In the current macroeconomic environment, the BFSI sector, which is facing multiple hurdles, is looking at investing in automation as a major lever for cost savings, said Geeta Gurnani, CTO and technical sales leader for IBM India and South Asia.
Gurnani told businessline: “Automation is one of the areas where we are seeing increased interest from clients as they want to understand how IBM can help them save costs without compromising service levels.”
In a post-Covid scenario, management capacity has become a challenge for companies, since they had previously purchased infrastructure in advance of peak hours. The organizations had deployed multiple servers to keep up with the needs of the day, and had some applications in the cloud and some on-premises. But now, you want to look back at hybrid cloud environments and invest only when necessary. Gurnani explained in more detail.
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“The BFSI sector, as it prepares to digitize all its channels, aims to automate all its tasks. Processes are automated to make people more productive, businesses scalable, and systems more resilient,” he said. In India, among several other banks, IBM has worked with the State Bank of India for its SBI YONO platform.
In terms of adoption by the BFSI sector, IBM, for its artificial intelligence (AI) and automation services, has seen rapid adoption by large banking organizations in the recent past. Fintech adoption, he says, was limited, but the cohort has now begun to have conversations about automation as they think about cloud spending in today’s macro environment, Gurnani noted.
IBM sees a huge market opportunity for AI and automation offerings in the BFSI sector as it has been an early adopter of the technology. The AI and automation offerings also contribute significantly to the company’s revenues in the region, given market interest and adoption, he added.