A presentation at Avenga Academy Business Outreach Event in in Skopje, North Macedonia by Petyo Dimitrov
AI for Business: practical applications and first steps Petyo Dimitrov / May 2025
About me • 18 years in Software Engineering • Software Architect in Musala Soft / Qinshift / Avenga • Head of Data & AI • PhD in Computer Science from Technical University of Sofia • Enjoy discussing technology in various events
Agenda Intro to AI 2 areas to try out AI Evaluating your AI ideas Trends in AI Avenga AI Service Offering
First, some fun with AI
Hype, hope, reality “ChatGPT hit 1 million users in 5 days and projects to reach 1 billion in 2025” “~40% of Enterprises have AI projects in production and ~40% are piloting one” “~70% of businesses report using Generative AI in at least one function”
Intro to AI 2 areas to try out AI Evaluating your AI ideas Trends in AI Avenga AI Service Offering
AI is a moving target
What is AI?
What is Machine Learning?
What is Generative AI?
Intro to AI 2 areas to try out AI Evaluating your AI ideas Trends in AI Avenga AI Service Offering
1 – Synthetic personas to improve sales reps
1 – Demo
2 – Intelligent document processing
2 – Demo
Intro to AI 2 areas to try out AI Evaluating AI ideas Trends in AI Avenga AI Service Offering
Why you need to evaluate? “Up to 75% of AI projects never deliver ROI or get past pilot” Fortune
Questions before starting an AI project (1) 1. Is it a repetitive task or augmenting a human? 2. What is the error tolerance / saved effort / response time? 3. Is there a non-AI approach that’s cheaper / faster?
Questions before starting an AI project (2) 4. Do you have the necessary data? 5. Can you start with a GenAI baseline in <= 4 weeks? 6. Do usage speed, volume and infrastructure costs fit? 7. Are there regulatory risks (data, explainability, AI act)?
General project questions 1. What pain point is it addressing? Who owns it? 2. Is the pilot focused on the most impactful issue? 3. How to integrate with existing workflows and systems? 4. Do you have the right talent or upskilling plan?
Intro to AI 2 areas to try out AI Evaluating your AI ideas Trends in AI Avenga AI Service Offering
AI ≠ Magic 9.9 - 9.11 = ?
Intro to AI 2 areas to try out AI Evaluating your AI ideas Trends in AI Avenga AI Service Offering
Empower your vision with our AI services Workforce Enablement Solutions Automated Customer Support Content Generation Customer Analytics Predictive Analytics and Forecasting Fraud Detection Visual Control Systems Intelligent Document Processing Personalized Recommender Systems
Data & AI technical expertise for your needs Modern Data Platforms & BI Data Engineering & Streaming Azure Data Factor y Generative AI SQL & NoSQL Data Stores Azure Stream Analytics ML Frameworks & Platforms Azure ML Data Science
Avenga.com Фала! Petyo Dimitrov Head of Data & AI, Avenga petyo.dimitrov@avenga.com www.linkedin.com/in/petyo-dimitrov
AI is no longer something on the horizon - it’s already part of how companies run their business. The tools are here and evolving. A few specific examples which I will also demonstrate during the session are sales support (via assistants and synthetic personas) and document processing via Generative AI.
In this talk, I’ll provide you with a non-technical introduction of the main concepts in AI (like Deep learning and Generative AI) and the recent trends in the field. I will also share real-life examples Avenga AI projects we are delivering to our clients and how to judge whether your idea is practical or just hype. My goal is not to chase buzzwords but to demonstrate specific examples, simple ways to test AI in your organization, and a framework to avoid wasting effort on projects that never move beyond the pilot stage.
for free. You
can too.