On the 47th episode of Enterprise Software Innovators, hosts Evan Reiser (Abnormal Security) and Saam Motamedi (Greylock Partners) talk with Ramesh Razdan, Global CIO & CTO of Bain & Company. Bain & Company is a "Big Three" management consulting firm with 65 global offices, 19,000 employees, and over $8 billion in annual revenue. Bain helps Fortune 500 companies optimize performance, enhance operational efficiency, and implement innovative technology at scale. In this conversation, Ramesh shares his thoughts on how generative AI is transforming Bain, the evolution of the CIO role in the AI era, and how Bain's clients harness the latest AI capabilities.

As a global leader in management consulting, Bain & Company is constantly seeking new ways to enhance its operational efficiency and client offerings, and AI has become a central part of that strategy. For Bain, the "why now" of AI adoption comes down to several key factors, such as the abundance of information, advancements in computing power, and the development of transformer architectures. Ramesh emphasizes that AI's potential lies in its ability to summarize and synthesize information, providing disproportionate value when combined with predictive capabilities. "Every enterprise is overwhelmed with too much information, synthesizing and simplifying that is a big challenge… Being an IT professional today, we have too many open facets, and it is impossible to know which facet to close and which to deal with. So, this is an opportunity to address all three of them, which is pretty unique." Bain's early collaboration with OpenAI, well before the public release of ChatGPT, positioned them ahead of the curve in generative AI deployment. Today, Bain has over 15 AI-powered products in production and more than 100 innovations in progress. One standout internal tool Ramesh discusses is a chatbot that helps employees retrieve and contextualize company information, boasting an impressive Net Promoter Score or NPS. "We have an NPS of 80. The people love the solution, and the key thing is to bring the information and give it reference and give me the full lineage of where the information came from." AI is also used to streamline performance reviews, contact center operations, and recruitment processes, with around 3,000 custom GPTs deployed across the organization. Ramesh even employs a personalized email assistant to reduce his time on communications: "I have an email GPT for myself because I want to reduce the friction of writing."

In today's technology landscape, led by recent AI advancements, the role of the CIO is undergoing significant transformation, shifting from primarily focused on keeping systems running to driving strategic business change. Ramesh shares that technology is becoming more of a disruptor than a solution. "Technology is disrupting the business. Rather than technology being an enabler, it is about how you help transform the business today." He emphasizes that modern CIOs need to blend strategy with execution, moving beyond traditional IT responsibilities to influence business outcomes actively. For instance, Bain's deployment of Copilot for Microsoft Teams to improve productivity is an example of leveraging technology to enhance employee experience and efficiency. Leaders are experiencing the need to balance new technology at a rapid pace while remaining focused on delivering core business needs. This shift requires CIOs to foster an environment where innovation can thrive while ensuring technology is tightly integrated with the business's strategic objectives. Ramesh believes building relationships across the enterprise and maintaining flexibility in architectural choices are crucial to enabling this transformation.

This internal transformation focus mirrors how Bain's clients are reshaping their customer experiences with AI. One grocery retailer, for example, shifted its focus from individual product purchases to offering complete ingredient lists for recipes, simplifying the entire shopping process. As Ramesh elaborates, "Instead of buying individual items, you can derive all the groceries you need for a recipe like pasta and place the order—changing the entire unit of consumption." This example shows how AI can create more seamless and cohesive customer experiences. Similarly, an airline embraced AI to provide end-to-end vacation planning for travelers. "If I want to go on vacation, I can ask AI to suggest a place and then book everything needed for the trip," he says. These shifts represent a move from enterprises offering fragmented services to AI, enabling the delivery of complete outcomes, enhancing customer experience, and minimizing friction.

Looking ahead, AI's future will require improvements in both model accuracy and data security. Ramesh envisions AI solutions operating more fluidly, resembling an app store ecosystem that enterprises can access for various GPTs. This vision highlights the potential for scalability and ease of use. However, he also acknowledges the limitations of AI, particularly its reliance on historical data, which restricts its ability to generate entirely new ideas. "AI can only do what has historically happened. It cannot yet create something entirely new," he says. Ramesh underscores the importance of human creativity for rethinking and redefining problems—something beyond AI's current capabilities. By leveraging AI where "hallucinations are a feature rather than a bug," he believes organizations can strike a balance between fostering innovation and ensuring reliability. This balanced perspective is crucial as enterprises navigate the evolving landscape of AI, blending technological advancements with human ingenuity to create meaningful and sustainable progress.

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Listen to Ramesh's episode here and read the transcript here.