The business outcomes from scaling AI are clear. Companies at the forefront of generative AI and data-led innovation are seeing 72% greater annual net profits and 17% more annual revenue growth than their peers. In addition, it’s expected that productivity will be improved by at least 70% across knowledge workers with the use of generative AI. A key step toward unlocking these gains is the adoption of AI assistants to transform how people get work done across the enterprise. With today’s announcements, IBM® is making it possible for companies to augment their workforce with digital labor. This can be used in every area of their business and achieve business outcomes at an unprecedented speed.

IBM’s enterprise AI assistants are purpose-built and tailored to your use case. Built on foundational models you trust and trained on best practices, AI assistants automate and orchestrate a range of high-value tasks, across business processes and your IT estate. They support end-to-end workflows through automations and are customized to your unique business requirements by integrating with the core of your business, working with different sources of data, workflows, and applications.

The new AI Assistant Builder in IBM watsonx Orchestrate

IBM watsonx Orchestrate is a low-code platform that helps you automate high value workflows and decision-making processes by integrating various AI models, data sources, and business applications. The new AI assistant builder is a next-generation builder studio that leverages the power of generative AI and digital skills to empower organizations and domain experts to quickly and easily create new and compelling AI assistants through a powerful low-code experience. Using purpose-built AI assistants, customers and employees can seamlessly complete tasks and complex processes that are facilitated by a highly engaging natural language experience.

The AI assistant builder experience provides builders with access to a low-code generative AI and automation studio to stand-up large language model (LLM) powered assistants that are grounded in business context, data, and automation. The AI assistant builder enables you to extend your investments in automation and scale adoption through a highly conversational interface that is infused with AI that you can trust. Generative AI capabilities are delivered natively by IBM’s trusted and transparent LLMs fine-tuned for specific business functions. Builders have the flexibility and control to decide when and how LLMs are used via content grounding, AI-guided actions, and conversational skills.  IBM watsonx Orchestrate™ provides natural, optimized experiences for your customers and employees, guiding them through the completion of multi-step processes while letting generative AI do the heavy lifting.

IBM watsonx Orchestrate powers the development of purpose-built assistants to boost productivity across the enterprise. Today, IBM announces two exciting new generative AI assistants for critical business functions: IBM watsonx Assistant™ for Z and D&B Ask Procurement powered by watsonx Orchestrate.

IBM watsonx Assistant for Z, built on IBM watsonx Orchestrate

With mainframes handling approximately 70% of global transactions by value, businesses rely on IBM Z to operate their most critical applications. To ensure that these applications are supported by a highly proficient and productive workforce, we are excited to introduce IBM watsonx Assistant for Z.

IBM watsonx Assistant for Z is a new generative AI assistant that transforms how system programmers, operators, and developers of all experience levels engage with and manage the mainframe. The software puts decades of experience and best practices at your team’s fingertips. This AI assistant improves IBM Z® users’ autonomy and confidence by providing curated answers that help reduce the time to onboard new-to-Z users and accelerate knowledge transfer from Z experts. Built upon IBM watsonx Orchestrate and in partnership with IBM Research, watsonx Assistant for Z uses a chat-focused granite.13b.labrador model. This model is an enterprise-level English-language model that is meticulously trained with an extensive dataset of over 2.5 trillion tokens, including IBM Z-specific content. It uses a Z domain-specific retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) to provide curated content to users.

IBM watsonx Assistant for Z is designed to simplify and optimize the execution of repeated tasks by codifying knowledge into a trusted set of automations. Users can seamlessly import existing trusted automation created with Ansible, JCL, and REXX as skills into the product catalog. These skills can be invoked via a contextually aware chat experience, using watsonx Orchestrate’s extensible automation framework that improves productivity and accelerates efficiency on the mainframe.

“Providing one place where questions can be answered quickly and automation invoked directly, will improve the experience for Rocket Software customers and help our developers across the enterprise increase productivity when working independently.” – Phil Buckellew, President, Infrastructure Modernization Business Unit, Rocket Software

D&B Ask Procurement, powered by IBM watsonx Orchestrate

Dun & Bradstreet and IBM plan to introduce D&B Ask Procurement, a new AI assistant designed to enable procurement professionals to accelerate the discovery and analysis of supply chain risks and opportunities. Dun & Bradstreet, a leading global provider of business decisioning data and analytics, and IBM collaborate to develop offerings for clients. These can be used in their native workflows to drive generative AI adoption that can help achieve growth and efficiency across various business functions.

Connected to global-leading business insights from Dun & Bradstreet and built on IBM watsonx Orchestrate, Ask Procurement will provide a quick and easy way to help accelerate multi-step analysis. It calculates answers to complex questions allowing for quicker and more intelligent decision making faster than ever before. The offering uses watsonx technology and draws upon Dun & Bradstreet’s Data Cloud, which contains more than half a billion private and public companies. It also includes market-leading Identity Resolution, including the D-U-N-S® Number and the company’s generative AI capabilities.

D&B Ask Procurement will offer an easy-to-use Generative AI assistant, connected to global-leading risk, financial, and firmographic analytics from the Dun & Bradstreet Data Cloud. Accelerated access to critical insights throughout the procurement and sourcing process can help procurement teams to:

• Reduce manual processes and save time by asking critical questions that are required during supplier onboarding and routine risk assessments
• Expedite supplier risk evaluations with AI that combines and interprets multiple data sets
• And make informed decisions quicker by retrieving answers that incorporate your

“Enterprises need partners who can help them scale responsible AI adoption, which starts with trusted data,” said Gary Kotovets, Chief Data & Analytics Officer at Dun & Bradstreet.

“We’re bringing together Dun & Bradstreet and IBM’s nearly 300 years of combined experience,” Gary continues, “to create generative AI solutions that harness Dun & Bradstreet Data Cloud and IBM watsonx Orchestrate to fuel responsible generative AI adoption, starting with Ask Procurement. By leveraging IBM watsonx, D&B Ask Procurement simplifies, accelerates and reduces the cost of certain essential procurement decisions. Ask Procurement is just one of many examples of how, together, we can help clients drive savings, optimize business processes and improve risk management with generative AI and reliable data.”

Call to actions:

Let’s reimagine how work gets done across the enterprise.

IBM’s statements regarding its plans, directions, and intent are subject to change or withdrawal without notice at IBM’s sole discretion.  Information regarding potential future products is intended to outline our general product direction and it should not be relied on in making a purchasing decision. The information mentioned regarding potential future products is not a commitment, promise, or legal obligation to deliver any material, code or functionality. Information about potential future products may not be incorporated into any contract. The development, release, and timing of any future features or functionality described for our products remains at our sole discretion.

Sources:

• https://www.ibm.com/thought-leadership/institute-business-value/en-us/c-suite-study/ceo
• https://www.ibm.com/thought-leadership/institute-business-value/en-us/report/ai-and-automation
• https://www.mckinsey.com/capabilities/mckinsey-digital/our-insights/the-economic-potential-of-generative-ai-the-next-productivity-frontier
• https://www.idc.com/research/viewtoc.jsp?containerId=US51291623
• https://www.ibm.com/downloads/cas/DOXY3Q94