Microsoft Jamaica is throwing its weight behind local companies accelerating their digital transformation to achieve robust growth and productivity.

To this end, Microsoft Jamaica on Tuesday hosted its ‘Microsoft Envision Summit’, which is an international event that took place for the first time in Jamaica and was used to celebrate Microsoft’s 20 years of doing business in the country.

The event, held at the AC Hotel in New Kingston, presented the technological tools that are trending in the world today and which are driving the transformation of business models to achieve accelerated growth.

A key part of the event was to highlight the importance of accelerating digital transformation. Digital transformation is defined as the profound transformation of business and organisational activities, processes, competencies and models to fully leverage the changes and opportunities of a mix of digital technologies and their accelerating impact across society in a strategic and prioritised way, with present and future shifts in mind.

While digital transformation is predominantly used in a business context, it also impacts other entitites such as governments, public sector agencies, and organisations which are involved in tackling societal challenges by leveraging one or more of these existing and emerging technologies.

Several leaders from local companies and the government sector, as well as technology experts, were tutored on the latest business and technology trends — in particular the growing use of artificial intelligence (AI), to drive efficiency and productivity in businesses.

The event opened with a keynote presentation by Herbert Lewy, Microsoft’s regional manager for the Caribbean, who made a case for the acceleration of digital transformation in Jamaica.

He drew on global statistics showing that digital transformation is already here as “91 per cent of business leaders see digital transformation as a way of sparking innovation and finding efficiencies, 68 per cent say digital transformation is increasing profits, 85 per cent say they must offer digital services or become irrelevant, while 64 per cent say they have less than four years to complete a digital transformation or they may go out of business”.

 

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE…THE GROWING FUTURE

Lewy zeroed in on AI, which is the way of the future, encouraging local companies to get on board through digital transformation. He pointed out “85 per cent of enterprises will adopt some form of AI by 2020, and that global business value derived from AI in 2022 will reach US$3.9 trillion”.

AI is an area of computer science that emphasises the creation of intelligent machines that work and react like humans. Some of the activities computers with artificial intelligence are designed for include speech recognition, learning, planning and problem-solving.

Lewy referred to a quote from Satya Nadella, Microsoft chief executive officer, who said, “AI isn’t just another piece of technology. It could be one of the world’s most fundamental pieces of technology the human race has ever created.”

 

DIGITAL TRANFORMATION AT WORK AT THE LABOUR MINISTRY

Colette Roberts Risden, permanent secretary in the Ministry of Labour and Social Security who also spoke at the summit, gave a presentation on her ministry’s partnership with Microsoft Jamaica on its digital transformation journey for the Jamaican Government. “The ministry has seen tremendous cost savings of over $2 million since the implementation of Microsoft Office 360; it has made our daily operations easier as we are now able to see the movement of all staff members and plan and make decisions accordingly,” Roberts-Risden remarked.

The Ministry of Labour and Social Security in Jamaica was the first line ministry to adopt Office 365 for email and Office. The main driving reason for adopting Office 365 was to leverage the collaboration tools available in the platform.

The vision was a long-term one for the ministry, wanting to adopt a full unified communication platform, not just e-mail. With a failing analog PBX, this provided another reason to adopt Office 365. The ministry immediately saw cost savings of over $2 million in its new investment.

It was able to completely remove fixed annual cost for diaries, which it replaced with One Note and Outlook from Office 365. Another immediate benefit was the internal capacity-building of the employees.

The Office 365 suite came with free licences to each employee for use at home. Owned and administered by the ministry, but available to the employees for home use, this innovative move allows the civil servants to have access to the technology at all times and increase overall productivity.

http://www.jamaicaobserver.com/sunday-finance/microsoft-encourages-jamaican-companies-to-accelerate-digital-transformation_175745