The annual Data Team Awards showcase the remarkable efforts of top global enterprise data teams committed to tackling some of today's toughest business challenges.
This year, we received more than 200 nominations across six categories, from companies representing a diverse array of industries and regions. In the lead-up to the Data + AI Summit, we'll showcase the finalists from each category, highlighting those pioneering the advances in data and AI.
New this year, the GenAI Award represents the widespread enterprise adoption of large language models (LLMs). As LLMs transform industries by enhancing productivity, personalizing user experiences, and opening up new possibilities in problem-solving, Databricks celebrates the teams who have made significant progress in leveraging generative AI to expand what’s possible with data and AI.
Below are the nominees for 2024’s GenAI Award.
Block, Inc.
Block Inc., a global technology company with a focus on financial services made up of Square, Cash App, TIDAL, and TBD, faced the challenge of efficiently managing its extensive data resources to both improve services for customers and streamline internal operations. Block's primary issue was an outdated and inflexible data architecture that struggled to process vast amounts of data across applications. To pave the way for GenAI innovations, Block proactively standardized its data infrastructure using the Databricks Data Intelligence Platform. By leveraging Databricks’ GenAI capabilities, new businesses can now onboard even faster to the Square platform using AI-powered set-up and data import automation. They can also leverage GenAI to instantly generate content for marketing emails, team announcements, item descriptions, website copy, and more. eCommerce sellers can choose from more than 50 style prompts and add hyperreal, AI-generated backgrounds to item photos, elevating their websites and attracting more customers. With Databricks, Block achieved a 12x reduction in computing costs, continuing to redefine financial services in the 21st century.
Experian
Experian, a global data and technology company, has spearheaded a comprehensive GenAI strategy across its business units that is revolutionizing both internal operations and customer interactions. Experian has demonstrated a proactive approach to implementing GenAI solutions in collaboration with Databricks. This strategic partnership emphasizes action-oriented deployment to embed GenAI across all products and solutions, leveraging the Databrick Data Intelligence Platform. With hundreds of use cases documented for future delivery, Experian views GenAI as a critical tool that enables its key mission of helping customers improve their financial lives.
Mahindra & Mahindra Limited
Mahindra is a global manufacturing and services organization with a strong presence in multiple industries and over 100 countries. They hold significant positions in various businesses, including being the world's largest tractor manufacturer by volume and the number one SUV and LCV manufacturer in India. To address the growing need for advanced Gen AI capabilities across all Mahindra businesses and functions, the Mahindra Digital Engine team developed an industry-first enterprise-level Gen AI solution, Mahindra AI. The goal of this solution was to drive growth, enhance customer experiences, and optimize operational efficiency across Mahindra's complex enterprise landscape. The Mahindra AI platform's plug-and-play features enabled the development and implementation of both co-pilot and customer use cases. Some examples of successful deployments powered by Mahindra AI include a GenAI bot for financial analysts, which led to a 70% reduction in time spent on routine tasks and enabled teams to focus on higher-value strategic initiatives. Some of the interesting use cases include an HR bot for Mahindra employees for personalized Q&A assistance, a technician knowledge management system, and a chatbot that provides employees with access to vehicle information, improving internal operations and customer support. Looking ahead, Mahindra is also using the Databricks Data Intelligent Platform to support multiple use cases and also leveraging the Databricks DBRX open source LLM to build a Voice of the Customer chatbot using both internal data via Delta Lake and external data from websites and social media. For this Mahindra is leveraging Unity Catalog governance to make its platform available to a wide range of users in a secured manner. These outcomes are among many that underscore Mahindra AI's transformative impact on business operations, customer experiences, and employee productivity and reaffirm Mahindra Group's #RiseWithTech philosophy.
OMV
OMV is on a mission to become an integrated supplier of sustainable fuels, chemicals and materials. It has embarked on a transformative journey to revolutionize its market research methodologies in response to the fast-evolving shift towards sustainability in the energy sector. As a first step, OMV's Data Liberation & AI team developed the “Autonomous Market Research Bot”. The bot is powered by a swarm of generative pretrained transformers (GPTs) deployed on Databricks Data Intelligence Platform. The innovative bot leverages LLMs available in the Azure OpenAI and Databricks Marketplace, revolutionizing its approach to market analysis by enabling real-time research, sentiment analysis, and consumer behavior insights.
By reducing the time, it takes to generate market research reports from days to minutes and automating previously manual tasks, the bot improved the accuracy of curating market insights and generated significant cost savings for OMV Fuels and Feedstock business. The bot's architecture included the Chainlit UI for user interaction and a system of delegation bots for specialized tasks — all integrated through the Microsoft’s Autogen framework for efficient communication among GPT bots. This project highlighted OMV’s leadership to invest in next-gen technology to support future growth by enhancing decision-making, optimizing operations, and setting the stage for future innovations.
Workday
Workday, a leading provider of solutions to help organizations manage their people and money, wanted to address a time-consuming HR task ripe for automation — the creation of job descriptions. The initiative focused on developing a generative AI application that would transform Workday’s approach to creating HR content. The team collaborated with Databricks to create an LLM capable of transforming inputs like job titles, company names, and required skills into new job descriptions. By training this custom LLM on a vast repository of Workday’s job requisition data, the team developed a model that met expectations while sidestepping the substantial costs and security risks associated with external vendor models. Databricks provided a platform for developing the innovative ETL, training, inference, and evaluation pipelines crucial to the project's success. The LLM is now available to a small group of select Workday customers as part of an early access program, and feedback so far has been positive.
All Data Team Award finalists and winners will be honored during a ceremony at the Data + AI Summit on Tuesday, June 11, at 6:30 PM on the expo floor. Join us as we celebrate the achievements of these exceptional data teams together!
