Building the future together: Harness the power of AI to drive strategic outcomes

It’s no overstatement to say that AI is transforming the world. The latest generative AI (gen AI) and machine learning (ML) solutions can perform tasks with astonishing speed and accuracy compared with human workers. As a result, enterprises can accelerate coding from days to minutes, personalize the customer experience with unprecedented precision and liberate employees from repetitive administration tasks.

Since 2022, the return on investment (ROI) from AI solutions has leapt from 13% to 31%, and forthcoming research from the IBM Institute for Business Value (IBV) will show that embedding gen AI into existing enterprise software workflows promises to deliver lasting returns. To thrive in this new industrial revolution, business leaders are looking to AI and ML solutions to maintain and sharpen their competitive edge—and more than half of CEOs now see these technologies as more of an opportunity than a risk.

For independent software vendors (ISVs) and managed service providers (MSPs), the opportunity is clear. Developing new AI-infused solutions or embedding AI into existing solutions can potentially open a wide range of new revenue streams. Using the technology stack and global reach of IBM can help our Build partners achieve AI success.

IBM has long been a leader in AI innovation, offering cutting-edge tools and expertise to help companies harness the power of AI to advance their strategic objectives. Whether businesses are starting from scratch or looking to enhance existing systems, IBM can provide a combination of cloud infrastructure, AI models and hands-on engineering services to boost efficiency.

IBM Client Engineering and Build Lab teams are at the heart of this effort. These teams work closely with clients, using capabilities such as the watsonx.ai™ portfolio of AI products to create AI tools tailored to their specific needs. The IBM approach emphasizes collaboration with Build partners co-creating solutions that can drive measurable business outcomes.

For example, the IBM Build Lab played a key role in supporting Netherlands-based company Migrato in augmenting its existing technology solution and accessing a valuable new market. A specialist in unstructured data processing, Migrato uses a custom-developed tool to empower organizations to transform unstructured data into actionable business insights.

In the Netherlands, new legislation requires government organizations to publish all information in the public interest while helping ensure that any personal data is redacted. By partnering with IBM, Migrato saw an opportunity to aid government clients in automating this process.

Migrato collaborated with the IBM Build Lab to enhance its existing toolset by integrating the IBM Watson® NLP Library for Embed—completing 70% of development work within hours and going live with a production solution in just five days. Today, the company is configuring the new solution to allow municipalities across the country to streamline their compliance tasks.

The combination of AI tools and agent-led services represents a big opportunity for businesses to drive up the value of their customer services. According to the IBV, 63% of executives reported that they have invested in gen AI use cases to directly support their service agents. Customer service is the organizational function most commonly cited by CEOs as a key focus area for gen AI innovation.

One driver for this trend is that call centers are crucial for maintaining customer satisfaction, but managing effective call center operations at scale is a significant challenge. ExpertSource, a company with over 300 agents making around 250 calls a day, aimed to get tighter control over its monitoring and compliance efforts while keeping headcount flat.

CXReview, the provider of the company’s existing automated call-review technology, co-created a solution for ExpertSource using Watson AI services. Developed in just 16 weeks by a joint team from CXReview and IBM Client Engineering, the new call-review solution supports ExpertSource in conducting 280,000 separate compliance checks daily. It monitors everything from opening greetings to post-call documentation for 100% of its calls.

AI automation not only aids ExpertSource in helping ensure higher compliance and quality standards, it also contributes to the bottom line: reducing the burden on management teams, improving service quality and mitigating compliance risks.

Another organization that benefits from AI automation is Digital Office Company (DOC), a Finland-based provider of information management solutions and services. To enhance the accuracy of document classification, DOC collaborated with the IBM Ecosystem Engineering Build Lab, IBM Client Engineering and IBM Technology Expert Labs to develop a pilot that combines ML and gen AI. The pilot proved highly successful in terms of increasing the speed and quality of document classification: what used to take an individual a few minutes can now take as little as 2 seconds.

In a global survey by the IBV, 62% of executives reported that gen AI disrupts how their organizations design experiences. There are few industries where the customer experience is more important than the hospitality sector, and IBM Build partners are using our tools and technology to support them in driving results.

HTOP Hotels manages thousands of reservations a day across 16 hotels throughout the Catalonia region of Spain, welcoming more than 500,000 guests every year. In the past, the company relied on manual, spreadsheet-based processes to manage employee schedules and help ensure that there was sufficient staff coverage to deliver an outstanding experience for every guest. However, the process was inefficient and error-prone, increasing the risk of a staffing crunch.

IBM Business Partner Integra developed a solution for HTOP built on IBM Planning Analytics, which the hotel chain is using to forecast customer demand and optimize its staffing plans in real time. The new AI-infused solution has contributed to a reduction in planning time of 30% and deeper insights into employee availability—cutting the gap between demand and staffing by 75%, improving operational cost-efficiency and supporting sparkling guest experiences.

Another IBM Business Partner experiencing the efficiency of IBM watsonx™ technologies is GigaSpaces, a global pioneer of in-memory computing. GigaSpaces is building one of the market’s first Digital Integration Hubs (DIHs) with the aim of simplifying digital transformation and enabling other companies to develop and launch digital services faster.

Using watsonx.ai and watsonx Assistant™ and working with the IBM Build Lab, GigaSpaces will enable its customers to query enterprise data in natural language, so that they are able to make more reliable business decisions. Currently, engineers who use AI to work with structured information see up to 55% accuracy. GigaSpaces’ target is to assist its customers in achieving almost 95% accuracy. And by integrating watsonx Assistant, GigaSpaces was able to reduce the time-to-prototype for its solution from months to days.

As we have seen, IBM Build partners are working with us to unlock game-changing capabilities for their clients. Whether your business aims to build new AI products from scratch or to add AI capabilities to existing offerings, IBM offers the tools, expertise and collaborative approach you need to succeed.

As an ISV or MSP, partnering with IBM empowers you to achieve great results, fast. With enterprise-grade capabilities including watsonx, APIs, libraries and applications, your business can integrate trustworthy AI into your applications rapidly.

Unlock new AI opportunities at the forefront of the new industrial revolution