How enterprises stand to gain from Wipro’s commitment to GenAI

When enterprise leaders face the kind of paradigm shift GenAI represents, they look to would-be suppliers for points of proof, asking: “Have you tried doing this to yourselves?” Like several of the stand-out performers in the first-ever HFS Horizons report on Generative Enterprise™ services (2023), Wipro is committed to applying generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) and artificial intelligence (AI) throughout its organization to do the hard yards its enterprise clients can benefit from. It’s also learning that it can generate wins for itself across all functions, embedding AI in organizational culture, committing to the responsible use of AI, and aligning its internal AI strategies to the needs of its enterprise customers.

In a billion-dollar commitment, Wipro has already trained 220,000 employees to basic levels in AI, and the firm has 55,000 expert practitioners who have already reached advanced standards. CEO Thierry Delaporte commits to leading a 90-minute AI council call every week. Wipro is transforming into an AI-first organization through partnerships, R&D, and developing new solutions while advancing capabilities.

Wipro’s AI experience applies across industries

CIO Anup Purohit calls out three key learnings from Wipro’s journey to becoming AI first:

• AI must be embedded in organizational culture: Delivering AI across the company requires top-down leadership (of the kind Thierry is showing through his leadership of the AI council) and bottom-up leadership through employee engagement. “Unless you have sponsorship from the board and management, you can’t drive anything. At the same time, if people at the bottom are not supportive, it becomes difficult to get a marriage between the two,” warns Anup.
• Commit to responsible AI: Wipro includes environmental responsibility within its definition of building responsible AI. Of course, its work includes guardrails to govern social, privacy, security, and legislative aspects. But it also covers the energy consumption of the models, mitigating to reduce impact, cognizant that many enterprises cannot afford for any new energy demands to knock them off course in meeting their own net-zero carbon emissions goals.
• Align internal AI strategy with the needs of enterprise strategies: The approach at Wipro has included building its internal capabilities and platforms while delivering solutions for customers. Anup says this holistic view of AI strategy demands holistic management. “It can’t be the job of one person, which is why we have formed a council to bring together those working in this area in an integrated and comprehensive way.”

A healthcare and consumer goods client explains the benefits gained from a flexible and experimental GenAI journey

HFS spoke with a Wipro customer who has been sharing their GenAI journey with Wipro. As a client responsible for human resources (HR) digital transformation for a Fortune 500 global healthcare and consumer goods company, he focuses on HR digital transformation and automation. He is keen to enhance HR functions through innovative technologies such as GenAI, aiming to improve the user experience for a large employee base, including active and retired staff.

Working with Wipro improved employee engagement and loyalty, enabled 24/7 availability, increased personalization, and provided productivity and efficiency gains.

Examples include a GenAI implementation improving the firm’s HR chatbot. Now, the bot can provide specific and relevant answers to HR queries such as travel policies and benefits, cutting a lot of frustrating delays for users. Wipro has also applied GenAI in policy documentation and query handling. Instead of his team having to read through lengthy policies, contracts, and other documents, they can use natural language to ask questions to get precise answers, reducing the required research time. Now, the team can focus more on the outcome rather than the research. In a third example, his team uses GenAI’s speech-to-text technology in internal meetings to capture detail and sentiment, again releasing time to focus on outcomes rather than admin.

It’s been a journey of experimentation in which flexibility and responsiveness have been vital. Wipro’s client told us: “Our solid relationship is built on the people. Whatever I ask for, I immediately get. I don’t know how they manage it, how they get the people, but whatever it is, we have it by the next day.”

GenAI benefits aren’t limited to client deliverables

Wipro’s commitment to AI-led transformation isn’t just about learning the ropes so its clients can have confidence in it. Exhibit 1 shows the extent of business benefits expected to be delivered to the enterprise by GenAI in the next 12 to 18 months. With so many upsides available, it makes as much sense to transform yourself—as Wipro is—as it does to build the muscle to transform others.

Exhibit 1: GenAI will impact productivity, revenue, profitability, and market valuation; 40% of respondents predict costs will fall by up to 10%, and a further 33% expect costs to fall 10%–20%

Sample: 104 enterprise leaders actively exploring and deploying GenAI
Source: HFS Research in partnership with Ascendion, 2023

Brijesh Singh is SVP and global head of AI at Wipro. He oversees the transformative impact of AI across three dimensions. First, it is infused into internal processes, such as in the human resources, legal, sales, and marketing departments. While delivering 20% to 40% benefits in productivity and efficiencies, that internal work also results in assets, software components, lessons learned and guardrails developed.

The second dimension is embedding AI in existing services—application management, process management, and infrastructure management. Here, Wipro’s proven BPO experience can give the firm insight into how AI can improve its clients’ customer care, engagement, and contact processing (for example). The data the application of GenAI can generate can make customer care a value-driving profit center rather than a cost center.

All those assets and outcomes can be packaged up for the third dimension, delivering AI to customers in their processes. Brijesh says fewer than 10% of these client engagements have yet to scale up, but internal initiatives are rolling out through the summer and fall of 2024, so he expects clients to expand their efforts with AI.

Three Wipro AI outcomes enterprises can create value with, too

Wipro is applying AI and GenAI throughout the enterprise, including for medical claims validation, which uses workflow automation, OCR, machine learning (ML), and GenAI, and Wipro Knowledge Search, which improves information retrieval across a diverse range of knowledge and data repositories. Among widespread and wide-ranging examples, Brijesh highlighted three:

• Eliza, Wipro’s sales accelerator: Eliza has ingested all historical RFP documents, case studies, offerings, and solutions. With the application of GenAI, anyone in the business can query to find answers to RFP questions, relevant case studies, and more. Wipro will roll out Eliza across the business in Q2 2024.
• Icertis, contract management support: Firms like Wipro write and revise contracts daily. Wipro applied AI to identify common clauses and use and reuse them to speed origination and updates. The intent is to save time and improve quality with more robust and error-free outcomes. Wipro will roll out Icertis internally throughout Q2 and Q3 this year.
• Policy responses: Wipro is building a GenAI-powered capability to answer queries about policies regarding leave, medical support, travel, and annual review processes. It will understand interdependencies between policies and answer in non-technical language. Level one use cases will be answered with zero human touch.

These and other examples of Wipro-produced AI solutions will be packaged for enterprise consumption and play their part in the boom in GenAI-related deals Wipro is experiencing as 2024 gets underway.

The Bottom Line: With so much quality “homemade” champagne produced, bottled, and ready to taste, it’s time enterprises filled their glasses.

Enterprise leaders often ask service providers how thirsty they are for their own champagne. Customers want to know that their suppliers have already found value in making the changes that service providers pitch them.

In committing $1 billion to its transformation, Wipro joins Accenture, Cognizant, KPMG, and others in responding loud and proud to the champagne question. The good news for enterprises is that their service providers won’t be learning on your dollar during this technological revolution. The comfort factor for service providers is that they will likely continue gaining investment returns, even while reticent and risk-averse clients drag their heels.

Our advice to the enterprise? Don’t be one of those dragging your heels. Where you have concerns, work with your service providers to find solutions. The likelihood is your service provider has already made a head start for you.