Semiconductor company onsemi has successfully transformed its operations using AI-driven digital transformation, achieving remarkable improvements in customer support accuracy and setting ambitious sales targets. Under CEO Hassane El-Khoury’s leadership since 2020, the company shifted from being a fast follower to a leader in power and sensing technologies by implementing seven comprehensive “digital threads” that integrate AI and automation across all business processes.
What you should know: onsemi developed a systematic approach to AI transformation by creating interconnected digital workflows spanning the entire organization.
- The company established seven “digital threads” covering Idea to Market, Lead to Order, Plan to Fulfill, Source to Pay, Silica to Chip, Record to Report, and Hire to Retire.
- CIO Neeraj Vijay emphasized that “people, processes, technology, and data needed seamless integration for these digital threads to come to life,” describing AI as the brain and automation as the hands.
Key breakthrough in technical support: The company transformed its global customer support model using AI-powered retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) technology.
- Previously requiring 50+ engineers to support customers across four continents, onsemi created an AI-first community that provides immediate responses to technical queries.
- The system pulls knowledge from thousands of specialized engineering documents, though accuracy initially started at just 55%.
- Through focused data quality improvements and human-in-the-loop processes, the system now delivers 80-90% accuracy on technical responses.
In plain English: Think of this like having a super-smart digital assistant that can instantly search through thousands of technical manuals to answer customer questions. Instead of waiting for a human engineer to research the answer, customers get immediate responses that are correct 8-9 times out of 10.
What they’re saying: Customer and engineer feedback highlighted the transformation’s impact on efficiency and job satisfaction.
- Customers were “enthralled with the speed and promptness,” according to Vijay.
- Engineers can now focus their expertise on addressing more complex customer problems rather than routine inquiries.
Sales innovation: onsemi developed an AI-powered cross-selling advisor that identifies technical opportunities across their complex product portfolio.
- Unlike simple e-commerce recommendations, the system requires deep technical knowledge to suggest relevant products for various applications.
- Initial adoption struggled until the company integrated AI insights into existing Salesforce workflows.
- The company has set an ambitious year-one goal of $100 million in incremental sales pipeline leveraging the cross-selling advisor.
Strategic partnerships: onsemi partnered with LTIMindtree, a global IT services company, and Snowflake to build the data foundation essential for AI success.
- LTIMindtree handles data curation, data lake management, and proper data tagging as onsemi’s strategic partner in their “digital thread journey.”
- Snowflake provides the unified data platform creating a single source of truth for accurate AI outputs.
- This partnership approach allows onsemi to focus on AI implementation while ensuring robust data infrastructure.
The big picture: onsemi’s journey demonstrates that AI transformation success depends heavily on data quality and organizational alignment rather than technology alone.
- The company’s focus extends beyond specific use cases to building AI-first thinking across 5,000 knowledge workers.
- From research acceleration to structured data analysis, onsemi is fundamentally changing how problems get solved by weaving AI into business operations rather than adding it as an afterthought.
How onsemi leveraged their data to successfully redefine AI