e& enterprise, part of e& (formerly known as Etisalat Group), and leading conversational AI platform provider, SentiOne, have signed a strategic commercial partnership to offer omni-channel conversational AI, sentiment analysis and social listening solutions to government institutions and enterprises in the UAE and MENA region. The partnership will bring enhanced automation solutions powered by Artificial Intelligence (AI) algorithms, thereby creating more business value for enterprise customers and enabling their digital transformation journeys.

The services will be rolled out in the UAE first, with plans to expand further to 16 markets where e& operates. Through the collaboration, e& enterprise customers will have full access to SentiOne Automate, the state-of-the-art channel conversational AI platform and become equipped to build customer automation solutions based on chatbots, voicebots and an automated messaging platform. These solutions will enable businesses to automate their processes by up to 40%, reduce costs, and provide round-the-clock, high-quality customer service.

The platform will be further complemented by e& enterprise's in-house professional services team and its cloud infrastructure that will host the platform in the country for data security and content localisation purposes. Customers will be able to leverage the combined value proposition of the state-of-the-art SentiOne platform, e& enterprise DevOps and cloud infrastructure to solve business challenges. In addition, the platform will provide better engagement with end users across social media and Over-The-Top (OTT) channels for a higher ROI. Chatbots enabled by AI, and Natural Language Processing (NLP) can be deployed across channels, further reducing manual intervention across business processes and streamlining end-user engagement.

"Through joining forces with SentiOne, we are elevating the customer experience by creating an innovative service model in the value chain that will improve the omni-channel customer engagement level. Our partnership enables us to leverage the SentiOne Automate platform so as to deliver on our vision to be the leading digital enabler for enterprises and governments within the MENA region. Together with SentiOne, we look forward to supporting our enterprise customers as well as SMBs in the UAE as they seek to heighten engagement levels with their clients through innovative cloud and AI solutions." said Miguel Angel Villalonga, CEO e& enterprise cloud.

"Our partnership with e& enterprise will allow the adoption of our services across the region," says Bartosz Baziński, CEO of the SentiOne MENA, co-founder of SentiOne. "Some of the local companies already use customer service automation using Artificial Intelligence, however, these are poor quality solutions. Our bots understand the interlocutor's intentions with an efficiency of 96%. This is the highest rate among all solutions of this type according to the industry ranking Papers with Code.  We foresee key technical employees such as CTOs, Heads of Product and Heads of Bot Design as well as project managers working closely with e& enterprise on the implementation of our solution for the benefit of their customers. The most important thing will be the scalability of this project. The success is guaranteed, as we have under our belt successful implementations in Europe, a scalable product, effective technology as well as leveraging e& enterprise cloud capabilities."

Last year, SentiOne started its operations in the Middle East, after signing up as a strategic partner with Seed Group, a company of the Private Office of Sheikh Saeed bin Ahmed Al Maktoum, a member of the royal family of Dubai. SentiOne was one of the first Polish companies to join forces with Seed Group that has partnered with over 40 start-ups from around the world to guide and empower them to explore opportunities and grow in potential markets. Seed Group is a notable force in the technology, healthcare, hospitality, and telecommunications landscape in the Middle East. Over the past 16 years, it has formed successful strategic alliances with leading global companies representing diverse regions to accelerate sustainable market entry and presence within the Gulf Cooperation Council countries.