Enterprises spanning virtually all industries and markets are jumping onto the artificial intelligence bandwagon. Yet as they climb on board for a ride into the future they soon discover that stock AI tools aren't capable of meeting their exact business needs. However, organizations don't need to spend large amounts of time and money building their own AI tools to fix this problem, suggested Kevin McMahon, executive director of mobile and emerging technologies at digital tech consultancy SPR. All they have to do, he noted in an interview, is to customize already existing tools to fit their exact business needs. To be effective, AI software must be tailored to address specific business problems, and this is where generic algorithms often fall short, said Sanjay Srivastava, chief digital officer at professional services firm Genpact.

Interest in artificial intelligence is on the rise in Egypt as enterprises embrace emerging technology to expand into new markets, investors back AI startups and government initiatives support education and awareness of the technology. There is mounting evidence that private enterprise is embracing AI. Recently, for example, AI and anlytics vendor fonYou partnered with a mobile operator in Egypt to use its AI module to reach the unbanked, and Widebot just raised a six-figure (USD) Pre-Series A investment for its Arabic language chatbot. Meanwhile, the government is looking to develop AI capabilities in a number of ways, including launching its first AI faculty at Kafr El Sheikh University. Egypt is aiming to have 7.7 percent of its GDP derived through AI by 2030, a figure touted in the PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) report, The Potential Impact of AI in the Middle East.

PwC announced that it was cited as a Leader in The Forrester Wave: AI Consultancies, Q3 2019. On firms that provide Artificial Intelligence (AI) consulting services, Forrester notes that "offering, breadth of support, and innovation are key differentiators." The report states that: "PwC doesn't see a technology problem; it sees a business problem. PwC's "reframing" approach for digital carries through to the firm's AI practice: PwC doesn't come to fix the plumbing but instead to transform a client. While many AI engagements address business process and customer experience, PwC doesn't stop there. The firm also illustrates how AI can change the way executives work by presenting interactive simulations of markets that they aren't in, they aren't optimised for, or don't exist. This allows leaders to imagine and execute on new business models and new products."

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"Some of the deep learning neural networks require tremendous amounts of computing power to train the systems," Elliot said. Properly planning for and designing an infrastructure that can support your specific environment's computational processing and storage requirements is critical to attaining AI's benefits. Furthermore, organizations may start too big, have the wrong data, or have a lot of data that's unusable, he said. Getting data assets and capabilities in place will deliver a huge lift to any planned AI project. Take a look at your talent.

Robotic Process Automation (RPA) is the automation of repeatable and redundant, rule-based human action through the use of software bots. These software robots are installed on a user's machine or as a standalone self-managed automation, that can amimic a worker's actions and replicate these activities on their own. Once the bot has performed its designated tasks, they can then report, notify, or handoff to another bot. While RPA provides a breadth of opportunities for organizations to streamline mundane tasks and reallocate resources to focus on more complex endeavors, one of the biggest obstacles to adopting this technology is human nature itself. In any workplace, there are those who embrace change and those who reject it.

Artificial intelligence (AI) can transform the productivity and GDP potential of the UK landscape. But, we need to invest in the different types of AI technology to make that happen. Our research shows that the main contributor to the UK's economic gains between 2017 and 2030 will come from consumer product enhancements stimulating consumer demand (8.4%). This is because AI will drive a greater choice of products, with increased personalisation and make those products more affordable over time. Labour productivity improvements will also drive GDP gains as firms seek to "augment" the productivity of their labour force with AI technologies and to automate some tasks and roles.

These and many other fascinating insights are from the Boston Consulting Group and MIT Sloan Management Review study published this week, Reshaping Business With Artificial Intelligence. An online summary of the report is available here. The survey is based on interviews with more than 3,000 business executives, managers, and analysts in 112 countries and 21 industries. For additional details regarding the methodology, please see page 4. The research found significant gaps between companies who have already adopted and understand Artificial Intelligence (AI) and those lagging. AI early adopters invest heavily in analytics expertise and ensuring the quality of algorithms and data can scale across their enterprise-wide information and knowledge needs.

Talent Planning Solution is a digital dashboard that provides advanced analytics on resource supply and demand levels and uses artificial intelligence (AI) to match and optimize role assignments in SAP SuccessFactors .

Neath Port Talbot Council is understood to have become the first local authority in Wales to use a robot to process back office administration. The council has been trialling the new technology, known as Robotics Process Automate (RPA), to process Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS) checks and update employee information. At a personnel committee meeting head of resources Sheenagh Rees told councillors the robot had helped clear a backlog of data inputting within a matter of weeks. She said: "Since 2013 there has been a 50% reduction of administration staff in HR but we have only had increasing demand for our services. "The reason we were interested in using RPA was because it could help us deal with a high volume of work we weren't able to do.