Amber Hickman |
Multinational building materials firm Cemex has worked with Microsoft to develop a custom artificial intelligence-assistant that will help it to enhance the agility of its sales force and enable it to tailor solutions to customers’ needs.
The solution, called Technical Xpert, runs on Microsoft Azure OpenAI Service and acts as a chat window in Microsoft Teams. Employees can use the solution to quickly navigate Cemex’s portfolio of products, which will help them to respond to customers quicker and provide more personalised suggestions.
“This new tool is sending us information much faster, so we can have conversations with customers and at the same time ask, internally, questions like ‘what can I offer to this customer based on what he’s requiring from me?’” said Cristhian Alday, a Cemex commercial advisor. “For me, reaching this type of information in the past would take me to knock at least on four people’s doors and the response time would have been maybe, I don’t know, in an hour. And here it is in nine seconds.”
The Cemex team seeing how the solution works
Microsoft helped Cemex ensure it had the right architecture to deploy the solution and that it was also secure. Both organisations also worked to make the solution flexible so that new products can be added in the future.
“At Microsoft, we empower our customers to drive innovation and address business challenges with the support of our AI solutions,” said Deb Cupp, president of Microsoft Americas. “Technical Xpert’s advanced AI capabilities provide Cemex employees with comprehensive product overviews and detailed insights to help shape product recommendations and enhance sales. Together, we’re redefining the future and fostering growth in new and innovative ways.”