Gyan Pandey, Chief Digital Officer, Voltas says, companies should first train employees on how to prompt, get acclimatised with the GenAI tool and then take a big leap.
(Source: freepik)
During 2023-24, Voltas embarked on an enterprise-wide digital transformation journey, known as V-vartana (transformation), aimed at ushering into a new era of innovation and efficiency across the Company. Additionally, in alignment with the Industry 4.0 paradigm, Voltas launched several strategic projects aimed at transforming the manufacturing processes and supply chain operations.
The adoption of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Generative AI (Gen AI) platforms was also one among the many other parallel tracks of IT adoption, added in V-vartana. As part of the transformation program, providing a strong digital backbone was also taken as a priority.
IoT and GenAI
As far as Artificial intelligence is concerned, Voltas was one of the first in the industry to implement IoT-enabled solutions in commercial air conditioning and chiller monitoring. “We have reached a maturity level, giving us good results in the area of AI/ML powered predictive maintenance,” says Gyan Pandey, Chief Digital Officer, Voltas.
Voltas deployed IoT-enabled equipment in new plants in Chennai and Waghodia for proactive maintenance and operational excellence. As far as room ACs are concerned, the IoT enablement in them, empowers the customers with analytical information on energy usage, with the trend graph feature available in the app.
However, Pandey has a word of caution on AI, “One needs to be cautious about GenAI or AI adoption, how much value it is bringing because AI as a concept is getting highly abused and even vendors are claiming almost everything as AI powered,” he says.
At some point, it's more about awareness, getting employees and processes acclimatized with it, and then companies can potentially take a big leap in AI adoption. AI investments demand a lot of money in terms of OPEX, and the returns, many times, are not very clear.
“Even if you are not getting returns out of your investments, it shouldn’t be that you are not beginning the journey; you need to start, because otherwise, you will be a laggard,” says Pandey.
“Every prompt has a cost”!
Voltas has kickstarted its GenAI journey, but in a very measured way. The M365 platform, the company recently moved to, comes with the GenAI feature, the ‘Copilot’. So, people can get information from the web in a secure way. Earlier, there was an organisation wide access for ChatGPT but it had its own set of challenges. “While it serves the purpose, unknowingly, people share confidential data, which is a security threat to the organisation. So, we stopped ChatGPT and asked users to start adopting Copilot,” informs Pandey from Voltas.
He adds, “We are also implementing some solutions related to recruitment that have the flavor of GenAI. We have gone for S/4HANA on RISE that also has GenAI capability called ‘Joule’. Every GenAI feature gives excitement, but every prompt has a cost, and that cost is not a small amount. If it costs around INR 17 to INR 25 for one single query or single prompt, we have to be a little cautious. So, in order to first get your employees and users to learn how to prompt or get acclimatised, probably then you can take a big leap.”
The IT backbone
Any digital or AI transformation initiative to be sustainable requires a powerful Information Technology backbone. “At Voltas, we first focused on how we can make our IT landscape, especially the infrastructure side, agile and digital. For example we conducted two major IT upgradation initiatives: Involving those platforms which are very core to the business data messaging and collaboration platform to M365 from Google, and ERP Central Component (ECC) to S/4HANA on RISE,” says Pandey.
The core part was to move the applications on the cloud - from 0%, almost 65% of the company’s workloads are now running in the cloud and the target is, by the end of 2025, around 75% to 80% of the applications will be in the cloud.
In the review process, a lot of patches of shadow IT were discovered in every business division including many siloed solutions that did not have a future roadmap.
Pandey says, “Across the entire landscape, we have now done a lot of consolidation. This process of rationalisation of applications is still ongoing. With this journey, all solutions will be on a single platform, enabling us to meet division-specific requirements.”
The DPDP Act will also soon come into force, “We are also working with some of the partners and implementing additional tools to make cybersecurity more hardened,” informs Pandey.
By continuing you agree to our Privacy Policy & Terms & Conditions
