Wilson Group, best known for its car parks and security services, is investing in its business applications and data environment as technical foundations for future AI initiatives.
Paul Sidwell.
Chief information officer Paul Sidwell told the Microsoft AI Tour event in Sydney that the group is in the process of migrating finance and operations from running on Microsoft Dynamics AX to a Dynamics 365 environment.
“It’s early days [for the upgrade] but progressing really well,” Sidwell said.
Also in line for an upgrade is the group’s data warehouse environment; the present architecture wasn’t discussed, but the target state potentially involves Microsoft Fabric, marketed as an “all-in-one” analytics platform that includes a data lake.
Sidwell said the group’s AI ambitions had “really called into question the data and data governance framework we have in the business.”
“Part of that foundational work has been looking at our data warehouse environment and moving – we’ve got a Fabric trial underway at the moment, so uplifting that environment, making sure we’ve got a better handle on what’s out there, and how it’s collected and stored and sorted and ready for these AI tools to make use of,” Sidwell said.
“We’re not quite there yet, but it’s part of that foundational level of work that we need across the business.”
Sidwell said there’s a “huge amount of interest” from executives about potential applications for AI technology across the diversified services group.
Some of the group’s operating businesses are already “driving forward with a few different AI initiatives of their own around predominantly customer service [and] concierge solutions.”
A development team in the group’s corporate IT function has also had access to AI via GitHub Copilot.
“We have a legacy workforce management product that they look after, and they’ve had some pretty meaningful use out of GitHub through that period with a major upgrade project that they were working on,” Sidwell said.
“It helped them drive a fair bit of accuracy and efficiency in what they were doing. They were quite surprised given the age of some of that legacy tech stack, so a really positive result.”
Sidwell said that broader use of copilot solutions promised to “give… time back” to people working across the group.
“We’re a pretty lean organisation in terms of some of [our] back-office business functions, and the subject matter experts in the business are generally very time-poor and overstretched, like a lot of businesses around the place,” he said.
“I think there’s a real opportunity to give them some time back, make their lives a little easier. That’s going to be a good thing for the IT team to look good.”
Ry Crozier attended Microsoft AI Tour in Sydney as a guest of Microsoft.
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