AI is happening now

Successful AI deployment is already a business reality. The rapid acceleration in the capability and availability of AI technologies has brought with it a rapid recognition by business leadership of its transformative — and immediate — value. But identifying how AI can specifically unlock productivity, process and quality gains for your business and then deploying it quickly and at scale to realize these gains is challenging. Where do you start? What is AI’s true potential? How do you move from theory to practice?

AI’s safe space

HCLTech’s Cloud-Native and GenAI Labs is an industry-leading space where businesses can come and share their vision and confidently and securely find a pathway to move from AI hype — and the art of the possible — to AI value, and deployment at scale. By exploring specific use cases collaboratively, rather than a one-size-fits-all approach, you can understand the power of technologies, such as Microsoft Azure AI solutions, to add value to your existing business capabilities.

Through HCLTech’s 35+ year partnership with Microsoft, including six Microsoft Solutions Partner designations, 21 Microsoft specializations and over 80,000 Microsoft-trained engineers, we can find the right AI solution together. You may have an idea of specific inefficiencies or pain points to improve — such as reducing wait times and speeding up responses to customer inquiries — but you may not. We are able to apply our unique insights, gathered from successful collaboration on 1,800+ projects, to unlock the optimal approach to scale AI for your business. And when the solution is ready for deployment, HCLTech can get your staff up and running, as recognized by the 2023 O’Reilly Awards, which awarded us Gold for “Best in Skill Transformation” for fostering talent, driving innovation and advancing skill development for clients during their digital transformation.

1800+
AI-enabled projects have been successfully delivered by HCLTech, applying unique insights at its Cloud-Native and GenAI Labs.

Use cases and the lessons they teach us
Here are five use cases across a range of scenarios and sectors that demonstrate how HCLTech is already deploying Microsoft AI technologies at scale.

1. Integrating verticals to create a single source of truth
   As many businesses that rely on legacy systems can attest, analytics teams spend significant time and resources overcoming siloed datasets to gain insights into operations, especially for companies with multiple business units. Not only would staff time be better spent focusing on strategic planning rather than chasing data, but lagging processes like these can lead to outdated insights and backward-facing moves.

   A leading multinational agriculture producer partnered with HCLTech to solve this problem, using AI to integrate data from its three vertical business units: operations and mining, corporate and regional services, and global strategic marketing and supply chains. HCLTech implemented Microsoft Azure, allowing the agriculture producer to use Azure tools, including Cloud Scale Analytics, Synapse, Data Lakes Gen 2 and Power BI to gain near-real-time data insights into global operations, reducing overall operating costs by up to 20% and speeding up the delivery cycle by up to 25%.

   Key lesson:
   Using data-driven AI tools to target specific data silos and information bottlenecks helps businesses process data faster than manual methods.

2. Improving customer relations through omnichannel operations
   Modern customers demand options when interacting with companies — phone, email, chat, social media posts, review sites and more. But for businesses, manually tracking and summarizing these disparate sources is time consuming and often leads to data loss, incomplete problem identification and, ultimately, extended resolution times.

   When faced with this predicament, a large financial services company implemented a solution that maintains the high-quality standards that its over 5 million customers have come to expect. Using generative AI, the company created state-of-the-art automated query responses and detail-oriented follow-ups based on a holistic view of customer interactions and problem resolution. This system, engineered by HCLTech, leverages Microsoft Azure OpenAI Services to reduce summarization efforts by 80%, cut manual labor by 70%, fully automate ticket classification and save roughly $3.2 million annually, based on projections.

   Key lesson: AI and automation can save time and money but should be centered on specific customer demands and behaviors, ultimately ensuring a more satisfying customer experience.

3. Creating a one-of-a-kind personalized customer experience
   In the highly competitive ecommerce world, many virtual shoppers require a seamless and engaging experience. Businesses, especially large companies with diverse products and services, often struggle to make their online storefronts and shopping tools feel personalized, both for shopping and issue resolution. What’s more, traditional chatbots, phone trees and automated responses often leave customers feeling frustrated and undervalued.

   HCLTech worked with a leading industrial and household tools and hardware manufacturer to build a solution to assist online shoppers with a sophisticated generative AI assistant and personal guide. This solution has built-in guardrails that keep conversations on track when helping customers find exactly what they need, often through customer-uploaded images and open discussion. HCLTech’s solution can also resolve issues using Microsoft Azure Stack, including AI Document Intelligence, AI Search and AI Translator, leading to 84% of questions answered with a high degree of accuracy and relevancy.

   Key lesson:
   Generative AI can give customers a more sophisticated and personalized experience than traditional chatbots and automated responses, but only when managed by guardrails that maintain a customer-focused approach and high-quality interactions.

4. Securely enhancing productivity to deliver improved value for clients
   For businesses that rely on large datasets, building a scalable solution that doesn’t require an expanding workforce can be challenging. This is certainly true for international businesses, as translating documents accurately can be a time-consuming and error-prone process.

   A global law firm turned to HCLTech to implement a solution that uses AI to increase productivity and reduce costs without compromising data security or client trust. Due to the sensitive nature of client data, this system incorporates built-in integrity, privacy and security guidelines that set rigid standards for all content generated by AI, including encryption, authentication, authorization and auditing. Additionally, all AI-generated content is labeled and requires human validation to ensure accountability, transparency and fairness. This solution leverages Microsoft products and services, such as Teams Premium, Copilot, Viva Suite, Power BI and Azure AI Cloud Services, including Azure OpenAI, AI Search and Translator services. These products and services work together to summarize complex documents, help lawyers gain new insights and generate legal documents. The system has saved about 5,000 hours in reviewing and correcting time-recording narratives, reduced due diligence by between 40% and 50% and slashed time spent generating documents by 2,000 hours.

   Key lesson:
   Security and accountability should form a key part of your AI implementation strategy, particularly in sectors where sensitive client or customer data is routinely handled.

5. Building a reliable solution for a highly regulated sector
   With AI, like with any new technology, knowing which tools are reliable and which are more hype than value can be tricky. Rather than jumping right into the deep end, many businesses prefer a phased approach with tested results. But finding the right balance between caution and falling behind can be challenging.

   As more people turn to search engines for medical questions, a non-profit academic medical center needed to create a system for patients to turn to instead of unreliable websites with unregulated advice. But any potential solution needed to be accurate and comprehensive to truly offer value to patients. Through a partnership with HCLTech, the organization devised a system capable of delivering bona fide information for patients and freeing up medical staff for more face-to-face interactions. This system uses Microsoft Copilot Studio and offers three tiers of interactions: basic clinic information, patient-facing materials and professional organization guidelines. And to ensure success, the system is monitored through Microsoft Power Automate and the Dataverse as part of a comprehensive four-year study with hundreds of participants. These accountability features provide essential transparency to ensure that the system is operating properly and that patients are getting the care they need.

   Key lesson:
   Whether businesses rely on AI for matters of life and death or just simple customer service inquiries, systems should be monitored and adjusted to ensure accuracy and success, as well as to protect customers’ well-being and the business’ reputation.

Act now to realize the power of AI
AI has the potential to transform your business — boosting productivity, improving quality and speeding up the delivery of goods and services. HCLTech’s extensive engineering capability combined with Microsoft AI technologies provide a proven route to success. This unique, collaborative and business outcome-focused approach moves you confidently and cost-effectively from AI hype to AI value.