How to successfully leverage partnerships to the benefit of the client?

Invenica and Volume (with the use of their product QBox) have each been able to advance the digital transformation journey of one of our shared customers (the leading global telecoms operator referred to here). This customers wants to automate 60% of support requests by 2025; with the addition of QBox, this is going to be possible.

Building on Invenica’s work, QBox has been helping optimise the NLP training data (across multiple providers) by:

• Extracting valuable performance data

• Offering ongoing monitoring into key metrics of customers’ automations (enabling them to dramatically increase the number of support requests that can be automated)

• Facilitating enhanced customer support

• Realising significant operational savings

QBox is a piece of conversational AI middleware. Once a roadmap for the transformation of the customer-support function has been drawn up, QBox helps test, understand and fix NLP training data. It also provides ongoing monitoring support after the automation and AI customer agents have been introduced.

Chatbots, voicebots, chat engines and digital humans all require NLP. Once the conversational AI has been devised and integrated by Invenica, QBox offers incredibly deep and never-seen-before analytics that enhance a customer’s investment into conversational AI. By including QBox or the right customer, Invenica can offer a full-service solution, from inception to optimisation.

Welcome to our Smart Cities & Smart Citizens Exploring 5G, IoT and the Connected World

Do we need a new vision for Smart Cities?

Whether people are ready or not, Smart Cities are here. The demand for the technology behind their development is already huge and will only keep growing. A report from PwC predicts that the global Smart City market will hit an annual growth rate of 23% by 2024, reaching a value in excess of $2tn (PwC, 2019). But what does it mean for the people living in these urban areas? Our whole notion of what Smart Cities represent is being challenged. We thought it would revolve around the ideas of connectivity, convenience, and access. Co-working spaces, better transport, and linked services are all hallmarks of what our IoT-connected cities can deliver. For the people we share our cities with – as well as the infrastructure required to deliver everything we may once have taken for granted. This is making us re-examine the relationship we have as citizens with every organisation we interact with – especially the firms and businesses we work with. So, what does this mean for Smart Cities – a concept that will touch on every area of our lives?

Blockchain FAQs

What is the technology and why is it valuable?

Blockchain technology offers transformative improvements for identity management. A central characteristic of Blockchain technology is its distributed, decentralised structure – obviating the need for third-party management. Blockchain is powering a personal data revolution. Relying on physical identity documents in an ever-growing digital age is outdated, cumbersome and expensive, but also increases the risk of fraud, hacking and spoofing. Events relating to the use of customer data for identification purposes can be stored on the Blockchain.

What does it mean for the user?

With so much of our life and commerce on-line the current methods of handling identity, usernames, passwords, authentication and user verification is error prone. Blockchain technology has established a new paradigm for handling digital identities – self-managed identity. Self-managed identity allows customers to create and manage their own identity, removing the need for a central repository. This new, digital concept using decentralisation and public key cryptography to give individuals control over their data. When implemented correctly, it can provide flexibility, scalability, security and consensual interactions. For the customer, this means they can transact in a frictionless, trusted, yet private manner. Identity management can also offer increased data privacy, identity is held on the user’s devices and is shared directly with products and services when required.

Meet The Disruptors  – Delivering Innovation 

Invenica recently hosted a series of online sessions at Meet The Disruptors, two days of digital events designed to showcase the future of fintech. Providing a showcase of emerging technology and business change, the Invenica team was joined by guests from Concord, Siemens and Vodafone.

Across three sessions – Meet The Team, In The Market and In Action – experts from all four firms discussed the business and technology drivers of Big Data, AI, user experience and automation. Their insights highlighted how businesses are finding ways to harness breakthrough innovation to tackle their biggest challenges.

All three panels featured a wealth of knowledge and experience, offering attendees a unique perspective on the world of emerging technology. And, whether you could make the event or not, there’s no reason to miss out. You can replay or catch up on all the Invenica sessions at your leisure below.

Delivering Innovation: Telco, Commodities & Trading - an industry showcase

About our Speakers

The digital world creates huge opportunities for businesses and people to thrive, but it also presents challenges.

Even with all the technology at our fingertips, it can be tough to stay connected; especially at these difficult times where remote working is more vital than ever.

Smart Cities: The Facts of IoT & Blockchain Webinar

Are Smart Citizens the Key to Successful Smart Cities?

As part of ditto’s TechCity Connect series, Invenica explored what Smart Cities might look like; how the current crisis will reshape our vision for them, and why Smart Citizens will play a key role in their development.

Do we need a new vision for Smart Cities?

Whether people are ready or not, Smart Cities are here. The demand for the technology behind their development is already huge and will only keep growing. A report from PwC predicts that the global Smart City market will hit an annual growth rate of 23% by 2024, reaching a value in excess of $2tn (PWC, 2019). But what does it mean for the people living in these urban areas?

Today, the whole notion of what Smart Cities represent is being challenged. We thought it would revolve around the ideas of connectivity, convenience and access. Co-working spaces, better transport, and linked services are all
hallmarks of what our IoT-connected cities deliver.

However, we now live in a time where we’re faced with the effect our basic movements can have on the people and communities around us. We’re seeing directly how our demand for services (both public and private) creates actions and consequences for the people we share our cities with – as well as the impact on the infrastructure required to deliver everything we may once have taken for granted.

This is making us re-examine the relationship we have as citizens with every organisation we interact with – especially the firms and businesses we work with and for. So, what does this mean for Smart Cities, a concept that will touch on every area of our lives? How will the current situation shape their development, and what will their future hold for Smart Citizens?

Building Smart Cities around the people

Ultimately, the aim of any Smart City is to enrich the lives of its citizens – whether through better services or the creation of inclusive, healthy environments. That’s why any organisation involved in creating Smart Cities must now look beyond siloed solutions for bikes, bins, and benches, developing connected applications and systems that make a real difference to Smart Citizens. After all, if the essence of urban development is individual action, a city can only be as smart as its citizens (Forbes, 2019).

In this way, outcomes will be hugely important in Smart Cities – including the ability to measure how our cities empower the new smart citizens to improve their rights, wellbeing, health, security, and prosperity. Demonstrating the power citizens will have to shape new ways of life will be essential.

Healthcare is a highly topical example, with the technology behind Smart Cities able to deliver increases in air quality and help reduce carbon dioxide levels – improving public health and reducing demand for healthcare services. As well as freeing up vital resources within the healthcare system, this adds to people’s quality of life – an essential element in building Smart Cities that empower people, rather than creating places they simply exist in.

That’s why the focus needs to be on the people. Smart Cities need to empower their citizens to reimagine their lives – going beyond siloed novelties to create urban areas connected with technology that enables new and frictionless ways of interacting with the people and organisations around them.

Why Smart Cities can’t grow in isolation

Another key question regarding the Smart City is how it connects and engages with other Smart Cities. How do we encourage a shared set of standards, frameworks and applications that allow urban areas to learn from the successes of others? How can it adopt methods and applications to achieve the same outcomes for its own citizens, as well as travelling citizens from other cities? The answer is a Smart City ecosystem that allows interoperability between urban areas.

All of this is part of a wider conversation around Smart Cities and Smart Citizens that’s shifting and reshaping itself. What will the urban areas of tomorrow look like? How will the Smart City vision change, based on the current global situation? And, ultimately, how do they empower Smart Citizens to shape the world they live in?

In a recent survey, 56% of customers said the most important thing in customer service is that their issue is resolved satisfactorily. It’s no surprise then that the same survey found that eight out of ten customers spend more with companies that give them a good customer experience.

What we did What we delivered

This means that operators who haven’t invested in the tools to improve their service experience (whether customer- or agent-side) become vulnerable to customer attrition. There’s also the likelihood of falling behind competitors when it comes to overall innovation. On the other side of the story, Telcos who already have the technology to deliver a smooth customer experience are freed up to focus on improvements in agility and performance – all of which add to their brand image.
It was in this context that the customer service function of a leading global telecoms operator was struggling to deliver the right level of value to customers. As well as causing a high operating cost of costumer care, this situation resulted in a low customer satisfaction scores (NPS, CSAT, FRT, AHT, etc.) and poor reviews on sites like Trustpilot – which, in turn, influenced the company’s brand perception.
Offering a wide variety of products and services, the operator required a complex suite of tools to support its customer care teams. It also struggled to make the most of its data. The sheer amount collected and exchanged had created huge sets of information that no one had been able to curate or analyse.
On top of this, the lack of performance data made it difficult to identify the key areas for improvement. It was hard to tell which product support areas were underperforming – and what tools they needed to improve. And this made it near impossible to take a targeted approach to the problem.

For Invenica, the first step to solving the problem was to identify the core challenges across the relevant teams – including customer care teams onshore and offshore and those dedicated to specific markets. This was achieved by surveying the relevant stakeholders: customer agents, sales representatives, managers, product owners and customers. The survey was important for gathering insights, determining actual performance and setting targets for a healthy customer satisfaction index.

Invenica then designed a roadmap for the transformation of the company’s customer support function – featuring steps like the rationalisation of tools, plus the introduction of automation and AI customer agents. The next step was to carry out a rationalisation of the firm’s customer care tools. This process involved the creation of new customer journeys and the streamlining of data – making it easier for agents to respond to queries effectively and efficiently. Invenica designed and developed the missing components and assembled the customer care platform, taking care to integrate it with existing legacy systems to provide functions such as identity, billing and supply chain management.

The changes and additions made by Invenica removed some huge barriers to performance (such as slow information discovery, a lack of insight from customer history and defragmented sets of tools for different products and services). They also increased the capacity to resolve customer queries through the automation of support tasks. All in all, the process reduced handling times, increased the number of solved tickets and delivered a better overall quality of service.
Taking an agile approach, Invenica transformed the tools incrementally, introducing time and cost savings to go with the improved customer experience. It also integrated new tools with the right systems where required – allowing agents to seamlessly discover and access the data and information they need.
This transformation extended into a review and reform of operating models. It also featured the creation of adequate training and documentation materials to help users get to grips with new features, including:

• An intelligent search engine
• Integration with telephony
• Identity management
• Chat engines (text/voice)

The team implemented QBox to continuously monitor and improve the accuracy of chatbot, you can learn more about this here.

With the tools in place, Invenica set new KPIs to match user expectations. The teams are now constantly measuring the customer satisfaction index to make sure their results reflect the vision and targets set by their leadership.

As a society we’re more than used to having technology as a driving force in our lives. From the smartphones we carry around with us to the apps we use to stream entertainment or bank online, we’re no strangers to the digital world. But how will our lives change when Smart Cities built on digital tech become a reality?

Smart Cities are urban areas that use electronic IoT-enabled sensors to collect data – using the insights gained from this information to manage resources and services efficiently. We might see some of this technology in various places already, but the difference with Smart Cities is that they’ll connect all the services we use. This encompasses traffic and transportation systems, power plants, utilities, water supply networks, waste management, crime detection, information systems, schools, libraries, hospitals, and other community services.

It’s set to be a huge shift in how we interact with urban areas, which is why it raises so many big questions. What will be the technology that sits behind Smart Cities? How do we build them? Who will build them? What do they mean for businesses? And what impact will they have on citizens?

That’s why, on 5^th March 2020, Invenica hosted a live broadcast from Blockchain Connect at Dogpatch labs in the heart of Dublin’s tech innovation district. Entitled Smart Cities: The facts of IoT & Blockchain, the webinar explored the fact and fiction behind the IoT and blockchain technologies, what Smart Cities mean for people and the environments we live in, and what products and services are in development to create true Smart Cities.

It was a fascinating exchange of expertise, with our panel featuring David Palmer, Blockchain Lead for IoT at Vodafone; Thomas Spencer, Business Development Director and Telco Lead at R3; Gareth Mee, CEO of Invenica; and Mike Wilson, CEO & Founder of ditto.

READ THE ARTICLE TO FIND OUT MORE

If you’re reading this article, you’ve no doubt heard the terms ‘smart home’, ‘smart workplace’ and ‘smart city’. All of us have definitely heard of the smartphone – in fact, you’re highly likely to be using one to read this article.
Today, technology can make pretty much everything ‘smart’ – including devices, machines, spaces, activities and even entire cities. The concept behind this is known as the Internet of Things (IoT), but what does that really mean?
What if all the devices in your life (not just your smartphone, but also your lightbulbs, doorbell, camera, window, car, fridge, or running shoes…) could collect useful information on indicators like temperature, location, pollution or movement?
And, what if all these devices connected to the Internet, communicating this information to you or receiving commands from you to open the door, warm the oven, or to start your car engine? All of this exists today thanks to the IoT making everything around you smart.

One of the areas where we’ve enjoyed success in deploying these amazing devices is consumer IoT. In this area, we’re helping a global Telco roll out new and exciting gadgets to their customers. But how are we making this exciting journey to a smarter world?
Initially, we helped our client create the cloud platform required to store and run server-based IoT applications. This included notification capabilities, Big Data, analytics, dashboards, automation and workflows. In some cases, it also required artificial intelligence (AI) to make smart devices even more intelligent, creating a unique differentiator to the competitors in the market.
While our cloud architects and developers were working on the server-side applications, we collaborated with the client’s commercial team to identify, asses and onboard consumer-centric devices – along with the supporting applications and services in hot consumer demand. This allowed us to deliver a prioritised, continuously refreshed collection of valuable IoT devices.

We’ve already started integrating these devices into the IoT platform. And we’re doing this in cycles to not just allow early releases to the market but also to ensure the continuous improvement of the IoT platform and supporting services. It’s all part of an ongoing process as the team learns from end consumers and incorporates that knowledge into future deployments.
Some of the most successful smart devices that we’ve integrated are sold in stores and online.

They include:
• A smart watch for kids that allows parents to track them and their activities
• SOS band watches for the elderly and vulnerable to make sure they have help when needed
• A smart pet tracker that monitors the activities of your pets
• Luggage and multi-trackers that let you know the whereabouts of your luggage, backpack, laptop and other valuables when travelling
• Smart alarms and detectors for your home to notify you of emergencies and keep your family safe
• Smart lighting that allows you to control the lights in your home via an application, offering you comfort and helping you save energy

Once integrated with the cloud, these devices are manageable through a single mobile app that allows customers to access one centralised source of information about their devices and deliver commands.
Thanks to its unique offering, the consumer IoT programme has seen growing sales – as well as rising numbers of onboarded devices. The programme still has a lot to give, and we (along with our client) are closely monitoring IoT start-up innovations to keep pace with developments and onboard exciting new devices.

It’s tempting to think that the sales process ends when a customer makes a purchase. However, it’s vital for firms to show the value they can provide after the sale is completed. After all, customers will have just been through a whole process to choose a supplier, so they’ll be keen to see what other products are on offer.

This is where recommendation engines come in. Using technologies like AI and machine learning, they analyse customer data to build accurate, individualised profiles of the people making purchases. Customers see a targeted selection of relevant products they might be interested in – making it easier to find what they need and buy it. Companies gain a wealth of insight that ultimately increases the likelihood of future sales.

Source:https://www.salesforce.com/solutions/industries/retail/resources/product-recommendation-engines/

With the customer data collected from these profiles, companies can build a picture of the content and solutions a specific customer requires – making it easier for sales advisors to recommend the products that meet those needs. Intelligent product recommendation also allows for natural, logical upsell and cross-sell opportunities. Clients, through their behaviour and history, demonstrate interest – and the product recommendation tool automatically pairs that behaviour with the right suggestions.

Small transactions become larger ones, with an increase in average basket size, and clients who might not have been on the path to making a purchase suddenly find themselves interested in doing so. As an example of how powerful this can be, an Accenture report highlighted how 91% of consumers are more likely to shop with brands who recognize, remember, and provide relevant offers and recommendations.

/What we delivered

To begin with, the Invenica team implemented and trained a machine learning model to predict the products and services that any given customer is most likely to purchase. It did this based on:
/// The customer’s profile (and related behaviour)
/// Previous purchases
/// History and behaviour of similar customers in the same market
This reduced the processing time and fed data into an unsupervised learning engine clustering algorithm that Invenica used as a recommendation seller.

/What we delivered

The outcome was an engine that provided sales and marketing teams with the ability to design campaigns and target a list of recommended customers for each product or service. It also supported customer-facing assets, specifically the upselling of products to website users. This allowed the business to use the technology across multiple channels (including ecommerce, in-store, and SMS), while keeping the core of the data intact – an important element that delivered enhanced learning from both approaches.

With the prototype working, Invenica launched it within an initial market by optimising the machine learning models and integrating them with real-time customer data. This included creating views to extract insight for campaigns, working closely with the commercial and technical teams to integrate the engine with existing channels, and exploring potential new channels like RCS and sponsored social content.

Smart Cities: The Facts of IoT & Blockchain Webinar

Welcome to our CordaCon 2019 - The Download'- Telco Podcast

R3’s flagship conference CordaCon2019 is brought together by over 800 industry leaders, technologists, and Corda enthusiasts to look at key trends in blockchain and the latest applications built on Corda.

Welcome to our telco special bringing you a live podcast recorded at CordaCon. In this podcast we are joined by R3 Business Development Director & Telecom Lead Thomas Spencer who shares how firms are using corda and blockchain as a digital enabler to drive new revenue streams. We hear Jorge Bento, CTO of Enterprise IOT at Vodafone discuss DLT, 5G and the emergence of smart cities, buildings and intelligent networks. Our CEO at Invenica Gareth Mee identifies the key drivers of adoption of DLT, the use cases that are real and scaling, and the top trends as we head towards 2020, into a new decade.

Press Play and Discover the Possible