A Telecom giant built a world-class AI/ML GCoE

Client’s challenge

A major Swedish Networking & Telecommunications company wanted to design a Center of Excellence with 4 teams globally. The Telecom giant had a global workforce of over 90,000 people with operations in more than 170 countries.

The client wanted to increase their capabilities by building a center of excellence (COE) in the Machine learning & Artificial Intelligence domain. This facility was key to driving innovation by leveraging cutting-edge AI and ML technologies.

The client wanted Zinnov to help in creating an effective COE design through a combination of learnings from our COE practice and peer assessment.

How Zinnov helped

We started with structuring the organization where we aligned the COE teams with other centers and business units. This was followed by outlining the roles, responsibilities, and talent pyramid of the COE Team. Crystalizing these key aspects was critical as they provided the essential criteria required to hire talent for the center.

Further, through discussion with the client, we put a pin on and prioritized their business needs. We then identified and formulated the best practices and unconventional methods to attract, engage, and retain top AI and ML talent for the center.

To build and sustain the operating model, we helped the client define the focus areas for internal collaboration and outlined the strategy for external collaboration.

Finally, understanding the existing known use cases within the company was also a key task undertaken. These use cases were beneficial as they provided a blueprint of the existing company operating models that had proven to be effective or those which required improvements. Through assessment of these use cases that emerged from the industry and competitors’ analysis, the client successfully identified the use cases’ impact on the top line, bottom line, and customer experience.

Impact created

After the transformational journey which started with the designing of the COE, the AI Center of Excellence became functional with a team of over 60 memcbers. We also developed a robust governance structure with defined KPIs for the new center, which was key to sustained operations in the future.

This facility was essential in helping the client enhance their AI and ML capabilities and reach their targeted levels of excellence in these domains.