Banking on a better customer service

Founded in 1968, Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) has been operating in Ireland for over 20 years and in 2020 opened a Global Delivery Centre in Letterkenny. Today, just four years later, the multinational has deeply embedded itself in the Irish technology landscape, by delivering digital transformation initiatives for businesses operating here.

As TCS is structured across a range of industry verticals, naturally it works with a range of clients, though among the key ones engaged in major digital transformations are banking and financial services, utilities and manufacturing.

Each of these verticals has its own needs and opportunities, said Deepak Chaudhari, country manager at TCS Ireland, and TCS sees itself as being in the role of partner, delivering expertise.

“My team here in Ireland brings global experience and delivers it locally. It’s a great opportunity for Irish customers, both key indigenous organisations and multinationals, to benefit from TCS’ experience,” he said.

Banks are among the most explorative of organisations engaged in significant transformations and also among those seeking the expertise TCS can deliver. For example, AIB life, a new initiative co-founded by AIB and Canadian insurance company Great-West Lifeco, has selected TCS as a strategic partner to launch a range of digital-first products. TCS leveraged its digital platform and services to launch this within 16 months.

“As a customer most things that you can do and want to do are going to be digitally-enabled. You won’t need to contact the local branch or a contact centre multiple times. You also won't have to contact different parts of the organisation to progress things,” he said.

In March, AIB life was recognised by Celent in its global awards as a Model Insurer in the digital and emerging technologies category.

Intelligent change

Today, of course, artificial intelligence (AI) is an integral part of most digital transformation projects.

Adoption has been rapid, driven in part by excitement since the 2022 launch of version 3.5 of ChatGPT by OpenAI and, more recently, Microsoft Copilot.

Businesses are now asking how they can meaningfully integrate AI into their operations, Chaudhari said, by asking, for example, how do you apply AI in a contact centre to make things more efficient.

However, deeper integration of AI means getting to grips with data analysis.

“We are enabling our customers to identify the use cases that make sense for their business. It’s not just a matter of pushing people onto the bandwagon but working out how we can fundamentally make an impact on the business,” he said.

One example is how AI can be used to resolve issues automatically, as well as leaving a clear audit trail.

“It can open the ticket, initiate the workflow, and automatically close it,” Chaudhari said.

As well as being a vendor-neutral consultancy, TCS is also a noted cybersecurity services provider, with its Letterkenny-based security operations centre service now among the top five in the country.

It's not just a matter of pushing companies onto the bandwagon of AI but working out how we can fundamentally make a positive impact on the business

As digital transformations move to the top of the organisational agenda, both for businesses and the public sector, however, there is both a need and an opportunity to rethink security.

“People are aware of the importance of security but they do need to take steps,” Chaudhari said.

Issues which need to be addressed, he said, include: security framework assessment, implementation of managed detect and response, vulnerability management, privileged access management and more.

“Security is extremely important for us and it needs to be in every part of every business, including security-by-design. Specifically in Ireland, we have a huge security focus and created a cybersecurity centre.”

Overall, Chaudhari said, digital transformation offers real benefits to organisations, but there is still a lot of ground to cover.

“Some don't have a full strategy in terms of cloud and are having difficulty developing an integrated view. What’s really interesting is we’re seeing a lot of companies are also thinking of the workplace transformation and TCS has been enabling such transformations.”