Productivity rockets to the top of the CEO agenda – here’s how we’re driving it in IBM

With economic uncertainty, rapidly advancing technology, and skills and labor shortages, leading companies around the world are urgently re-thinking the way they work, and how to apply technology to achieve the productivity that fuels growth and competitive advantage.

This is reflected in the recent IBM Institute for Business Value global CEO Study, where 48% of CEOs surveyed cited productivity as the top priority for their organization – up from sixth place a year ago.

At IBM, we have already been accelerating how we apply innovation to increase productivity with new tools and platforms – soon to be further enhanced with increased speed and scalability through IBM watsonx and generative AI – focused on delivering a better work experience for our people and creating the time for more meaning full work.

• In HR support: For example, we used Watson technologies to create an “Ask HR” employee self-service capability for answering routine questions and automating routine processes.?We are now solving 94% of cases with this virtual agent and delivering a 56% increased return in productivity savings.
• In IT operations and security: We used Red Hat Ansible automation to streamline IT operations across thousands of servers and eliminate slow, manual efforts. This has resulted in a 98% cycle time reduction for patching servers, and a 99% improvement in middleware deployment and configurations.
• In procuring contractors: ?Using watsonx AI and automation capabilities found in Watson Orchestrate, our procurement teams are saving 50% of the time used on tedious manual tasks like posting information into a process management tool – freeing them to focus on building relationships with suppliers, finding the right candidate, and getting them to work quickly.

Along the way, we’ve learned that improving productivity requires both a technology transformation and a cultural transformation. It is about empowered people doing the right things, the right way.

Question why you do everything you do, and empower your teams to do the same. Take a long hard look at your processes; eliminate what isn’t needed and simplify what’s left. Otherwise, you are just automating inefficiency.

Empower your people further to be the catalysts for change; to participate in the creation of your modernized enterprise. If they embrace the opportunity to learn and apply new skills and new ways of working, that will set them up – and set your company up – for future success.

#productivity #transformation #AI