Now Japanese Enterprises Gear Up For A Speedy Adoption Of AI

Indian enterprises are working heavily with artificial intelligence and analytics. The adoption story for many enterprises in India has been like a fairytale. According to a recent survey by Goldsmiths and the University of London, India is ahead of Japan and the US in terms of AI adoption by enterprises. According to the report, nearly 71% of Indian respondents said that they are leveraging Robotic Process Automation (RPA) and AI to the fullest. On the other hand, Japanese enterprises have aggressively forayed into AI and automation technologies with the survey saying that 46% have already invested in AI and RPA technologies. Reportedly, another 51% plan to invest in the same, in the following 12 months.

Japanese Enterprise And AI

Let’s take the example of Riso Kagaku Corporation, a Japanese manufacturer of digital copiers and high-speed printers. The market has been tough due to fierce competitions in the printer industry and the market is shrinking. To deal with the competition RISO has started adopting analytics and AI in many of its processes. They recently started using a product from Teradata to improve forecasting accuracy and restructure how they work. Tomoko Shoji, a team leader of data analysis at Information System Dept in Riso Kagaku Corporation told Analytics India Magazine, “We have machine’s data, user data and data about how the machine was repaired. We wanted to analyse all of this data. We came up with some best practices for repairing based on the internal analytics project.” RISO is among the many in the Japanese printer industry who are adopting AI to help them stay relevant in a competitive market. Since April 2017 the company have also started using analytics to improve user satisfaction and streamlining repair operations by spotting patterns in large amounts of data. Tokyo-based company Rakuten Travel also is undergoing a massive automation phase and they are leveraging AI to retain and attract customers. Talking to Analytics India Magazine, Michifumi Katsuta who is a manager of their Analytics group, said, “We are trying to use AI for marketing and online advertising optimisation. We try to figure out who looks at what ads and then decide at what time and whom to send relevant ads along with fixing the price. All of this is enabled by data science and AI.” It is clear that using AI and analytics has helped Japanese enterprises to improve their bottom line results. Katsuta added, “Using AI and analytics have led to a 10% increase in hotel booking sales.”

Indian Enterprises: Fastest Adopters of AI

RPA and AI have now become one of the cornerstones of enterprise digitisation process. There is enough traction in India to make enterprises comfortable with changes. Analytics has resulted in a significant increase in revenue growth. It has also created new revenue streams thus offering a huge advantage. There are many areas in which Indian companies are also providing AI services. One of the positive signs that enterprise AI adoption has gone up is the rise of startups that cater to large enterprises. Sanjay Parthasarathy, CEO of AI-based startup Indix, which builds software for easing access to product information for enterprises says, “Our competitive edge comes from our scale. We have over two billions products in our corpus. More data is equal to faster learning and better algorithms. The large scale of data allows us to develop higher precision algorithms.” Indix products are popular among enterprises as it helps them filter large amounts of data using AI. Some of the rising vendors are Datamatics which is one of the leading providers of robotics, advanced analytics, mobility and cloud solutions in India, Q3Tech is a leading RPA software for BPO, healthcare, retail, telecom, BFSI and manufacturing among many other players. With the amazing ecosystem that has been built around analytics, India is making great strides in the area. The survey states, “Unsurprisingly, with such a positive background environment, India leads the way in reaping the benefits of augmentation, with 86% of the respondents saying that automation has increased employee productivity.”

Conclusion

With Japan and India making great strides in analytics adoption and at a fast rate, there are many things to learn from AI adoption journeys in two different enterprise cultures. One of the most important places where there is great space for analytics adoption is where employees are spending most of their time. In our conversations with both Indian and Japanese enterprise managers, we have found that employee enthusiasm is one of the most important factors in successful AI adoptions, especially in large enterprises. Enterprises who have worked with employees and understood their work process can work with technology partners to put ideas into executions. After many iterations of experiments and data collection of AI augmenting the workforce, there can be great progress in enterprise productivity.