Inside IBM: Deb Pimentel on AI, Innovation, and Toronto’s Advantage

In this episode of Toronto Talks, Deb Pimentel, President of IBM Canada joins us to share how IBM is helping Canadian companies unlock real productivity gains through AI. From a storied past in hardware to becoming a global leader in hybrid cloud and AI, IBM’s transformation is a case study in strategic reinvention.

She outlines how IBM is applying AI internally to improve its own productivity and how it’s helping clients do the same. If you want to understand what it actually takes to adopt AI in your business, this is not an episode to miss.

Transcript

Jason Chapman: 0:05

From the Toronto Region Board of Trade, this is Toronto Talks. Toronto, let's talk about how AI can do so much more for your business than just summarize meeting notes.

Deb Pimentel: 0:19

AI is really powerful. It's an extremely powerful technology, but it's not magic. So it takes thoughtful planning and execution to make sure that it's successful and is doing what you need it to do for you.

Jason Chapman: 0:35

IBM is a brand that almost everyone is familiar with. Most of us had an IBM tower sitting in our homes 40 years ago. Over the years, the company has evolved and is now a leader in AI and hybrid cloud technology. Deb Pimentel has been with IBM for most of that evolution. 30 years ago, Deb joined the company weeks after graduating from York University. Now she's the president of IBM Canada. To get a better understanding of how this iconic brand has grown over the years, Deb recently sat down with our president and CEO, Giles Gerson. Here's their conversation.

Giles Gherson: 1:13

Welcome to our podcast, Toronto Talks. Great to have you here. I want to talk to you, just get going here on this conversation about your trajectory, your career trajectory, because I think a couple of things. One, you've been president of IBM Canada for just over a year now, but your whole career has been at IBM Canada, which is, I think, extraordinary as you've risen to the ranks. I think it'd be a great idea to just give us a bit of a sense of how you've progressed and what are the high points of your career as you've gone along.

Deb Pimentel: 1:47

Yeah, thank you for having me. This is great. I started 30 years ago. I went to school at York University. I went to school down here, and I had every intention to continue to stay in school to do my master's and whatnot. And then I met who ended up being my first manager at a networking event. Oh, really? Yeah.

Giles Gherson: 2:13

At York University? At York University, yeah.

Deb Pimentel: 2:16

So I remember saying, okay, I'm about to graduate. I want to go do my master's, but I should probably network and see what's really out there. Started talking to different people. And I was actually at the end of that conversation, went to go get some water. And I started talking to my, who ended up being my first manager. And we obviously enjoyed our conversation. and he says, "Why don't you come and meet with us over the next little few weeks?" Three interviews later, I got offered a job at IBM. I finished school on the Friday. I started IBM on the Monday. Maybe in retrospect, I would have given myself a little bit more time between the two, but it was one of the proudest moments of my life because IBM was such an iconic brand. And I thought it was fantastic. I have had so many different jobs at IBM. I've had the privilege of being able to do, I've worked across our hardware brands, our software brands, technical, client facing, always. I've always worked in the Canadian market, even though we are obviously a global company, but I have always worked in the Canadian market. And part of that has always been focused on making sure that Canada is extremely relevant and important and acknowledged and making sure that we have access to information from all over right here in our country. So I have done a lot of different jobs. I'd say every 18 to 24 months I've sort of changed and that's been the privilege of my career which is I feel like I've done a lot of different things and I've been able to do it all within IBM. And it's always interesting and exciting and different. Always.

Giles Gherson: 4:13

Always. But just thinking about your trajectory over that period of time, IBM itself, as you've kind of hinted, has changed a fair bit. When I think of IBM when you started, I think of it as a hardware company almost. You think of the ThinkPad. For many of our listeners who may not be familiar with that, it was really the first big laptop that everybody had. And so it was a hardware company, and of course, international business machines implies hardware products. But now, AI is on everybody's lips. There's an explosion of interest and use of AI, particularly now as we move into generative AI. And IBM, I'm thinking back a number of years now, but when I think of Watson, one of the first examples of AI in action was really the Watson computer and you've kind of evolved with it. Let's talk a bit about your software lab, the work you're doing up in Markham and just how that fits with this really rapidly changing face of AI.

Deb Pimentel: 5:21

Yeah. We've been working with AI on these types of technologies for decades. This isn't something that's new for us. However I would say to you that last year, mostly last year, there were many people that wanted to talk about AI. Every board, every organization, that is what they wanted to talk about.

Speaker 4: 5:45

That was top of mind.

Deb Pimentel: 5:46

It was top of mind. And so we have been working with and making sure that we're working with different organizations to make sure that IBM is also top of mind as part of this ecosystem that is AI. So, you know, we believe that AI should be an open space so that you have collaboration and you have creativity and you continue with innovation. If you fast forward to now, I think what you're starting to see and what I'm hearing from working with different companies is AI was really something interesting to talk about you needed to have a path to ai but what's the value that ai is going to drive especially as most organizations are looking at how do i improve my productivity yeah i always say this organizations like my like our ourselves and and other companies out there there's really three things that drive you it's innovation as long as it's going to drive revenue not a science experiment. It's how do I take out costs and be more efficient without making sure that we don't hurt the identity of the company. And the third thing is risk. How do we ensure that we are mitigating risk? Because as you evolve and you get more deep into the technology space, there's a lot of risk. Absolutely. So what we're really focused on right now is how do we leverage AI to bring value to the organization. So if I just step back and I look at what we've done. So one of the things that we do like to do is we, if I'm going to tell you that you should be doing something, I probably should be doing it myself. So a few years ago, we went on this journey and we said, and we call it internally and we do talk to people about it. We call it our client zero story, meaning we are client zero. So how do I use AI to improve productivity? So our CEO said we will be the most productive company. How are we going to do that? You're not going to do it by eliminating people. You have to think through and say, how can AI help with this process? How can AI help me do my job better? How can AI improve our innovation and revenue without increasing our costs so considerably? So we have been able to, over the past few years, take out the last number we used was 3.5 billion. We're closer to 5 billion mark. We've been able to take out of costs.

Speaker 4: 8:31

Really?

Deb Pimentel: 8:31

Yes. And how we've done that is we've had to think through what our identity is, who we want to be, eliminate anything that didn't have to be there, simplify our different processes, and make sure we understood all of the information, all of the data that was under there. How do you automate that? And then how do you put AI so that you can make sure that you're lifting the value for the organization? That's transformative, that kind of change. It's massive.

Giles Gherson: 8:59

How did it affect your workforce? Because you talk a bit about the uniqueness of IBM as an organization and the role it plays in this space, in the region, in the province, and in the country. But how has your workforce evolved and how is it maybe different now than it was even a decade ago?

Deb Pimentel: 9:18

What we started to do, of course, everybody is going to at first go, what's going on? Does that mean my job goes away and whatnot? So we've done a few things to help with that. It's part of our culture. So part of the client zero culture is, we started this actually last year, we do a global WatsonX challenge. WatsonX is our AI platform. We do a global WatsonX challenge where we bring every single employee, not just our technical employees, every single employee, whether you're in operations or HR or whatnot. and we say think of a client zero story meaning how could it be better if how would you envision a process think about that and work together not all it like for like teams bring different people onto your team and create an opportunity for improving productivity or efficiency when you bring the employees in yes find of problem to solve but when you're bringing people in and you're asking them to help you solve that you would be amazed at how quickly that technology gets embraced so because they feel like they're part of a solution for one thing absolutely and that was the other piece of doing that as an example we didn't want it to be this is just for a technical person or a super technical person Everyone in our organization understands AI, understands what's next. Everyone in our organization understands how it could make things better. And that means that no matter who you talk to within IBM, not just the one person that might want to be talking to about buying something. Everyone in our organization understands the benefit of that technology to what they're doing. And then you can now have a conversation with somebody and say, this is what it did for us. How can it help you?

Giles Gherson: 11:14

So let's go outside the organization. So you explained how it's working inside, but outside, you've got a whole bunch of clients in the Toronto region, obviously, and across Ontario and across Canada. What would be a project where a company would come to you using the software lab, for example, in Markham and say, "I've got a particular problem I need solved around productivity." Can you think of an example that would help listeners understand the role that IBM plays in enabling companies to use your technology to advance their mission?

Deb Pimentel: 11:49

So we have a lot of clients that come into our Markham or our Toronto office, and typically it starts with understanding what is that company's identity. What do they want to do? Who do they want to be? Do they want to grow? do they have some issues so we sit and we do we'll do workshops we bring our experts to the client doesn't matter how big or small and we typically do a a workshop where we listen and try to understand map things out with them the next step that's we bring in those resources the next step would be now let's look at how our technology can help you along that journey and we know that we are one of many options that every client has. A lot of the clients that are coming in, we've been working with, working on building our ecosystem. We have over 200 ecosystem partners in Canada. A large part of them are here in Toronto. And we will work with them on embedding our software or any part of our portfolio as part of their solution. How do we do that? We surround them. they'll come in. So I'll give you an example. There is a wonderful ecosystem partner called Nocri. They are an AI-empowered talent assessment platform, and that is built on WatsonX.ai and Watson Orchestrate. So they'll come into the lab, we'll work with them, we will help them build what that solution is, and it is their solution that they are going in.

Giles Gherson: 13:30

product using your technology. Correct. That's an example. That's a great way of...

Deb Pimentel: 13:34

That's an example. Another business partner called Innova Marine, they are using AI to revolutionize naval maintenance with a tool that they call QuickBrain. Now QuickBrain uses IBM's WatsonX.AI and what it's doing is it's streamlining inspections by spotting defects, it's generating reports and it's prioritizing the repairs. So ship safety basically. Exactly. And so it's already helping. So they have an example where there's 16 French Navy ships that are improving accuracy and cutting errors and letting their crews focus on critical repairs. These are some examples. So there's a company out of Toronto is this or? No, this one, this is a business. This is an ecosystem partner and it's, they're using our software there. Naukri is absolutely out of Toronto. There is, you know, here's another example where you have to think a little bit differently on how you leverage AI. We work with Mitsubishi Canada, and they've introduced AI Power Intelligent Companion for their 2025 Outlander. And so this tool basically gives prospective buyers a personalized interactive 3D visual guide to the vehicle's features, enhancing their customer engagement and really the purchasing process. So that's another example.

Giles Gherson: 14:59

Those are some really interesting examples because they're quite different.

Deb Pimentel: 15:02

And I can keep on going because, but I'm not sure I want to tell you,

Giles Gherson: 15:06

they want me to tell you what their names are.

Deb Pimentel: 15:07

But I'll give you another example. We had a client just last week come in. They didn't know who IBM really was. We spent some time understanding what they wanted to do. And for them, it's really about improving efficiencies. They do cleaning of different buildings and whatnot. So improving the automation in their backend. How do they see their data? How can they make decisions really quickly? So it's a little bit, it's different.

Speaker 4: 15:41

When you come in, yeah, when you come in and you say,

Deb Pimentel: 15:44

oh, I want to talk about AI, many times it ends up being something else that we'll talk to them about and we will work with them on what is their journey to that automation and to embedding AI in their solutions.

Giles Gherson: 15:58

So you say improving their performance along the way, that's the mission for them.

Deb Pimentel: 16:01

Yeah.

Giles Gherson: 16:01

You've probably over your career even, but talked to so many clients who might have misconceptions about AI or about technology adoption in general. Do you think there's a kind of a couple of basic, not mistakes, but just how they think about how people, maybe how companies think about adopting AI. Are there, there's probably a right way and a wrong way of doing it. But what would be sort of advice you might have for companies, CEOs that are thinking about I need to advance technology in my organization. Just a couple of words of advice maybe for that in terms of what to do right as opposed to doing wrong.

Deb Pimentel: 16:42

Yeah, so there's definitely a lot of hype around AI. I would say a few things. One is avoid jumping to tools before you define strategy. And technology should always serve a business goal. So earlier I said, what's your identity? Who do you wanna be? Technology should serve your business goal. That's the first thing I'd say. Neglecting data readiness is a pitfall. So AI needs good governed data. Without that, even the best models are going to fail. Don't forget about the people. And AI is changing the way that we work. Invest in making sure that you're upskilling your people and also change management. really important to make sure that everybody is behind the changes. Try to avoid doing too much at once. Don't boil the ocean. So you go from everybody was experimenting. A lot of people will always say to people, need to get beyond the experimentation phase. You need to start actually doing things. But start small and it will grow from there. otherwise it will become extremely overwhelming and expensive and cumbersome and cumbersome uh ai is really powerful it's an extremely powerful technology but it's not magic so it takes thoughtful planning and execution to make sure that it's successful and it's doing what you need it to do for you so my advice is be strategic and data driven design your plan in a way that empowers the people who will be using it to benefit from the technology. So make sure that you design it that way.

Giles Gherson: 18:44

Do people understand? I mean, the point that really sort of I found important there was, particularly important was this idea of making sure you have the data. I've heard of companies that have brought in, like manufacturing companies that have

Speaker 4: 18:57

brought in, you know, consultants, for example, say, I really need to adopt advanced

Giles Gherson: 19:01

robotics in my plant. And then the company will say, the provider will say, okay, so where's your data? And they'll point to a filing cabinet. And that's not much help 'cause it has digitized. And so are you finding that companies in the region are moving quickly enough to digitize their operations so that they then are in a position to use AI effectively?

Deb Pimentel: 19:23

I think this is a really good time for people. People are thinking about it more. So everybody was talking about digitization. And when you start to realize you wanna put these types technologies, and by the way, we were one of them. When we, a few years ago, before this whole Client Zero mission of ours, we realized we have a lot of data. Things are all over. We're digital, meaning we're using technology, but if you don't know where it is, and if you can't make very quick business decisions and have analytics against that, then there's So I believe, like we were saying, AI was really, really the hype last year. I am seeing that organizations are now stopping, looking, redefining, understanding where is my data? Is it good data? Do I need to have all of this? And then they're building from there. So be more intentional is absolutely the best piece of advice I would give. most likely the data isn't where it needs to be.

Giles Gherson: 20:36

As we find ourselves in this particular economic moment, the desire to be more productive, to be more competitive, is going to be critical for the success of this region and the province and the country. And so digitizing and then using these AI tools to be more productive is going to be really important. Getting the sequence right is the important part of that. Deb, thank you very much. Thank you.

Jason Chapman: 21:02

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