Companies first need to find the problem and then let AI solve it

Gitex this year has been all about artificial intelligence. The technology is in the spotlight like never before, with companies across sectors scrambling to understand how they can use it to boost productivity and efficiency and prepare for the so-called future economy.

But its rapid ascent has also meant that organisations are sometimes adding AI agents just to tick a box without understanding what their needs are, according to experts.

For the technology to work well, it is vital that AI has access to the right data and tools, said Ahmad Abu Hantash, partner, digital and technology Consulting at PwC.

“I think we are still in the experimentation phase. There's a lot of money being spent on multiple use cases to validate the business outcome. The biggest challenge that people see is not only on the technology, it's on the readiness of the business … the readiness of the consumer, of the information, and the availability of the data and the information to be used,” he said on the sidelines of Gitex Global in Dubai.

“AI, if it does not have the right data and the right information and the right landscape around it, you won't get the right results … You need to have the right data and tools, the right regulatory requirements, for example, privacy, responsibility, bias – all of this has to be there … That's the key element.

“And if we don't change how we process the information, how we get the data, how we analyse it, what are the rules around it, you will not get the value that we really expect.”

Companies are swiftly incorporating the technology, with the number of organisations using at least AI business function reaching 78 per cent in 2024 from 20 per cent in 2017, a survey earlier this year by McKinsey found. Meanwhile, the use of generative AI also sharply grew to 71 per cent last year from 33 per cent in 2023.

Workday, a US-based enterprise AI platform that supports human resource management, finance and also support AI agents, currently has 70 million users globally, generating more than a trillion transactions a year.

“So, we have an extremely rich, clean, pure data set, which, if we're talking about AI, is really foundational,” said Michael Douroux, chief operating officer, Europe, Middle East and Africa at Workday.

“With regards to AI, we've seen a very steady explosion … The main thing for us is that they [AI products] demonstrate and can be measured in terms of the value that they provide, which I think is a unique part of the AI hype cycle,” he said.

“There's been a lot of hype and a trough – this is what happens with any tectonic shift where organisations are really trying to understand and justify all the money that they're spending on AI, and is it actually amplifying the productivity of their employees within the realm of people and in finance.”

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Companies need to have a clear plan for their AI strategy before making heavy investments.

“Some people come to us say, ‘I want to have 300 or 400 AI agents’. Why? What problem are you trying to solve?,” said Mr Abu Hantash.

He said he urges companies to experiment first. “Start small and grow bigger. Let's look at the low hanging fruit. So for example, the easiest thing for us is usually the back office operations. Go to procurement, HR, finance, admin, supply chain, because these are usually the most mature elements of the organisation.”

'Doing the work of a million interns'

US-based cyber protection company Cohesity handles huge quantities of data, and the insights that AI can provide using that data is enormous, said chief executive Sanjay Poonen.

“For example, a lot of our banks or insurance companies collect massive amounts of data, and a lot of that is in hundreds of millions of PDF files.

“If they write a query [addressing AI] that said, ‘could you summarise all the contracts, documents I've had with my vendors over the last 10 years, and give me a summary of all the discounts I've given them, the terms of my agreement, all the economic terms, put it in a nice table so I can see it’, it will [AI agent will] go and scour like – imagine you had a million interns that could read all those documents and summarise it for you – that’s what it's doing,” said Mr Poonen.

There are some “incredible breakthroughs” that are going to happen using AI, he added.

Workday, which announced last month that it will enter the Middle East with a new office in Dubai, is confident about growth in the region, said Mr Douroux.

“We are very measured when it comes to market expansion, meaning we want to be thoughtful and not just drop in a sales team and figure out the rest later,” he said.

In line with government initiatives in countries such as the UAE and Saudi Arabia, “we thought that we had a unique opportunity to support multiple countries in this region in their digital transformations, not just within business, but in terms of what they're doing”, he said.

While the company is supporting the growth of the digital workforce, he also stressed that AI agents will coexist with employees.

“There's going to be a growth and explosion of new types of roles, but what we see right now is an amplification, an increase in the level of productivity with our users, with our customers and their employees, and really a strategy that complements what they're doing, as opposed to replacing.”