SCC has outlined ambitions to invest up to £100m in artificial intelligence (AI) over the next five years as channel players strengthen their expertise and ability to support customers.
The company’s Project Sirius operates across five core areas, all related to AI: Infrastructure Factory, Security, Digital Workplace, AI Solutions, and Hyperscalar Marketplace.
As well as developing external services for its customers, SCC will also invest significantly internally to increase its use of AI and its level of expertise.
These internal investments include hiring 100 staff across the UK, France, Spain and the Middle East to provide AI support. Some of these staff will work at the company’s advanced technology centers in Birmingham and Paris.
The company is also working on establishing a global AI division that will be the focus of project implementation.
SCC Group CEO Robert Vassoyan said the company has constantly evolved its proposition over its 50-year existence and Project Sirius is in that tradition.
“We’ve been able to weather all of these waves of change and disruption,” he said. “Maybe that’s because we’ve always adapted, and we think the company has its own way of adapting.”
important areas
Vassoyan added that the five areas the company has identified are “critical” to its customers and that it wants to develop best-in-class capabilities in these areas, offering a deeper service that goes beyond just using AI to improve employee productivity in superficial ways. Much of that knowledge comes from internal lessons learned about the benefits of using AI to transform your business.
“If you’re really serious about AI ROI, you have to look at how you can leverage AI to transform your company’s most fundamental business processes,” he said. “We decided to embark on this multi-year journey because it is at the core of our company to really adapt and transform our end-to-end quote-to-cash process.
“This involves hundreds of people, starting with getting orders from customers, getting quotes from vendors, getting orders into the system, going through the entire supply chain and logistics, to invoicing and collecting cash,” Vassoyan said.
He said the aim of Project Sirius is to put SCC in a stronger position regarding AI, allowing a wider range of customers to adopt and benefit from the technology.
“We help customers choose the right use case, design it, implement it, and at some point manage the orchestration and security of this agent,” Bassoyan said, adding that customers also need the infrastructure and security it provides.
He said the plan is rooted in a long-standing policy to ensure SCC remains a trusted advisor to its customers, providing them with the support and guidance they have asked for.
“The quality of the relationship with the customer, that’s the most important thing,” Vassoyan said.
SCC Chairman James Rigby also said the investment would bring channel players closer to their customer base.
“Project Sirius represents a milestone in our mission to simplify complexity for our customers,” he said. “This investment will enable us to create high-value AI jobs, strengthen our internal capabilities, and ensure we deliver the most powerful AI solutions on the market.”
