Many fear robots will replace humans in business. But they can actually coexist with corporate employees to create “bionic organizations” which combine the capabilities of humans and machines for more productive operations, according to Boston Consulting Group Inc., which applies artificial intelligence and machine learning tools to help enterprises to make this technology transformation. It uses the cloud to scale solutions developed with customers to improve business.

“If you think about the next 10 years, we believe that it’s going to be the era of the bionic organization,” said Sesh Iyer (pictured, left), managing director and senior partner of BCG Gamma. “We are at a point now where the power from AI, the power from machines combined with the intrinsic human potential coming together, delivers a very, very different set of outcomes.”

Iyer and Allen Chen (pictured, right), associate director of AI software engineering at BCG, spoke with Dave Vellante (@dvellante), host of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s mobile livestreaming studio, and guest host Justin Warren (@jpwarren), chief analyst at PivotNine Pty Ltd., during the AWS re:Invent event in Las Vegas. They discussed the role of AI and machine learning in business transformation and how BCG works with customers to create models that improve business. (* Disclosure below.)

Teaching companies how to fish

Bionic organizations will be able to achieve new and better outcomes on three fronts, according to Iyer. First, in customer experiences and relationships, which will move to a new level. Second, in operations, which will become more productive with automation. Third, in innovation, whose rate tends to increase significantly.

Despite employees’ concerns about replacement, the real barriers to business transformation are organizational models and old ways of working, in addition to a lack of AI talents, Iyer explained. “These companies are legacy technologies,” he said. “[The problem] is the lack of access to data that we can leverage to actually convert that into insightful outcomes using AI.”

The business model of BCG Gamma, the arm of the BCG that focuses solely on AI and machine learning use cases, is to empower enterprises to start their technology journey.

“We prove out a few use cases and then we actually train and transfer them,” Chen explained. “So companies can make sure that the programs that we helped plant the seeds for end up being long term, sustainable programs for them.”

After developing appropriate AI and ML models for the customer’s business, it is necessary to deploy them in the organization’s environment. This is usually done in the cloud, which allows scaling the models to make the most impact on operations, according to Chen.

“We work very closely with partners like [Amazon Web Services Inc.] to ensure that we can bring the most scalable AI solutions,” he said. “And so we build platforms like Source AI to facilitate that entire journey from data access all the way to deployment at scale.”

BCG is working, for example, to help airplanes and gate scheduling, as well as routing bags. It is also working in the retail industry, where markdowns is a big topic.

“So how do you get the best price for the given inventory that you have?” Iyer asked. “We again have AI-based solutions that drive markdowns and take the profitability of the revenue of a client to a better level.”

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of the AWS re:Invent event. (* Disclosure: Boston Consulting Group Inc. sponsored this segment of theCUBE. Neither BCG nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE