Sustainability plays a fundamental role in the orientation of all business activities and is crucial for the long-term economic success of many small and medium-sized enterprises. For some time now, customers and clients, business partners and the general public have no longer been interested merely in the pure profitability of a business, but rather in companies whose focus is on resilience, quality and sustainability. Thus, companies that do not specifically focus on sustainability may have difficulties in the long run securing financing and competing against their competitors.
Also investors and rating agencies are looking beyond merely financial data and including environmental, social and governance (ESG) issues in their assessments. According to the ‘2021 CEO Outlook’ by KPMG already 58 percent of global CEOs are seeing increased demands from their stakeholders – such as investors, regulators and customers – for increased reporting and transparency on ESG issues. KPMG’s survey of 1,325 international leaders of major organizations from 11 key markets and 11 key industry sectors opens up further forward-looking insights:
Projects with positive impact on social responsibility
Digital avatars support pupils and teachers
Virtual AI buddy helps kids learn to read – through AI technologies digital avatars can become real educational helpers: Learning to read through the personalized play-out of content and vocabulary and pronunciation and comprehension trained with a playful approach. Concurrent teachers can view the learning progress via a learning assistant dashboard. If the virtual assistant is used systematically, homeschooling costs can be halved and overall school costs reduced by 5%. Also, the lives of children, teachers and parents worldwide can be positively impacted.
The «AI Learning Helper» is the result of an international collaboration between NTT DATA Business Solutions Denmark, NTT DATA UK and NTT DATA Romania and was recently awarded with the «SAP Innovation Award 2022«.
More about our virtual ai buddy
The farmbot-network turns urban land into agricultural land
Re-thinking the agriculture of tomorrow – back in 2017, we developed an innovative concept for combating against future food shortages and nutritional instability in the course of the NTT DATA Hackathon. The core idea is to increase the efficiency and productivity of smart agricultural robots, so-called farmbots, by means of networking via a smart farming platform and the use of innovative technologies such as AI, IoT or blockchain. In view of climate change, the growing world population and the trend towards urbanization, the project received the First Prize of the NTT Group Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) Conference in 2019.
More about the farmbot-network
Optimization of medical supply chains to improve and save people’s lives
Innovative IT soar to new heights – the start-up Wingcopter, which was already named a technology pioneer by the World Economic Forum in 2020, focuses on optimizing supply chains of medical goods. Their future plans include the delivery of packages, tools and spare parts, and food and groceries. Wingcopter pursues an emerging business model and has to meet complex requirements regarding the production process. In the successful collaboration, we have built an intelligent SAP cloud ERP landscape with ‘RISE with SAP’, which gives the innovative start-up a boost for its business processes.
AI makes telephone care for Danish children more efficient
A virtual assistant supports Børns Vilkår – the Danish children’s aid organization Børns Vilkår communicates with children seeking help not only via telephone calls, but also via SMS and chat. A virtual assistant, developed by NTT DATA Business Solutions Denmark, supports the Børns Vilkår team and continuously learns to better understand the language of children and young people. The AI-based solution helps more than 500 volunteer counselors who receive more than 220,000 calls from children in Denmark every year. As a result, the number of enquiries handled has been significantly increased.