are also leaning heavily into AI as they move through their digital transformations.
According to the report, 87 percent of enterprises in the telecom and communication sector are moving full-steam ahead with their digital transformations. As part of that, the study indicates telcos are planning to use AI in a variety of ways to help cut costs through automation.
Some 86 percent of respondents said they’re planning to use machine learning in their new digitized environment, while 80 percent said they’re planning to build AI-based applications to improve their products and services. Approximately 71 percent also want to use AI to automate decision making, while around 65 percent each want to use AI for chatbots and cognitive processes or tasks. Another chunk of respondents (62 percent) said they want to use AI for automated predictive analytics.
The reason? Telcos said they’re looking to boost productivity (83 percent), slash costs (70 percent), and minimize manual errors (61 percent).
“Telecom is clearly into intelligent automation,” the report authors wrote. “Telefonica O2, an early adopter of AI, earned a 650-800 percent return on investment over three years from its 160 robots, which processed about 400,000 to 500,000 transactions each month. What’s more, Robotic Process Automation (RPA) crashed some process times down to a few minutes from days and dramatically reduced the number of service enquiries from customers.”
In the next 12 months specifically, telco respondents said they want to use AI to provide human-like recommendations for automated customer service (71 percent), integrate AI to process complex structured and unstructured data and to automate insights-led decisions (56 percent), and have AI create a simulated experience that is essential to decision-making processes (49 percent).
But while the value of AI is clear to some, IT professionals said the challenges of fully implementing such a digital transformation include not only time constraints (72 percent), but also entrenched resistance to change within their organizations (72 percent). Three quarters of those professionals also said a lack of clarity around the value proposition of AI is also hindering progress, while another 71 percent pointed to financial limitations.
The full Infosys report, “Human Amplification in the Enterprise,” can be found here.
Filed Under: Infrastructure, DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION (DX)