Flex, an HR data-driven artificial intelligence platform company, is stepping up its push into the enterprise AI market through a partnership with Microsoft Korea.
Flex said on Oct. 21 that it signed a memorandum of understanding with Microsoft Korea on Oct. 20 to support AI transformation, or AX, at South Korean companies. Flex CEO Jang Hae-nam and Microsoft Korea CEO Cho Won-woo attended the signing ceremony.
Under the agreement, the two companies will cooperate in three areas: joint sales to corporate clients in South Korea, product and technology integration, and reviewing the use of each other's solutions. Flex registered as an official Microsoft partner in September, ahead of the agreement.
Flex plans to tap Microsoft's corporate client base to expand in the market for large and midsize companies. It will pitch its solutions alongside Microsoft 365 Copilot to companies already using the tool, and the two sides will also build joint sales and customer support systems. They will additionally pursue ways to raise corporate AI adoption by linking their technologies.
The core of the deal lies in combining Microsoft's workplace data with Flex's personnel and organizational data. Microsoft 365 accumulates work-related data such as emails, meetings and documents. Flex holds personnel data including employees' jobs, roles, goals and skills, as well as information on relationships within an organization. The two companies will pursue technical cooperation to connect that data with Work IQ, Microsoft's technology for analyzing workplace context, so that Copilot can provide answers that take into account a user's job and role within the organization.
The two sides are also considering a "Customer Zero" arrangement, in which each adopts the other's solutions in its own workplace to verify how well they work. Flex is reviewing plans to introduce Microsoft 365 and the Azure cloud platform in its own operations, and intends to apply the experience gained to its future business with clients.