Matt Candy on IBM Consulting's role as digital transformation partner
IBM Consulting is engaged in helping dozens of GCC enterprises in their digital transformation journey, offering wide-ranging benefits from business model competitiveness and innovation, to cost efficiency, customer experience, and operational excellence. IBM Consulting executive Matt Candy outlines how.
IBM Consulting sees innovation moving faster in the open-source space, and helps enterprise clients see a world that is multi-model and multi-cloud. Embracing an open approach and adopting different AI models for different use cases, provides the flexibility to choose the best model for the job at hand.
At IBM Consulting, we take the perspective that getting to trustworthy AI at scale means taking a human-centric approach that is based in core principles of trust and transparency. The need for ethics, trust and governance should be engineered into the entire lifecycle of AI by taking a holistic view that encompasses people, process and tools.
IBM Consulting is entering a new era of human potential. To use its own AI-powered best practice as an example, IBM Consulting Advantage is its AI services platform designed to support IBM consultants in delivering consistency, repeatability and greater productivity for our clients.
Core to the platform is a library of role-based IBM Consulting Assistants to support teams in their day-to-day tasks. This includes assistants trained on IBM proprietary data and composed of tailored prompts, models and output formats to put the collective knowledge of IBM and the wider industry at the fingertips of 160,000 IBM consultants.
The GCC landscape
IBM Consulting works across a spectrum of clients supporting various industries in GCC region including healthcare, banking, government, chemicals and petroleum, retail, travel and transportation.
IBM Consulting is engaged in helping clients in their digital transformation journey offering a range of benefits to them, including creation of new business models, improved cash flow, increased customer and employee satisfaction, enhanced sales and marketing effectiveness, reduced costs, and improved operational efficiencies.
IBM Consulting focuses on a select few clients with the intent to support their longer-term needs across all customer buyers starting with technology, line of business owners, CHRO, CFO, CPO and CISO. Typical engagement lasts between 6 months-24 months with potential extension for up to three or five years.
Across GCC, IBM Consulting is engaged in strategy and consulting, complex system integration, new digital product and services development, implementing new digital experiences using platforms or custom development of platforms, large ERP implementations, cloud migration and modernisation, establishment and operationalisation of data, AI capabilities and sustainability to name a few.
The genuine interest and activation in generative AI from GCC clients reflect their commitment to improving citizens’ experiences, enhancing safety, and eliminating frictions.
- In retail and hospitality, personalised experiences, intelligent chatbots are employed to create seamless interactions.
- The healthcare industry adopts Generative AI for accurate diagnoses, personalised treatment plans, and overall improved services for all stakeholders.
- Manufacturing and supply chain optimisation benefit from predictive maintenance and resource allocation, leading to increased efficiency.
- Finance, banking sectors and public sectors prioritise security through fraud detection and data-driven investment decisions.
- Media and entertainment industries captivate audiences with captivating content and immersive experiences.
- Energy and utilities sectors optimise resources and maintain critical infrastructure for sustainability.
GCC clients share a united vision of harnessing the power of Generative AI for a better world. As IBM Consulting explores future prospects and ethical considerations, it becomes clear that Generative AI holds the key to unlocking a brighter future in the Middle East.
Recent GCC partnerships
IBM Consulting has engaged with various clients across the GCC region:
Riyadh Air travel experiences
One of our most recent engagements is how Riyadh Air and IBM Consulting are collaborating to revolutionise travel experiences. Alongside Adobe, Riyadh Air will leverage IBM’s advanced technologies such as AI, experience orchestration, and data analytics. The goal is to deliver hyper-personalised guest journeys and immerse travellers in Saudi Arabian traditions and local experiences, fostering a deeper connection to the region.
Riyadh Air AI and hybrid cloud technology
In addition to focusing on personalised guest experiences, last year Riyadh Air and IBM Consulting announced a partnership to create a digital and technology strategy, focusing on AI and hybrid cloud technology. IBM is the lead systems integrator, implementing and integrating over 50 industry solutions and core technology capabilities, and establishing a hybrid cloud integration platform.
The collaboration aims to position Riyadh Air as a leader in the aviation industry and support Saudi Arabia’s Vision 2030.
Al Futtaim Group
IBM Consulting was selected by Al-Futtaim Group to redesign the customer experience journey of its Blue Rewards programme and transform its digital core through large-scale data migration projects. IBM implemented a robust, modern digital core, unifying data from diverse sectors, and streamlined SAP S4HANA migration, and modernised solutions on Microsoft Azure.
The collaboration aims to reshape the landscape of Al-Futtaim Group’s digital operations, setting a benchmark for industry standards and enriching the overall customer experience.
Solution stack
IBM Consulting has a rich partner ecosystem and is a partner with other technology players – Adobe, AWS, Microsoft, Oracle, Salesforce and SAP. IBM Consulting helps clients apply AI to deliver meaningful business outcomes including improved productivity and efficiencies, better experiences, and new business models.
IBM Consulting is a major consulting firm at scale inside a technology company, with both AI technology and the business expertise to put it to work. IBM Consulting helps accelerate business transformation for clients through hybrid cloud and AI technologies, leveraging our open ecosystem of partners.
With industry expertise spanning strategy, experience design, technology, and operations, IBM Consulting have become the trusted partner for many of the world’s innovative and valuable companies, helping modernise and secure their most complex systems.
160,000 consultants embrace an open way of working and apply a proven, collaborative engagement model, IBM Garage, to scale ideas into outcomes across large organisations.
IBM Consulting is working with hundreds of clients around the world to integrate generative AI with technology. In addition to applying its proven, collaborative engagement model of IBM Garage, IBM Consulting has the watsonx practice, which brings expertise in the generative AI technology stack as well as domain and industry experience.