More than Half of MENA Executives have AI or Automation on their Top Priority

A recent study shows that about 53% of senior staff or executives who are based in the MENA region have artificial intelligence (AI) or Robotic Process Automation (RPA) on their mind when it comes to top technologies. Especially in the consumer sectors, the top technology focus in MENA is on automation.

The study says that the government services and the retail and financial services are the three main customer-facing areas, which are using AI and the efficiencies by automation drives, thus utilizing the resultant capacity to add new value, enhance the customer experience, and also enable more innovation in the products and services.

Governments are making way for the private sector

GCC Governments have instructed their departments to use more intelligent automation to further bring efficiency and encourage innovations, thereby enhancing the satisfaction levels of the residents and tourists by giving them quick and efficient public services. Dubai now stands as the most advanced city in the GCC, regarding automation of public services delivery.

This not only enhances the customer experience but also gives cost-cutting advantage due to automation. Governments should aim at creating in-house developed data science talent to increase service effectiveness and also promote innovations in the private sector.

Aiming to make the customer interactions smarter in the retail side

If used in the retail sector, RPA can build and strengthen the foundation for better digital customer experience; however, to make the customer interactions much smarter requires better predictive analytics which influence AI.

Financial services are leading the implementation of intelligent automation

The financial services sector is the most advanced when it comes to the application and usage of intelligent automation technologies. Many banks are using up-to-date storage of data to give wing-to-wing services to their customers while giving flawless connectivity between the channels, and partnerships with other service providers to facilitate fast payments and loan processing.

The extent to which intelligent automation is implemented currently could vary between and within various sectors, but the speed of transformation in this region has increased to a large extent this year as various organizations are aiming to find newer technologies and also collaborations, which could assist them in addressing the changes in their customer behavior.

Risks associated with digital transformations

As various organizations adopt fast-growing and emerging predictive technologies, they also need to evaluate and tackle information security, data privacy, and ethics.

Companies, be it public or private sector, will have to build their new models of data governance and create ethical guidelines regarding how the customer data is utilized to deal with reputational risk.