Isaac Song

Turning AI potential into real outcomes.

Director, People Systems & AI at WPP Media · Ex-BHP · I've deployed RAG, MCP, and LLMs inside global enterprises. This is where I break down how real companies are doing the same.

Director of People Systems & Analytics at WPP Media. Ex-BHP. ISC2 Certified. Building and shipping enterprise AI since before it was trendy.

Latest from AI Real-World

Travel

Booking Holdings AI Transformation: How a $27B Travel Giant Cut Costs, Accelerated Developers, and Rebuilt Customer Service with AI

Booking Holdings exceeded its $450M restructuring target by $100M, cut customer service cost per reservation by ~10%, and deployed AI across five travel brands using a deliberate multi-LLM strategy that avoids vendor lock-in.

Leadership

Agentic AI: What Enterprise Leaders Need to Decide Before the 40% Cull Arrives

With strong ROI data on one side and Gartner predicting 40% of agentic AI projects will be cancelled by 2027 on the other, enterprise leaders face a decision that cannot wait for the next planning cycle.

Banking

Bank of America Erica: How a 20-Million-User AI Assistant Became the Operating Layer for One of the World's Largest Banks

Bank of America's Erica started as a simple banking chatbot in 2018. By 2026 it had 20 million users, 3.2 billion interactions, and a scaled clone running inside every major business line from treasury to wealth management. Here is what the system actually is, what the numbers mean, and what enterprises can learn from it.

Telecoms

Verizon Personal Research Assistant: How a 28,000-Rep Contact Center Used AI to Cut Call Times and Lift Service-Channel Sales by 40%

Verizon deployed a Google Cloud-powered Personal Research Assistant to 28,000 customer care reps, cutting call times and reporting a nearly 40% sales increase through its service team. Here is how the system works, what the numbers actually mean, and what other enterprises can replicate.

Financial Services

Goldman Sachs GS AI: How a Major Bank Built a Multi-Model AI Platform, Deployed Autonomous Coding Agents, and What the Productivity Numbers Actually Mean

Goldman Sachs rolled out GitHub Copilot to 9,000+ developers, built an internal multi-model AI platform serving nearly all employees, and piloted autonomous coding agents via Devin. Here is how the architecture works, what the productivity figures actually measure, and what other enterprises can replicate.

Leadership

AI Compliance Deadlines: What Leaders Must Prove Before August 2026

Colorado's AI Act fires June 30, EU AI Act high-risk requirements land August 2. The shift regulators and enterprise buyers are demanding is not better policies — it is auditable proof that your controls actually work.

Insurance

Allianz AI: How Europe's Largest Insurer Built Fraud Detection, RAG Underwriting, and a 7-Agent Claims Pipeline

Allianz deployed three distinct AI systems across its global operations: Incognito for fraud detection, BRIAN for underwriting guidance via RAG, and Project Nemo, a 7-agent pipeline that cut food spoilage claims settlement time by 80%. Here is how each system works and what the metrics actually mean.

Telecoms

Vodafone SuperTOBi: How a 300-Million-Customer Telco Rebuilt Its AI Customer Service From the Ground Up

Vodafone's SuperTOBi replaced a decade-old keyword chatbot with a generative AI system across all European markets, lifting first-contact resolution from 15% to 60% in its first pilot and achieving a 70%+ end-to-end resolution rate at scale.

Manufacturing

Siemens Industrial Copilot: How AI Is Cutting Engineering Hours and Maintenance Downtime in Manufacturing

Siemens Industrial Copilot embeds generative AI into factory engineering and maintenance workflows across 120,000 engineers and 100+ companies. Here is how it works, what it actually saved, and what enterprises in any sector can replicate.

Leadership

The AI Delivery Gap: What Separates Leaders Who See Results from Those Still Running Pilots

Accenture research shows only 32% of enterprises achieve sustained, enterprise-wide AI impact. The gap is not technology. It is delivery, integration, and organisational will.

Supply Chain

General Mills ELF: How AI Logistics Optimization Assesses 5,000 Daily Shipments — and What It Actually Saved

General Mills' ELF (End to End Logistics Flow) uses Palantir AIP and Google Cloud to optimize thousands of daily shipments. Here's what the system actually does, what the numbers mean, and what enterprises in other industries can replicate.

Financial Services

Mastercard Decision Intelligence Pro: How AI Fraud Detection Moved from Transaction Scoring to Pathway Prediction

How Mastercard rebuilt its fraud detection architecture around sequence-pathway prediction, what the performance claims actually mean, and what enterprises in any sector can take from the approach.

Aviation

Delta TechOps APEX: How AI Predictive Maintenance Forecasts Engine Parts 18–24 Months Out

How Delta TechOps built APEX, what the engine materials forecasting AI actually does, what the 2024 Aviation Week Grand Laureate story gets right — and where the honest limits are.

Leadership

Your IT Help Desk Is Already Obsolete

What autonomous AI workers actually are, why they are different from the AI tools your organisation already has, and what leaders should be asking their teams right now.

Financial Services

BNY Mellon's Eliza: How America's Oldest Bank Deployed AI to All 48,100 Employees

How BNY Mellon built Eliza, deployed 134 digital employees, achieved $550M savings, and what every enterprise should learn from America's oldest bank.

Retail Tech

Walmart's AI at Scale: The World's Largest Retailer's Biggest Bet Hasn't Shipped Yet

Walmart has deployed AI across supply chain, catalog, and maintenance at massive scale—but its most strategic bet, the Wallaby LLM, still hasn't launched.

Enterprise AI

IBM's Client Zero: What Deploying AI Across 280,000 People Actually Looks Like

IBM deployed AI across 280,000 employees and claims $3.5B in savings. Here's what the numbers actually mean—and what enterprise leaders should take from it.

Enterprise AI

Shopify's AI Operating Model: What the Numbers Actually Show

Shopify doubled revenue and halved opex ratio without doubling headcount. Here's what the Lutke memo, Sidekick, and the real numbers tell enterprise operators.

Autonomous Vehicles

Waymo's Robotaxi: The Technology Is Proven. The Business Isn't Yet.

Waymo robotaxi: 450K rides weekly, 6x safer than humans, $30B spent. The technology case is closed — why the business case remains the harder problem.

Agriculture

John Deere's See & Spray: What AI in a Physical Industry Actually Takes

John Deere's See & Spray saved 31M gallons in 2025. What it teaches about edge AI, data moats, and realistic deployment timelines in physical industries.

Fintech

The Klarna AI Customer Service Experiment: Three Acts, One Honest Lesson

Klarna's AI handled 2.3M chats then reversed. The full three-act story reveals what AI customer service really costs—and why the human fallback matters.

Finance

How JPMorgan Chase Rolled Out AI to 230,000 Staff — and Actually Proved the ROI

JPMorgan Chase's LLM Suite is now live for 230,000 employees — $2B spent, $2B saved, fraud down 11%, and full investment banking decks in 30 seconds. A close look at the largest enterprise AI deployment in financial services: what it does, what it costs, and what every bank should take from it.