Genpact and Microsoft have announced a strategic collaboration that will grant Genpact’s global talent access to Microsoft’s Azure OpenAI Service. This partnership aims to unlock fresh possibilities in implementing generative AI capabilities and solutions for its joint clients.

Genpact plans to leverage large language models (LLMs) to harness the potential of gen AI, driving enterprise efficiencies across domains such as transition management, global service desk management and infrastructure management.

“Through our partnership with Microsoft, we’re allowing employees globally to leverage Microsoft’s Azure OpenAI Service technology and expedite the development of new solutions that empower enterprises to strategically use gen AI for business value,” Harsh Kar, Genpact’s global business leader for data and AI told VentureBeat. “Genpact’s strength in AI and advanced analytics, coupled with Microsoft Azure’s cloud infrastructure and the flexibility of Azure OpenAI Service, will be a key differentiator for us and critical to how we drive innovation and outsized impact for clients.”

Providing comprehensive training and resources

To support employees accessing Microsoft Azure’s AI tools and foster a culture of continuous learning and innovation, the company said that it will provide employees with comprehensive training programs and resources.

These resources include Genpact’s online learning platform Genome, its proprietary data literacy initiative DataBridge and a machine learning (ML) incubator. 

As part of its ongoing commitment to invest in AI capabilities, Genpact has also partnered with Google Cloud to establish a gen AI practice. 

Through this partnership, the company will combine its industry and process expertise with Google Cloud’s gen AI capabilities to build custom enterprise LLMs, business processes and augment operations.

The new practice will bring together a cohesive team of Genpact and Google data scientists, data engineers and domain experts. The primary focus will be capitalizing on their shared clients’ cloud, data and analytics modernization journeys. 

Leveraging generative AI to streamline employee productivity

Genpact aims to empower business teams with gen AI use cases, enhancing employee productivity, operational efficiency and agility while addressing day-to-day challenges faced by enterprises. 

The integration of Azure’s cloud infrastructure and the flexibility of the Azure OpenAI Service is expected to accelerate the development of these solutions.

“As part of Genpact’s gen AI strategy, we consider different stages of AI adoption within the company: incubation of processes, people tools and technology, and eventually democratization,” Kar told VentureBeat. “To keep up with today’s accelerated pace of innovation, equipping all employees with the necessary skills and knowledge to harness gen AI is not good-to-do, but a must-have.”

Genpact expressed a keen interest in employee experience in its collaboration with Microsoft. 

The company highlighted that its experience agency Rightpoint is a leading Microsoft partner responsible for developing and delivering Microsoft-based applications, services and devices to enhance employee experience.

Strengthening gen AI capabilities

Through the new partnership, Genpact aims to further strengthen its gen AI capabilities and collaborate closely with Microsoft to drive actionable business insights and deliver significant impact for its clients.

Kar emphasized that LLMs form the core of gen AI at Genpact. The company actively utilizes LLM centers of excellence (CoEs) as a central hub for change management, facilitating the design, integration, scaling and democratization of gen AI prototypes into robust enterprise-grade solutions. 

“These LLM CoEs will enable us to develop AI guidelines, evaluate use cases, implement pilot projects and train our employees in new roles of prompt engineers, prompt compliant checkers and customer protection officers — all of which are critical to continue driving value for our clients in today’s data and AI-driven world,” he said. 

Gen AI upskilling

Genpact recently launched a gen AI skill on Genome, which is part of its flagship tech skilling program TechBridge. This initiative aims to prepare employees for the future AI-driven world by enabling them to master LLMs like ChatGPT through compelling use cases and practical applications. 

The company said that more than 10,000 employees have already been trained, with an additional 25,000 actively learning new gen AI skills.

Moreover, the company has unveiled a data literacy initiative called DataBridge, empowering employees to become proficient in data science techniques — the foundational skills needed to leverage gen AI. 

Genpact asserts that more than 78,000 employees have been trained through this program, enabling them to understand and visualize data effectively and utilize this knowledge to guide decision-making for clients and the company.

Ensuring responsible AI development

The company emphasized its commitment to responsible development and utilization of gen AI tools, recognizing their qualitative differences and potential risks compared to traditional AI. 

To address these concerns, the company has invested in a comprehensive strategy that guides all stakeholders from development to production, integrating four key components: data, foundation models, prompt templates and gen AI application.

Genpact acknowledges that foundation models may produce unintended results, sometimes leading to enterprise-grade solutions that pose challenges when deployed. To mitigate this, the company’s safety framework prioritizes diligent engineering to address privacy risks associated with model selection, ensuring consistent and reliable outputs.

Mitigating data drift

Furthermore, the company said its approach addresses data drift issues by employing metrics that engineers evaluate in collaboration with subject matter experts (SMEs) and industry specialists. These evaluations encompass data quality, anonymization and overall performance, leading to improved data drift mitigation.

“We continuously partner with engineers and other stakeholders to conduct due diligence on the data collected for fine-tuning models,” said Kar. “Our framework applies guardrails to mitigate risks arising due to biases of pre-trained models in the outputs. For instance, the output robustness test for fairness ensures that the AI-generated output complies with fairness and legal frameworks.”

What’s next for Genpact?

Kar revealed that Genpact is witnessing robust client demand for leveraging generative AI, LLMs, ML technologies and AI more broadly in their business operations. Looking ahead, the company aims to further refine talent in data science, AI, ML and engineering. 

Additionally, Genpact plans to train its current employees through upskilling programs, ensuring a steady stream of skilled professionals to meet evolving client requirements.

“We remain bullish on investing in and identifying ways to leverage AI to improve client value creation and internal efficiency,” Kar told VentureBeat. “To increase our opportunities to collaborate with clients and boost our productivity, we plan to invest consistently in R&D and strategic partnerships with leading technology providers and further enhance our capabilities in AI and generative AI. This includes our partnerships with Google Cloud to launch a gen AI practice and Microsoft to leverage its Azure OpenAI Service platform.”