AI inside: Tech simplifies and automates routine work for IT firms

AI can be used in a variety of functions: From HR management to sales and coding. Senior executives say companies must continuously train employees in the technology and keep them skilled

When Satya Nadella, the chief executive officer of Microsoft, visited India early this year he spoke about how the country’s information technology (IT) companies were driving artificial intelligence (AI) and customising it for their use.

Nadella said Infosys, HCLTech and LTIMindtree were among companies that had been the first movers in adopting Copilot, Microsoft's AI-based conversational chat interface, for customers and themselves.

Considering Indian IT companies are deploying AI and generative AI (GenAI) for hundreds and thousands of global enterprises, how they do it for themselves is of significance.

Mohammed Rafee Tarafdar, chief technology officer (CTO) of Infosys, said his company is leveraging AI to “reimagine work, workplace and workforce”, with a focus on using the technology to amplify human potential.

“We have been continuously implementing and rolling out AI within key processes over the last 12 months. For example the generative AI-led learning processes in our learning platform Lex have been rolled out to all our employees and we are seeing active adoption. We have rolled out a knowledge assistant, InfyMe NAVI, for all (company) leaders to help drive productivity in the sales process,” said Tarafdar.

Modernisation tool

Infosys is using AI assistants to help productivity in software engineering, modernisation and migration. Tarafdar said the impact of such assistants is evident. “Using assistants our developers have generated three million lines of meaningful code. With the usage of classical AI and GenAI, we have seen that some processes that used to take weeks can now be done in days.”

Like their clients, Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), Wipro, IBM, LTIMindtree and other firms have adopted AI across processes such as human resource (HR) management, automating IT infrastructure, and even sales. 

“Through our early work of applying foundation models, we found that the time-to-value is up to 70 per cent faster than a traditional AI approach. That’s why we ourselves use the transformational power of generative AI by being the client zero for many of our products and services. Doing this helps us not only to test and validate what we create, but it also helps us build use cases that our clients can replicate and benefit from,” said Geeta Gurnani, IBM Technology CTO & technical sales leader for India and South Asia.

IBM has deployed for its use a conversational AI-powered platform called AskHR that has helped 94 per cent of employee interactions happening without human intervention. The platform sits over about 79 different systems, 4,700 policy documents and supports 2,500 processes. It has helped the HR team focus on “value-creating tasks”.

Gurnani said, “We use AI during performance evaluation, automating the tedious work of culling through data like past performance ratings, skills, whether employees are up to date on training, and their length of employment. For example, on average a manager takes about eight hours to gather the necessary data and fill in the relevant nomination forms for promotions. During a pilot in Q2 of 2022, approximately 1,800 managers part of our North American consulting team used HiRo (a digital tool) and they completed the data gathering and entry work in about one hour each, collectively saving about 12,000 hours in that quarter’s promotions process.”

Sivaraman Ganesan, head of AI.Cloud unit at TCS, said that making employees understand GenAI was a big task. “One of the things we have been extremely busy over the last few quarters have been on skilling employees on GenAI capability but also getting them acquainted with the technology,” he said.

Adopting GenAI means that various teams in the company work together and are trained. TCS has trained 300,000 employees in basic AI skills, said the company recently.

Bengaluru-based Wipro has several initiatives underway to apply GenAI to hundreds of internal scenarios in HR, sales, and marketing. Anup Purohit, chief information officer (CIO) at Wipro, said AI can speed up presales and enable company executives to focus on main sales by talking to customers and gaining understanding of their issues.

He said that Wipro is implementing an AI-powered talent marketplace which will enable its associates (employees) to strengthen skills and plan their career.

Productivity help

Wipro has deployed an AI-powered enterprise chatbot that handles business queries, automates tasks, provides information, and offers support to employees. “It is currently being used by employees across 53 countries to improve employee search experience, knowledge management, and boost productivity with proactive engagement notifications for critical activities like approvals and onboarding. It has significantly reduced the cost-to-serve by deflecting common employee interactions and resolutions to an Electronic Virtual Assistance, freeing up employee capacity and reducing navigations to legacy apps. About 85 per cent of HR-related queries will be handled by this chatbot,” said Purohit. The chatbot typically responds to employees in 5 seconds and handles more than 14,000 queries daily with 95 per cent accuracy.

GenAI benefits not only individuals but also entire organisations, according to a Microsoft study last year. About 70 per cent of Copilot users said they were more productive and 68 per cent said it improves work quality.

The CIOs and CTOs Business Standard spoke to agree that the only way to be part of the shift to AI is training and up-skilling. Purohit, the Wipro executive, believes companies must invest in training employees in AI model training, ethical use, system integration and blending technical skills with critical thinking.

“We have a range of training programmes designed and deployed, including the GenAI101 training, with the intention to teach every employee the fundamentals of AI. Wipro has trained over 220,000 employees. Out of this, 195,000 have been trained in basic GenAI fundamentals, 18,000 on a foundational level, 4,000 on an associate level, and 2,200 on an advanced level,” said Purohit.

LTIMindtree has developed an internal microsite called GARUDA that offers training material on various GenAI topics. Through Shoshin, an internal platform, the company is training more than 18,000 associates on the basics of GenAI.