Not everyone needs to be data scientist, but employees need data science skills

Contributed Article
May 4, 2020 11:51 am
Abdallah Saqqa, Head of Customer Experience, SAP Middle East North.

The Middle East is seeing strong interest in artificial intelligence and automation, with increasingly sophisticated algorithms solving business challenges across a wide range of industry verticals. Middle East IT decision-makers agree that cloud is important for integrating artificial intelligence, machine learning, Internet of Things, and blockchain, including 83% in KSA and 76% in the UAE, according to a recent YouGov survey.

Currently, more than 70% of digital leaders in the Middle East and North Africa are investing in artificial intelligence and machine learning, making it among the top three most heavily-invested technologies over the past year, according to the SAP and Oxford Economics Digital Transformation Executive Study.

Middle East organisations need senior management to understand what artificial intelligence and machine learning can and cannot do, then integrate artificial intelligence and machine learning into wider data strategies and digital transformation strategies. Organisations need a digital core to ingest and analyse the increasing variety, velocity, volume, and veracity of data. 

Middle East organisations that want to deploy artificial intelligence should first work with specialised and authorised channel partners to identify the business cases. Many organisations do need to modernise their IT infrastructure to run in real-time, and train staff to optimise artificial intelligence. Not everyone needs to be a data scientist, but increasingly employees do need data science skills.

Use case include:

Government

Artificial intelligence can help to predict tax revenue and identify irregularities, send automated alerts about natural disasters, and better identify neighbourhood needs.

Smart Cities

Artificial intelligence apps can help to reduce traffic congestion by adjusting signals, support sustainability and recycling with sensors on waste bins, and analyse CCTV footage to help deter and solve crimes.

Oil, and Gas

In digital oilfields, artificial intelligence at the wellheads can provide recommendations on how to optimise management and to predict maintenance of assets.

Utilities

Electricity and water providers can use artificial intelligence for real-time insights on smart grid distribution, manage usage peaks, and enable e-payment of bills.

Products include:

SAP S4HANA 

Every line of business can benefit, from predictive maintenance and automated receipt recognition, to future budgeting and inventory management.

SAP Customer Experience 

With 96% of GCC organisations ranking customer experience as a 2020 business priority, artificial intelligence is transforming customer experiences. Examples include conversational artificial intelligence chatbots, retail leveraging voice-activated artificial intelligence systems, and emotional artificial intelligence to enhance customer experiences.

SAP SuccessFactors 

Artificial intelligence can address recruiting bias across job postings, applications, and screening, and bots and conversational interfaces can answer routine questions.

SAP Leonardo

The digital innovation system integrates artificial intelligence and machine learning, IoT, and blockchain on an open cloud platform to transform processes and business models to deliver business outcomes.

Key takeaways

  • More than 70% of digital leaders in the Middle East and North Africa are investing in artificial intelligence and machine learning.
  • Organisations need senior management to understand what artificial intelligence and machine learning can and cannot do.
  • Organisations that want to deploy artificial intelligence should first work with channel partners to identify business cases. 
  • Not everyone needs to be a data scientist, but increasingly employees do need data science skills.

By Abdallah Saqqa, Head of Customer Experience, SAP Middle East North.

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