How AI helped us save $3.5 billion
Can AI help transform the operations of a company with more than 275,000 employees worldwide?
To find out, we used AI to reimagine how we deliver HR services across our global teams. Here’s a behind-the-scenes look at what we discovered, and how these insights can benefit our clients. ⤵
A new era of HR service 🤝
As our global workforce grew, the HR department faced mounting complexity—fragmented processes, inconsistent policies, and manual tasks strained both employees and HR teams. Multi-channel experiences also led to delays, low satisfaction, and non-strategic workloads.
It was time to pioneer a new era of HR services, powered by advanced gen AI, automation and a commitment to continuous innovation and ethical AI practices.
Over the past six years, we've continuously evolved our internal virtual agent, AskHR, to automate 80+ HR tasks and manage 2.1M+ annual employee interactions. In 2025, we futher enhanced it by integrating IBM watsonx Orchestrate for advanced gen AI and agentic automation. The results were impressive. ⤵
📄 7,000 policy pages are accessible
🧾 1 million HR-related transactions were processed in 2024
💬 55.1K pieces of user feedback were collected in 2024
📺 Watch our evolution to agentic AI ⤵
We call ourselves Client Zero ⚡
We didn’t have to look far to find one of our most ambitious AI clients. Our CEO Arvind Krishna kicked off the transformation in early 2023 with the ambitious goal of becoming the world’s most productive company, acting as our own “Client Zero”.
And so far, the impact has been clear:
💰 AI and automation have enabled $3.5 billion in productivity gains
⏱️ AI saved employees over 3.9 million hours by automating repetitive tasks in 2024
“We’re a hardware, software and services business, and we operate in a lot of different countries. We feel like if we can do this within IBM, you can really see a vision of doing it across every industry, across every client.” - Joanne Wright , IBM SVP, Transformation & Ops
Join the conversation 🗣️
AI Product Lead | Research‑driven builder shipping at startup speed | NYC
4hGreat case study. Could you share the top 3 operational levers that drove the $3.5B savings (e.g., ticket deflection via virtual agents, HR cycle‑time reductions, procurement optimization), the baseline vs. current KPIs, and how you attributed impact to AI vs. concurrent process changes?
Nill at Nill
1dHow much profit in a year IBM
Vice President of Connectivity at Tempus AI, Inc.
1dApplying AI to global HR service delivery is a forward-thinking and often underestimated area. Such significant results demonstrate the enormous potential of reimagining internal operational processes.
Majoor Netherlands Air Force
1dThanks for sharing this IBM