Steve Zimberg
Navigating a clear path to a native-AI enterprise
The surge in demand for AI is real. According to a recent report published by Markets and Markets, the global AI market size is expected to grow from $58.3 billion in 2021 to $309.6 billion by 2026, at a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 39.7%. As the demand for cognitive technology across the globe increases and organizations implement AI solutions at scale, the momentum and data they gain today will provide a long runway for success tomorrow. Is your enterprise ready?
Selecting a partner to help navigate the developing world of cognitive capabilities can be a valuable way to speed digital and cognitive maturity; nevertheless, the mission can be a complex process for even the most well-informed technology and procurement executives. With a sprawling list of technology partners to choose from and a growing backlog of business needs ripe for AI-driven innovation, narrowing down a shortlist of trusted technology providers with a proven intelligent automation platform and the credentials to keep it running can be challenging.
So as a leading provider of nearshore digital services for nearly 40 years, Softtek developed our own platform, and we call it FRIDA. FRIDA's namesake was carefully chosen to pay homage to the Mexican artist Frida Kahlo and serves as a reminder that digital and cognitive automation is a blend of both art and science. Cool, right?
FRIDA has street cred
During 2020 and 2021, FRIDA received some noteworthy attention as both a pragmatic and reliable platform for helping organizations scale their automation and cognitive capabilities throughout the enterprise. In fact, in April 2021, Softtek was ranked as a Major Contender in the Everest Group PEAK Matrix® for Intelligent Process Automation (IPA) solutions. "Softtek's cloud-based cognitive automation platform has capabilities that align well with its vision of delivering business efficiency for its clients. Its dedicated focus toward internal talent development, cognitive automation, development of unique computer vision-based solutions, and automation scalability have contributed to its success," said Anil Vijayan, Vice President, Everest Group.
In addition, over the last 24 months, Softtek has participated in several additional assessments, including Forrester's Now Tech: AI Consultancies, Q1 2021, Gartner's Tool: Vendor Identification for AI and Data and Analytics Service Providers, and ISG's Intelligent Automation Solutions and Services Provider Lens – U.S. 2020 – Intelligent Business Automation, where we placed as a Product Challenger.
Ready to scale
ISG Research reports, on average, about 80 percent of enterprises within the United States are either experimenting with or have deployed cognitive solutions. And until recently, mainly large enterprises have enjoyed the benefits of widespread intelligent automation. However, today, we see our mid-size clients also rapidly accelerating intelligent automation, triggered by the pandemic. These improvements include seeking new ways to reduce costs, enhance employee productivity by automating routine work, and adding additional capabilities critical to data accuracy and improving the customer experience.
The pandemic has been a catalyst for innovation within all industry sectors, especially within the manufacturing industry. Beni Lopez, US Market CEO & Global Managing Director of the Industrial vertical at Softtek, notes, "As organizations fast-track the inclusion of cognitive capabilities within their portfolio of enterprise tools, it's remarkable to watch our clients get ahead of the disruption curve and drive innovation. FRIDA makes this possible by giving our clients the platform, support, and agility they need to scale and innovate across the supply chain."
Ready to plugin
FRIDA is a good fit for organizations looking for a powerful, intelligent automation platform able to optimize the needs of their business today and continue to scale and drive innovation over the long term. FRIDA streamlines automation by combining RPA, AI, and human contribution to add continuous business value and efficiency to virtually any organization. Specifically, FRIDA's suite of offerings includes an automation demand management solution, a cognitive automation platform, and solutions for automation governance. Its cloud-based cognitive automation platform has capabilities around RPA, IDP, IVA, computer vision, workflows, and human-assisted exception handling that can be accessed in a modular fashion via a subscription-based commercial model, providing our clients with maximum flexibility to apply the technology across a broad range of use cases.
Historically Softtek's client engagements include a healthy mix of RPA and cognitive components, giving us the experience necessary to serve clients with varying requirements. Softtek has also demonstrated a strong presence in the CPG & Retail sectors. We have several computer vision-based packaged solutions and success implementing AI planogram compliance, AI handwashing compliance, and visual product search across the retail and e-commerce industries, respectively.
Our platform also includes an analytics component, FRIDA Flight Control solution, and we offer packaged solutions that include cognitive enhancements from our proprietary AI studio of no-code ML and deep learning tasks such as image classification, object detection, and clustering. In addition, FRIDA has a proprietary robot management tool that monitors robots and provides analyses around performance and benefits. Best of all, FRIDA, particularly its Robot Manager and Flight Control modules, are compatible with third-party automation platforms, giving our clients the flexibility to leverage and improve existing automation and drive continuous value. This avoids the losses of starting over, lending valuable adaptability in a fast-moving Agile world.
Ready to learn more about how FRIDA stacks up?
Click here to request a free copy of the Everest Group PEAK Matrix® for Intelligent Process Automation (IPA) solutions in 2021 report.
