Browsing: AI

Adding to these concerns, 98% of IT organisations today report experiencing at least some degree of challenge with their digital transformation efforts, with 80% citing data silos as a concern and 72% grappling with systems that are overly dependent on one another.

Every day across Africa, people turn to Google products like Search, YouTube and Fitbit for insights about their health and wellbeing. But many may not know that we have also been researching how AI can help improve healthcare outcomes for people, and how AI can empower our partners to deliver better health services — from improving maternal health outcomes to building useful digital tools for healthcare workers.

Google on Thursday unveiled the first cohort for its ‘Google for Startups Accelerator: AI First’ program. The 11 startups, picked from a vast pool of innovative talent, are using cutting-edge Artificial Intelligence to address both Africa’s challenges and broader global issues. The transformative power of AI in Africa is highlighted by a McKinsey report which suggests that AI could add $1.3 trillion to Africa’s GDP by 2030.

As businesses continue to go digital and become increasingly data-driven, it’s imperative for them to include a holistic business intelligence (BI) programme in their technology strategy. A comprehensive BI programme helps combine various data points from multiple sources, perform cross-functional analysis, and bring out intuitive insights like inspirations behind seasonal customer trends, reasons for supply-chain gaps, sales funnel pain points gathered from customer feedback, productivity drops due to employee attrition, future trend predictions, and whatnot. Powerful information like this can enable organisations to adopt a culture of smart, evidence-based decision-making and gain a true competitive edge.

According to John Obaro, a renowned Nigerian ICT expert and Managing Director of foremost African technology company, SystemSpecs, digital transformation is the process of using technologies to create new or modify existing business processes, culture and customers’ experiences to meet dynamic business and market needs.