Digital inclusion and artificial intelligence stakeholders’ recently gathered in Lagos, Nigeria and came up with strategic approach designed to usher Africa into the trending customer-centric business decision management driven by artificial intelligence capabilities.
Participants during discussions at the SAS Road to Digital Transformation and Artificial Intelligence (AI) Showcase in Lagos, averred that time has come for African businesses to modernise their processes and systems so as to reduce compliance costs, improve efficiency and effectiveness, stay competitive and drive innovation.
Vice president, SAS Africa, Desan Naidoo in his remarks, argued that “seeing we are in the analytics economy where data, people and machines work right to accelerate the pace of innovation, critical business decisions must be made via data analytics instead of gut feelings and guess work.
“At SAS, we are the leaders in business analytics software and services, and we help organizations across the globe transform their data into deep and well-defined insights that provide fresh perspective on business, helping to identify what’s working and fix what isn’t and innovate in ways that keep you ahead of the competition. Our solutions turn large amounts of data into knowledge you can act on, and also empower business leaders to capitalize on new opportunities and be seen as strategic business advisers by using analytics to align the marketing process with the customer journey.”
Continuing, Naidoo explained that “We want to avail businesses operating in Nigeria with solutions that help them to achieve a customer-centric business strategy with an integrated decision management approach underpinned by artificial intelligence capabilities such as machine learning and cognitive computing. Our platforms address critical challenges across marketing —including planning customer-centric strategies, gaining insight from big data and analytics, optimizing omni-channel customer interactions, and understanding the customer’s digital experience.”
Earlier in his keynote address, world’s first ‘cyborg’ artist, Neil Harbisson, said “Humans have limited number of sensors, but if we merge with technology, we could have more sensors that will enable us understand and unfold the real beauty of nature. We can add new senses and additional organs to ex- tend our bodies’ capacity to experience the world. We can, in effect, redesign ourselves. Our current evolutionary step is to merge with technology and take an active part in the birth of our future selves. I work with artificial senses, which I call AS.”
This was buttressed by the Senior Business Solutions Manager – Advanced Analytics & AI at SAS Africa, Larry Orimoloye, who encouraged firms to adopt AI as a strategic tool in jumpstarting leap to knowledge economy powered businesses.
