Microsoft announced today that it has teamed up with Accenture and Avanade, a joint venture between Microsoft and the global professional services company to create new AI-based solutions to be used across various industries (via ZDNet). Avanade was formed as a joint venture between Accenture and Microsoft back in 2000.
In a blog post published on LinkedIn, Gavriella Schuster, Microsoft Corporate Vice President, Commercial Partner Channels & Programs explained that the joint AI solutions will be custom designed to “increase customer engagement and drive revenue growth across industries like the consumer-packaged goods market, telecommunications, and retail.”
Schuster detailed two specific solutions, the first one being virtual agents that leverage Accenture’s “Intelligent Customer Engagement” (ICE) framework and the Microsoft AI Solution for Customer Care. Such custom AI-based solutions have already helped HP transform its customer service experiences, with a digital assistant that can give recommendations, answer support questions and more.
The second solution that Schuster mentioned will bring Accenture’s Intelligent Revenue Growth (IRG) onto the Microsoft AI platform to transform the packaged good market. The exec mentioned an experiment with large brewery that used IRG to optimize promotions, leading to a volume uplift of 25%.
To help more businesses transform themselves with AI, Microsoft and its two partners will create a large team of data scientists and AI specialists. “The growth around Artificial Intelligence is exponential, and my hope is that these AI partnerships will inspire other partners to make a bet on Microsoft to transform AI in the enterprise,” Schuster said today.
