AB InBev Turning to Cloud and AI

Probably one of the oldest company still standing tall in the world, AB InBev is now looking forward to the Cloud and AI to transform their business. In a telephonic interview with Forbes, Tassilo Festetics, the company's Vice President, Global Solutions at AB InBev, stated "The world changed around us. At one point, sales were dictated by how fast a salesperson could drive a motorcycle between locations. Today, AB InBev needs to digitize all aspects of its business to be successful."

To overcome the hurdles of the size and age of the company, it has turned to Microsoft to deliver all the infrastructure and the support needed to transform itself. It is using the proven Microsoft Azure Infrastructure, Microsoft M365 suite, and their AI Cognitive services. The company has been facing various problems since the data was geographically fragmented and was based on numerous mergers and acquisitions. 

Festetics further added, "The only way to resolve this issue was to rebuild from scratch. You go directly to the cloud. No other route makes sense. The biggest benefits lay in tapping into technologies that weren't available before."

In an astonishing feat, the company has migrated 40 percent of its workload to the cloud in a span of just 18 months. Of course, transferring forty to fifty workload to the cloud is quite easier since all the things which can quickly adapt to the new technology are added first. The real challenge now lies ahead with the shifting of the older back-end systems which weren't developed keeping the technological developments in mind. These systems need to be recreated from scratch to work in an environment like this.

"Even our legacy backend systems become cool with cloud computing. Cloud computing services are loaded with machine learning and real-time analytics. It just offers us more and is constantly updated."

It's more comfortable for the organization to provide various functions such as account reconciliations since the back office operations can be simplified with the cloud services available.

Many companies now look forward to using the cloud platform in conjunction with machine learning and AI to increase their effectiveness. For example, in the case of AB InBev, AI helps the sales and the commercial department in the analysis. They also use AI for various operations ranging from promotions to image recognition for planograms. One of the main reason why the firm was attracted to the Azure platform was its ability to leverage AI services.

AB InBev also wants to use the natural language processing offered by AI to integrate their business applications with chatbots and to place an order and perform other tasks using voice commands all via a mobile app.

Of course, all is not green when it comes to making the transition to the cloud. Every business faces some challenges which make the transformation process slower but AB InBev seems to be on the right track given its expertise and proven track record.

PC: Pablo, Unsplash