A force for good: how AI and GenAI are reshaping our world

You can believe the hype: AI is transforming industries, organizations and experiences for the better. It's even changing how we think about sustainability. From smart ecosystems to customer-centric interactions, it's proving that technology can serve both profit and purpose.

Often supported by structured data and aligned with business goals, general AI helps us with tasks such as prediction, classification or segmentation, while generative AI, or GenAI, is the exciting, fast-evolving offshoot that assists with creating new content and other outputs - making it a potent tool for creative and content-driven applications.

And the rise of agentic AI - the ultimate example of moving from experimentation to impact by decision, action and optimization - will be a key driver of AI and GenAI growth and effectiveness in the coming two years.

In fact, 64% of the C-suite expect significant transformation in their industry this year thanks to major investments in GenAI, according to the more than 2,300 leaders surveyed for NTT DATA's Global GenAI Report. Additionally, over 60% of organizations believe GenAI will be a game changer within two years, and almost 70% are optimistic about the technology.

Moving beyond the trial phase, many organizations have already discovered valuable AI and GenAI use cases and are forging ahead with scaled implementation. Let's explore how these technologies are making a real difference for a range of NTT DATA clients.

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1. Sustainability and smart ecosystems

According to the Global GenAI Report, 3 in 4 organizations are concerned that their GenAI ambitions may negatively affect their sustainability goals. However, in the age of the climate crisis, AI is also becoming a powerful ally. By analyzing vast amounts of data, it can predict environmental risks, recommend optimal resource use and suggest sustainable practices.

For instance, AI-driven systems can monitor and manage the energy consumption of smart cities, or they can supplement conservation efforts by tracking wildlife populations and identifying areas in need of protection.

Where AI is making a difference:

On Denmark's Fanø Island, NTT DATA is involved in a Green Nudging partnership, which has included deploying a GenAI digital assistant that shares information with visitors (for example, on how to preserve the natural splendor of this World Heritage Site).
In Australia's Daintree Rainforest, we've teamed up with ClimateForce to create the world's first "smart rainforest" by using a smart management platform to regenerate a section of the forest and establish sustainable, cost-effective models for environmental restoration efforts around the world.
A global leader in advanced low-voltage battery technologies for mobility, is working with NTT DATA to transform and manage their full IT architecture and to use GenAI for delivering corporate knowledge to engineers, which is good news for the electric-vehicle industry.
We're also supporting various utilities in several countries. For instance, using predictive AI to monitor water and energy infrastructure makes it easier to match supply to demand, which lowers the risk of resources going to waste.

2. An engine of productivity

A significant feature of AI is its ability to eliminate bottlenecks and streamline processes. In manufacturing, AI-powered robots can work around the clock with human oversight to raise production efficiency and limit downtime. And across industries, it can equip workers with the knowledge and insights they need to work more efficiently and with a higher level of accuracy.

In service industries, GenAI chatbots and virtual assistants can handle routine tasks such as generating high-quality articles, reports and advertising copy for marketing teams. This frees up human employees to focus on value-added contributions and more complex or strategic work.

Where AI is making a difference:

In Spain, NTT DATA and Microsoft integrated Copilot for Microsoft 365 into the operations of MASMOVIL (now MASORANGE) to help their employees work smarter and faster. The impact? An ROI of more than 400%, with employees spending significantly less time on daily tasks.
For the Crown Prosecution Service in the UK, we implemented the GenAI-based Case Explorer to help employees navigate and review the most important information in cases that sometimes stretch to thousands of pages.
Working with Continental Automotive in Germany, we leveraged retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) and agentic workflows to develop an AI companion that supports engineer requirements in automotive product development. The innovation significantly streamlined engineering workflows and delivered notable efficiency improvements in the development process.

3. Customer-centric experiences

AI algorithms can analyze customer data to provide tailored, personalized recommendations to customers. For example, ecommerce platforms can use AI to suggest products based on a customer's browsing history and purchase patterns, and GenAI tools can suggest engaging and highly effective targeted marketing strategies based on past campaign performance data.

When it comes to servicing customers, GenAI-powered chatbots and virtual assistants provide always-on, context-aware support, streamlining the user experience and resolving issues quickly and efficiently.

According to the Global GenAI Report, 95% of organizations agree that the customer experience offered by their customer-facing GenAI support systems is the same as - or better than - human-led interactions.

Where AI is making a difference:

For leading international cosmetics brand L'Oréal, NTT DATA created an AI-driven sales assistant that converses with customers using the brand's WhatsApp and Instagram platforms and provides hyperpersonalized recommendations. The time it takes for shoppers to add five products to their shopping carts is down from an average of six minutes to just 37 seconds.
In Spain, we worked with a multinational financial services provider to implement an IT architecture that supports the demands of GenAI and large language models - in particular, Copilot for Microsoft 365. This led to faster and more accurate customer responses as employees started using the technology in their day-to-day activities.
In Japan, we helped a large natural-gas distributor to implement personalized marketing with GenAI. This included streamlining design work and setting up target personas and customer journeys. We also helped the company to develop an overall AI strategy and identify ways to apply AI in existing business processes.
At The Open, the world's oldest golf tournament, we're using AI to deliver real-time competition updates and insights. The stream of live data increases fan engagement and contributes to creating the perfect fan experience.

4. A revenue accelerator

By analyzing huge datasets of market trends and customer behavior, AI can find opportunities for growth - for instance, by predicting which products are likely to be popular with customers and recommending targeted marketing strategies. This data-driven approach helps organizations to make informed decisions that grow revenue.

Also, GenAI can automatically generate new product or service designs, inspiring cost-efficient innovation cycles and, ultimately, reducing time to market.

Where AI is making a difference:

A US aerospace company collaborated with NTT DATA to establish an AI strategy and roadmap. We identified 296 use cases, and the company has projected $60 million in associated annual revenue opportunities.
At a media and entertainment group, we implemented an AI-powered analysis tool to provide detailed insights into audience behavior. This allowed the group to adjust their advertising sales strategies, leading to a rise in revenue.
Nestlé, the Swiss multinational food and drink conglomerate, uses a proprietary GenAI tool to facilitate creativity and product innovation and development. Teams can now generate and test product ideas faster than before and move from experimentation to long-term use cases with ease. Nestlé is deploying AI in nearly every aspect of their business, including sales, marketing and legal.

5. Predictive insights and innovative risk mitigation

Prevention is better than cure, and AI is leading the way in predictive analytics. By analyzing historical data and real-time information, AI-enabled systems can flag potential issues before they cause harm. In the financial sector, for example, AI can detect fraudulent transactions to prevent financial losses; in healthcare, it can save lives by predicting patient outcomes and recommending preventive measures.

And, by extracting and processing knowledge faster and more precisely than any human can, GenAI is supporting research and development. In the case of healthcare, for example, it can analyze massive databases of medical literature and patient data to identify new drugs and treatment options.

Where AI is making a difference:

To help a US fast-food chain to reduce the risk of foodborne illnesses, we're using AI to proactively identify and mitigate contamination risks. This involves collecting billions of temperature readings across thousands of restaurants and deploying sophisticated models to infer bacterial loads and predict the probability of contamination in various situations.
With our help, Ono Pharmaceutical Co. in Japan now uses natural language processing for analyzing the unstructured electronic health records of patients with inflammatory bowel disease. This allows healthcare practitioners to identify the characteristics of patients who are resistant to medication and, ultimately, improve care.
We're working with Toyota Motor Corporation in the field of mobility and AI-enabled telecommunications to help prevent traffic accidents. Toyota is making safety a priority for their vehicles, with a need for high-speed, high-quality communication, powerful computing resources and robust AI models. To achieve this, we're jointly developing a Mobility AI Platform.
A major US utility was spending $90 million to $100 million per year on trimming plant growth on powerlines across three states according to a set schedule. We fed AI-driven analytics into predictive models for trimming prioritization, leading to between $20 million and $30 million in annual savings from reduced outages.

6. Improved decision-making and knowledge management

Making informed decisions in a world awash with data can be overwhelming. AI and GenAI tools provide instant, accurate insights to help organizations make sound decisions more quickly. It achieves this by analyzing market trends, customer feedback, operational data and more to compile actionable insights.

According to our Global GenAI Report, better strategic decision-making is one of the top five outcomes expected of GenAI by the C-suite. With knowledge comes power, and GenAI delivers.

Where AI is making a difference:

For a US insurer, AI boosted the efficiency of their claims processing. The technology NTT DATA implemented - including automated query responses to speed up decision-making - has increased their claim adjudicators' productivity by 70%.
At a US credit-rating agency, using GenAI to streamline document management has reduced manual effort by more than 40%. The solution is persona-based so users across a variety of different business functions - risk, legal, marketing and cybersecurity - can quickly and easily access the information they need to do their jobs more efficiently and effectively.
NTT DATA used GraphRAG, a structured, hierarchical approach to RAG, at the UK media and telecommunications company Virgin Media O2 to solve complex, enterprise-wide requirements for information discovery and document analysis. The company now uses multimodal and agentic AI to integrate a range of data sources and automatically generate new designs.
For a leading global beverage manufacturer, we deployed GenAI tools, including GenAI agent technology, to analyze vast datasets and identify optimal trade spending allocations, while also streamlining decision-making for retail and marketing teams. Making these insights readily available has delivered about $10 million in new annual revenue opportunities and $30 million in revenue lift.
In Japan, NTT DATA is helping a consumer product manufacturer efficiently collect and disseminate expert tacit knowledge and skills. GenAI is a key instrument, transferring business acumen from senior employees with three times the efficiency of manual processes alone.

7. Operational efficiency

AI is improving operational efficiency by automating routine tasks and streamlining workflows - in short, helping organizations to do more with less.

In logistics, for example, it can optimize delivery routes to reduce fuel consumption and delivery times, while in manufacturing, it can minimize downtime by predicting equipment failures and scheduling maintenance proactively.

More than half of top-performing organizations (based on revenue growth and profit margins) in our Global GenAI Report agree strongly that IT and operational teams should collaborate to define opportunities and design an organization's GenAI initiatives.

Where AI is making a difference:

For a US pharmaceuticals wholesale and research company, we implemented GenAI to improve the speed and quality of data integration. Among other benefits, this reduced the data-mapping time for a single data source from six months to just three minutes, with a higher degree of accuracy.
Iberdrola is a Spanish utility with a focus on renewable energy. Using AI, NTT DATA automated the company's approach to document classification and information extraction, which involved processing more than half a million documents. The result was a 95% increase in accuracy for document classification and an 85% increase for information extraction.

8. Employee engagement and opportunity

AI tools can create great employee experiences by giving people fast access to information, reducing the more tedious aspects of their jobs and improving service quality. Real-time insights and recommendations make employees' work easier and support better business outcomes.

Where AI is making a difference:

A US materials-handling and lift-truck company worked with NTT DATA to install GenAI-powered chatbots to reduce the time it took for their technicians to access information in repair manuals. The company's employees can ask questions in natural language about operational details, part specifications and maintenance processes, and the chatbots deliver the answers promptly.
It took a team of roughly 70 people at UK-based multinational infrastructure group Balfour Beatty Communities to review about 500,000 maintenance work orders a year. NTT DATA helped the company deploy a Gen-AI-powered solution that can review 100% of these work orders with over 98% accuracy in a fraction of the time, relieving the human team of hours of tedious work so they can focus on servicing residents.

9. Data integration and knowledge management

High-quality data enables better decision-making, and AI is making it easier to manage and integrate data from a range of sources. It can clean, organize and analyze huge datasets to deliver accurate, actionable insights.

GenAI tools can help to manage enterprise-wide documentation more efficiently, leading to better knowledge management and faster information retrieval.

Data-readiness is a requirement that has already been addressed by more than half of organizations surveyed for the Global GenAI Report, and it is cited as the top lesson learned from previous GenAI deployments.

Where AI is making a difference:

A US pharmaceuticals and technology distributor partnered with NTT DATA to develop a GenAI assistant using natural language processing, knowledge graphs and machine learning. Now, the CFO and other stakeholders can query intricate financial data and receive instant answers visualized as charts and tables. The assistant even provides insights into the financial performance of the company's competitors.
For the Spanish pharmaceuticals company Almirall, we deployed GenAI tools using Microsoft Azure OpenAI Service that have achieved over 90% accuracy in extracting information automatically from medical literature. This has helped to speed up the company's drug research.

10. Innovation in public services

AI is also making public services more efficient and citizen-friendly. In healthcare, for instance, it can assist in diagnosing diseases and personalizing treatment plans; in education, it can create personalized learning plans to match students' individual needs.

The public sector and government's top three current use cases for GenAI are personalized service recommendations and knowledge management, product and service design and development, and risk assessment and fraud detection, according to the Global GenAI Report.

Where AI is making a difference:

Working with the authorities in one of the largest cities in Denmark, NTT DATA used AI to streamline public services, including appointment check-ins, job searches and integrations with healthcare cards and other schemes.

The governance and management of AI and GenAI initiatives

Across all the AI and GenAI use cases mentioned in this article, governance is crucial to ensure that these systems are used ethically and securely and that they comply with regulations. By establishing clear guidelines and monitoring protocols, organizations can limit their risk exposure and get the most value out of these technologies.

Responsible implementation and management are crucial aspects of GenAI development at a time when 89% of the C-suite are very concerned about the potential security risks associated with GenAI deployments, and just 24% of CISOs strongly agree that their organization follows a robust framework to balance risk and value creation, according to data gathered for the Global GenAI Report.

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How we're making a difference:

Within NTT DATA itself, the six principles that guide us in everything we do around AI are sustainable development, human autonomy, fairness and openness, security, privacy, communication and co-creation. Our approach to deploying and maintaining AI is always in lockstep with our organizational principles.
In Italy, NTT DATA worked with Sky Italia, the satellite television platform, to establish an internal governance model for the company's GenAI program. This included defining stakeholder engagement mechanisms, managing the technical portfolio and processes, and reskilling employees.

Join us at the leading edge

AI and GenAI tools are reshaping the world in profound ways. Organizations that embrace the technology will gain a significant competitive advantage by innovating faster, making better decisions and delivering superior customer experiences.

At NTT DATA, we're taking the lead to transform industries securely and sustainably. We're setting bold benchmarks for meaningful change and success in the digital age, proving that the future is not just bright - it's here.

WHAT TO DO NEXT

Bookmark this page and return often to learn about more successes. Read more about NTT DATA's GenAI products and services to see how we can lead your organization into the future.

Sudhir Chaturvedi

Chief Growth Officer, NTT DATA, Inc. and Chief Executive Officer, North America, NTT DATA, Inc.

Sudhir Chaturvedi is Chief Growth Officer for NTT DATA, Inc. and CEO, North America. His expertise spans consulting, IT services and software as well as vertical industries, digital transformation and strategic sourcing. He has a strong background in industry-driven sales, go-to-market transformations and growth-initiative execution. Previously, Sudhir was President of Global Markets at LTIMindtree and Chief Operating Officer at NIIT Technologies. Earlier, he held leadership roles at Infosys and consulting roles at EY and A.F. Ferguson. He holds a bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering and dual MBAs from the University of Poona and the University of Leeds, and an Advanced Management degree from the Wharton School.