Microsoft, Avanade, and Accenture focus on joint AI solution, organizational investments

Microsoft, Accenture, and their jointly owned subsidiary, Avanade, have announced new plans to invest together in Microsoft AI technology.

The companies are assembling a team of engineers, data scientists, and architects with the goal of providing in-depth technical experience and early access to Microsoft artificial intelligence (AI) technology, according to a new blog post by Gavriella Schuster, corporate vice-president of One Commercial Partner at Microsoft. Simultaneously, Accenture and Microsoft are focusing their combined AI investment on industries such as telecommunications, retail, and packaged goods.

According to Schuster, many partners want to invest in AI, but face fragmented and experimental adoption, and prefer out of the box solutions rather than "APIs and individual services."

Some jointly developed solutions are already available, related to Microsoft's push into AI for Dynamics 365. Accenture's Intelligent Customer Engagement (ICE) framework, integrates with Microsoft AI Solution for Customer Care, working to leverage digital assistants to respond to the unique needs of thousands of customers. A second solution joins Accenture Intelligent Revenue Growth (IRG) to Microsoft AI, geared toward the CPG market. Sales departments can use IRG to spot potential opportunities and more rapidly deploy to meet them. Schuster gave the example of a brewery that used IRG to automate its external and internal data feeds, and cited a 25% increase in volume as a result of promotion optimization.

"I think there will be more strategic AI agreements like this going forward," wrote Schuster. "The growth around Artificial Intelligence is exponential, and my hope is that these AI partnerships will inspire other partners to make a bet on Microsoft to transform AI in the enterprise," she added.