Tag: Artificial Intelligence

The COVID-19 pandemic has accentuated the need for resilient supply chains and human-machine collaboration at work. Full or partial shutdowns, as well as social distancing regulations, impose factories and workspaces to operate with the minimal onsite crew. Despite labor shortages, supply chain disruptions, and other production challenges, manufacturers are under constant pressure to respond to the evolving market needs. The demands for mass customization, quality expectations, faster product cycles, and product variability are at an all-time high. Tackling these persistent challenges requires combining human skill and ingenuity with the strength and speed of robots. To bring the best of both worlds – human creativity and robotic precision – manufacturers should adopt cobots (collaborative robots) that can reduce human interaction in feasible situations and accelerate production cycles.
Cobots allow manufacturers to maximize production and address the changing demands while ensuring the safety of their employees, clients, and partners. Why are cobots the future of manufacturing? How do they help build manufacturing resilience? Let’s explore further in this blog.
Read more: What are cobots and how can they benefit industries

Cobots Enhance Manufacturing Efficiency

Collaborative robots or cobots are designed to safely work alongside humans in tedious, dull, and hazardous environments. Unlike the traditional industrial robots that work in fenced premises to avoid close proximity with people, cobots operate in a shared workspace alongside human labor. For instance, a robot that helps humans sort foam chips in a lab is a cobot, while a robot welding a sharp cutting tool in a restricted factory area is a typical industrial robot.
Conventional industrial robots have long enabled manufacturers to leverage automation and compensate for labor shortages, but they are typically designed to execute one specific task. Moreover, they lack the cognitive capabilities possessed by humans to reprogram their operations based on new circumstances. In contrast, cobots don’t require heavy, pre-programmed actuators to drive them. Cobot motions are steered by computer-controlled manipulators, such as robotic arms, which are supervised by humans. Thus, cobots facilitate effective human-machine collaboration at work.
Cobots can be programmed to perform a wide range of tasks in a factory setting such as handling materials, assembling items, palletizing, packaging, and labeling, inspecting product quality, welding, press-fitting, driving screws and nuts, and tending machines. While cobots attend these mind-numbing jobs, human workers can focus on tasks that require immense resourcefulness and reasoning.
Read more: Digital Transformation in Manufacturing 

Benefits of Cobots in Manufacturing 

Modern manufacturing requires effective human-machine collaboration to cut expenses, reduce time-to-market, and address growing customer demands. Here’s how cobots empower manufacturing enterprises.
1. Easy to Deploy and Program
It takes days and weeks to install and program a traditional industrial robot. A cobot, on the other hand, can be set up in less than an hour. They are lighter than conventional robots. With user-friendly mobile applications and customized software, you can swiftly program the cobot to get started. Right software configurations enable cobots to learn new actions, without any specialized training. Using intuitive 3D visualizations or simple graphical representations, you can move the robot arm to preferred waypoints. Your employees can focus on more critical tasks while the cobot takes care of mundane jobs.
2. Flexible to Perform Different Tasks
Cobots can be easily shifted from one workstation to another due to their flexible hardware. With minimal software customizations, cobots can be re-deployed or repurposed to perform different functions across various departments. For example, a cobot that performs picking and packing can be re-programmed as a filler by replacing its robotic arm with a tube and nozzle.
Read more: Challenges, Opportunities, and Technologies That Will Revolutionize Manufacturing 

3. Save Production Cost and Time
A study conducted by the World Economic Forum in association with Advanced Robotics for Manufacturing found that collaborative robots can cut nearly two-thirds of the cycle time required to pack boxes onto pallets. Because cobots are designed to work without any breaks, they reduce the idle time between cycles. The International Society of Automation reports that cobots can save production costs by reducing 75% of manual labor. Traditional robots increase the installation costs for manufacturers as they need to set up additional safety measures around the deployment area. Cobots don’t incur such extra expenses as they can be set up in close proximity to humans.
4. Improve Employee Engagement and Productivity
Cobots work in collaboration with people to refine and process the tasks better. They can never replace the human touch in production. When cobots take care of repetitive tasks such as screwing a bottle or packing medical equipment, employees can focus on more important functions such as running quality checks or inspecting a worksite. It allows manufacturers to optimize their productivity and boost employee morale. Businesses can also prepare their workforces to learn new skills.
5. Maintain Consistency and Accuracy
From the first to the hundredth task, cobots maintain the same level of accuracy and consistency. Humans can get drained easily, whereas a cobot never deviates from the actions for which it is set up. This helps ensure high product quality and uniformity. With the right software and hardware configurations, cobots can produce more finished goods at an incredible pace, faster than handcrafting.

Cobots and The Future of Manufacturing

Industry 4.0 paved the way for automation and smart manufacturing powered by data-driven technologies such as IoT, cyber-physical systems, wearables, AR, cloud computing, artificial intelligence, cognitive computing, and so on. Though the sole focus of Industry 4.0 is to improve process efficiency through physical and digital integration, it accidentally ignores the significance of human value in process optimization. Industry 5.0 re-shifts its focus on human value by fusing the roles of mechanical components and human workers in production. This makes cobots the very foundation of the next wave of the industrial revolution, that is, Industry 5.0.
Denmark-based Universal Robots reports that cobots are at the heart of Industry 5.0. Cobots democratize robotic capabilities, thereby serving as a personal tool that can be leveraged by any member of the workforce to apply creative skills and generate more value. Cobots can be used as a plug-and-play solution across a variety of manufacturing and industrial operations such as automotive production, food processing, chemical plants, medical devices, and kits, among others.
Since they collaborate well with humans in a safe environment, cobots will:

• augment intelligent decision-making,
• drive high-quality products to the market,
• enable mass customization and personalization,
• optimize manufacturing costs,
• generate new job roles (eg: Chief Robotics Officer), and
• boost virtual education to make the most of collaborative robotics.

Read more: How Custom Software Development Helps Manufacturing Industry 

How We Help Manufacturers Leverage Cobots and Other Emerging Technologies

As technology matures, manufacturing enterprises need to build use cases that prove the inevitability of human-robot collaboration. We help develop POCs and use cases that demonstrate how your business can benefit from cobots. Our experts can develop your cobot management software or mobile app from scratch or customize your existing software to address the evolving market demands. Fingent custom software development company can work along with your cobot hardware manufacturers to develop a robust software orchestration layer that can control the movement of your cobots. We also simplify the training process to help you get started in no time.

Better businesses need better cyber security.
Regrettably, threats to cyber security have become the new norm across public and private sectors. The pandemic affected all types of businesses. If anything, uncertainties around remote working amplified cybercrime. As a result, cyber security’s importance has become more clear now than ever before.
As cyberattacks become more sophisticated, businesses will have to stay one step ahead. Security professionals need strong support from advanced technologies like Artificial Intelligence (AI) to protect their companies from cyber threats.
AI can enable security teams to handle greater and more complex threats than ever before. More specifically, it has proven to identify and prioritize threats. In some cases, AI has even taken automated action to quickly remediate security issues. This article considers how AI can redefine the cyber security needs of an organization.
Before we discuss further, let’s find out the impact cyberattacks can have on businesses.

How Cyberattacks Affect a Company’s Performance and Value 

Protecting a company against cyber threats is costly. It can impact the relationship between your company and your customers.
Unfortunately, cyber threats are never static. Millions are created each year and are becoming more and more potent.
In a survey conducted by Hiscox-Cyber Readiness Report, 28% of the businesses that suffered attacks were targeted on more than five occasions in 2020. Companies have lost millions to such cyber security breaches. Companies like financial services, technology, and energy were hit the hardest.
That is not all. Cyber security breaches have caused several other damages including:

• Outlays such as insurance premiums and public relations support.
• Operational disruption.
• Altered business practices.
• Business’s standing and customer trust.
• Stolen intellectual property including product designs, technologies, and go-to-market strategies.
• Legal consequences.

Read more: Quantum Vs Neuromorphic Computing – What Will the Future of AI Look Like!

How AI Contributes to Cyber Security 

Cyber threats are real and certainly worrisome to businesses. It is important to protect critical digital assets.
However, it takes planning and commitment of resources. With good security operations, you can stay on top of most of the most serious cyber threats. True, there may be smart thieves, but Artificial Intelligence can provide smarter security.
Here are 5 specific ways AI can contribute to cyber security:

1. Robust Zero-Day Malware Detection

Malware is unpredictable. And signature-based tools will not detect attacks that have never occurred before. Given that, is it possible to defend against something unpredictable? Yes!
AI is cable of grasping all the possibilities and finding relationships that traditional security tools would miss. While traditional security strategies have their place in cyber security, they are insufficient to detect and prevent zero-day attacks.
Zero-day attacks are best detected by automatically identifying aberrant behavior and alerting administrators immediately. AI can enable organizations to be more proactive and predictive with their security strategies.
Artificial Intelligence provides visibility and security for an organization’s entire data flow. AI helps organizations gain such visibility by dismantling each incoming file to search for any malicious elements. Simultaneously, it also looks at the user and network behavior and anomalies from expected activities.
Together with ML, AI adapts its behavior to new network conditions, constantly adapting to evolving security conditions. Even those hackers who use modern ML penetration methods cannot be fool AI-enabled cyber security.
We cannot stop security breaches from happening. But Artificial Intelligence helps organizations avoid potential disruptions before attackers wreak havoc.

2. AI Can Safeguard Large Amounts of Data

Whether a company is small or mid-sized, there is a lot of data exchanged between customers and the company every day. This information must be safeguarded from potential cyber threats. Cyber security experts cannot always inspect all the data for potential threats.
AI is the best option to detect threats to routine activities. Because of its automated nature, AI can sift through large amounts of data in real-time and identify any hazards lurking amid the chaos.
Read more: Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning – The Cyber Security Heroes Of FinTech!

3. AI Takes Care of Redundant Cyber Security Operations

Hackers constantly modify their methods but the fundamental security practices do not change. Plus, they may weary your cyber security worker.
Artificial Intelligence takes care of redundant cyber security operations while imitating the best of human traits. It also does a thorough analysis of the network to locate security flaws that may harm your network.

4. AI can boost response time 

Ideal security is the one that can detect security threats in real-time. The principle of ‘a stitch in time saves nine’ applies here.
Integrating AI with cyber security measures is a sure way to detect and respond to attacks immediately. Unlike humans, AI does not miss a spot when examining your system for risks. Besides, it can detect risks early, thereby boosting response time.

5. Authenticity Protection

Most websites allow users to log in and access services or make purchases. You will need greater protection as such a site contains private information and sensitive material. To maintain customer trust, it is important to ensure all data about your guests remains safe while accessing your site.
Artificial Intelligence can provide an enhanced security layer. AI can secure authentication when a user wishes to connect their account. Login measures like CAPTCHA, fingerprint, and facial recognition are used to determine if the attempt is legitimate or not.
Read more: Safeguarding IT Infrastructure from Cyber Attacks – Best  Practices

Do Not Be Afraid!

Fingent is your reliable security partner. We provide professional security with reliable service. As a proactive security partner, we look ahead to ensure your business is successful far into the future.
Using AI’s real-time monitoring capabilities, we can spot potential issues before they become a major problem. Security experts Fingent are aware that cyber security threats are not limited to work hours. Our professionals here at Fingent software development experts will be there for your business whenever you need us.
We are in business today because of the reputation we built with our customers. We offer a unique level of enterprise IT support, and our clients can rest easy knowing that their business is always protected.
Give us a call and let’s discuss your security needs.

AI is not just a technology; it has become part of daily lives. Thanks to AI, we witness new kinds of development in each sphere of life every day. We can access many points with AI now more than we could ever before. From the research that we do on the internet to the goods that come to our doors, AI is directing our lives and business. It has solved many problems faced by humanity. And, revolutionized technology in all industries.
Coined at Dartmouth College in 1956, Artificial Intelligence (AI) gave succeeding generations a potential for information technology that can benefit humans in a profound way. Apart from bringing efficiencies, AI is also bringing new possibilities. These possibilities continue to create new models and opportunities for businesses that tap into them. Quantum and neuromorphic computing is the way forward.
This blog takes a deeper look into quantum and neuromorphic computing and explores which companies can benefit from these technologies.

A Look at The Future Of AI

The possibilities Artificial Intelligence can create are seemingly endless. Innovations are constantly taking place in the AI world. Given that, many business and information technology leaders are looking to better understand how it will affect their business now and in the future.
Taking a look at the future scenarios for how AI could evolve can help IT leaders demystify this emerging technology.  Two such technologies are called neuromorphic or quantum computing. They offer us a new way forward by fulfilling our AI-related dreams. The quantum computing market alone is expected to reach $2.2 billion by 2026, so it’s definitely worth looking into.
The future of AI also depends on improving the capacity of intelligent systems by using powerful hardware. Hardware such as neuromorphic computing and quantum computing will allow companies to build AI solutions that are extremely fast and can encapsulate more data and knowledge.
For example, a virtual assistant may now have the computing capacity to handle one or two products. But with more powerful hardware, it could cover more products. Advantages in this area are ongoing.
Let’s examine these in detail.
Read more: Answering The Top Burning Questions On AI Implementation For Businesses!

A Deeper Look into Quantum and Neuromorphic Computing 

Neuromorphic computation and quantum computing always seemed that they were years away. The fact is commercial neuromorphic chips and quantum computers are in use today. These two new technologies are going to change what looked like a straight path to Artificial Intelligence.

1. Neuromorphic computation

Neuromorphic computation attempts to imitate the way a human brain works. In simple terms, hardware and software elements of a computer are wired to mimic the human nervous system and cerebral system.
The goal of neuromorphic computation is to create devices that can learn, retain information, and make logical deductions just like a human brain does. It also attempts to imitate the human brain by searching for new information.
However, unlike quantum computing neuromorphic computing does is not that demanding. Where quantum computers need temperatures close to absolute zero, neuromorphic computers can easily work in normal conditions.
This increases its practicality and potential to integrate this technology in all kinds of devices.

2. Quantum computing 

Quantum computing deals with the world of atoms and subatomic particles inside those atoms. Unlike neuromorphic computation, quantum computing works on the principle of quantum entanglement.
So, the smaller the computer gets, the more powerful they seem to become. Quantum computing provided powerful new possibilities.
Though it is more complex than traditional computing, quantum computing opens the door to potentially solving very large and complex computational problems. It can potentially deliver a big computational upgrade for ML and AI computing.
Quantum computers will not replace traditional computers. Instead, they will require the support of traditional computers for their specialized abilities.
Read more: Driving Business Innovation and Success Through Sustainability

Industries That Can Leverage Quantum Computing and Neuromorphic Computation

1. Industries That Can Leverage Neuromorphic Computation

a) Aerospace and defense: Neuromorphic computing architecture can help in pattern recognition, event reasoning, and robust decision-making. It can also aid in adaptive learning and autonomous tasking for energy-efficient agile Air Force platforms.
b) Self-driving cars: Similar to space communications, neuromorphic computing enhances self-driving. In imitation of the human brain, neuromorphic chips attempt to think and learn on their own and then adapt their learning to unexpected scenarios on the road.
While conventional computers run commands sequentially, neuromorphic computers process and store data almost at the same time. This makes self-driving cars more energy efficient. It can also help autonomous vehicles learn skills and execute tasks more efficiently.
c) Healthcare: Neuromorphic platforms can be used for the hardware-based implementation of ML methods in treating Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD) in home-care environments. Real-time analysis of data can be obtained by bringing data from the backend onto a neuromorphic chip.
Furthermore, securing sensitive medical data on a single chip complies better with patient privacy regulations. Since neuromorphic platforms process data near a patient, it offers a large fault tolerance for medical applications.
Moreover, hardware-based neuromorphic systems require less computational power making them perfect for PoC medical devices.

2. Industries That Can Leverage Quantum Computing

a) Aerospace: By considering an exponential number of variables, quantum computing could help determine the optimal alternative for each route. It can also help find the best way to allocate resources so that the crew and passengers are impacted as little as possible.
b) Healthcare and Pharmaceuticals: Harnessing the power of quantum computing can significantly accelerate the timelines of various stages of the pharmaceutical research and development process. It can help life science companies by accelerating the speed of the pre-clinical phase and reducing the cost of drug development.
c) Finance: Quantum computing will be able to help solve the problems of customers in finance institutes. It can optimize investment portfolios and financial derivatives. It can also enable the institutions to accurately characterize anomalous transactions and rapidly detect fraud.
d) Chemistry: It is likely that quantum computing can be applied to simulate the properties and behavior of new molecular structures in chemistry. It can address the probabilistic challenges of quantum mechanics. In the future, quantum computing is expected to predict molecular properties for new molecules.
Read more: Data and AI: How It Has Transformed Over The Years And Trends To Watch out For!

Conclusion

In the coming years, advances in Artificial Intelligence will reach the superintelligence stage. However, the transition to new technology has already begun.
Many companies are incorporating this unique fixture as it has helped them achieve better sales and forecasts. It has also provided them with growth opportunities. Fingent top custom software development company is confident that you would also benefit from implementing this in your business.
Give us a call and let’s discuss what is best for your business.

Businesses are always on the lookout for ways to optimize processes and gain greater visualization. When processes work efficiently, the output of the product is higher. This leads to workflows that run smoothly with minimum errors and higher capacity. A good reason for the growing popularity of process automation and visualization.
Automation and visualization are the future of the business strategy. Gone are the days of carefully filling in graph paper by hand. Today, process automation and visualization help enterprises up their game by allowing access to real-time models capable of accurately capturing the nuanced data sets.
In this blog, we will expand on how enterprises can up their game with process automation and visualization.

How Enterprises Can Up Their Game with Process Automation and Visualization

Data visualization enables human operators to manage vast sets of data, glean insights from different information sources, and perform operations more intuitively and strategically.
In the current data-immersed world, data visualization can significantly add value by conveying large datasets visually. What does this mean for your business? This means a better grasp of critical customer data.
According to the IDC, the collective sum of the world’s data is predicted to grow to 175 zettabytes by 2025. Processing such large amounts of data can become a problem.
By allowing automation and the right programs to sort out your business data, you can generate graphs. You will be able to use these graphs to up your game in business competition.
Data visualization offers businesses the hope of getting a grasp on data. Fortunately, the human brain can process and recognize trends, identify potential issues, and forecast future development from clear visual displays.
Read more: How Powerful Is Data Visualization With Tableau

Look Out for Upcoming Powerful Trends in Automation and Visualization

1. AI and ML

Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning render visualization more accurate and efficient. These technologies enable businesses to handle customer feedback without bias. Process automation allows you to sort the feedback in real-time and according to your specifications.

2. Unlock Big Data with Data Democratization

Large amounts of data are hard to understand. It requires data scientists and other experts to unlock its treasures. Not anymore. Advanced no-code data analysis platforms can automate your data process. This is called the democratization of data.
Democratization of data leaves it malleable and easy to display allowing your employees any level of tech support. When this is paired with the data visualization type, it can unlock big data results for teams at all levels of your organization.

3. Video Visualization Is Here to Stay

Young and old alike tend to retain the information they see over what they hear.  This would mean that video infographics will be the future.
Video applications for business strategy and customer retention are key areas for future strategic data visualization implementation.

4. Real-time Visualization for Early detection

Knowing a problem at the exact moment it arises can assist businesses in customer retention and brand presence. Early detection can have a dramatic impact on the bottom line.
Process automation can help run a dashboard that allows users to submit their error reports to your customer support. Then the reviews can be tagged and analyzed using sentiment analysis.

5. Mobile Optimized Visualization

An increased number of people access the internet on their mobile devices. Your business needs mobile-optimized data visualization to stop customer churn.
It enables you to know if your potential customers are learning about your services through social media or an online review board. Though mobile-optimized visualization is an easy step, it is critical to keep your business on top of the game.
Read more: 7 Awesome Data Visualization Tools

Business Applications of Process Automation and Data Visualization

1. Financial Service and Insurance 

The finance service industry is a prime candidate for process automation and data visualization. Two top requirements of this industry are customer response time and compliance with strict regulations.
When automated, quick decisions can be made based on pre-defined rules like loan applications, claims processes. businesses can use data visualization to make reliable predictions or risk calculations in the financial industry.
Insurance fraud can cost billions of dollars damage.  Process automation and data visualization can improve fraud detection.
Read more: Deploying RPA for Finance, Healthcare, and IT Operations.

2. Distribution and Logistics

Process automation and data visualization can minimize costs by planning transport promptly, reducing costs of downtimes and maintenance.

3. Sales

Data visualization can greatly improve relationships with your customers. It helps you know the needs of your customers better, and address each of them directly in real-time.

4. Marketing

Data visualization and process automation can reduce marketing costs substantially.  These technologies can help evaluate the demographics, location, transactions, and interests of your customers. Visualizing these details can help you understand their purchase patterns.
Thus, data visualization can be used to create and target new customer segments. Cross-selling is another advantage. At the same time, data visualization may reveal that customers are dissatisfied. Identifying this and responding quickly can counteract the situation to retain your customer base.

5. Healthcare 

Process automation and data visualization enable cheaper healthcare. It can help predict disease occurrence and proactively propose countermeasures.

6. Science and research

Visualization enables the evaluation of the data of an experiment. Process automation and visualization can be advantageous especially when an experiment generates large amounts of data within seconds.

7. Production

Large amounts of data are generated during production. Using process automation and visualization can help plan preventive maintenance and prevent production delays or downtimes.

Prepare Your Business For The Future With Fingent 

Fingent helps enterprises automate document-based processes. We can help you create safer sharing and collaboration. Our platform allows you to create teams, assign roles and privileges, and streamline communication.
Fingent’s partner integrations allow you to use it together with your existing software. Our top-level measures protect our users’ data. The encryption we provide ensures content integrity and prevents alteration.
Fingent top custom software development company can help your organization reach the goal of paperwork elimination. Doing so can lead to efficient resource distribution throughout the organization.
What’s more, it reduces carbon footprint. Our experts bring along specializations supported by scientific rigor and in-depth knowledge of advanced techniques to design, develop, and deploy solutions for process automation and visualization.
Give us a call today and let’s get talking.

Educational institutions were among the most impacted aspects of society when the coronavirus unleashed its hold on the world. Over the course of 18 months schools, colleges, and universities all around the world have faced more than their fair share of problems. No matter how difficult adapting to a completely different mode of teaching and learning is, many institutions faced the challenge head-on, pivoted, and caught up with the rapid change successfully.
In this blog, we will examine the challenges that loomed in front of the admission and college selection process and how rising technologies like VR & AI have helped tremendously in successfully dealing with these challenges.
Read more: The future of Augmented Reality in EdTech!

The Pandemic – A Massive Challenge for Students 

Transitioning into the university lifestyle is usually a very significant part of an individual’s life brimming with feelings of anxiety, trepidation, and excitement. Adding into this already complex intersection of negative emotions, the aggressive transmission of COVID-19 has altered the higher education landscape on a colossal scale.
The pandemic created exponential threats to a student’s experience of streamlined higher education.  Poor psychological outcomes, increasing levels of social anxiety, inducing feelings of lethargy, and reducing overall academic performance are predicted in the recent college students. To top it all, new applicants are facing the most difficulty deducing if a college is a good fit for them or not without ever entering the campus because of the pandemic restrictions.

Admissions and the College Selection Process During The Pandemic 

The pandemic has forced universities and colleges to alter admission policies in recent years. There are constant updates in admission procedures that everyone must be aware of, whether it’s the extension of application deadlines or a change in how the admissions department will be evaluating applications.

1. New Selective Process 

Many institutions dropped stereotypical testing methods and canceled extracurricular activities, and admissions counselors have changed how they examine and evaluate applications. Admission staff are encouraging potential students to showcase their caliber, personality, and passions during admission, particularly how they pursued the latter accompanied by a world plagued by COVID-19.

2. Efflux Of Applications 

Since most popular universities and colleges decided not to consider SAT/ACT scores, they have faced a surge of applications creating greater diversity in the application pool. This hope is slightly misleading. Theoretically, it may seem as though the students have a good chance at admission, but this does not always translate into reality as these institutions still remain very selective.

3. Prosperity In Medium-Level Institutions 

A great number of students who didn’t find acceptance in popular institutions found their hope in Medium-Level Institutions 

4. Travel Restrictions

Due to travel restrictions, colleges provided online platforms for applications and even conducted interviews for admission through online mode.

Decrease In College Enrolment and Its Effects 

Although universities and colleges have tried their maximum to keep admission procedures streamlined, College enrolment has seen a massive slump due to the pandemic. There is a drop of almost 1 million college students enrolling in higher education since before the pandemic began. Compared with the fall semester before the pandemic in 2019, undergraduate enrolment has dropped a total of 6.6%, representing the largest two-year decrease in more than 50 years. Thousands of students, many from low-income families were forced to delay school or drop out because of the pandemic and the economic crisis it has created.
Health and economic factors play into why hardly any students are enrolling in college during the pandemic and why people are opting for better-paying jobs instead of spending money on college. Given that cost is still the biggest obstacle, it isn’t surprising that prospective students suggest “free college” for a bigger impact on them finishing or returning to college – a very interesting insight that legislators are currently debating on.
The impact of having students not enrolling in college affects their individual earning potentials, as well as the economy of the country. Research shows that getting even a simple post-secondary education can lead to higher wages, lower unemployment, and greater lifetime earnings. Without this, fewer people graduate with the skills, credentials, and degrees required for a higher-paying job, which means unemployment for the student and a lack of a skilled workforce for the community.
Read more: Answering the top burning questions on AI implementation for businesses!

The Timely Rise Of VR & AI 

“Change is inevitable and the disruption it causes often brings about new opportunities.”
Virtual Reality (VR) and Artificial intelligence (AI) are two cutting-edge technologies on the rise today. Their practicality has been proven in a number of fields and in the midst of the pandemic, these technologies grow greater.
Higher education administrative processes have started using AI to recruit, admit and enroll students. It acts as a powerful instrument in nurturing innovation and entrepreneurship in universities and it can accurately estimate demand, which means it can predict with precision how many applications to accept to achieve prime enrolment numbers.

Here are a few ways how AI helps: 

• AI-backed software scores an applicant against a set of significant factors based on past applicants and builds software for higher education. This is comparatively easier and faster than admission officers assessing each and every application on their own.
• AI eliminates situations where an admissions officer might know an applicant and be biased, robotically flagging a personal connection that exists between two parties.
• AI can customize, speed up and personalize the admissions process for intercontinental students, including visa processing, housing selection, and course registration.
• AI has the latent to create interventions for students suffering from homesickness or social isolation and is thereby an important tool for student welfare, ultimately attracting more student applications.

#1. How Fingent Utilized AI-enabled Chatbots To Create Enhanced & Engaging Learning Experiences

Fingent helped the University of North Carolina develop an AI-driven ecosystem powered by IBM Watson that facilitates students to interact with an AI-enabled Teaching Assistant(AiTA). Multiple Chatbots are set up to manage a wide range of student inquiries. Also, important documents and teaching materials are uploaded with keyword and tag searches to make them easily accessible. The environment enables to create a healthy student-teacher relationship, instruct and engage students effectively, and improve students learning experiences.

Virtual Reality on the other plays a major role in providing a mode for students to experience the campus without even stepping into the college or university with Virtual Reality Campus Tours. At Fingent, we were able to capitalize on this for our clients. By applying the latest mobile technology and 360-degree panoramic video abilities, we helped build apps that swiftly connect students with campuses of their choice through their mobiles, reforming and simplifying the complete search process. Deploying Virtual Reality to innovate campus visits is also helping increase admission rates from underprivileged areas of the country, allowing students to seamlessly find the right courses and campuses from anywhere!
Here are a few ways how VR helps: 

• A VR package allows overseas students to get a sense of what the community and campus are like.
• It creates a high-quality image of the college and by using cost-effective devices like Google Cardboard, keeping costs in check becomes a less daunting task.
• With the help of VR, you can give enrolled students (who have not already seen the campus) a more profound sense of campus life and community. The idea is to charm them to make time for an in-person campus tour.

#2. More On Gear Up – Deploying VR For Campus Visits

GEAR UP is a virtual reality-based app that helps high school students experience a college campus through Virtual Reality and 360 Video. GEAR UP creates direct connections to college campuses and curates the college choice process. It empowers individual exploration and is completely free to download, making it easily accessible. It invites students to explore colleges and focuses more on first-generation students. The Introductory videos are anticipated to assist students in finding a suitable college to fit their interests and give them a sense of where they might want to attend. GERA UP is created as an initiation to help increase the number of students from low-income backgrounds who seek to obtain a secondary or post-secondary education.

College admissions, learning experiences, and in a way, the entire education industry is on the brim of a massive revolution. Deploying technology seems like the only way to tackle the ever-growing challenges and adapt to the fast-evolving world. It’s time now to step into digital transformation. Connect with us today and partner with one of the leading custom software development and technology consulting companies!

One of the oldest known professions and also considered one of the most dangerous, Mining is now nothing like it used to be. The face of the mining industry has changed drastically. We no longer rely on physical hand and animal labor. Artificial Intelligence has stepped in. There is a lot going on.
Modern mines are sophisticated and machine-intensive environments. Whether we are extracting minerals and ores or gas, we need machines to extract, transport, refine, and move them to their destinations. AI is enabling the mining industry to be a safer and more profitable industry.

How AI Is Transforming The Mining Industry

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is driving innovation in the mining industry by transforming the way mines operate today. The mining industry is constantly looking out for ways to improve safety, productivity, and sustainability.
AI helps achieve these key factors by collecting data and using relevant information to optimize processes and improve equipment development. AI proves particularly useful when it comes to cumbersome and operations-heavy processes.
The use of AI can make operations and machinery even more sustainable in the long run.
Watch now: 5 Steps to Prepare Your Organization for an AI-enabled Future!

Benefits Of AI In Mining

Mining companies must become more efficient and innovative. This will help them keep their workers safe, mitigate their environmental footprint and remain competitive. AI plays a vital role in this. Here are some advantages of AI integration in the mining industry:

1. Improve resource discovery and planning 

The initial investment in mining can be very costly. The company must know precisely where and how to dig. A wrong location can cost millions of dollars. AI can help learn about the terrain they are working with and precisely map out and predict terrain better than any humans can do, effectively preventing those errors.
Artificial Intelligence can analyze vast amounts of data to find better resources. Better predictions will contribute to better planning and a better return on investment.

2. Cost optimization

Cost optimization is the primary motivation for mining companies to use AI. AI can analyze big data to help diggers conduct their operations more cost-effectively. It can also help them develop efficiency along these lines.
Mining companies can use the data collected to teach their machinery and prevent damage. AI can help automate different operational processes. It can also enable remotization that can substantially reduce labor, increase productivity and safety of workers. This can greatly reduce costs and increase productivity gains.

3. Preventive maintenance

Reactive maintenance can cost six to ten times more than predictive maintenance. On the other hand, predictive maintenance eliminates the risk of production halts ensuring operational continuity.
Furthermore, preventive maintenance makes it easier to maintain security protocol.  It helps in the early detection of wear and tear of important pieces of equipment. This can help workers to predict and plan repairs and maintenance.

4. Reduces environmental footprint

Mining by nature has a negative environmental impact. While it is not possible to completely eliminate the impact of mining, AI-monitored devices are capable of instantly analyzing and interpreting enormous amounts of sensor data. These systems can help you locate patterns that may be of concern.
AI can provide greater value and reliability to the industry while increasing safety and reducing negative environmental impact. It can optimize dust control measures for haul roads by helping workers to apply the right doses of dust control additives at the right time in the right way.
This will also reduce associated water, additives, energy, and other factors by 50%. This is in addition to preventing road maintenance frequency, avoiding accidents, and loss of productivity.

5. Enhanced decision-making process

In the mining industry every second counts. When there is a breakdown, administrators cannot afford to lose time waiting for an engineer to arrive. Thankfully, AI enables administrators to obtain valuable insight in real-time and automate part of the decision-making process. These insights allow them to respond promptly and appropriately.

Why Do Mining Companies Still Hesitate To Adopt AI?

There is no doubt that AI holds immense promise for the future of the mining industry. However, some mining companies still hesitate in adopting AI. As with the adoption of any technology, if not implemented properly, AI adoption can be difficult, time-consuming, and costlier than anticipated. Here are some AI adoption challenges and solutions:
Resources: Every business is concerned with budget and return on investment (ROI). As legacy technology does not support AI, companies need to invest in compatible infrastructure that is agile, flexible, and scalable. Opting for cloud-based services can negate the huge costs of investing in newer servers and processors.  Plus, it is a good idea to start small and scale up. It is also important to avoid unnecessary AI tools.
Industry culture: Leadership and culture that promotes experimentation and strategies will result in a more dynamic and scalable environment.
Lack of talent: AI technology is complex. Companies must thus look for people with the right mindset to help facilitate changes and capitalize on opportunities.
Governance: Only when leaders understand how AI fits into their business model can they encourage AI adoption.
Read more: Answering The Top Burning Questions On AI Implementation for Businesses!

How Can Fingent Help Resolve These Challenges And Transit To AI Capabilities At Ease?

Fingent has been at the forefront of leveraging the power of AI to empower leaders with the benefits of root-cause analysis and predictive insights. Our AI is built with the core philosophy of congruence between humans and machine capabilities.
Fingent can help deploy user-centric designs to enhance operational and machine reliability. We consider technology as an ally to enhance human intelligence and capabilities. Hence, our AI models can help solve many challenges that the mining industry faces.
Our AI solutions enable businesses to analyze voluminous, real-time data. Additionally, these solutions can also diagnose bottlenecks with the help of real-time monitoring and AI-powered predictive insights.
Fingent’s AI solutions can increase your productivity, reduce industrial waste, and enhance machine reliability. We can also help minimize the ecological impact of the mining industry while ensuring the safety of mineworkers.
We know that in the mining industry, each rock crushed is money saved or lost. We at Fingent understand that the mining industry needs to open up to modern operational practices that promote efficiency.  Our AI solutions are powerful enablers to help your get there. Let’s discuss how we can assist you.

Building a successful business is a marathon. But determination and a business growth mindset can make it happen. If you are a business owner looking for a consistent approach to growing your business, you must realize that the essence of your company is the ability to establish trust with your customers.

True, building customer trust and loyalty takes time, effort, and persistence. But when you build trust, you are turning the key to rich dividends as your customer evangelists gear up to advocate your business. In turn, it increases brand visibility, attracts more consumers, and increases revenue.

In this article, you will learn the importance of building customer trust and loyalty in the growth of your business. You will also learn how emerging technologies can help boost customer trust in 2024.

Why Building Customer Trust And Loyalty Will Matter The Most Going Ahead?

As the world battles to contain the current pandemic crisis, customer trust and loyalty are being put to the test. However, it is good to remember that this is just one of the many crises we will face in the future. Now is the time to let your customers know how important they are to you.

Customer trust and loyalty are not just important where competition is fierce. It is a brand differentiator that could make or break a business. In a way, customer trust is an “insurance policy” against any future upheavals. It can ensure your survival if you face problems in the future. It will also ensure that your business thrives when others struggle to find a foothold.

Customer trust and loyalty are also important because they are constantly bombarded with various options. And for obvious reasons, this will only increase in the future. The need to build customer trust and loyalty has heightened, thanks to the immediate effect of emerging technologies.

How Can Emerging Technologies Help Boost Customer Trust?

Technologies are continually evolving and will always impact customer trust and loyalty. The speed of this change is faster than ever now. With emerging technologies, companies must prepare by identifying those trends now and capitalizing on them before it is too late.

The influence of technology can be a powerful catalyst to build customer trust and loyalty. Businesses that do not choose to move with emerging technologies will be left behind and may have to face business disruption.

Today, customers are becoming more tech-smart. To boost customer loyalty and trust, businesses must stay up-to-date with emerging technologies. Here is how you can boost customer trust:

1. Technologies can help you keep your lines of communication open, fostering relationships
2. Converse where and when you need
3. Create a high level of personalization to promote brand loyalty
4. Create an experience both online and in real-time

Read more: Customer Retail Software Solution: Everything you need to know!

Technologies That Help Drive Customer Loyalty Through Unique Experiences

There are many opportunities to engage your customers and build their trust and loyalty. But that is only possible if your business is equipped with the right tools to capitalize on it. Consider some:

1. Chatbots

The influence of technology offers companies solutions to meet higher expectations. AI-powered chatbots enable businesses to better communicate with their customers. It helps you to be there with relevant messaging and information whenever the customers choose to reach out.

This has a significant impact on customer trust. It is noted that customers are increasingly willing to buy a product through chatbots.

Additionally, chatbots provide detailed records of conversations with your customers. This provides you with data that can be analyzed to gain insights on customer pain points. This data can also be used to improve your products and services.

2. Voice capabilities

Voice capabilities can be relied on to engage customer loyalty and facilitate actions. These capabilities can serve as a useful tool to the customer as it leverages data to make customers’ task simpler and more seamless.

Voice-enabled technology enables your company to do all these more efficiently.  Besides, it appeals to busy customers as it indulges them in a quick shopping experience. This builds customer trust and loyalty and encourages repeat business.

3. Virtual and Augmented Reality

Virtual and Augmented Reality (AR and VR) technologies are game-changers in the way businesses communicate and interact with their customers. They enable customers to educate themselves and solve their issues better than ever before.

Additionally, these technologies will provide your sales reps better understanding of what the customer is going through. Thus, it increases their empathy and enables them to come up with better solutions for your customers’ issues.

Virtual and Augmented Reality are enabling the visual journey of the customer allowing them to search by looking at an object. This can open to new experiences. The resulting data can be used for innovative engagement in the future.

Read more: 7 Ways Augmented Reality will Transform Experiential Marketing!

4. Customer Relationship Management (CRM)

CRM (Customer Relationship Management) is a tool for tracking and managing a customers’ journey. It makes communication between marketing teams more efficient.

A CRM tool allows retailers to analyze huge amounts of customer information including the feelings that drive customer behavior. This enables your company to establish a deeper connection with your customers. Using this technology will help you craft more highly personalized messaging and new features to your services and products.

5. Virtual showrooms 

Many shoppers still prefer the in-store experience. Virtual reality allows customers to see a 3D rendering of a kitchen or other renovations. It also allows customers to pick and choose the items they would like in their virtual room.

This technology can also be useful in purchasing clothing from the comfort of their homes as it allows them to mix and match.

6. Artificial Intelligence

Artificial Intelligence (AI) can help your business stay a cut above the rest. It is a great tool to build customer loyalty and trust.

AI can provide you with needed information to understand the purchase behavior and interaction patterns of your customers. This information can be leveraged to design products that suit your customers.

Natural Language Processing (NLP), computer vision, and deep learning can be used to analyze a vast database of visuals and text. You can use this information to identify the main themes in colors, patterns, styles, and so on of your products. These findings can be implemented while designing future products.

Gear Up for Exciting Opportunities

Emerging technologies uncover exciting opportunities for businesses and are poised to increase economic growth by building customer loyalty and trust. Are you in on it? Give us a call and let’s get talking.

Why AI? What Can AI do for me? When? How?

So many questions about AI! Considering that AI has become a revolution that has taken today’s business world by storm, it isn’t surprising that there are so many questions.

Most businesses can testify to the fact that Artificial Intelligence (AI) has improved the way their business operates. Businesses implement AI to increase efficiency, grow their revenue, and improve customer experience. Let’s explore the benefits of AI and get to some of the top questions about AI.

Read more: Artificial Intelligence: Taking the buzz out of the buzz word!

Importance Of AI Implementation in Business Today

According to the 2020 Global AI survey conducted by McKinsey & Co, 44% of the companies reported cost savings from AI adoption in their business. They also reported that AI adoption has decreased business units cost by at least 10% on average.  Is this the only benefit of AI implementation? Not in the least. Here is why AI is so important.

1. Efficiency 

Artificial Intelligence (AI) handles manual tasks at a pace and scale that is beyond human ability. This allows workers to move to higher-value tasks that AI technology cannot handle.

Such a well-calculated balance helps businesses minimize the costs associated with mundane tasks while maximizing the talent of human capital.

2. Shorter business timeline

Businesses are moving faster in this digital age. However, AI empowers businesses to move faster as it enables shorter development cycles and reduces the time taken to move design to production output. In turn, this shortened timeline delivers better and more immediate ROI.

Read more: How AI Integration Helps Maximize Your Business ROI

3. Improved customer service

Delivering a positive customer experience has become a determining factor between a successful and an unsuccessful way of doing business. Best customer service includes knowing the customer, their needs, and presenting customers what they need when they need it. That is exactly what AI can do constantly.

4. Near-instantaneous monitoring capabilities

AI’s capacity to process massive amounts of data can help businesses stay alert to issues, recommend action, and initiate a response. This prevents costly and disruptive breakdowns and thereby eliminates the cost of maintenance work. AI’s monitoring capabilities can also be effective in enterprise cybersecurity operations.

5. Error-free results

Human employees are prone to mistakes. By adding AI technologies businesses can ensure that errors are minimized as it can automate repetitive, rule-based tasks. This speeds up and enhances the entire process. Plus, it can be trained to improve and take on broader tasks.

Though AI has proven to be important for business success, some hesitate. Why? Let’s find out.

Read more: The future of Artificial Intelligence: A game-changer for industries

Why Do Businesses Still Hesitate?

Some decision-makers remain hesitant because they feel they are venturing into the unknown. Here are some additional reasons:

• Limited AI talent: Larger organizations are more likely to have the necessary technical skillset to understand the business case for AI investment. Some lag behind because they do not understand AI’s value proposition.
• Data issues: Insufficient quantity or quality of data is a common barrier to AI implementation.
• Concerns about responsible AI: Some have concerns about ethical breaches with AI.
• Concerns about AI investment: Many companies are concerned about moonshot investment.

Answering Top Burning Questions On AI Business Application

The rise of the popularity of AI welcomes several questions that must be answered to help businesses make informed decisions.

1. How does my business benefit from AI implementation?

AI cannot do everything. However, it can give your organization the ability to run automated tasks, pull reports and analyze data at the touch of a button. This can give you a strong competitive advantage. AI is capable of processing enormous amounts of data to unlock actionable insights.

2. When should I consider building an in-house AI-powered solution?

• When you are building something that differentiates your core product. If the project is not central to your business mission it probably isn’t the best use of your team’s time and resources.

• When you have a sizeable engineering infrastructure because you will need dedicated resources to build, maintain, train, and improve your solution.

• When no vendors can meet all your requirements. Here’s a tip: when evaluating a vendor, ensure to ask for customer references and case studies of companies where they successfully implemented their AI solutions. Using a vendor can often be faster, cheaper, and provide better results than what a company can build on its own.

3. How to evaluate if a company’s AI is “good?”

Here, “good” depends on human talent, data, algorithms, and computing power. In other words, it depends on the company’s ability to gather the best data and the best skill set to solve the problem at hand. So, it can be helpful to ask companies what is the quantity of data, compare the relevance of their data with yours, and how the system was built.

4. Why is AI relevant to customer service?

The businesses that skillfully weathered the storm caused by the pandemic provided their customers and employees with reassurance, stability, and easily accessible information whenever needed. Deploying bots on websites will increase the use of self-service and provide relief to phone or chat queues.

Read more: 9 Examples of Artificial Intelligence transforming Business Today!

5. How can AI be used for a quick win?

AI bots can handle high volume repetitive tasks as we have already discussed. These tasks include answering questions, scheduling appointments resetting passwords, and more. Automating these tasks can provide quick and economically substantial wins.

6. What are the pitfalls to avoid?

There have been designs that left customers adrift in a sea of endless menu options. To avoid repeating this pitfall, design your bot thoughtfully and within the context of the end-to-end customer journey. This must include a seamless path to agents where customers do not have to repeat the information.

7. How can Fingent help leverage the best of AI?

AI systems require training and Fingent understands that. We are here not just to implement AI solutions. We will train, monitor, and make sure that it works. We have an excellent track record with business cases showing the financial value of implementing AI.

Our experts at Fingent custom software development experts can develop solutions that quickly show financial benefits. We have invested in extensive training, which is why Fingent’s AI specialists can strategically plan data warehousing and cloud computing in their sleep!

We can build on a foundation of open-source software and develop an AI solution that fits your needs on commodity hardware. We can also choose a platform that is simple to deploy and manage. We assure you that Fingent can understand and support the complete lifecycle. Fingent can provide AI applications to solve the previously unsolvable. Let’s discuss your project.

The pandemic is now the biggest and most critical challenge of traditional banking. Some of these challenges are revenue pressure, data security, customer service management, data collection and analysis, risk management, and so on. These are the warning lights and alarm bells that call for caution over emerging risks. AI (Artificial Intelligence) has gained recognition as an effective solution.

AI is empowering the banking industry to provide individualized frictionless customer experiences. It is driving customer loyalty and profitability by automating banking processes.

In this article, we will discuss how AI can resolve banking challenges. We will also discuss some of the common challenges banks might encounter in implementing AI and how a tech partner can help deploy AI better.

How AI Can Resolve Banking Challenges?

AI is the new electricity – Andrew Ng.

Modern technology such as AI can be tailored to the specific needs of the banking sector. The digital age is opening up new opportunities. According to a Business Insider research report, banks are expected to save an estimated $447 billion by 2023 with the help of AI applications. Given that, here is how AI can resolve some challenges.

Read more: Digital Transformation in Financial Services: All You Need to Know

1. AI-enabled conversational interfaces

Chatbots are one of the most popular cases of applying AI in banking. Bots are programmed to communicate with thousands of customers with minimum expense. Insider Intelligence estimates that the adoption of chatbots could save the banking sector $11 billion annually by 2023.

Mobile banking has become the most popular and chatbot services attract users’ attention and create a unique brand identity. AI functionality in mobile apps is helping banks generate more revenue than when customers visit their branches. Banking organizations that leverage AI improve their quality of services and remain competitive despite the crisis.

2. AI-enabled data collection and analysis 

Banks generate an enormous amount of data every day. Collecting and recording this data is an overwhelming task for employees. Besides, all this work may be a wasted effort if there is no proper plan to use this data. Hence banks need to determine the relationship between the collected data. That is another major challenge.

AI-based apps improve the user experience by collecting and analyzing data. The collected data then can be used to grant loans or fraud detection.

3. AI-enabled Risk management

Providing loans is a challenging task for bankers. Extension of credit to a fraudster can get the bank into difficulties. Or a borrowers’ economic downturn can adversely affect the bank. 2020 statistics show that credit card delinquencies in the US alone rose by 1.4% in a duration of six months.

AI-enabled systems can appraise a customer’s credit history more accurately. Additionally, AI-powered mobile banking apps track financial transactions and analyze user data to help banks anticipate the risks associated with the extension of credit.

4. AI-powered data security

Credit card fraud is on the rise. It is the most common type of personal data theft. AI-powered systems can analyze customer behavior, location, and financial habits. So, if it detects any unusual activity, it triggers a security mechanism immediately.

Read more: Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning: The Cyber Security Heroes Of FinTech

When all these challenges are successfully tackled, how does the AI-powered bank look like? Read on to find out.

How Does The AI-First Bank Look Like?

AI-bank rises to meet customers’ expectations and remain competitive. The AI-powered bank will offer intelligent and personalized propositions and experiences as it understands customers’ past behavior. It can span across multiple devices providing a consistent experience to its customers.

What Are The Common Challenges Banks Might Face In Implementing AI?

Implementing AI technology in banking is not always easy.  You need to ensure you have the right team and expertise. You will also need access to data, resources to invest in the project, and parties that are willing to adopt the new technology.

• Access to data: It is one of the biggest challenges to implementing AI. Additionally, banks might face challenges with training data. It becomes hard to update or improve the AI models if the team does not have the necessary information to use and learn from.

• Localization: Localization is critical to the banking sector as they often need to design models with multiple markets that they serve. Localization can help you properly customize the customer experience. Your data partner can support you with localization as they have skilled linguists to develop aspects such as style guides and voice persona.

• Security and compliance: It is quite challenging to keep all the data confidential and secure. The right data partner can offer a variety of security options. They have security standards to ensure your customers’ data is securely handled.  Look for data partners who have strong data protection with certifications and regulations. They will be able to provide secure annotation. They will also provide onsite service options, private cloud deployment, on-premise deployment, and so on.

• Trust, transparency, and explainability: AI models can only be successful if they can be understood and trusted by customers as they will want to be sure that their personal information is handled and stored securely. Talk to your partner and ask them to explain the model to you. Or you can always go back to the training data that was used to develop the model and extract some explainability.

• Data pipelines: Connecting data pipeline components to use siloed data is not as easy as it seems. To do this effectively, banking institutions must ensure their data is collected and structured correctly. They must also ensure that this information enables ML models to predict according to the business goals. Look for a partner with extensive security offering as their expertise will enable your banking service company to be successful and scale.

Read more: The New Untapped Opportunities for FinTech Companies in the Coming Years

How A Tech Partner Like Fingent Help Deploy AI Better?

Implementing AI into banking is a serious responsibility. It takes in-depth knowledge, an enormous amount of time, and dedication to accuracy. That is what Fingent has. We do not just follow the trends. Instead, we focus on how AI can add value to your particular banking needs.

Fingent top custom software development company, can bring transparency and explainability of AI automated decision making to your banking processes. We can provide an easy-to-use interface through APIs delivered either on-premise, in the cloud, or as a SaaS offering.

By embedding AI and ML into our products, we can accelerate the release of explainable business models that will underpin new AI use cases. These can help create a seamless customer journey and automate manual processes with self-learning capabilities. We are confident that we can help you deploy AI better. Give us a call and let’s get talking.

Undoubtedly, data is what we see almost everywhere, and it is enormous. And it doesn’t stop there, it is growing continuously at a level beyond imagination! Let’s have a look at how it has changed over the years.

A look into how Data and AI transformed in years!

In the 1950s, when there were fewer technological developments, companies would collect the data(offline) and analyze it manually. This was also backed by limited data sources that made it time-consuming in obtaining the results.

The mid-2000s paved the way for changing the world for the better and it was during this time the term “big data” was coined. Almost every business that had something to do with digital infrastructure started looking for ways to use the large data and come up with meaningful insights.

This era also saw the invention of tools like Data mining, OLAP, etc., taking technological advancements to the next level. In general, the internet gained immense popularity not only for organizations but also for households. During this time, technology became more advanced and provided automated options for managing data, and data analysts could analyze data, trends, etc., and provide better recommendations.

Google, Amazon, Paypal, and others also made a mark causing the volume of data to reach newer heights. However, all this posed a storage and processing problem.

The late 2000s to early 2010s saw a surge in Facebook, Twitter, Smartphones, and connected devices. The companies used improved search algorithms, recommendations, and suggestions driven by the analytics rooted in the data to attract their customers. Enterprises also realized that would have to deal with unstructured data and so they got familiar with databases such as NoSQL. New Technologies were introduced for faster data processing and machine learning models were used for advanced analytics.

Now, businesses are a step ahead and using automated tools using cloud and big data technologies. With cloud platforms, it is now easier to enable massive streaming and complex analytics.

Read more: 5 ways in which big data can add value to your custom software development

Having seen how data has evolved over the years, let’s have a look at how Artificial Intelligence has transformed in the last generation.

In 1950, a British mathematician and WWII code-breaker- Alan Turing was one of the first people to come up with the idea of machines that could think. To date, the  Turing Test is used as a benchmark to determine a machine’s ability to think like a human. While this notion was ridiculed at the time, the term artificial intelligence gained popularity in the mid-1950s, after Turing’s death.

Later, Marvin Minsky, an American cognitive scientist picked up the AI torch and co-founded the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s AI laboratory in 1959. He was one of the leading thinkers in the AI field through the 1960s and 1970s. It was the rise of personal computers in the 1980s that sparked interest in machines that think.

That said, it took several decades for people to recognize the true power of AI. Today, Investors and physicists like Elon Musk and Stephen Hawking are continuing the conversation about the potential for AI technology in combination with big data could have and how it could change human history.

AI technology’s promising feature is its ability to continually learn from the data it collects. The more the data it collects and analyses through specially designed algorithms, the better the machine becomes at making predictions.

Impact on business

AI and big data have an impact on businesses like never before. Whether it is workflow management tools,  trend predictions, or even advertising, AI has changed the way we do business. Recently, a Japanese venture capital firm became the first company ever to nominate an AI board member for its ability to predict market trends faster than humans.

On the other hand, data has been the primary driver for AI advancements. Machine learning technologies can collect and organize a large amount of data to make predictions and insights that otherwise cannot be achieved with manual processing. This not only increases organizational efficiency but reduces the chances of any critical mistake. AI can detect spam filtering or payment fraud and alert you in real-time about malicious activities.

AI machines can be trained to handle incoming customer support calls thereby reducing costs. Additionally, you can use these machines to optimize the sales funnel by scanning the database and searching the Web for prospects that have similar buying patterns as your current customers.

Read more: The Future of Artificial Intelligence – A Game Changer for Industries

5 trends in data and artificial intelligence that can help data leaders.

1. Customer experience will be the key

Supply chain and operating costs will mean nothing if you are unable to hold on to your customers. Today, businesses have to be more connected with their customers to be on top of the game. From in-person and digital sales to call centers, companies will have to collect data to have a holistic view of the customer. Businesses must consider other forms of interaction such as using voice analytics to understand how customers interact with call centers or chatbots.

2. Leveraging External data

External data can provide early warning signs about what’s going on. To make external data work, companies must start with a business problem and then think about the possible data that could be used to solve it. That said, companies might need to modernize data flows to leverage external data.

While many businesses have started leveraging external data, some companies haven’t leveraged it yet as they are either too focused on internal data or finding it difficult to transfer data.

A prime example of brands that used external data is Hershey’s Chocolates. It leveraged external data to predict an increase in the number of people using chocolate bars for Backyard S’mores and a decline in sales for smaller candy bars for trick-or-treating.

3. CDOs leading the way towards a data-driven culture

Introducing any new technology without training your employees to adapt and figure out new skills and processes will not be effective. According to Cindi Howson, chief data strategy officer at analytics platform provider ThoughtSpot, Chief Data Officers (CDOs) need to take the lead and empower their employees and the organization to gain time and efficiency with data.  Also, CDOs will have to make sure to upskill employees to take full advantage of new technology.

4. Multi-Modal learning

With advances in technology, AI can support multiple modalities such as text, vision, speech, and IoT sensor data. All this is helping developers find innovative ways to combine modalities to improve common tasks such as document understanding.

For example, the data collected and processed by healthcare systems can include visual lab results, genetic sequencing reports, clinical trial forms, and other scanned documents. This presentation, if done right, can help doctors identify what they are looking at. AI algorithms that leverage multi-modal techniques (machine vision and optical character recognition) could augment the presentation of results and help improve medical diagnosis.

5. AI-enabled employee experience

Business leaders are starting to address concerns about the ability of AI to dehumanize jobs. This is driving interest in using AI to improve the employee experience.

AI could be useful in departments such as sales and customer care teams that are struggling to hire people. Along with robotic process automation, AI could help automate mundane tasks to free up the sales team for having a better conversation with customers. Additionally, it could be used to enhance employee training.

Read more: 9 Examples of Artificial Intelligence Transforming Business Today

Conclusion

Leveraging data and Artificial intelligence has grown due to the pandemic and businesses are digitally connected than before the lockdown.

At Fingent, we equip business leaders with insights, advice, and tools to achieve their business goals and build a future-proof organization. To learn more about how we fuel decision-makers to build successful organizations of tomorrow, contact us.