AI Conference
Amdocs CMO: “Most of our interaction with customers will change within a year or two”
Gil Rosen added: “If you don’t have an AI agent to handle this, you’re not in the game.” According to Orna Kleinmann, Managing Director, SAP Israel R&D Center, “One hundred percent of the processes in the enterprise will eventually involve AI.”
“It's easier for us to crack the customer side and harder with the employees. At the customer level, there is a commitment to meeting goals that impact the company's performance, while at the employee level, there needs to be a daily, direct measurement. Internal change is more challenging, and therefore more results are seen externally,” said Ran Ilany, VP of AI at Cisco, speaking on a panel at Calcalist’s AI Conference in collaboration with Vultr.
The panel, which was moderated by CTech Editor-in-Chief Elihay Vidal and explored the most pressing questions surrounding the introduction of artificial intelligence for employees and customers, also included Gil Rosen, CMO at Amdocs, and Orna Kleinmann, Managing Director, SAP Israel R&D Center.
Gil Rosen, CMO at Amdocs, added: “Things don't happen if employees aren't part of the process. We have an internal concept, AI fitness. You can't teach anything specific today because everything moves fast; employees need to learn fast and stay in shape to learn new things. Secondly, we constantly talk about technology, but less about the user experience. The agents' Amdocs programs today will interact with our customers' customers, effectively turning us into a B2C company. When different people contact their communications company, the experience needs to be different and customized, and that's not happening yet, and it's not discussed enough.”
Orna Kleinmann, Managing Director SAP Labs Israel & Senior Vice President at SAP Business Technology Platform, offered a different perspective: “One hundred percent of the processes in the enterprise will eventually involve AI. We won't even feel like we're working with AI. We'll simply come to work and perform tasks with the help of interconnected agents, allowing us to do more with fewer people. Good AI is invisible, it’s just there.”
You've all been talking about AI for years, but suddenly there was a boom. How do you make changes in the services you provide?
“The advantage of agents exists only if several conditions are met,” Kleinmann explained. “The data on which they rely must be clean, you must trust the results, and everything must communicate seamlessly. No organizational process is limited to a single software. Today, work involves extracting information from multiple systems and connecting them manually. AI agents can do all of this and deliver results in seconds for any business scenario.”
Vidal asked about cyber risks: “Many programs already analyze customer experiences through agents,” Ilany said. “Even in professional services, software updates are executed via agents. This isn’t futuristic thinking; it’s happening now. Of course, this opens fertile ground for attackers, and we will see these attacks increase. We are beginning to consider how to mitigate them.”
Rosen was asked whether avatars will provide services: “Most of our interaction with customers will change within a year or two. If you don’t have an agent to handle this, you’re not in the game. This reminds us of what happened with apps around 2012. Companies won’t rise or fall based on cybersecurity but on user experience. Product and customer service managers must actively engage, and agents must feel like real people to customers. All customers need someone available at all times, not just VIPs. This introduces new dimensions involving psychology, branding, and positioning.”
On human resources and workforce reduction, participants agreed: “In the long term, we will need fewer people. In the short term, we will become more efficient and do more with fewer staff. Meanwhile, organizations will change business models,” said Kleinmann.
“Today, small companies have an advantage over large ones because they can harness AI and advance faster. Large companies need to focus strategically. In the long term, this will improve and sharpen human quality, with fewer people doing higher-quality work,” added Ilany.
“You have to be AI-capable in the modern organization,” Rosen concluded. “We are in a revolution moving so fast that sometimes by the time you act, the future is already happening. We have to run fast. This is the beginning of the beginning of the Internet revolution, it’s like 2001 with e-commerce.”
First published: 13:10, 07.09.25
