IBM: 'Digital Dave', the AI Agent Revolutionizing Meetings

An AI Agent to Optimize Meetings at IBM

Dave McCann, a prominent executive at IBM, has developed an artificial intelligence agent named "Digital Dave" to enhance the preparation for his meetings with clients. This innovative tool allows him to save five hours each week by eliminating 30-minute prep calls. McCann, who oversees thousands of people as a global partner in transformation at IBM Consulting, uses this agent to conduct in-depth research on clients, including giants like Nestlé, Ericsson, and Riyadh Air.

The agent, which is actually a set of AI assistants, analyzes McCann's agenda and generates a list of ten key points to know for each meeting. This automation frees up time for McCann and his team, who previously spent time on manual meeting preparation. Under the old system, team members would draft a briefing document with him and typically have a 30-minute prep call before the meeting with the client. "All of that is now a thing of the past," said McCann, who is on a mission to help transform the global sector of IBM Consulting, which has nearly 150,000 employees.

Freeing Up Time for the Team

McCann's research agent, which he and his team began building last fall, is based on a tool that a group within the company had started developing as part of an annual internal competition. The agent reviews internal data, what IBM and the client are doing in the market, external data, and account details — such as the status of projects and the services sold and purchased. It can also identify industry trends and client needs by examining, for example, a company's annual report and pinpointing a corresponding service that IBM could provide.

Digital Dave also allows McCann's team to save time, as the three or four employees who previously spent hours gathering information for prep calls are now free to focus on other tasks. "It's not just about improving efficiency, but transforming the way work is done," McCann stated. The agent's research capabilities are not limited to client reports. McCann has also started using it to help him evaluate the hundreds of partners of IBM Consulting that he assesses each year. The goal, he said, is to make informed decisions and provide leaders with sound advice on their strengths and weaknesses as part of their performance evaluation.

The Multiplier Effect

One advantage of creating agents, according to McCann, is that IBM employees who develop them can share them with other team members or more broadly within the company, "which immediately creates this multiplier effect." Many of the people who report to him have created agents, he said. There is healthy competition, McCann added, to design the most robust digital assistants, especially since workers can build on what their colleagues have created.

Across sectors, companies are developing AI agents to take on intellectual work tasks — particularly tedious tasks — that were once performed by humans. From one-person startups to consulting giants, companies are using agents in functions such as human resources, IT, finance, communications, and training. Agents can manage a range of functions, including information gathering, document processing, drafting communications, taking meeting minutes, and conducting research. Although it is still early days, these systems are quickly becoming a major focus of corporate AI efforts as they seek to transform generative AI into something that can genuinely lighten employees' workloads.

One challenge McCann sees with clients and the creation of agents is access to data. IBM Consulting's most advanced clients — perhaps a Fortune 100 or Fortune 500 company — may have granted data access to several hundred people, but not to 5,000 people in their finance division or 10,000 people in human resources, McCann noted. Concerns about security and innovation management can pose obstacles. Until you unlock the data, individual workers may be able to accomplish more, but "you don't benefit from that multiplier effect on productivity," he said.

For McCann's work, Digital Dave means he recovers valuable time in his schedule. "I can give much more targeted attention to our clients and our employees while having the operations of the business now managed in a more digital way," he stated.