Sharon, Deb, welcome.
Delighted to be in conversation with the both of you this
afternoon.
Let's jump right into things.
Sharon, we have seen a tremendous innovation in the AI
space over the last year or so.
Talk to me specifically about the effects of generative AI on
today's workforce.
Great, thank you for that question.
You know BCG has done some recent research on that and what
we found in our research, and we surveyed 13,000 employees across
the world, across 18 countries, and we looked at 1,400 different
skill sets, and across 12 functions.
And what we found is, in time, over time, 60% of all jobs will
change.
Now the sequencing of that and the impact of that will vary,
but there's going to be enormous change and opportunity, in fact,
created by generative AI.
Another study BCG did actually with our own people, our own
consultants, 750 of them, was super interesting because what
we found was a rapid acceleration in terms of
content, creation, which is amazing, and the creativity of
the output was 90% better than typically done.
But what we also found was a deterioration in terms of
business and analytical judgement.
And so I think the implication for business is we have to be
very mindful in terms of not only the technology, which is
super important, but also the change management journey.
It cannot be understated the potential for AI. Deb, I do want
to turn to you.
You work with clients across the Americas.
What have you gleaned in terms of the value that AI can unlock?
Thank you.
And it's been pretty remarkable.
So I will first say the opportunity is enormous and so
most customers are thinking about a few very simple things.
How do I improve productivity, improve efficiency, create a
business outcome, or really create innovation that will
bring new revenue streams.
So that's really their focus areas
when they think about AI, and I'll categorize it kind of
pretty simply.
And so we think about it in the context of knowledge capacity or
knowledge learning similar to what Sharon was saying, you have
so much access to content and you can do it so quickly.
It gives you this opportunity to be more creative, to find more
information, and to be more efficient.
Our customers also think about use cases like call centers or
contact centers. That I would say is the single biggest area
that our customers are focused on because it's an opportunity
for us to serve our customers better
when you use chatbots and virtual agents, you can prompt
agents to respond in certain ways given what's happening.
Then they learn faster, then they have an opportunity to be
more consistent, and then of course we have an opportunity to
increase productivity and efficiency as well.
So it's both making it better for the customer and it's also
making it better for the agent.
So we're actually seeing the agents are happier in their job
because they're being able to support their customer in a
better way, which we think is incredible.
And then you also see things across operations.
So we look at supply chain and operations.
How can we learn from data?
The part about getting access to data that people couldn't get
access to before and actually reason over it in a way that
creates value is probably the single biggest unlock.
There's a lot to be said about AI's potential to make drudge
work obsolete.
Certainly, efficiency is the biggest use case. Drawing from
both of your experiences,
however, what are the key issues you and your partners have to
solve in order to really yield AI's very full, very vast
potential?
Deb, let's kick off with you. Sounds great.
Well, I think first, you know what we would say is, try it,
right?
So one, you want to unlock the productivity with using things
like Copilots.
It's an opportunity for everybody to lean into
something, it's easy to interact with, and you'll learn from that
experience.
Second is building your own capability.
So the beautiful thing about this new wave of AI is you have
the capability to build it yourself.
So whether that's apps or areas that you can expand capability
for your own business, it's really, really compelling.
And three I would say is take care of your data, take care of
your governance, make good decisions, make sure you have
knowledge around the way that you're convening information and
you're driving your organization.
Nothing is more critical to making sure you have governance
and you understand ethics around AI and how your business wants
to operate.
So I think one of the neatest things about this is the way the
ecosystem is growing.
So it's not just technology companies, it's expanding across
all types of companies across the world and I think that's
really cool.
So for Microsoft, that is an ecosystem opportunity for us and
it's actually one of the things we're super excited about with
BCG.
It's an awesome partnership and it allows us to really bring
this to life for our customers.
We'd love to hear from you.
Yeah, thank you.
So the ecosystem is critical in terms of unlocking the potential
of AI.
And I'm so happy and proud of our partnership with Microsoft
on this journey and actually thinking about some of the
impact we've already had.
You know, whether it's accelerating customer insights
for one of our key clients and one of your key clients, or
whether it's actually reimagining the customer
journey, you mentioned that as a key use case.
And I think we're already seeing results in that area.
So I'm super excited about what's to come.
And then in particular, I'll just call it healthcare.
I think there's an enormous opportunity in healthcare and
we've worked together on a great paper, and in terms of looking
at biopharma and looking at the core processes, and what's super
interesting is there's an opportunity to unlock and
increase both efficiency and effectiveness of each of those
core processes across the pharmaceutical industry.
One in particular I'll highlight is BCG worked very deeply with
one of the big biopharma companies and we were working on
their R&D process.
And we looked step-by-step for opportunities for it to be
AI-enabled, and the ease of which it could be AI-enabled,
and the risk of AI enabling it.
And I think what it unlocked was enormous opportunity.
And so I think taking forward our partnership, whether it's
the biopharma industry, healthcare more broadly, or just
industry more broadly, I think there's enormous opportunity in
our work together.
Yeah. Opportunity is the key word.
These are all very useful insights as companies assess how
they will leverage the ever-evolving, fast-evolving
technology.
Thank you both for your time.