Flow Jamaica is heralding the infusion of artificial intelligence (AI) into its operations as a major driver of improved operational efficiency.

Stephen Price, vice president and general manager, says the leading technology and entertainment service provider has been leveraging AI technologies to unlock new opportunities and drive sustainable growth.

Price emphasised Flow’s strategic approach to AI integration, stating, “We’ve embarked on a deliberate journey to integrate AI into our operations, and we’re already seeing tangible benefits.” 

Under the umbrella of its parent company, Liberty Latin America (LLA), Flow is fostering a culture that embraces AI innovation. The company has established a dedicated department for the development of AI tools aimed at improving business processes and driving operational excellence. Leveraging AI across LLA to enhance products and services has also been set as a key objective for 2024 by its president and CEO Balan Nair. 

“We looked at the various problem statements that we wanted to solve across the organization. Through that exercise, we were able to define the things we wanted to get more efficient and better at,” Price shared at a recent panel discussion hosted by the Jamaica Stock Exchange (JSE) eCampus.

He outlined that coming out of that exercise, the company created workstreams to better anticipate and cater to the needs of its customers using predictive and generative AI. Predictive AI is focused on making forecasts based on existing data while generative AI relates to creating new content that resembles existing data. 

He added that the company is working on predictive analysis to monitor and optimize its network operations. Using real-time data, AI algorithms can foresee potential network failures and proactively take preventative measures. 

“By employing this technology we will be able to increase service availability, decreased network downtime and overall created a more reliable and seamless customer experience,” Price said. 

He also shared that the company will soon deploy agent chatbots to empower its customer care representatives to define and solve customer problems more quickly as well as chatbots that customers can interface with via WhatsApp. 

“There are also many other applications for which we see AI creating an impact, inclusive of coding assistants for our engineers which they can use to create various apps, bots and other tools to automate repetitive tasks and do their work faster,” Price highlighted. 

According to Price, central to this strategy is Flow’s commitment to empowering its workforce with the necessary skills to harness the potential of AI effectively.

“We’re investing in our team members by providing comprehensive training and development activities to facilitate their transition towards AI adoption,” Price affirmed. He added that by prioritizing skill acquisition, Flow is equipping its employees with the tools needed to thrive in an AI-driven environment. We have embraced the concept of lifelong learning by equipping our teams to better themselves by using LinkedIn Learning and other training opportunities.

“We believe in providing our employees with the right skills to bring value to the company, thus mitigating any potential job losses,” Price stated.. 

The discussion, which was moderated by Professor Gunjan Mansingh of the University of the West Indies School of Computing, revolved around how Technology and AI have impacted the decision-making process for CEOs.  The panel also included Norman Chen, CEO of tTech Limited and Ricardo Allen, CEO of One-on-One Educational Services.