Editor’s note: To promote the implementation of the “AI + industry” concept and support more companies to ride the current wave of digital transformation, Microsoft Research Asia established the Innovation Partnership in 2017. Today, the partnership has expanded to 27 member companies, including leading and innovative companies from multiple industries such as finance, logistics, education, healthcare, manufacturing, and retail. On the occasion of the third anniversary of the establishment of the partnership, we interviewed representatives of member companies from different industries and talked about the opportunities and challenges faced by the companies in the process of creating their digital layout and undergoing digital transformation.
Enterprise digital layout and development status
Chengming Gu, VP/Medical Lead, Sanofi China: Sanofi established its Digital Innovation Center in 2018 to foster more digital projects and, more importantly, to implement these digital projects in order to either produce new business models or to improve current work efficiency, including internal business process optimization, cooperation with external customers, and services for doctors and patients. Today, digital transformation is occurring in the entire pharmaceutical industry, and even in all industries. In the past, the sales model of pharmaceutical companies relied on one-on-one promotional efforts by sales representatives, and drug R&D also relied on manpower, where it took as long as 10-15 years to research and develop a drug, and cost was very high. In the future, if our work transforms into digital clinical research, costs would be greatly reduced. I believe that the future lies with a digital model, that is, a model with wide coverage and low cost.
Charlie Bai, Vice President & CIO of Lilly China Information Technology: Lilly’s digital transformation began six or seven years ago. Our first step was to establish a global information technology innovation center in China, and we approached from three dimensions in creating a layout: Making better use of digital technology in traditional sales and marketing models; establishing a flexible and effective digital platform to realize omni-channel integration and online and offline integration, and at the same time to build better internal digital capabilities, including a data analysis platform and internal process automation; and actively cooperating with external parties to establish an ecosystem in the industry. For example in the chronic disease management of diabetes, we were, as early as in 2014, the first to launch a mobile app in the industry to provide patients with—in addition to medication—a full range of management services based on the “five-horse carriage” theory, including diet, exercise, blood glucose monitoring, and disease knowledge, etc. The app has reached 1.3 million downloads.
Zheng Li, Deputy General Manager of CFETS Information Technology (Shanghai) Co., Ltd: CFETS helps the Foreign Exchange Trading Center to achieve the strategic goals of the global RMB trading platform and pricing center. The China Foreign Exchange Trading Center and Microsoft Research Asia have cooperated on digital transformation for many years. The initial project we worked on was an explainable smart recommendation system applied in financial products. The innovative part of this technology lay not in its ability to recommend the most suitable financial products to customers through AI, but in its ability to also tell customers why they would recommend this product. On one hand, it ensured the success of product recommendations, and on the other hand, it allowed our traders to better understand customer needs.
Guozhang Lin, Managing Director of Pearson Greater China: Through our cooperation with Microsoft Research Asia, we have truly realized the convenience brought by digital transformation. At the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, we opened up Longman Xiaoying to all schools and parents in Wuhan. This process would have been very time-consuming if we had adopted traditional methods, since everything needed to be developed differently, but with the help of digital technology, we completed all the development work within a week. For us, this was a very good experience.
Lidong Zhou, Assistant Managing Director at Microsoft Research Asia: Microsoft Research Asia’s Innovation Partnership offers a brand new exploration of our existing research model. We have gained many new inspirations from our exchanges with partner members to carry out further and more in-depth research. It is through such a new model that the Innovation Partnership is supporting discussions with companies on how to combine technology with accumulated knowledge in the industries to truly challenge traditional methods and create new models. This also falls in line with Microsoft’s commitment to each person and each organization.
Opportunities and challenges of digital transformation faced by enterprises
Chengming Gu, VP/Medical Lead, Sanofi China： I believe it is not only Sanofi, but the entire pharmaceutical industry—and perhaps all companies and industries—that are now undergoing digital transformation. The core of China’s medical reform is to protect the grassroots level. Development of the grassroots level is actually a very difficult process. How, then, can we improve capabilities at that level? We must rely on AI and digitalization. There is no other way.
Charlie Bai, Vice President & CIO of Lilly China Information Technology: While ensuring the directional accuracy of digital innovation, we must also maintain the right speed and achieve a balance between the two. In addition, it is necessary to create a balance between external digitization and internal digitization. People are often attracted by the idea of external digitization and are willing to invest a lot of money in it, but they often overlook the importance of internal digitization, such as process automation and data analysis capabilities.
Guozhang Lin, Managing Director of Pearson Greater China: More than 60% of Pearson’s annual revenue currently comes from digital-related business, and yet, ten years ago, it was less than 10%. While undergoing digital transformation, we discovered that digitalization is not just about transferring contents and services online, but is actually about using digitalization to maximize students’ experiences and to truly solve the problems in teaching and learning.
Gang Xu, Vice President of Taiping Asset Management: Data and business standardization is what’s difficult for the insurance asset management industry in promoting digital transformation. Traditional AI models deal with static or relatively stable scenarios, but the environment for open market investment is a constantly changing and self-renewing market that might even change according to the behaviors of participants. This draws out higher and more special requirements for digital transformation.
Zheng Li, Deputy General Manager of CFETS Information Technology (Shanghai) Co., Ltd: How do you build a bridge between finance and science & technology? AI technology cleverly connects the two. Today’s AI technology not only helps the people in our business understand the original needs, but also inspires them to create new needs.
Feng Yu, CIO of Guotai Junan Securities: We hope to seize the high ground for future financial innovation and development through digital transformation, forming a digital-driven operating mechanism and transforming the traditional human-driven operating system into a data-driven operating system. This requires a great number of high-end talents and cross-industry cooperation. The securities industry serves the real economy, which means that it must be integrated into the entire society and produce data exchange, but achieving this may require joint efforts.
Tie-Yan Liu, Microsoft Research Asia Assistant Managing Director: The purpose of digital transformation is not digitization itself, but to achieve intelligent decision-making based on digitization. Digitization is relatively simple, but intelligence is more complicated and requires AI scientists and industry experts to find personalized solutions for companies. If a company wants to fully embrace AI, it needs to become an “athlete,” contributing active participation, changing the corporate culture, and enabling core employees to possess an AI mindset. Only then can it ride the waves of digital transformation and position itself to be invincible. While Microsoft Research Asia conducts research and helps its business partners find AI solutions, it also pays great attention to the computing power and energy consumption behind these solutions. We hope that through our joint efforts, we will be able to achieve truly sustainable artificial intelligence.