Miguel Leocádio, head of Glintt Next, says many companies still have manual administrative and bureaucratic processes, predicts that “in the coming years there will be a major shift there” and challenges organizations to run internal trials with Artificial Intelligence.
Miguel Leocádio, executive board member of Glintt Global, has no doubt that 2024 is the year of generative Artificial Intelligence (AI) — but for that to truly happen, companies need to shed their reluctance and test the technology. They can start by automating bureaucratic processes that are still signed by hand, and gradually introduce chatbots and algorithms.
“Companies should do a bit of what’s called walk the talk [moving from words to action], which means experimenting internally to build capability, as well as a culture around the potential of these technologies,” the innovation consulting expert told Jornal Económico (JE), in an interview on the sidelines of the Building The Future event, organized by Microsoft and imatch.
The executive of this Portuguese technology company was the third speaker to take the main stage at Convento do Beato, where he shared Glintt’s case study on Big Data capability-building and four examples of software following this path of adaptation to the new reality: ‘Rookie’ (question answering), ‘Adventurer’ (more advanced automated task-execution software), ‘Sage’ (work in progress) and ‘Human-Like’.
Miguel Leocádio told the audience, and elaborated to JE, that there are three dimensions to consider when introducing automation or generative AI systems: people’s work, company management, and changes to business models.
“First, it’s very much about individual productivity — the type of tools each of us can use day-to-day to automate processes and find other, higher-value ways of working,” he begins by explaining. “Second, internal operations within organizations (expense submissions, requesting vacation days, reporting foreign travel…), because there are many administrative and bureaucratic processes within organizations that are still manual. In the coming years there will be a major shift there,” he predicts.
“Then there’s a third dimension, even more relevant to businesses and the economy: how can businesses, and the services delivered to customers, truly change with this technology and, in particular, with this generative component. It’s about being able to consistently stay one step ahead in banking, insurance, energy, public services…,” the executive states.
Internally, Glintt considers itself a use case for the path of adopting and developing this technology, which is what brought it to the Building The Future stage. For example, a digital manual that answers IT-related questions for over 1,200 employees, or an onboarding process for new hires where people arrive already having their interviews scheduled in the system, know who to talk to, and know which training modules they need to complete. “There’s no longer a decision tree. It’s based on data, on each person’s journey, and it’s pre-defined. Only with a wealth of information can people find their own way,” he tells JE.
