High five for 5G

The new service, the speedy 5G connection, is already out in the US as a pre-standard network by Verizon. However, standards-based networks of both Verizon and AT&T are so close to launching that we can already call 2018 a breakthrough year for the technology. 5G-capable smartphones from Samsung and other vendors (not Apple, though) are also in the pipeline for next year.

The EU takes a slower approach but it has just accepted new measures that would help the rollout of 5G in Europe. Industry body GSMA estimates 1.3bn 5G-connections by 2025, covering 40% of the world’s population. When in full swing, the new networks will allow for the rise of IoT and faster and safer connections to everyone.

Robos Rising

We’ve seen the robots before but never in such an abundance. Chatbots flooded the whole internet, taking over simpler customer service tasks, answering plain questions and, in case of more complex queries, they redirect the visitor to a human assistant. And those are only the robots hiding behind websites and only showing a set of characters of themselves.

Others get a physical body and come out to the limelight, though. SoftBank Robotics’ humanoid robot named Pepper made its first appearance already in 2014 but it has grown up: it now responds to human emotions and can answer questions about products or services. Two of its German versions, Luna and Monaco Pepper, take their role one step further. They have a permanent home in one of Bremen’s Sparkasse bank branches and keep regular contact with clients. They can even tell jokes! But, in the hindsight, there is more than that: by learning every day, they have the potential to take over more complex tasks as well.

Artificial or Virtual, Both a Reality Already

Smart glasses creating an augmented reality (AR) have found their way to the offices this year. At the Consumer Electronics Week in the summer in New York, ThirdEye Gen presented its X1 glasses: workers who wear them in the office can make remote colleagues see exactly what they see. These advantages can also be translated into serious savings in operational costs: according to Forbes’ report, as much as 40% can be achieved using AR or VR-technology in certain industries. One of the businesses in the know, French banking giant BNP Paribas, has also announced the rollout of a VR-based app and a set of new services for its retail customers last year. It allows the clients to manage their accounts in a different way or make decisions easier but it also allows the bank to create a new type of operation.

Foldable phones

California-based Royole and Samsung announced their own foldable mobile phone models almost simultaneously. Both can transform into tablets when unfolded – arguably the most genuine announcements this year. Creating a totally new product category, it has the potential to create a new definition of work as well.

Royole’s Flexpai phone, when folded, works as a dual screen with both screens operating independently or in interaction with each other as needed. It works on the Flexpai+ platform that can be integrated into other devices or applications as well, giving the California startup quite a growth potential. Meanwhile, Samsung has also presented its foldable phone, though only available commercially from 2019. The company calls the display technology Infinity Flex Display and Android has already announced to support it.

Hybrids Going One Step Further

Lenovo didn’t sit on its laurels, either, and came up with an innovation in the laptop-tablet hybrid category. The Yoga Book C930, presented at the IFA trade show in Berlin this year, has dual-screen with a 10.8-inch size, with the secondary display being an e-ink one that can also morph into a virtual keyboard. Actually, this second screen has three functions: keyboard, notepad, and e-reader. The first screen is a Windows-based regular display. Despite the many features of the device, Lenovo might still have a hard time selling it given the non-exceptional nature of either function but it is still an interesting product worth mentioning.  

AI in CRM

AI being the winning technology in the field is a claim also made by CRM market leader Salesforce and IDC, based on a recent joint study. According to them, 28% of the respondent companies already have AI in place, while 41% plan to have it in the next two years.

Salesforce itself has upgraded its Einstein software this year, giving it a new feature that integrates customer service tasks in the regular service offering and allows Einstein to handle routine requests building on customer history, natural language processing, and machine learning. one of the other major announcements of this summer was Microsoft committing to AI-based analytics. The tools to provide this experience include chatbots, predictive lead scoring based on communication traffic patterns, and automated welcome emails, among others.

Newcomers to the market already have AI in their initial offerings and investors are keen to support such projects. One of the latest announcements is of Spiro Technologies that claims downright the title of “the first AI-powered CRM”: it has raised USD 1.5mn in seed funding that will be used to add even more AI features to the product.

Fast Finance with Apps

Let’s not forget about mobile app innovations, some true delicacies for an enterprise mobility vendor like us. Our favorite this year was also awarded a Mobie Award by Enterprise Mobility Exchange as the most effective mobile app integration: financing solution specialist DLL’s Express Finance. It is a sales tool that helps sales reps quote financing payments to customers, a complex task with many scenarios with a process that is just as confusing for the clients as it is for the sales workers.

The new app, Express Finance, is a user-facing app that simplified the pricing process by offering a real-time pricing service, proposal generation, and POS closings. The reps can find all the relevant information they need to quote a payment in the app, no other information source needed. As a result, they managed to achieve a 90% reduction in their time-to-quote rates. DLL calls it an amazing success and it’s hard to think otherwise – we are glad to see the direction enterprise app development is going!

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AI being the winning technology in the field is a claim also made by CRM market leader Salesforce and IDC, based on a recent joint study. The statement has proved just as well to be a safe bet: according to the study, 28% of the respondent companies already have AI in place, while 41% plan to have it in the next two years.

Salesforce is citing the ultimate argument of AI boosting businesses by USD 726bn extra revenue and USD 265bn of cost savings between 2017-2021, mainly through improvements in productivity and customer engagement. In total, that means a USD 1.1tn of revenue boost.

Besides these convincing figures, recent acquisitions and investments in the AI marketplace by the likes of the largest CRM vendors have also pointed toward a bright future of artificial intelligence.

Make AI Listen, Analyse, and Speak

We love AI because it is capable of things we get soon bored of and accomplish those tasks 24/7. Whether it would be routine automation of conversations, analysis or insights, it is there, but it also enables the equal distribution of insights, faster decision-making, and pattern recognition by its collaboration features.

From the customers’ angle, it means “someone” is always there when they have a question as AI keeps early-stage consumers busy by talking and listening to them (see chatbots). Sometimes it simply handles claims, sometimes it qualifies leads from these conversations (even identify those who are eligible for certain discount), and generates them automatically in the CRM.

Some AI’s are even more intelligent or have learned enough along the way to be able to assess the highlights and pitfalls of the consumer journey. With such an analysis, companies can find the best workflow for conversions or see what content is the most successful (relevant). From that information, the AI can be programmed to run campaigns alone.

AI Use in CRMs Spreading Like Wildfire

The Big Five

Salesforce introduced its own Einstein in 2016 and has been heavily promoting its features ever since. Einstein is able to customize advertisements and recommendations, replace manual data entry, give customer insights, and prioritize leads, among others. But Salesforce doesn’t stop here: it has recently introduced a new feature that integrates customer service tasks in the regular service offering and allows Einstein to handle routine requests building on customer history, natural language processing, and machine learning, the official statement claims.

Salesforce and Microsoft have also made a deal with IBM to use their Watson technology for campaign automation, that includes automated messages on all available channels and gives a new type of insights for marketers. The users can collaborate better with sales by getting an overview of the strategies and find new ways to improve it.

In fact, one of the major announcements of this summer was Microsoft committing to AI-based analytics as something it believes will improve the life of the end user (i.e. the salesperson, the marketer, or the customer service agent) and not just the bosses reading the reports. The tools to provide this experience include chatbots, predictive lead scoring based on communication traffic patterns, and automated welcome emails, among others.

For some time, Adobe has also been on the market with its AI-based API, Sensei, that allows the creative professionals to be more efficient and insightful. Sensei’s specialty is to analyze images and animations, recognize their aesthetics, but it can also define the sentiment of other documents if needed. In a recent effort to extend Sensei’s reach within the developer community and to improve the performance of the AI tool, Adobe further committed to its partnership with hardware maker NVidia. Lip sync, face awareness, or auto-tagging are some of the features to be developed further.

Improving operational efficiency and predictive insights is also in the focus for SAP that has its own AI-based assistant, Leonardo. Named after renaissance hero Da Vinci, the tool combines (since last year) artificial-intelligence with IoT, analytics, the blockchain, and machine learning, to accelerate digital transformation for businesses. Leonardo is now used to find business problems within an organization and is then able to compare it with an industry-specific database and define the technologies and methods to solve them. SAP takes pride in data safety as well, as it gives users the opportunity to utilize data that is at their own premises, in the systems used every day.

Smaller Scale, Bigger Dreams

All of the above is just the surface of what is happening in the CRM space right now. Public announcements of AI-enhanced software are coming out every week, showing the smaller players are just as well aware of the direction they should take.

It might very well worth it, as the example of Pegasystems shows, that has just been named the market leader of customer engagement by analyst firm Ovum mostly because of its AI capabilities.

Zoho has also announced an upgrade to its Zoho One suite, by extending Zia, the AI assistant’s services to the whole cloud platform. Zia was first introduced as a feature of Zoho CRM only and to help sales reps with suggestions based on client data.

Newcomers to the market already have AI in their initial offerings and investors are keen to support such projects. One of the latest announcements is of Spiro Technologies that claims downright the title of “the first AI-powered CRM”: it has raised USD 1.5mn in seed funding that will be used to add even more AI features to the product.

The trust in the increasing demand from the consumer side that requires the latest technology to stay ahead of the competition also makes CRM vendors try to meet the clients halfway by adding third-party AI-services into their offerings.

The selection they can choose from is impressive already: according to Get CRM’s recent compilation, AI providers have targeted at least 15 business functions with their technology. Speech analytics, for example from Cogito or Uniphore’s Akeira, is one field with a great potential, allowing companies to optimize call outcomes with real-time guidance or improve call resolution rates for service centers.

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Voice Command Is Taking Over

Humans love to have their voices heard – you can see the proof in the ever-growing popularity of voice-enabled digital assistants or VEDAs. The likes of Siri, Alexa, and Cortana are invading the households. What’s more, they are effortlessly slipping through the “personal mental firewalls,” a phenomenon that surprised many opponents concerned about privacy issues.

Consumer technology that becomes so popular so soon always finds its way to the offices. Think about mobile devices, and you are only a step away from the thought of robotic assistance fighting for a cubicle. Putting it simply: they will come regardless of you liking it or not. Besides, you have to love what your customers want to stay competitive.

Don’t try to find counterarguments just yet. Accepting VEDAs to the workplace is a spectrum rather than a point in time. The question is, what’s your stance on that spectrum? Are you looking to replace all your sales reps with a cheaper alternative, are you entirely against robots, or are you trying to find a compromise?

Naturally, some industries and professions are more prone to such automation of workflows. Translation, customer service or logistics are the first to come to mind, but legal, medical, or educational professions are not safe, either. Plus, wherever administration occurs, voice-activated functions will appear and, well, take people’s jobs.

On the other hand, it is still a long way until they can accurately analyze a person’s tone and realize emotions. It is also a long way until human customers get so comfortable with robotic interactions that they don’t mind a non-human selling them something. Today, Capgemini data shows 20% thinks so, and it will grow to 31% by 2020. So until then? Let’s make friends!

Reps and Bots = BFF?

So voice-enabled digital assistance might as well be a beginning of a beautiful friendship, and not just based on commanding a shopping helper hidden in a speaker in the living room. After all, is it that bad if the new digital assistants do the dirty work and make sure all the data is in place or flowing in the right direction? The administration is something humans hardly ever enjoy and, besides, the strengths of our kind lies more in finding creative solutions.

Voice assistants can be the first line of contact and sales enablement can support them by providing the data for the initial communications and research. Further along the pipeline, human reps can take over and give the different quality of the connection. Remember, empathy, caring, or even competitiveness are emotional traits that have a big say in a deal, and they all belong to the human character.  

So reps don’t have to abandon their newly found BFFs even during a personal sales meeting with clients. When you integrate a VEDA into the mobile sales app, the whole experience changes for both the rep and the client and not as to exclude the agents.

The bottom line is that voice command function facilitates for example, the note-taking during and after the meeting when on the go, but if further developed by artificial intelligence, it can also “take part in the conversation,” and find out in the course of the meeting what materials it should present at which point.

Analytics and emotional intelligence: the digital assistants can analyze tons of data that helps the rep understand the client better and use his or her emotional judgment to find the right time and place to offer the right product.

Meanwhile, the personalization of VEDAs is an issue that you cannot ignore. Languages, accents, or “just” preferences and mental pathways are some of the things users expect their digital friends to recognize – sales reps are no exception. The best is when the sales reps know their way around programming: they can then make the voice assistant their partner and not their competitor.  

Integration: The Peace Treaty of Sales

The basis of the friendship between a rep and a VEDA is the proper integration of the artificial intelligence into the systems used. Speaking of sales, it goes without saying that CMS or CRM will be the top references and the data within these systems peculiarly clean. Other than that, the integration itself is not rocket science, and it is available for mobile apps, too – so reps can take their new friends with them wherever they go.  

You might want to develop your interface on the platform of Amazon, Apple, or Google, but integration is a more viable option you should consider. That is the starting point if you want to upgrade your mobile business application to the latest standards, and it only involves some particular API’s completed with the specific tools provided by your developers.

Essential voice assistant features for sales can be the following:

• Communication: Your VEDA will call, text or email anyone on the contact list
• Content: It mines the documents, presentations, images the rep needs
• Scheduling: Appointments, follow-up calls, conference attendances, report preparation times
• Navigation: Finds the way to and from meetings

For that, you will need some key technology like speech-to-text (STT) and text-to-speech (TTS). Furthermore, it can even have noise reduction and voice biometrics (to recognize the rep’s voice). We bet it will not be long until even more features become mainstream and VEDAs will be able to adjust their tones and languages to the user automatically or also develop their personalities.

No matter how artificial intelligence and voice assistance is all the rage these days, let’s not forget about conscious professionals to provide the right input for the technology and use the human creativity to find out more business cases where robots can add value.

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It is the first of two blogs presenting the opportunities AI can bring to sales, this time from a management perspective.

As much as we are living in an age of digital transformation, according to current knowledge, robots will not replace sales reps any time soon. It means your task of managing humans remains. However, it is true that AI is finding its way in assisting the workers. The best thing about it is that you can be among the first to adopt it as a management tool: Adobe found that only 15% of enterprises are using it currently, but 31% plan to introduce it in the coming year.

1. Empowering and Developing the Team

A well-functioning sales team is vital for the business operation and, as a leader, it’s your task to provide advice and direction to your reps. From the onboarding of new colleagues to the motivation of old ones, you should welcome AI as a useful companion.

The first thing you want to make sure of is that you have all the tools to provide data. Moreover, since the intelligence making sense of a mess is yet to be discovered, data needs to be as clean and as consistent as possible.

You shouldn’t rely on the reps administering the contacts and logging the meetings. Artificial intelligence can dig their email correspondence for new leads. It can keep a log of the calls. It can be integrated into a mobile business app and used by field teams so you can see the data flowing in from all directions, to a central place. By motivating the reps to answer some simple question, AI can even assemble a todo-list based on the logs of the pipeline and schedule (follow-up) meetings with clients.

Then, further down the pipeline, AI will give the team a sense of accomplishment while setting the reps free of the tasks that everyone hates. It doubles for all of your team members as a  personal artificial assistant and empowers them to focus on personal selling. AI gives the data (ideally from the CRM) to begin the conversation, finds highly relevant content (see sales enablement) that fits the situation of the client, based on industry, deal size, stage, and other factors. With the more tailored pitches, sales reps can win the well-prepared and demanding customer who expects the agent to know them.

2. Evaluating Performance

Effectiveness is always crucial for sales leaders as they need to meet the quota of the current quarter or business year. However, that’s when AI comes into the picture and can add value. From the data collected by the reps and their apps, the new intelligence can extract a meaningful analysis of performance.

You might have learned to look out for performance peaks or red flags in particular data sets: imagine that a machine not only learns that from you and delivers the actionable items to your fingertips, but also suggests new measurements of actions that can be translated to business performance.

How is it possible? AI is never in a time constraint to check the relations between all elements of the formula. Does the length of the meeting have an impact on deal success? How many times does an agent have to follow up? What is the ideal skill set for a winning team? With some settings of your preferences, you can find the answers to these questions in the automated report.

3. Forecasting Opportunities

This one is huge: the team of you and the AI will be winning every time you correctly recognize a business opportunity. So all the performance analysis serves one purpose: to improve the processes so that the business can profit from it.

You do that by trying to improve the accuracy of forecasting and predicting future events and translate it into figures to depict the earnings. By learning what actions and behaviors lead to sales, managers can act adequately on the opportunities, e.g., by setting the right priorities.

The artificial element of a corporate application can tell by the analysis of previously successful activities what the future actions should be. CRM’s powered up with AI, for example, can build new pipelines with priority rankings, out of the previous interactions with contacts. Also, the analysis of the deal sizes and contributing factors allow the AI to predict what the reps can bring in in a selected period. Now how is that for support of business planning?

In the next part, we will present you five up and coming AI apps that you can use for sales.

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AI and AR Will Extend Our Mobile Boundaries

The rise of artificial intelligence didn’t even leave business mobiles untouched: it has made its way to the workplace. Its capabilities of predicting decisions in basic scenarios have already proved to be an essential addition to the arsenal of efficiency-boosting methods, and some predict it will be everywhere by 2022.  

AI will only gain further ground because of its analytics capabilities in 2018, as businesses increasingly feel pressured to use their data assets. The Internet of Things (IoT) is making the data situation only more pressing. With streamlining business processes, AI can be another excellent tool for savings costs. Meanwhile, the networks are being strengthened with 5G to be able to provide the analysis and insights in the shortest possible timeframes.

We are still to see, though, in 2018, where augmented reality (AR) will lead our businesses. There are some obvious applications in the utility sector or in retail that are already taking shape, and the software part of the equation is well-covered anyway. One important thing is still lacking, though: a proper headset, that would make business put AR in practice (of course Apple and others are working hard already on solving this problem).

On the other hand, the user experience is evolving in many different ways, too. Mobile has the most significant impact of all, prompting the transformation of corporate websites to mobile-first format and progressive web apps. The voice/speaking and chat options penetrate all interfaces, making getting work tasks done and team collaboration easier – thus improving overall efficiency.

Services in the Cloud and Other Locations

In the age of ubiquitous connection, offering location-based services is one of the most promising areas of development. For enterprise mobility, it means being able to track workers everywhere, all the time, and helping them with that. Wherever a problem emerges, the office workers can have the backs of their field colleagues: think maps, blueprints, instructions, client data. All employees can save time by using geo-tagged photos and indoor navigation to products in a store or service stations in an office, as popular examples.

Similarly, selected information can be made available to clients, allowing them to see whether the maintenance worker is on the way or the sales agent is in a place where he can be available for a call. Customers in specific areas can be shown particular promotions or offered specific benefits or discounts.

Cloud services are also on the rise like never before, due to the significant service price drops and the ever-growing popularity of BYOD – smartphones flooding the workplaces. But businesses have also realized that not every type of data is worth to be trusted to the cloud, so, for security reasons, we will likely see the on-premise storages remain in place for the most business-critical information.

Security Threats in 2018

New devices, new operating systems, new (consumer) apps – they all pose a threat in the workplaces increasingly relying on BYOD (again). Security experts warn that accessing corporate data with poorly secured consumer devices and apps can be one of the most significant challenges to the IT-departments this year.

One solution to these pains can be AI itself, with its capabilities of recognizing misuse and signs of breach earlier. The protection will have to be set to prevent the data from leakage, like scanning new apps for these properties. But sometimes even that is not enough, like in the case of phishing and other elaborate methods of hacker trickery, against which further training of employees can be a viable solution.

Surprisingly, ransomware is not at all that common of a threat than one would imagine – most breaches we hear about happen on desktops instead. Mostly because app stores do a proper job screening new applications and enterprise apps apparently don’t contain malware, and those are the ways people get their software. On desktops, it is easier for hackers to hide a malicious piece of code and cause significant trouble.

All that doesn’t mean, though, that businesses don’t have to be alert to such options on mobiles. The continuous evolvement of malware (especially ransomware) techniques makes them a real threat if once an efficient way of installing them on mobiles is found.

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4 Ways Technology Is Transforming Finance

“Several tasks that were once handled with paper money, human interaction, and bulky computer systems are now conducted entirely on digital interfaces.”

Don’t let yourself be discouraged by acronyms and buzzwords: this article contains all the necessary information about the basics of technology for financial services providers. If you never knew how the Internet of Things can help improve insurance service quality or how Artificial Intelligence or Machine Learning will enhance customer experience, or how blockchain reduces process times and transaction costs, now is the time.

Fintech and Banks: How Can the Banking Industry Respond to the Threat of Disruption?

“Even in 2017, only 7% of credit products in banks can be handled digitally from end to end.”

Fintech is a factor that traditional financial services companies have to take into consideration. For some, it is a threat, for others, it presents new opportunities and opens new business channels. Toptal has published an extensive article about the possible reactions to fintech disruption by banks. Surprisingly, the battle will not be about renewing the consumer-facing, front-end type of service structure. The potential instead lies in rebuilding the back-end, to create new processes by digitalizing them. Unbundling of services can also be a way to survive.

How Artificial Intelligence Can Deliver a Personalised Banking Experience

“AI could also help banks serve their customers more effectively by giving them easier access to relevant information.”

Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning will undoubtedly bring cost savings, as well as new revenue streams, to the financial services sector. It is just as clear that the opportunity for personal interactions, once a bloodline of financial services sales activities, will become scarce. Bridging the gap between the two trends is essential to keep the loyalty of customers who want personalized treatment. An often overlooked improvement AI can bring is enhancing the customer experience of in-person interactions. For example, advisors can provide immediate advice to less typical questions through apps instead of having to spend time on consulting the relevant experts.

In Financial Services Innovation, Disruption Isn’t Everything

“With a more modern and agile IT infrastructure in place, a small bank can examine how to manage compliance while fostering better user experiences in a low-cost operating environment.”

Buzzwords aside, there are still more fundamental questions than what is AI that one needs to answer when talking about financial services’ future. Innovation, according to Amir Wain, founder and CEO of i2C, is a commercialized invention. When we talk about innovation in financial services, we need to translate ideas into commercial concepts. And those are only viable if we solve critical customer problems. On the other hand, technology can be the answer to the severe complaint about compliance issues hindering innovation, because many times, technology itself can ensure continuous compliance while firms can focus on developing more innovative services.

Artificial Intelligence: The Legal and Regulatory Challenges

“Boards will have to ask probing questions about what checks and balances are built into the new AI-driven systems and ensure that the quality of management information is appropriate.”

Artificial Intelligence, or AI, poses a problem for insurers on more than one front: it’s excellent capacities, and future potentials call for even more cautious legal and regulatory processes while meeting technological requirements. While the regulation still strives to be tech-neutral, legislation such as the IDD will surely test its boundaries. There is a definite demand to deliver more benefits than risks in an environment increasingly reliant on innovative services.

The Future of RegTech: A Skyrocketing Industry?

“While the RegTech concept is innovative in itself, many FIs are already pushing the envelope and utilising RegTech as part of more complex collaborations in order to achieve regulatory compliance.”

Regulatory technologies, also known as RegTech, are newcomers to the market at the intersection of financial services and technology. Its birth is justified by the ever stricter regulations and the trend of digitalization in all industries. Implementing RegTech can be a significant cost-saver and enhancer of effectiveness in such traditionally resource-intensive back-office functions as compliance. The only problem that exists is the lack of balance in the skillsets of RegTech companies: they are still more technology-focused and less experienced in compliance issues.

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