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[la forge] 23/10/2017 12:38

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European bank is first company in world to put AI fully into it's CRM
21 minutes ago | 311 views | 0



A lot of activity happened last week when Ulster Bank, a subsidiary of NatWest and part of RBS Group announced that it had end-to-end implemented Salesforce Einstein, the new Artificial Intelligence platform. The entire solution was designed, developed, frontline tested and rolled out in under six months by Atos, the largest European service supplier of Analytics and High Performance Computing.

For me personally, being the responsible lead of the Atos and Salesforce team on this project, it especially pleasing to see a European Bank challenge the usual modern status quo of the Amercian banks leading innovation. By the time US Bank, the 5th largest Commercial and Corporate Bank in the US announced it's intention to implement Salesforce Einstein, Ulster Bank had already rolled out.

This ambitious contract comprised of a full renovation of the existing Salesforce CRM platform (incorporating Einstein and migrating to Salesforce Lightning), a data quality cleanse of the platform and the build of a new Single Customer View (SCV). Atos designed and implemented the platform to also include a next-best product recommendation engine in order to optimize managers’ time to respond to the needs of its customers. The new platform will support Ulster Bank to enhance customer relationships, deliver greater business efficiency and increase sales revenue.

This is the first full-scale implementation of Salesforce Einstein in that it incorporates both internal CRM data and additional external customer data in one platform. Salesforce Einstein is the first-ever comprehensive CRM Artificial Intelligence (AI) platform.

This challenging project was achieved in record time. Atos drew expertise from a global development team based across five time zones, which it managed to accelerate delivery from what would traditionally have been years to just six months, working closely to agile software development methods. The combination of Ulster Bank and Atos specialists, working closely with the Salesforce team, together with essential input from the Bank’s customer relationship, product, process and customer experience teams delivered the necessary level of expertise and commitment to successfully complete the project in such a short timescale.

Features and benefits of the new platform include:

Significant insight into customer and consumer data generated, through services from Atos Codex, Atos’ offering for advanced business-driven analytics, IoT and cognitive solutions, which can be used to:
influence product development and management
more effectively respond to customers’ specific needs, preferences and expectations
Single customer view (SCV) in order to better target and personalize future customer interactions
Enhanced optimal product recommendation prediction and targeting – to minimize human effort, maximize sales and improve customer experience
More effective resource management releasing cost savings, efficiencies and synergies across the business
Predictions and alerts on customer opportunities, and syncing with other apps on multiple devices to support Relationship Managers whether in the office or remote

Ulster Bank chose Atos’ unique proposition on the basis of the strength of the vision, the fully joined-up approach, the level of innovation and the end-to-end solution that brought AI into the heart of the Bank. Atos’ expertise in Business Analytics Services is recognized globally by analyst Gartner as it was positioned as a Visionary in its Magic Quadrant for Business Analytics Services Worldwide, 2017. Ulster Bank is now investigating other advances using the platform, including better customer journeys, customer communications and knowledge sharing, plus even closer integration of the platform with the Bank’s infrastructure and business.

The news of Ulster Bank's success was covered by many leading publications. Here are just some of a few:

Irish Times
Computer Weekly
Nasdaq

[waldron] 13/10/2017 07:48

CFA Institute Talk
What is City Talk? Latest
How artificial intelligence could change the way you save money
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Sahil Sethi
Sahil Sethi, CFA, is a senior strategist in the Defined Contribution team at Sta [..] Show more
Is the future of pensions in the hands of Siri and Alexa?
Is the future of pensions in the hands of Siri and Alexa? (Source: Getty)

A conversation in the not-too-distant future:

Sarah: Hi Eva.

Eva*: Hi Sarah, how’s it going? You came home early today.

Yeah, I wasn't feeling too well so thought I would have an early night.

What’s the problem?

I have a booming headache and a runny nose.

Sound’s terrible. Would you like me to order some cold and flu tablets? They should be with you tomorrow morning before you leave for work.

That would be great.

Excellent. I will do that now. Oh, by the way, I checked your bank account today and you have been good this month. You have an extra £50 in your account. Should I put that in your savings?

Sure, where will you put it?

As you didn't top up your pension last month, I recommend you put it all in your pension account.

Okay, why not? Where do you think I should go tomorrow night?

Why don’t you take it easy and stay in? I can order some wine and download a new series that I am sure you will love. How does that sound?

Eva, you know me better than myself. Thanks!

* Eva is Sarah’s artificial intelligence (AI)–driven alter ego who learns from Sarah’s experiences and those of others like her who are plugged into the same online global ecosystem.

To some, this conversation might seem farfetched. But to others, it’s very close to a reality. With the creation of Alexa, Siri, Cortana, Google Assistant, and other chatbots, the battle to control the entryway into our lives is now being fought in our homes.

These new interfaces are changing how we look for and consume information and have far-reaching consequences for all businesses, especially consumer-facing ones.

With this in mind, how might artificial intelligence (AI) affect the world of retirement accounts, specifically defined contribution (DC) plans?

To answer this question, I asked myself: What could an intelligent self-learning AI system do for my financial life? Ideally it should be able to:

Track and help budget my money.
Negotiate the best deals with banks, utilities, and other service providers, switching services after finding better deals.
Help me save by setting targets and mapping out the steps for me to achieve them.
Account for my personal preferences while doing all of the above.

Does this sound impossible? Maybe today, but it’s not far off on the horizon.

So if this scenario is approaching, what will the transition look like? I have broken the process down into four stages along with their potential timelines:

Stage One (2017–2019)

Many retail investors distrust independent financial advisers (IFAs) and the vast majority of the population can’t afford them. As a result, technology-led, rules-based advice will play a major role.

The pension freedom reforms in the United Kingdom unleashed a deluge of cash that needs to find a home — and not necessarily in savings accounts. Where will this money go? To the firms that can provide the most holistic advice, not those who deploy an impersonal and formulaic approach — “We classify you as a three rating, so you should put your money into Multi-Asset Fund C.”

A human touch is required to win over consumers who may be sceptical about machines managing their money and telling them what to do.

Dig deeper into the topics of AI and finance on Market Integrity Insights, a CFA Institute blog.

Stage Two (2020–2022)

With auto-enrolment already in place, what comes next? Increasing default contribution levels doesn't sound nearly as enticing as pulling millions more people into the savings world.

Why not develop more personalized defaults settings? Why not crunch all that data and create unique, individualized paths and instant communication experiences?

Stage Three (2023–2024)

So far, robo platforms help people figure out what to invest in. So consumers have to consciously decide to save, seek out information, and land on the right website.

The challenge in Stage Three will be luring the disengaged into the saving process: to help them make better choices but leaving the investment decisions to the experts. Eva or Alexa or Siri will be able to track their spending, suggest options to cut down where required, and keep them on track for their goals.

Think of them as personal financial fitness trainers. If personal spending goes over budget, Eva may step in and suspend your Apple Pay account.

Stage Four (2025–2027)

With fee transparency, few surviving providers, and robos directing consumers to the most suitable investment products and strategies, the employer’s role in retirement funds will probably diminish. In turn, true personal pension accounts, akin to bank accounts, will likely emerge at the expense of company-run plans. The default investment options will be determined by robos, not company committees. More importantly, the default position will be based on personalized data.

2027 and Beyond

I’ll leave this to your imagination.

If you believe the trend toward voice-assisted living will transform the financial industry, think about the other business models that depend on customers and clients looking at a screen. What are the implications for search engines, the advertising industry, and the 80% of apps that have more or less a single utility — Starbucks’ free weekly coffee app, for example?

If you are not on Amazon’s website, how will Amazon recommend products to you? How will Google generate ad revenue if people don’t see its screen? Questions like these are occupying the minds of engineers in the tech industry, and the stampeding pace of technological progress is proof that it doesn't take much for the disruptors to become the disrupted.

So who do I think the winners will be?

Those businesses that are closest to their customers and open to collaborating to create plug-and-play propositions.

Let me clarify: Eva or Siri may know what was said, but they may not know what to make of it. This is where collaboration comes in. For example, if I order milk, the context is very clear, but my request can only be fulfilled if Eva has access to a service that can provide it. That may mean plugging into a supermarket’s bot.

So who will win this tech war? It could be Google or Amazon. But it could also be your local bank or supermarket.

Maybe my timeline will be extended in some places and crunched in others. But the doorway into our lives is being transformed by this high-stakes tech revolution.

[hazl] 03/10/2017 07:42

agree skirbell good post.

interesting better than title

[grupo guitarlumber] 27/9/2017 17:05

THANKS SKIRBELL

[skirbell] 27/9/2017 13:44

Interesting discussion here. AI is a long way from a Terminator style rise of the reobots. It's also some years/decades away from doing everyone out of work. The main hurdle for AI to get over is regulation and the ability for any industry/company/individual to cope with change. You can't revolutionalise everything everywhere at the same time - there isn't enough capacity to do this.

The biggest two risks today with AI are one of ethics and the other of understanding. With ethics, put simply, just because you can point an algorithm at a data set to determine something, doesn't mean that you should.

With understanding, the risks are more complex. Most learning algorithms try to make sense of non linear data sets and are either closed or continuous. Closed learning is trained, tested and then used with no additional learning applied. These work until they don't and it's recognising when they don't and stopping them quickly enough that is the risk.

With continuous learning, as a human you cannot understand how new inputs are adjusting the learning algorithm internally. Certain inputs could be skewing the algorithm in ways that will still adhere to the initial rule set but apply a very odd, literal or other interpretation to them. Again, as humans, how do we successfully build in breaks to avoid undesired consequences?

The above risks are exacerbated when you consider deep learning. With such models, learning algorithms pass results to other learning algorithms. How such inputs and outputs adjust the AI is very hard to understand and control. Humans can't think of every input/output and it's interaction with every other input/output.

So before a 'rise of the robot' scenario is considered a risk, I think we should be more concerned about ethics and algorithm understanding/control.

[waldron] 26/9/2017 19:00

CITYAM
Trivago will add personalisation algorithms to its platform (Source: Trivago)

Holiday search firm Trivago announced today it has acquired the assets of Tripl, a machine learning travel start-up from Hamburg.

The acquisition, which took place for an unspecified amount, is set to add personalization technology to Trivago’s platform.

Read more: Trivago’s ad campaign is hitting home, but has it altered brand perception?

The technology gives tailored travel recommendations by identifying trends in users’ social media activities and matching this with in-app activity by similar people.

Hendrik Kleinwächter, the creator of the Tripl algorithm, will join trivago’s development team.

When visiting a restaurant, I prefer those with few hand-picked entries on the menu, that exactly match my taste," he commented. "That is what I believe a modern travel website should look like. There are billions of combinations, but the user is really only interested in the most relevant ones - we offer them through our algorithm."

"We believe our competitive advantage is the speed of our learning. We have always focused on machine-learning, and the area of semantic analysis," said Rolf Schrömgens, founder and CEO of Trivago. “Tripl’s personalization technology is unique and individual in its approach, putting us one step closer toward bringing each traveler into their ideal hotel."

[ariane] 26/9/2017 16:51

i will be investing in companies that might well be helping robots become
more independently mobile with a independent energy source

battery and other power cells together with nano computers etc etc etc

ARM might be considered but now owned by Softbank

[ariane] 26/9/2017 16:16

HUMANS DO NOT LIKE HUMANS

WHY SHOULD ROBOTS BE ANY DIFFERENT

BESIDES WAIT UNTIL THEY START BEING USED BY NAUGHTY GOVERNMENTS AND THE MILITARY


BEING REALLY SILLY I KNOW

i guess i have watched alien and the terminator to much lately

[hazl] 26/9/2017 16:11

I was struck by the fact that even people working in the field expressed concern about the potential hazards within the industry.
The expert said that there had to be some kind of a safeguard that made sure that the robots 'like humans' in their construction!

[hazl] 26/9/2017 16:07

many thanks

[ariane] 26/9/2017 16:06

hazl
26 Sep '17 - 15:53 - 35 of 37 0 0
There are a lot of ethical issues still to be addressed because it is still
very much in early stages.
hazl
26 Sep '17 - 15:54 - 36 of 37 0 0
Radio 4 did a very interesting series of talks about robots,worth a listen.

[hazl] 26/9/2017 15:54

Radio 4 did a very interesting series of talks about robots,worth a listen.

[hazl] 26/9/2017 15:53

There are a lot of ethical issues still to be addressed because it is still
very much in early stages.