Displaying items by tag: Accenture

Wisr Limited (ASX:WZR)has announced the appointment of Álvaro Carpio Colón as Chief Innovation Officer.

Australia's largest telco Telstra and global consulting firm Accenture have finalised details of their data and AI joint venture (JV), announced last month.

GUEST OPINION:  With AI reshaping industries at unprecedented rates, findings from the 2024 CISCO Live Report suggest Australian companies are trailing, with only four percent ready to leverage the technology, a decline from the previous year.

Across APAC use cases for AI and cloud adoption are countless including enhancing cybersecurity through to transforming network resiliency, but there’s much more to be leveraged here. 

For example as  companies continue facing fast-paced changes to customer experience needs, including new demands for seamless digital experiences, real-time support and hyper-personalisation – sophisticated AI-driven capabilities becomes critical.

Some of Australia’s largest companies are betting big on AI too, including Telstra’s recent $700m AI investment with Accenture. 

Yet many businesses struggle to translate AI investment into tangible business value. AI projects often remain siloed, security concerns slow adoption, and enterprises lack the AI-ready infrastructure needed to scale.

But the remit is clear: get AI ready or risk falling behind. 

This poses questions company executives need to be asking, but first let’s get clear on where the key challenges lie:

Infrastructure Limitations:

Many organisations lack the necessary IT infrastructure to support AI initiatives – this hamstrings innovation efforts from the outset. Only 13% of Aussie companies possess the graphics processing units (GPUs) to handle future AI demands, and a mere 17% have comprehensive security measures to protect data within AI models .

Talent Shortage:

It’s no secret there’s a scarcity of skilled AI professionals in Australia, presenting a huge barrier to AI readiness. This talent gap limits companies' ability to effectively deploy and manage AI solutions.

Unmet Return on Investment (ROI) Expectations: 

Despite substantial investments in recent years, many Aussie companies are finding that AI initiatives are not delivering on anticipated returns. This has led to skepticism and slowed adoption rates.

These challenges aren’t industry specific either, but remain an issue across the board. So how do we bolster the AI adoption and readiness of Aussie companies? There are six questions forward-thinking CEO’s and CTO’s need to be asking themselves about AI:

1. Are we clear on our AI strategy and use cases?

With almost 70% of Australian enterprises investing in AI, and an additional 23% saying AI adoption is in their 12 month road map, it’s clear that Australian companies know AI readiness is a must-do, but a clear strategy is essential to maximise its value.

• What business problems are we solving with AI? And what could we be solving?
• Do we have a clear roadmap for integrating AI into our operations, products, or customer experience?

2. Do we have the right data infrastructure in place?

In Australia, 80% of consumers now expect personalised digital interactions and yet only 35% of enterprises say they’re confident in their AI data readiness to meet this demand.  And customer experience is just one consideration in your AI infrastructure plan.

• Is our data accurate, accessible, protected and well-organised?
• Are we leveraging internal and external data sources to unlock AI’s potential? 
• Do we have AI-Optimised customer experience (CX) infrastructure?
• What support should we invest in to do this better?

3. Do we have the right talent and expertise?

With the demand for AI infrastructure accelerating, the industry-wide skills gap will continue to hamstring AI adoption if not addressed in an innovative way. In-house talent is just one part of the equation.

• Do we have skilled data scientists, AI engineers, and domain experts?
• What channel partners and external experts are required to meet our strategy needs?
• Are our employees being upskilled to work alongside AI systems?

4. Is our organization culturally prepared for AI adoption?

AI readiness isn’t just about technology - embedding the right mindset into company culture is critical for adoption, too. Change is often met with resistance, and needs to be managed accordingly especially when it can be interpreted as a threat to peoples jobs.

• Are we fostering an AI mindset across teams?
• What is our plan to address change management and employee concerns about AI integration?
• How will we communicate these changes effectively to all stakeholders including leadership, employees, clients, investors and customers?

5. Are our governance and ethical frameworks robust?

As Australia moves increasingly towards tightening regulations around AI and AI adoption, enterprises are responsible for ensuring their AI models are fair, transparent, and compliant. And third party vendors and partners need to be held accountable, too.

• Do we have safeguards to ensure AI decisions are transparent, fair, and compliant with regulations?
• How are we mitigating potential biases in our AI models now and into the future?
• Is the technology we utilise from third party vendors and partners transparent? How do we hold them accountable to this?

6. Are we measuring the ROI of AI initiatives effectively?

While AI investment in Australia continues to grow, only 30% of Australian companies have clear, measurable ROI metrics on this ⁵. To drive successful AI adoption getting clarity on ROI is vital.

• Do we have metrics to evaluate the success of AI-driven projects? 
• How are we ensuring AI investments directly align with business goals and drive growth?
• Do we have the right strategic AI partners on board to achieve these objectives?

To understand how AI ready your company is, start by asking questions. Whilst AI remains cloudy and uncharted territory for many, have the courage to dive in and embrace it – the risk of not doing so is increasingly exponential.

Thoughtworks, a global technology consultancy that integrates strategy, design and engineering to drive digital innovation, has appointed Steven Yurisich as Asia Pacific Regional Managing Director.

Telstra has announced a proposed AI joint venture (JV) with global consulting firm Accenture, in which Australia's largest telco would reportedly invest A$100 million a year over seven years for a total of A$700 million.

Multinational company Accenture has agreed to acquire Italian-based network services company, specialising in fibre and mobile 5G networks deployment Fibermind.

Over the last decade, the commitments and reporting offered by data centre providers who lay claim to sustainability have moved from a ‘nice-to-have’ to a ‘must-have’ customer requirement.

The Federal Government has begun an audit of mobile coverage and capacity in the country, with a pilot audit having started and an initial tranche of data published on Wednesday.

Generative AI is already having a profound impact on the corporate landscape and is set to revolutionise how we work.

COMPANY NEWS: Australian headquartered order management company Fluent Commerce today announces a fresh global channel partner program for partners across Asia Pacific, North America, and Europe and Middle East.

Data cloud company Snowflake has launched its Snowflake Women in Data initiative in Australia and New Zealand in collaboration with Accenture to create a community of data professionals and encourage women to be an active part of a data-driven future.

Not-for-profit edtech charity Grok Academy has appointed ex Commonwealth Bank executive, Martha McKeen as Chief Strategy Officer.

Telstra is expanding two in-house developed generative AI solutions following ‘promising pilots’ with frontline team members, enabling faster and more successful interactions with customers.

New research from Accenture finds the world is in the midst of a massive technology shift, as AI and other disruptive technologies become “Human by Design”—much more human-like and intuitive for people to use— and usher in a new era of unprecedented productivity and creativity. The research further suggests that as human-centric technologies wield even greater capabilities, are easier to interact with and become even more seamlessly embedded across every aspect of our lives, we are moving toward a world where the technology around us will become more omnipresent, yet also more invisible.

The launch of ChatGPT in November 2022 saw generative AI explode into the mainstream. Since then, the technology has experienced the fastest adoption rate in history and become instrumental in the way we do business, research, shop and study. While we may be enamoured by the promise GenAI holds, we should also pause and consider any potential detrimental consequences it may have. The environmental impact of GenAI poses a particular challenge until there is wider awareness of how to manage and mitigate its effects.

COMPANY NEWS: Appian today announced its 2023 APJ Partner Award winners across five categories. This year’s winners have created world class solutions and services across a variety of industries and represent another strong year for Appian’s partnership network with a 132% increase in Appian certified developers in the region.

COMPANY NEWS: CyberArk, the identity security company, today announced that Accenture, a leading global professional services company, has expanded its deployment of the CyberArk Identity Security Platform to include CyberArk Privilege Cloud. The solution enables Accenture to control and monitor privileged access across on-premises, cloud and hybrid infrastructures for clients as well as their own IT environment.

Remote monitoring technology provider Kallipr is set to join the 5G Open Innovation Lab (5G OI Lab) in the United States.

COMPANY NEWS: Boomi, the intelligent connectivity and automation leader, has been named a Strong Performer in the Forrester Wave: Integration Platforms As A Service, Q3 2023, receiving the highest scores possible in the wizard-driven integration criterion within the Current Offering category; and in the vision, roadmap, partner ecosystem, and pricing flexibility and transparency criteria within the Strategy category.

The Forrester Report states that “Boomi’s strong vision emphasises improving business outcomes via APIs, event-driven architecture, democratised integration, and AI to improve iPaaS user experience (UX). Customers of Boomi have access to a wide array of global and regional service integrators with strong Boomi partnerships. Its price structure and modular product is flexible and aligns with value delivered.”

Additionally, the report credits the Boomi Platform for having “strong guided integration processes, with suggestions for next steps and data mappings for building from scratch. It also supports creating templates that can be configured for reuse by simply entering input parameters for a new instance. Reference customers give high marks for Boomi’s price predictability and value delivered for the cost. They also praise its ease of use and speed of integration.”

According to the Forrester report, “the importance of integration continues to grow. Software-as-a-service (SaaS) sprawl and function-first buying require integration to orchestrate between distributed vendor applications. API-led architectures require integration to orchestrate technical services into business domain services and to support a plethora of consumer channels. Growing demand for automation finds teams including iPaaS in their automation fabric toolbox. IT leaders use integration to breathe new life into legacy systems of record that struggle to keep up with cloud-native and real-time architectures, averting an expensive rip-and-replace migration from systems with untold years’ worth of complex business logic baked into them.”

As a result of these trends, Forrester recommends that iPaaS customers seek providers that “enable modern application architectures, support an automation strategy, and democratise integration.”

The award-winning, low-code Boomi Platform — the industry’s only cloud-native, fully on-demand iPaaS — enables customers to modernise and create better business outcomes easier and faster than ever before by providing end-to-end services, including application integration, master data management, API management, workflow automation, event driven integration, and B2B/EDI network management.

“With its speed, ease-of-use, and lower total cost of ownership, approximately 20,000 global customers across industries trust and rely on the Boomi platform to easily deliver fast and complete business outcomes,” said Boomi chief product and technology officer Ed Macosky. “Our platform has the full breadth of capabilities organisations need to eliminate today’s modernisation chokepoints and accelerate achievement of their digital transformation goals.”

As a category-leading, global SaaS company, Boomi touts a growing community of more than 100,000 members and one of the largest arrays of global systems integrators (GSIs) in the iPaaS space. The company boasts a worldwide network of approximately 800 partners, including Accenture, Deloitte, SAP, and Snowflake; and works with the largest hyperscaler cloud service providers.

Recently included on the Deloitte Technology Fast 500 and Inc. 5000 lists as one of America’s fastest growing and most innovative technology companies, Boomi has also won three International Stevie Awards, for Company of the Year (two years in a row) and Product Innovation; the Gold Globee Award in the Platform as a Service (PaaS) category; the Merit Award for Technology in the Cloud Services category; and the Stratus Award as a Global Leader in Cloud Computing 2022.

Read The Forrester Wave: Integration Platforms as a Service, Q3 2023.

About Boomi
Boomi aims to make the world a better place by connecting everyone to everything, anywhere. The pioneer of cloud-based integration platform as a service (iPaaS), and now a category-leading, global software as a service (SaaS) company, Boomi touts the largest customer base among integration platform vendors and a worldwide network of approximately 800 partners – including Accenture, Capgemini, Deloitte, SAP, and Snowflake. Global organisations turn to Boomi’s award-winning platform to discover, manage, and orchestrate data, while connecting applications, processes, and people for better, faster outcomes.

A week or so after Australia substantially increased the US military presence in the country, a detailed study claims that American tech firms will play a critical role in addressing Australia’s future tech workforce demand, particularly for experienced workers.