Making a great partnership even better
When Neudesic embarked on building its AI practice, it knew Microsoft would be an important ally. With a strong Microsoft heritage going back to its founding members (several of which came from Microsoft), Neudesic has been a long-time partner.
That relationship became supercharged since Satya Nadella came onboard. Mike explains that, “when Microsoft introduced the One Commercial Partner organization and its partner-centric focus, it was a very positive experience for us. Our relationship has become much more collaborative, and as a result, we’ve been able to do great things together, from developing AI solutions for clients to co-selling.
The partnership has enabled Neudesic to align with Microsoft product teams, and in turn, help them in growing the offerings they bring to their customers. “At the end of the day, our partnership succeeds because it’s based on trust and mutual respect. There’s trust that we at Neudesic will be good stewards of the platform. And there’s trust that together we’ll do amazing things to grow our businesses,” says Mike.
Helping clients get confident with AI
Together with Microsoft, Neudesic is giving clients the tools, and knowledge, to build confidence and mastery over their new AI solutions—in effect, to become self-sufficient in how they leverage new AI-powered data insights.
One such example is the NBA. Every year, during the NBA’s regular season, 30 teams play a total of 82 games. Each of those games generates terabytes of data, a big portion of which is in photos. The organization struggled to manage and curate this massive stream of photos, with each photo needing to be manually identified, tagged, and organized in a process that would take weeks.
Neudesic partnered with Microsoft and the NBA to develop the Photo Sorter application, using Microsoft Cognitive Services and leveraging Cognitive Search to automatically sort and curate the influx of photos from each game. Garth Case, Vice President of IT at the NBA, says the new system saves them massive amounts of time: “Photos from one event could take up weeks to categorize and process. Using Photo Sorter, we can now reduce that to a few hours. When the system is properly trained and is used to optimize our process, we can whip through it in a few hours.”
For Garth, this is only the beginning. As they dig deeper into game data, and not just from photos, he sees additional opportunities to use automation to drive more personalized, value-based engagement with fans across the world.
Looking ahead, with Microsoft
As Neudesic considers what’s next, the future looks bright with possibilities. And as Microsoft continues to advance its AI platform, the opportunities to find new applications that bring value to clients are endless. For Neudesic, the core opportunity remains in helping clients get clear on their business strategies, and the outcomes they wish to achieve, and in grounding AI to clear goals and tangible results.