IBM and its partner ecosystem empower organizations with custom AI solutions

Generative AI (gen AI) is inspiring great excitement but leaving some organizations overwhelmed and unsure how to profit from this new technology. Many artificial intelligence (AI) projects fail to progress from sandbox to production, resulting in financial losses and limiting the company’s competitive advantage.

IBM and its partner ecosystem are here to help. By combining IBM AI solutions with IBM Business Partners’ expertise in customization, system integration, managed services and more, we can collectively help enterprises capitalize on AI’s potential.

Research from the IBM Institute for Business Value (IBM IBV) suggests that gen AI investment is surging, with spending increasing more than 10 times in 12 months. The typical organization expects to grow its gen AI model portfolio by approximately 50% within 3 years.

However, these investments might not always be targeted effectively: one in three companies pauses their AI use case after the pilot phase. When AI initiatives falter, organizations waste time and resources, missing out on return on investment. This can sour internal attitudes toward AI and significantly reduce digital transformation efforts.

However, when properly executed, gen AI solutions can help organizations create transformative, top-line growth. Research shows that operating profits directly attributable to AI doubled to nearly 5% between 2022 and 2023, with projections reaching 10% by 2025. This data highlights the importance of focusing on AI initiatives, and IBM and its partners are ready to help turn ideas into revenue generators.

Over one-third of organizations surveyed by IBM IBV are piloting and deploying gen AI across functions responsible for creating customer experiences, including marketing, sales, commerce and product and service design.

IBM Partner NTT DATA Business Solutions has partnered with IBM to launch a Center of Excellence (CoE) for IBM watsonx™. The CoE aims to help companies identify and explore the best use cases for NTT DATA’s it.human platform, which uses IBM watsonx capabilities in machine learning, speech recognition, natural language processing and conversational AI to help enhance the customer experience.

Thomas Noermack, Global Head of Innovation at NTT DATA, says: “We reached out to IBM and said we wanted to be the first to collaborate with them on fine-tuning and optimizing domain-specific large language models. For the last few months, we’ve been working with IBM to implement real-world projects using watsonx.ai.”

Today, organizations are looking for the best way to help accelerate and scale the impact of their gen AI initiatives. Research from IBM IBV shows that 68% of hybrid cloud adopters have already established formal, organization-wide policies to direct their approach to gen AI. For many, the answer seems to lie in a hybrid cloud. For companies exploring their options, a new value-generation partnership between IBM and SAP could help unlock business gains by combining gen AI with industry-specific cloud solutions.

Together, IBM and SAP plan to build on the SAP portfolio of cloud solutions and line-of-business applications to offer new capabilities. The aim is to create intelligent industry use cases that help fuel next-generation industry innovation across sectors, including industrial manufacturing, consumer packaged goods, retail, defense, automotive and utilities.

Expectations around the impact of gen AI are high: executives surveyed by IBM IBV believe that applying gen AI to business processes could drive a 41% increase in productivity. Companies plan to augment business processes by 55% more than they do today, with expected growth distributed almost equally across human resources (HR) and finance processes.

To help drive this transformation, EY and IBM have launched EY.ai Workforce, a solution powered by IBM watsonx™ Orchestrate. This AI-driven solution aims to help automate HR processes and transform operations.

Andy Baldwin, EY Global Managing Partner–Client Service, stated: “We believe this EY and IBM collaboration couldn't have come at a better time. The modern workplace is evolving rapidly, and there's a pressing need for streamlined operations. EY.ai Workforce reimagines ways of working by helping businesses make the most of their talent, putting humans at the center of technology to bring about an improved work experience with superior productivity.”

No conversation about gen AI is complete without considering ethical questions. Research shows that executives understand what’s at stake: 58% believe that major ethical risks exist with the adoption of gen AI. However, less than 25% have operationalized common principles of AI ethics.

IBM Business Partner® Tech Mahindra is collaborating with IBM to help businesses across the globe responsibly accelerate the adoption of gen AI. Tech Mahindra is integrating its suite of AI offerings and solutions with IBM® watsonx.ai™ to offer new AI governance capabilities to its clients.

Kunal Purohit, Chief Digital Services Officer at Tech Mahindra, commented: “Organizations are now seeking to implement responsible AI practices while concurrently revitalizing their enterprises by integrating gen AI technology. Our work with IBM aims to help advance digital transformation for organizations, adoption of gen AI, modernization and ultimately help foster business growth for our global customers.”

With help from IBM Partners, organizations can scale gen AI success from experimentation to enterprise-wide implementation. Companies are already drawing on the breadth of the IBM Partner Ecosystem to help drive new levels of value and productivity for their businesses. Join them and turn your gen AI vision into reality.

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