AiThority Interview with Wayne Busch, Group President at NTT DATA Services

Hi, Wayne. Welcome to AiThority Interview Series. Please tell us a little bit about your journey and how you reached NTT DATA?  

I’ve been in the Consulting & Technology industry serving my clients for 30 years. I joined NTT DATA in 2019 when I saw a market that was interested in new partners and ways of working. That’s what we’re building here at NTT DATA. NTT DATA is a trusted global innovator of IT and business services, helping our clients transform through consulting, industry solutions, business process services, IT modernization and managed services. Our goal is to enable our clients to move confidently into the digital future.

Please tell us how NTT DATA planned its series of acquisitions in the digital space. 

We are an organization committed to the growth of our digital business both organically and through acquisition. Our Chief Strategy Officer, Head of Corporate Development and myself work together to identify areas where we want to deepen or expand capabilities to better serve our clients. Then, we follow a rigorous process to search for organizations that bring the right combination of capability, leadership, market presence and culture. Often this results in the two organizations coming together to build something better together.

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How does Umvel’s addition to the NTT DATA family ensure better IT servicing and customer support?

NTT DATA recently announced it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire Umvel, a digital design and engineering firm. Umvel expands our Product Innovation, Design & Engineering capability in Mexico, allowing us to better serve our clients across Mexico and North America. The acquisition will see more than 140 team members join NTT DATA, growing our Mexico-based team significantly. It also builds on other recent successful acquisitions in the digital design and engineering space including Nexient, Vectorform and Postlight.

The last two years have accelerated digital transformation for businesses of all sizes and stature. What has been the biggest lesson for you that helped you stay on top of your data-centric product management? Would you like to share your pandemic experience on how you managed to continue your development works and research during the uncertain times?  

It’s true that digital transformation has accelerated over the past 24 months. Every company is effectively a digital business. All products and services need to be designed and delivered through that lens. During the pandemic, we rapidly shifted our workforce’s location to a work-from-home model, but it didn’t change the need to support our clients’ continued transformation journeys. We adapted to work in virtual teams and still deliver our client’s mission critical outcomes.

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Please tell us how you fit into the modern IT stack. What kind of data science concepts have you used to make your product so useful for modern digital engineering and design teams?

We provide end-to-end Advanced Analytics/AI services, covering the whole cycle of value generation from strategy to execution of Analytics programs, with a strong focus on Innovation, AI Governance and AI Ethics. When it comes to modern digital engineering and design teams, we use AI Driven Design & Prototyping Studio as frameworks that create true value and accelerate the innovation at a pace demanded by the market and our clients.

Your take on the future of data science and AI in the product design businesses.

As mentioned, AI Driven Design & Prototyping Studio is a great example of how data science and AI are making an impact in the Product Design business. Simulation time will drop from days to hours to minutes with AI-enabled rapid prototyping, and we will be able to identify key design parameters using machine learning models. Also, we will see faster time-to-market of valuable use cases, as rapid prototyping enables organizations to evaluate multiple use cases in a short time span.

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Any advice to data science / AI professionals looking to start in this space?

The foundation to every insight is data, the most valuable asset that shapes outcomes. It is important that you understand data in conjunction with the larger context of the business problem you are solving. This helps data scientists have meaningful conversations with stakeholders and unlock new transformational opportunities. Also, in today’s world, AI initiatives should be performed with ethical principles such as Transparency, Fairness, Privacy and Accountability. AI Governance and AI Ethics are fundamental.

Thank you, Wayne! That was fun and we hope to see you back on AiThority.com soon.