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  • Top challenges faced by modern-day CMOs

    Top challenges faced by modern-day CMOs

    Gone are the days when the life of a CMO was simple, and their focus was mainly on advertising, market research, and brand management. Market research and consumer insight were confined to pre-market testing and evaluation of new products and campaigns, and few market’s feedback in customer preferences. Today the role of a CMO has changed drastically, and he/she is an equal partner in the growth of revenue and enhancing customer experience as any other CXO.

    Interconnected shifts in the technological landscape and consumer behavior are challenging the world’s businesses. Technology is changing everything, and early warning signs have been visible much before the Black Swan event of a pandemic. The pace at which these changes are happening is exciting and frightening at the same time.

    Are you still wondering what 2022 is going to be like for CMOs?

    The role of the Chief Marketing Officer has changed dramatically in recent years. The CMO used to be primarily responsible for marketing strategy, but now they are tasked with much more. Marketing strategy is still a considerable part of their job, but it’s not all they do anymore.

    They need to take on many other roles, such as being an analytical problem solver and understanding how data will affect their future decisions to create an excellent customer experience.

    In 2022, the CMO will have a holistic approach to marketing strategy and adopt new technologies like AI/ML and integrate AI into their workflows.

    As the role of the CMO is changing rapidly as technology advances and the competitive landscape shifts, the challenges faced by CMOs are also growing very fast.

    Top challenges that will constantly come up in a CMO’s radar

    As the changes are happening rapidly in the marketing landscape, CMOs will need to adopt a more holistic viewpoint than just the strategic one. Here are the top challenges encountered by CMOs this year.

    Challenge #1- Accelerated Digital Transformation

    Rapid digital evolution and technology fundamentally transform the way we live our lives. Adaptability is vital for staying afloat. If an organization doesn’t adapt to changing times, competitors will leapfrog them. Adaptability isn’t only crucial for humans, but the technology we use needs to be adaptable. Quick turnaround times, fewer bottlenecks, workflow automation, and integration are mandatory. CMOs must always look for new and innovative ways to stay ahead of the curve. Also, they must continue evaluating new technologies and platforms and experimenting with different marketing channels.

    Challenge #2- Data and data-based insights- mastering metrics in real-time

    The data explosion is one of the biggest challenges marketing teams and organizations have faced in recent times. 90% of the world’s data today has been created alone in the last two years. With the increasing volume, variety, and velocity of data available from various sources, it has become challenging to get a clear picture and meaningful insights from this massive volume of data.

    According to an IBM survey, at least 80% of CMOs still rely on traditional sources of information such as market research and competitive benchmarking to make strategic decisions. Similarly, more than 60% rely on sales trends and campaign analysis.

    It has become tough to analyze these vast data to extract valuable insights in real-time and use these data-driven insights to improve products, services, and customer experience effectively.

    Challenge #3- Owning the customer experience

    Customer experience is another area that CMOs need to focus on to succeed in the future. It’s been predicted that customer experience will overtake price and product as the key brand differentiator.

    According to Accenture, only 25% of brands feel they are behind in terms of customer experience. Traditionally also, companies have had clear silos between marketing, sales, and customer service. In order to be customer-centric, the customer journey needs to be seamless. Today’s CMO is expected to do more than blanket customers with brand awareness and messaging. They need to reengineer the experiences that bring technology and people together in a more human-centric manner to improve and put customer experience first.

    Challenge #4- Delivering Personalization

    CMOs understand that relevance is hugely important. Because when the content is tailored, the audience is more likely to pay attention. When it comes to engaging with content, people now have shorter attention spans than a goldfish.

    Personalization provides the answer to this challenge. According to McKinsey, “Personalization can reduce acquisition costs by as much as 50%, lift revenues by 5 to 15 percent, and increase the efficiency of marketing spend by 10 to 30 percent.”

    Challenge #5- Identifying the right technology

    The proliferation of digital channels across multiple platforms and devices with the increased demands of analytics and insights inevitably result in a much greater need for technology. But identifying the right technological trends and developments is not an easy task in the marketing technology (MarTech) landscape as it is extraordinarily complex. CMO will need to understand the solutions available and identify the right partners to solve these technology-related challenges.

    Challenge #6- Structure and capabilities of the marketing team

    With digital and consumer centricity playing a more prominent role across the marketing and communication mix, finding the right talent to manage this isn’t easy. It is difficult to find, particularly those in the marketing organization who have deep domain knowledge in digital blended with broad business acumen- and having both creative and analytics skills- or, at least, the ability to manage and integrate those with these skills.

    Challenge #7- Leveraging AI and machine learning

    AI is no longer a dream of the future. What you can pragmatically do with AI and machine learning to positively impact your customer experience and marketing is limitless. Let us see how it changes the MarTech landscape and improves customer experience.

    Let’s look at some interesting statistics for this year.

    Top challenges faced by modern-day CMOs

    Seven Roadblocks, One Answer: Artificial Intelligence (AI)

    The answer to the aforementioned challenges is Artificial Intelligence (AI) or AI-based solutions. It helps automate repetitive manual routine tasks and encourages professionals to focus on more strategic and creative tasks. It helps increase efficiency and improve customer experience by providing tailored made offers at the right time to the right customers.

    The rise of AI, machine learning, and automation trends have a significant impact on marketing. AI is used in power marketing activities such as personalization, targeting, and segmentation. And as AI continues to evolve, it will be even more powerful and able to create custom content and analyse a massive amount of customer data from various sources to derive meaningful insights.

    With the rise of AI orchestration platforms in the industry, enterprises are operationalizing AI, enabling scalability, growth, and innovation. AI-based solutions help look beyond traditional customers’ basic demographics, interests, behavior, etc., and help manage end-to-end customer journeys. It helps understand customers’ unique preferences to earn customer loyalty and achieve hyper-personalization using detailed, real-time data and fine-tune offers accordingly to deliver a better and seamless customer experience.

    According to Gartner, 65% of application development will be done on low-code/no-code AI platforms. With its unique low-code/no-code capabilities, it equips anyone in a marketing organization to build AI/ML models in addition to domain knowledge. It helps them build machine learning models without writing a single line of code and helps make faster, better data-driven decisions. It helps enterprises adopt new technologies like AI/ML and quickly integrate AI into their workflows to make data-driven decisions and deliver an excellent customer experience.

    So, how is your marketing team approaching these challenges? Do you think AI and machine learning address all these challenges? If yes, let me know your thoughts in the comments section below.

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  • Partner Management way forward for CSPs in a digital world

    Partner Management way forward for CSPs in a digital world

    The impact has been profound of the COVID-19 Pandemic on the whole world, especially for customer service providers. The impact was not felt on the revenues as predicted by some analysts; instead, the impact was how these services are provided and the interaction with customers.

    This impact has brought a paradigm shift on what the customer wants, their behavior, and their requirements. The key thing here to understand is the number of revenue streams that have opened. CSPs have started the work towards pivoting these challenging times into opportunities and opportunities into Revenue.

    CSPs are under pressure to innovate to counter the rise in competition. They are now expanding their partner ecosystem to drive cost-effective innovation to improve customer experience.

    However, from a service operations point of view, the pandemic has exposed CSPs, many of which have not invested in software and processes that enable them to change their internal structures smoothly in response to such a massive change in the Partner Ecosystem.

    Despite them understanding the importance of Partner Ecosystem, CSPs are significantly behind in implementing new business models & digital offerings. Following are the challenges which CSPs are facing in curating partner ecosystem, asking more profound questions on CSPs’ capacity to deliver the right technology, skills, and business agility:

    Ability to manage Partner Ecosystem & Relationships

    Selecting the right partners for a CSPs ecosystem by identifying and scoring them on key KPIs so that their ecosystem is profitable also enables CSPs to accelerate innovation, increase agility and lower the operating cost by offsetting pressure from traditional services.

    With the rise in complexity in the partnerships, an end-to-end partner ecosystem management system to the like of Subex’s is the need of the hour.

    Which helps to choose the right partner for a CSPs Ecosystem and end-to-end manages the relationship.

    Having the right technology in place to manage monetization & Contracts across the partner ecosystem

    A converged integrated platform that manages a CSPs B2B billing & settlement for all the LOBs at a single place manages disputes; reconciliation to have high assurance on the revenue is one of the critical requirements.

    Growing Partner Ecosystem and increasing dynamics also asks for a High-quality Contract management solution that analyses, tracks SLA, and maintain contractual integrity for all the partners is another area where CSPs need to work upon.

    The need for a Converged system that does all of this to create a seamless experience of conversation between partners & CSPs will drive the growth that CSPs are aspiring for.

    Why Subex Partner Ecosystem Management?

    Subex Partner Ecosystem Management offers capabilities to Expand business while working with traditional partners and digital disruptors to introduce new-age products and services. Partner Ecosystem Management enables collaboration between communication services providers (CSP) and their partners to manage all aspects, from partner onboarding to billing and dispute settlement, taking care of entire partner lifecycle management through a transparent process.

    Partner Management Way Forward For Csps In A Digital World

    Rise of the API Economy in Forging Dynamic Digital Partnerships

    Download the whitepaper to know more!

  • The case for Business Assurance in 5G

    The case for Business Assurance in 5G

    5G is a reality now, and Communication Service Providers (CSP) are launching products on their 5G networks.

    5G is considered a revolution for the enterprise business world because of its characteristics like network slicing, multi-access edge computing (MEC), aggregators, dedicated high upload and download bandwidth, low latency, and more.

     But for those of us in the business assurance community, what does 5G mean? How will it be different when we consider 2G/3G/4G controls?

    5G: Creating new connections

    When I saw the movie ‘I, Robot’, there were scenes of several robots working together and performing specific tasks to support the human race. It was difficult to believe that we could be close to that kind of reality. Those robots are like today’s connected devices: connected and controlled from a centralized location, and trained with AI/ML models.”

    Connecting this story in ‘I, Robot’ with today, we can expect a similar customer experience with 5G connectivity working alongside AI and robotics. Although the movie script showed some negative effects, we assume that these issues will get be assured in the 5G world by our peer communities of Information Security Groups.

    Coming back to the topic of how 5G differs for our business assurance community over the current controls, here’s what I see. There will be reusability of the traditional revenue assurance controls like subscription assurance, product catalog validation, and QoS validation. The current customer and revenue use cases of business assurance like Customer 360-degree, revenue analytics, product profitability, margin assurance, etc., will continue to be relevant.

    But in terms of the Framework of Business Assurance in 5G, we will need a few more controls to ensure healthy relationships between CSPs and their partners/suppliers. These will be important for all parties to work together and provide a great experience for the end customer.

    New BA controls in the 5G world

    Below is an image of the foundation of the CSP business model:

    The Case for Business Assurance in 5G

    In the 5G world of enterprise business, there are thousands of partners (seen on the left of CSP) involved in supporting CSPs to provide services to all lines of business (seen on the right of the CSP). These services include immersive entertainment, sports broadcasting, smart cities, connected cars, 5G drones, etc. A healthy relationship with partners is key to ongoing success.

    BA’s role in supporting 5G growth

    To this end, here are a few use cases where business assurance plays an important role in delivering the best customer experience:

    • Service assurance – This includes everything from partner contracts to configuration validation and monitoring the quality of the service provided (QoS breaches) to the customer
    • Partner profitability – This is an extension of margin assurance and involves scoring and analyzing individual supplier performance.
    • Supplier analytics – This is a comparison of supplier performance and an analysis of supplier risk and their sustainability.
    • Spend analytics – This includes analytics on the spend on a product, which is tightly coupled with vendor spend. It also extends to forecasting the spend for any product launch against the expected margins.
    • Contract risk management – This involves expiry alerts and identifying clauses, obligations, and risks
    • Dispute analytics – This involves using AI/ML to predict disputes on the billing, write-offs, bad debts and usage charges date sets
    • Just in time (JIT) and just in case (JIC) analytics – This includes managing inventory based on analyzing historical data and current datasets, and forecasting capacity. This capability has been essential for a lot of CSPs since the Covid-19 pandemic. Many CSPs are refocusing from JIT to JIC to avoid loss of opportunity.

    The more we analyze how CSPs and their partners interact, the better business assurance teams are able to institute controls that protect to ensure those relationships. Ultimately, healthy and profitable business interactions will be necessary for both CSPs and partners to provide a best-in-class experience to customers.

    Business Assurance in 5G and beyond

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  • How to build an ai platform with no code

    No-code AI is a type in the AI application that aims to democratize AI. No-code AI means using a no-code development platform with a visual, code-free and often drag-and-drop interface to deploy AI and machine learning models. No code AI enables non-technical users to quickly classify, analyze data and easily build accurate models to make predictions without business analysts.

    No code AI Platform is the closest to the ideal of “any person without prior training” when it comes to data handling. The increased level of democratization of data to personalized applications has been proven time and time again, the majority of businesses struggle to implement AI to utilize its full potential and scale the use cases to all workflows of the company.

    With each model of ML built for a company, the goals of the unique model of No-code would be to conquer complexities, increase efficiency with automated machine learning, instant visualizations and Auto Feature Engineering which all provide ready results once the AI platform is up and running.

    Here is how to build an AI platform with No-code

    CONNECT :

    Building custom AI solutions requires integrating with an existing data source or uploading your data files in just a few clicks, cleaning data, categorizing, structuring data, training and debugging the model. These take even less time on No-code to enable Auto Data Preparation. Studies claim that low code/ no-code solutions have the potential to reduce the development time up by 90%, so connecting your existing business models and data with point and click interfaces will draw the most benefits once employed.

    BUILD :

    No-code AI platforms allow automation through drag and drop UI. Easy-to-use AI platforms leverage the time/value/knowledge trade-off in a genuinely attractive way and allow customers with no AI coding skills to optimize day-to-day operations and to solve business issues.

    Visual, often drag-and-drop, no-code AI tools make AI easy to operate and build a personalized platform for non-technical people or those who lack the time or resources to build such systems from the ground up. Building the No-code allows skipping training, testing and validating the models that are traditionally required by ML platforms.

    DEPLOY :

    Saving and launching takes just a few clicks and can be instantly applied on web platforms or other applications to start using on your business models.

    COLLABORATE :

    Inviting and corporating relevant data and integrating AI models help the ML make a better prediction and help with accuracy in all applications.

    Besides the ease of starting with No-code, there are some huge advantages to no-code AI:

    • Accessibility: No-code AI allows businesses to make use of AI in the first place and can act as the stepping-stone towards intensified use of data science or AI in the future. The relatively low investment paired with people building up hands-on knowledge of AI tools tackles the biggest obstacles to AI adoption at small and mid-sized companies.
    • Usability: Drag-and-Drop allows anyone in the company to find an AI solution to a problem, and more often than not, in a budget-friendly way. These tools are built primarily with non-technical users and non-developers in mind.
    • Speed: The best type of no-code AI application allow users to iterate through time and help machine code platforms to learn quickly. This allows for more rapid experimentation to see what can be done using one’s data – and getting back to business right afterwards. The simplicity of the process of No-code deployment and intuitive processes help significantly in the launching speed.
    • Quality: No-code tools useful for people who may not have a technical talent group, to begin with. This takes significant work going into the product with defaults and safety measures that need to be carefully chosen on behalf of the user. To further tackle such risks, some AI platforms have human reviews built-in and ask for input when required. This reduces human error marginally when setting up such systems in the first place and allows direct interaction with the platform during daily operations.
    • Scalability: AI itself doesn’t have any drawback to manage a task for a single or a hundred users and neither do servers that are automatically scaled up or down, depending on the load.

    How HyperSense AI Platform works?

    HyperSense AI uses automated machine learning to automate iterative tasks of machine learning model development. It allows data scientists and experts to build ML models with higher scale, productivity, and efficiency while sustaining the model quality. It accelerates the time to get production-ready models with greater ease and efficiency. It also decreases human errors mainly because of manual measures in ML models. It also makes data intelligence accessible to all, enabling both trained and non-trained resources to rapidly build accurate and robust models, thus fostering a decentralized process.

    The quality of a machine learning model is not only based on code but also on the features used for running the model. Around 80% of data scientists’ time goes into creating, training, and testing data. HyperSense AI Studio comes with features to store registered, discovered and used data as a part of an ML pipeline. It enables reusing features for different models driving AI at scale.

    HyperSense AI Studio is built with assisted analytics capabilities, provides users with the ability to build applications with suitable levels of automation and human involvement at any stage of the data science cycle based on task and business requirements. It notifies users while creating a pipeline. It reduces complexity and iterations. These workflows are not a black box, so what happens at each stage can be surfaced to the user in detail, including the results.

    Guided Analytics As many enterprises have started their AI journey and are at different stages of maturity, they require a module that can leverage their existing components in an organization while choosing a specific module suitable to their business needs.

    HyperSense AI Studio is a highly composable data science studio that allows them to integrate with the existing assets in the organization. It can be integrated using various options such as APIs, files, databases, and streaming to achieve modularity and plug-and-play capabilities for quick data collection.

    Composable Architecture Visual Analytics combined with HyperSense AI Studio’s automated ML capabilities provides users with visibility into how the AI system arrives at a decision and how the decision can be improved. Without AI Model Monitoring, sometimes the decisions made can be biased. Visual analytics can reduce these suspicions by providing a fine picture of the decision process. It improves the efficiency of the AI projects and helps to create ML pipelines quickly

    HyperSense AI Studio provides ML operation capabilities that leverage automation to monitor, deploy and govern operations to manage machine learning lifecycle to get better business results. With ML platforms, models can be easily deployed into the production environments. It provides constant monitoring and production diagnostics to improve the performance of existing models. It also shows an AI trust and testing framework that helps to maintain the governance process for AI projects across the entire organization. ML HyperSense AI Studio supports multiple deployment options based on business requirements and priorities. The deployment options are On-premises Cloud or Hybrid.

    Overall, deploying an AI Orchestration platform helps enterprises operationalize AI enabling scalability and growth. Facilitating technologies such as machine learning and AI assists with data preparation, model construction and deployment, insight generation, and insight explanation to augment how enterprises explore and analyze the data for substantial improvements.

    Eliminate AI Model bias with HyperSense AI Studio

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  • The 5G Series: Broadband for All – Disrupting Broadband Connectivity with 5G FWA

    The 5G Series: Broadband for All – Disrupting Broadband Connectivity with 5G FWA

    The challenges brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic have increased digitization in our lives and our reliance on high-speed internet like never before. With the emergence of 5G technology, home internet connections are now at the cusp of a new transformation – one that is wireless and promises unparalleled high-speed network connectivity. In this blog, I want to explore how 5G FWA (Fixed Wireless Access) will enable broadband connections of the future.

    What is 5G FWA and how does it benefit operators?

    5G FWA (Fixed Wireless Access) is an enhanced mobile broadband (eMBB) use case of 5G in the hybrid (high/mid/low) electromagnetic spectrum bands for wireless communication. 5G FWA can be used to deliver a superior customer experience quickly and economically. It can be a strong alternative to wired broadband. In the millimeter wavelengths (mmWave), 5G FWA can provide ultra-high bandwidth to deliver heavy content at significantly faster speeds.

    5G FWA (Fixed Wireless Access) allows telecom operators to deliver broadband internet services in areas where fiber or fixed internet lines are absent. The technology relies on mobile components to deliver internet services to customers. Even today, many households do not have a fixed broadband connection. Operators can use this technology to expand their revenue stream by catering to residential markets in rural and remote areas where it is hard to maintain fixed internet lines.

    5G FWA: An exciting new opportunity for telco revenue 

    Over the last decade, total global telecom operator service revenues have been quite flat, and operators have been under tremendous margin pressure. Many operators are struggling to find top-line growth. With the rise in the usage of high-speed applications, gigabit speeds have become a new benchmark for consumers. 5G FWA provides operators a unique growth opportunity to capture new revenue while improving their 5G business case with bundled services. As per GSA’s latest report on FWA (end of 2020), fixed wireless access broadband based on LTE is already available worldwide. CSPs clearly realize the potential.

    Let us look at the below numbers:

    • 423 operators in 166 countries are offering FWA services based on LTE (up by 5.5% as compared to their last report, published around mid of 2020)
    • Out of 120 telecom operators announcing 5G launches worldwide (till the end of 2020), around 44 announced the launch of 5G FWA broadband services (up by 42% as compared to their last report)
    • From a device or more precise CPE (Customer Premise Equipment) perspective, 31 commercially available indoor and outdoor 5G FWA CPE devices are available (up from nine as compared to their last report).

    These stats clearly establish that FWA is by no means a new phenomenon anymore.

    Why is 5G FWA gaining momentum in the telecom industry? 

    1. Capacity

    Capacity is one of the fundamental and critical aspects for operators to digitize the mobile wireless ecosystem. 5G FWA in its current form will gain significant momentum as mmWave spectrum auction in various geographies by respective regulatory is executed. Operators will acquire their respective purchases of this massive bandwidth spectrum. The actual densification exercise will then accelerate, and the state of 5G FWA deployments will revolutionize the way consumers access broadband services.

    2. Performance

    In the ongoing pandemic, the pressure on traditional broadband service providers significantly increased to maintain consistent network performance. Simultaneously, the growing global popularity of online gaming and video streaming has increased the demand for high-performance broadband services. This demand cannot be alone met with legacy xDSL or cable. 5G FWA is destined to make this landscape increasingly competitive. This is just the beginning, as the change in consumer behavior witnessed during the pandemic will lead to introducing new types of 5G services. FWA is seen as a good opportunity for additional revenue streams.

    3. Cost

    With the massive bandwidth of mmWave and superior spectral efficiency of 5G, the network cost (cost per/bit/hertz) can be dropped immensely, provided the 5G FWA rollout is planned accurately to enable superior customer experience and new business cases. Cost efficiency will help CSPs deliver OTT services such as TV/video streaming today to households and AR/VR services in the future. This will not only enable CSPs to capture new revenue but will also help them improve margins.

    Strategies to launch 5G FWA

    In the past, those who have had a not-so-successful experience of deploying FWA based on WiMAX or earlier technologies may have some questions, like, what is different this time? And why 5G FWA could be a game-changer? Here are the key aspects to consider from a network and a business perspective.

    – From a network perspective, spectrum assessment (in the low band, mid-band, and mmWave band) with respect to cost vs. capacity in the targeted FWA area calls for an intelligent approach. If planned accurately, it can ease out the capacity challenges and cost of FWA rollout. Key considerations in this direction are:

    • Precise understanding of the current state of the network in terms of capacity utilization, installed licenses and software, spectrum availability, and current system load.
    • Accurate forecasting and understanding of future demand and a priority-based rollout plan to add new small cells, macro-cells, carriers, etc.
    • mmWave, massive MIMO, and beamforming will be the integral factors of 5G FWA to boost capacity and speed, but the radio propagation characteristic will pose many planning challenges. Operators will need domain-based data science models to simulate and perform multiple iterations and extensive tests before the final deployment.

    – From a business perspective, there are three main opportunities for mobile-led operators to boost their financial performance:

    • Enterprise – A new revenue stream:
      • 5G FWA in mmWave spectrum boosts the enhanced mobile broadband (eMBB) capabilities. Once enhanced and seamless services on 5G FWA have been delivered to consumers, Operators can leverage the critical best practices to extend the technology to the enterprise segment. The huge potential enterprise coverage will prove a great opportunity for operators to generate a new revenue stream on top of their existing broadband offerings for consumers.
    • Fixed Broadband vs. Wireless Broadband – A new battleground for CSPs: 
      • For mobile-led operators, household broadband is, to a large extent, an unaddressed market. By targeting this market with FWA, these operators can tap into a considerable pool of residential spending. The additional revenue streams that can be targeted are highly dependent on the operator strategy being pursued. Business-driven 5G FWA planning would be quintessential to compete with fixed broadband service providers.
    • Tapping the ocean of unconnected broadband ecosystems
      • With more than 50% unconnected households, a market that is extremely challenging for a traditional broadband service provider to serve mainly due to cost associated with last-mile connectivity opens a huge opportunity for 5G FWA deployments by mobile-led CSPs. In the current pandemic situation, the need for connecting rural areas has become more critical than ever before.

    Key takeaways

    5G FWA will not just be related to the network alone; it will need comprehensive and robust analytical capabilities related to planning, optimization, customer experience, and most importantly, business. As more operators upgrade their network to LTE-Advanced, and more 5G networks are deployed globally along with more CPE devices (mainly 5G) that are commercialized, it will just be a matter of time that the number of FWA services will rise.

    5G FWA holds the potential to solve the problem of revenue growth for all CSPs. More importantly, 5G FWA brings in a unique capability to provide economic broadband services to everyone, a requirement that has now become a necessity or a commodity in every citizen’s life.

    To know more about how your organization can plan for 5G with improved accuracy and efficiency

    Read this Case Study

  • AI vs. ML vs. DL: What’s the difference?

    We all have seen AI do amazing things and know what it can do. AI in our everyday life pretty much surrounds us. Recommending movies on Netflix and music on Spotify, navigating roads in Google Maps, controlling smart home devices and speakers using Alexa to cab booking apps like Uber, we use AI to help make our daily lives easier and improve customer experience. AI has offered many different benefits across multiple industries like healthcare, retail, manufacturing, banking, and many more.

    So what is AI? What is ML? What is DL? There are many popular terms around this area, such as Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Deep Learning, Data Science, etc. There has been a lot of confusion around these terms. Knowing and differentiating artificial intelligence (AI) vs. machine learning (ML) vs. deep learning (DL) has now become more critical than ever. Although these terms might be closely related, there are differences between them. See the illustration below.

    AI-vs-ML-vs-DL-Whats-the-difference

    What is Artificial Intelligence (AI)?

    Artificial Intelligence is a broader term that refers to the replication of humans, the way it thinks, work, and function. It has the ability of computers and machines to mimic the human mind’s problem-solving and decision-making capabilities. It anticipates problems and deals with issues as they arise. It performs three cognitive skills just like a human: 

    • logical reasoning
    • learning 
    • self-correction 

    It enhances human performance and augments people’s capabilities.  

    What are the types of AI? 

    AI-based systems fall into four categories: 

    • Reactive AI- These are systems that only react. They respond to identical situations in the same way, every time. They do not learn from past experiences to make decisions. 
    • Limited Memory AI- These systems learn from past experiences and build experiential knowledge by observing actions or data. However, as the name suggests, the referenced information is short-lived, not saved in the long-term memory. 
    • Theory of Mind AI- These systems can understand and remember the emotions of humans, then adjust behavior based on their emotions accordingly and how they affect decision-making. 
    • Self-aware AI– These systems are designed to be aware of themselves. They understand their internal states, predict other people’s emotions, and act accordingly. 

    As AI uses computers and machines to mimic problem-solving, machine learning uses computers to mimic human actions, performs predictions, automation, and make decisions as AI applications. 

    Where is Artificial Intelligence (AI) used? 

    AI is used in different domains to provide insights into user behavior and recommendations based on past data. For example, Google’s predictive search algorithm used past user data to predict what a user would type next in the search bar. The uses of artificial intelligence fall under the data processing category, which includes: 

    • Searching within data and optimizing the search to give the most relevant results 
    • Logic-chains for if-then reasoning that is applied to execute a string of commands based on parameters 
    • Pattern-detection to identify significant patterns in extensive data set for unique insights 
    • Applied probabilistic models for predicting future outcomes 

    What is Machine Learning (ML)? 

    Machine learning is one way to achieve artificial intelligence that uses statistical methods and algorithms. It enables the machines/computers to learn automatically from their previous experiences and data and allows the program to change its behavior accordingly. The ML systems can automatically learn and improve without explicitly being programmed.  

    Why is machine learning important? 

    Machine learning is essential nowadays as it helps to automatically build models quickly and accurately analyze large and complex datasets with access to enormous volume and variety of data and affordability of computational power.  

    There are multiple use cases where machine learning can be applied to cut costs, mitigate risks, and improve the overall quality of life, including recommending products/services, detecting cybersecurity breaches, and enabling self-driving cars. 

    What are the types of machine learning? 

    The three different types of machine learning algorithms are as follows: 

    • Supervised Learning- Uses labeled datasets to train or supervise the model to classify the data and accurately predict outcomes. The model can measure its accuracy and learn over time using labeled inputs and outputs.  
    • Unsupervised Learning- Uses machine learning algorithms to analyze and cluster unlabeled data sets. These algorithms discover hidden patterns in data without the need for human intervention. 
    • Reinforcement Learning- Train machine learning models to find an optimal solution to maximize reward in a particular situation. This algorithm finds the best possible behavior or path to a specific situation. 

    ML provides many different techniques such as Decision trees, Random Forests, Support Vector Machines, K Means Clustering, etc., to make the computer learn. ML models are used in various use cases such as demand forecasting sales of products, predicting customer behavior, gauging customer sentiments from their social media behavior.  

    What is Deep Learning (DL)? 

    Deep learning is a subset of AI and machine learning inspired by the brain’s structure and the function called artificial neural networks. These neural networks attempt to simulate the behavior of the human brain, allowing it to learn from large amounts of data. Deep Learning systems help a machine learning model filter the input data through layers to predict and classify information. While a neural network with a single layer can still make approximate predictions, additional hidden layers can help to optimize and refine for accuracy. It drives many AI applications and services that perform analytical and physical tasks without human intervention and improves automation. 

    How does deep learning work? 

    Deep learning networks learn by discovering intricate structures in the data they experience. By building computational models composed of multiple processing layers, the networks can create multiple levels of abstraction to represent the data. 

    For example, a deep learning model known as a convolutional neural network can be trained using large numbers (as in millions) of images, such as those containing cars. This type of neural network typically learns from the pixels contained in the images it acquires. It can classify groups of pixels that represent a car’s features, with groups of features such as headlights, tyres, and rear mirrors indicating the presence of a car in an image. 

    One of the significant differences between deep learning and machine learning is how data is presented to the machine. Machine learning algorithms usually require structured data (a specific set of features to identify the car in the image). In contrast, deep learning networks work on multiple layers of artificial neural networks (a large number of car images and the system can autonomously learn the features that represent a car). 

    AI-vs-ML-vs-DL-Whats-the-difference

    Where are we with AI today?

    With AI, machine learning, and deep learning techniques, many industries such as manufacturing, fintech, e-commerce and retail, telecom, transportation, etc., try to solve actual problems and get answers in real-time. AI gives you the ability to sift through all your data and make logical connections between past actions and different criteria.

    According to IDC, 90% of enterprises will insert AI into their processes and products. It is also expected that in 2022, traditional businesses will adopt an AI-first approach to platform and digital transformation, says Forrester research. The more AI inside, the more enterprises can shrink the latency between insights, decisions, and results.

    In fact, in the coming years, AI will be democratized and become accessible to everyone across an organization. According to Gartner’s research, 50% of enterprises will devise AI orchestration platforms to operationalize AI, and 65% of application development will be done on low-code/no-code AI platforms.

    Artificial intelligence has many applications in the world that are changing the face of technology. While creating an AI system as intelligent as humans remains a dream, ML and DL algorithms already allow the computer to outperform us in many areas such as computations, pattern recognition, object detection, and anomaly detection.

    Do you agree with the points mentioned in the blog? Is there any specific difference that we’ve missed? If yes, do let me know your comments in the section below.

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  • Demystify Mobile Money Risks and Money Laundering with Better Monitoring Controls

    Demystify Mobile Money Risks and Money Laundering with Better Monitoring Controls

    2007 was a remarkable year in many ways for me as a graduate student and a tech-enthusiast.

    It was the year when J.K Rowling wrote her final book, ‘Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows’, which I read and re-read with much enthusiasm, and the year that marked the beginning of ‘iPhone mania’.

    It was also the year when the largest mobile network operator in Kenya, Safaricom (part of the Vodafone Group), launched M-PESA – an innovative payment service for the unbanked.

    This heralded a new era for mobile customers, allowing them to leverage telecom providers beyond the traditional use of voice and SMS. They could use network provider infrastructure for financial transactions, money transfers, and other services without having to hold bank accounts.

    Fast forward to 2021

    Now, it is a sea change. Mobile money has grown to become a significant contributor to the overall revenue for most Asian and African operators. By the end of 2018, there were over 866 million registered accounts in over 90 countries processing over US $1.3 billion a day. 2019 marked a major milestone for the mobile money industry with over 1 billion registered accounts across 290 mobile money deployments in 95 countries, processing over US $1.9 billion a day. This was the year when the industry first witnessed 57% of digital transactions values that exceeded the cash-in/out values and the US $22 billion in circulation.

    When the world was hit with Covid-19 in early 2020, it quickly became clear that mobile technology was vital to keep the world connected. More importantly, it became evident that mobile money could play a critical role in providing safe, no-contact way for payments for life essentials, including food, electricity, daily grocery supplies, money transfers to friends and family, etc.

    The year 2020 saw an increase of 17% year-on-year in the number of monthly active accounts, 5.2 million unique agent outlets, and US $500 million digitized transactions per day by agents globally. Despite the difficulties during the pandemic, there was a significant increase in the adoption of digital technology. No-contact and restricted movements made digital payments a necessity. This saw an increase of 12.7% in the number of registered mobile money accounts.

    Risks of Using Mobile Money 

    Being relatively new to the market, mobile money has several loopholes by way of operations, regulations, and user knowledge. Also, being a fast, cheap, and easy way to transact makes it increasingly susceptible to attacks like money laundering and fraud.

    On October 3, 2020, MTN Uganda was forced to suspend mobile money transactions on its network after discovering that hackers had breached the payment system through one of their partners, a finance aggregator. The hack, executed using 2000 mobile SIM cards, resulted in the theft of nearly US $3.2 million dollars. 

    This example is one among many frauds that permeate the mobile money network. Mobile money attacks arise from different sources – from within the network, through agents, customers, employees. It can also be part of wider schemes to steal financial data. Some of the common mobile money attacks are shown in the figure below.

    Types of Mobile Money Attacks

    • Fraudulent top-up using compromised or stolen credit-cards
    • Identity or subscription fraud
    • Dealer or agent fraud
    • Commissions fraud
    • Internal fraud (employee collusion)
    • Social engineering fraud
    • SIM swaps
    • Roaming fraud
    • Foreign exchange (exploiting currency differences during deposit and withdrawal)

    Source: GSMA Mobile Financial Services – Fraud Risk Analysis

    Without the right controls, mobile money presents increasing business, financial, operational, and compliance risks. On the business side, it can also lead to identity theft and impersonation. Financially, it breeds laundering by exchanging counterfeit notes for digital money or spoofing transactions to withdraw cash. On the operations side, it may cause a lack of electronic float and abuse of customer details. Finally, from a compliance perspective, it presents risks arising from inadequate KYC and screening of PEP and sanctions lists.

    According to an Interpol report, transaction fees for mobile money networks are lower than traditional banks, making it lucrative for criminals to section big transactions into many smaller ones to avoid detection. In fact, one of the most dangerous and costly risks is money laundering. In money laundering, the objective of the launderer is to conceal their identity, source, and destination of the money for organized crime, financial fraud, arms dealing, terrorist financing, etc. Funds are simply transited through various accounts and financial systems. The rapid speed of transactions and minimal face-to-face interactions make mobile money a viable channel for money laundering.

    The cost of money laundering is heavy for telecom operators. According to research from Fenergo, regulators across the globe issued more than US $10 billion in anti-money laundering fines to financial institutions in 2020. Nearly 198 fines were issued to global financial institutions in 2020 for non-compliance with AML, KYC, data privacy regulations. Global data privacy fines amounted to US $88.6 million, while AML and MIFID (Markets in Financial Instruments Directive) breaches in US, Europe, and China by 203 individuals led to fines of US $88.8 million. Controlling money laundering involves detecting suspicious transactions and reporting them to the correct authorities. This, in turn, requires strong monitoring controls.

    Fraud Monitoring Controls 

    With years of experience in fraud management, Subex has seen the types of fraud becoming more ingenious and innovative in methods. In the same vein, it requires dedicated commitment and effective monitoring controls such as:

    • Customer and agent/dealer dedupe controls
    • Transactional controls at all levels (customer, dealer, device, etc.)
    • Internal fraud controls
    • Advanced machine learning techniques to automatically segment customers based on predictive models and identify complex fraud techniques like smurfing or layering

    A stitch in time

    Robust processes and appropriate solutions are needed to deploy numerous fraud controls in real-time. It calls for powerful machine learning techniques, AI-driven AML monitoring, and real-time visualization tools to combat the existing and future threats in the mobile money landscape. Other capabilities like risk categorization, AML watchlists, and activity monitoring can protect mobile money networks from criminal activities and fraud attacks, thereby securing them for safe financial transactions and revenue growth.

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  • Simplifying Contract Management over Blockchain

    Simplifying Contract Management over Blockchain

    With the evolution of 5G, sharing of infrastructure and assets between telecom infrastructure companies and CSPs is the need of the hour. The vast operations cost involved in maintaining infrastructure and assets by CSPs is critical for optimizing and sharing infrastructures resources. CSPs need to get into an agreement with several new vendors and other CSPs as partners to meet the new business expectation. Infrastructure sharing will improve the business experience where competitors become partners to reduce their investments. Infrastructure sharing includes the mast, sites, tower, and many more. Other than this, CSPs also offer services associated with Virtual reality, IoT devices, 5G slices, etc. This requires regular onboarding of new partners to help them offer and deliver these services to the end-users.

    Once a CSPs or vendor gets into an agreement with CSPs to share their assets or provide a service, they need to maintain the contracts, which is currently a manual process or is done using a basic document management system. This data is maintained over excel or an open-source system in most places, leading to delays and errors. Currently, complexity in infrastructure sharing requires follow-up and closure of commercial agreements, which get delayed due to the complexity of negotiating the terms and conditions within timelines, which further delays the onboarding of suppliers and vendors. Due to the current situation, partners’ onboarding is a critical function at the same level as commissioning management, dealer management, tower sharing, etc.

    Due to the absence of standard policies across industries, it’s challenging to keep track of financial transactions, and hence, auditing activities are not transparent. A ready-to-use enterprise solution can be deployed for end-to-end contract management, which will simplify the process by digitally capturing the transactions and transparency in a step-by-step process.

    What is Blockchain?

    • Blockchain is a shared, immutable ledger for recording transactions, tracking assets, and building trust.
    • A decentralized, distributed ledger that stores encrypted blocks of data and chains them together to form a chronological single-source-of-truth for the data

    How can a Blockchain-based end-to-end solution help resolve the above challenges?

    Blockchain is a technology capable of hosting smart contracts that comprise the application logic of the system. Smart contracts can ensure the standardization of templates for contracts and agreements where rich queries reside over an immutable distributed ledger. Moreover, smart contracts will ensure the least manual intervention in contract life cycle processes. These processes include:

    • Template authorization
    • Contract creation & review
    • Contract negotiation
    • Contract approval
    • Contract execution
    • Contract renewal
    • Contract expiry

    How can a decentralized enterprise solution help?

    A decentralized enterprise solution can help to:

    • Productivity
      • Reduce the lead time in contract negotiation and quick onboarding process
      • Digitization and automation lead to a reduction in human resources efforts
    • Efficiency
      • Closure of agreement as per the contractual timelines and real-time tracking of status
      • Capture contract workflow with immutable timestamps, which can be quickly backtracked
      • Implement standard template for contracts via smart contracts
    • Trust
      • Agreement negotiation and T&C get captured digitally
      • Payment, penalty terms, and settlement are captured as per the contract
    • Transparency
      • Any deviation in SLA will be penalized as per the agreed contract automatically
      • Provide real-time reports and dashboard views for operators
      • CSPs, Partners, and regulatory bodies ensure that infrastructure will be shared transparently

    A permissioned blockchain with a decentralized database will simplify the process, help standardize the template, and help in the smooth execution of contract life cycle management. Blockchain will ensure that the productivity, performance, and level of trust are better by making terms and conditions of the contract visible and SLA tracking transparent to all end-users at all times, leading to minimum expenses for dispute settlement. Hence, Blockchain can help overcome the challenges of managing the contract lifecycle through a secured network.

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  • What is No-Code ML and How to get started?

    What is No-Code ML and How to get started?

    Machine learning and artificial intelligence are two limbs of technology that are quickly evolving and helping businesses run. Today’s businesses rely on updated data and deep insights, which primarily depend on our ability to find and analyze them. In such a case, we need machine learning to learn from this data and give individualized assistance on a large scale to help us make better decisions. However, mastering machine learning tools and deep-diving into data science is time-consuming. This led to the development of No-Code AI!

    With the advancements in ML and AI, both no-code AI platforms and libraries have expanded quite a bit. The limits to using and applying ML models in applications have deterred greatly. Machine learning has become more accessible than ever before as the industry expands.

    In this blog, we introduce you to how No Code AI works, its benefits, and what it can deliver for businesses.

    What exactly is No-code?

    The quick definition would be that it is a bot that can deliver everything AI and ML promise without having to write any code. A no-code development platform is a graphical development interface that allows developers to create portable applications using established templates, pre-built logic models, drag-and-drop application components, links to other constituents, and so on, all without having to code.

    No-code technologies are often aimed at business users, enabling them to easily transform their corporate work-cases into personalized applications without the users having prior coding skills to create applications using no-code.

    No-Code is the future, and here’s why :

    The objective of no-code AI is to help businesses to turn data into actionable information via predictive analytics in minutes rather than weeks or months. Programs can be built from the ground up with end-to-end scalability in mind. From rapid deployment tech to plug-and-play integration, No-Code AI has it all.

    More and more businesses are shifting towards AI and ML hounding the promise of success via AI and rightfully so. By democratizing access to machine learning capabilities across any team, it is easier to optimize the businesses once the tools are properly integrated.

    There is a significant demand for skills and talents in the technology business. No-Code AI would bridge this demand and supply gap by allowing non-programmers to manage the addition of fundamental functionalities, which in turn frees up IT staff to focus their efforts on more challenging tasks or strategies with higher business value. This tradeoff also saves the company valuable time and resources in the long run.

    Managing and maintaining no-code machine learning environments can be done from a single comprehensive dashboard, which empowers IT professionals, to design every app within the boundaries of their organization.

    The Benefits of No-Code AI

    There are diverse advantages of using no-code, given that they are “effortless and suitable.” We’ll go over a bunch of them for you.

    1. Evolve into data-driven business without a data science team

    Because the speed at which an application can be developed is faster and has even become simpler, the IT or Data Science department is no longer flooded with requests. Work that once took months is now completed in hours or days, so putting forth your ideas and work program samples are easier than ever before. In return, No-code AI can deliver a data-driven application that can work for you independently to the data science team.

    2. Deploy machine learning-driven strategies and scale them

    Traditional coding has the drawback of making it difficult to update functionality, especially if the code is written in a language you are unfamiliar with. You can quickly revise the functionality with no-code in only a few hours. With the ever-evolving market, it’s never been easier to utilize No-code ML tools to leverage data directly to drive your product sales or scale your business.

    3. Improve decision-making

    Machine learning appears to most firms to be a sophisticated, pricey, and talent-intensive technology. But in reality, Machine learning platforms can be wonderful efforts without much investment and infrastructure needs, whether the goal is to construct a recommendation engine or a machine learning API to harness your real-time social informatics, ML can help you make better decisions by working faster with data but also develop a visual data information output you can understand quickly.

    4. Eliminate costs while improving profit

    The maintenance of ML and AI was scary not so long ago because of the complexity required in the pre-no-code era. But with No-code ML, even during maintenance, you don’t need a programmer which reduces the costs significantly both in terms of maintaining a data science operator and also the costs that would traditionally be levied to pay for updating the model and keeping the algorithm in check.

    How to get started with No-Code?

    If you decide to get started with machine learning and integrate it into your existing programme, Experience HyperSense No Code AI platform which provides unique combination of automation and customization of machine learning pipelines to help enterprise scale faster.

    In high-load, data-intensive situations, they are not a replacement for specialised ML models. These technologies are only liable for what they are: no-code platforms that allow non-technical users or ML newcomers to quickly adapt to the models and apps.

    It is evident now that the future with No-code Machine Learning at the core will bring great results towards businesses opting to deploy them. The sooner the deployment of ML into the system, the better will be the results from the self-taught algorithm in AI.

    Operationalize Machine Learning models with MLOps

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  • What is No-Code ML and How to get started?

    What is No-Code ML and How to get started?

    Machine learning and artificial intelligence are two limbs of technology that are quickly evolving and helping businesses run. Today’s businesses rely on updated data and deep insights, which primarily depend on our ability to find and analyze them. In such a case, we need machine learning to learn from this data and give individualized assistance on a large scale to help us make better decisions. However, mastering machine learning tools and deep-diving into data science is time-consuming. This led to the development of No-Code AI!

    With the advancements in ML and AI, both no-code AI platforms and libraries have expanded quite a bit. The limits to using and applying ML models in applications have deterred greatly. Machine learning has become more accessible than ever before as the industry expands.

    In this blog, we introduce you to how No Code AI works, its benefits, and what it can deliver for businesses.

    What exactly is No-code?

    The quick definition would be that it is a bot that can deliver everything AI and ML promise without having to write any code. A no-code development platform is a graphical development interface that allows developers to create portable applications using established templates, pre-built logic models, drag-and-drop application components, links to other constituents, and so on, all without having to code.

    No-code technologies are often aimed at business users, enabling them to easily transform their corporate work-cases into personalized applications without the users having prior coding skills to create applications using no-code.

    No-Code is the future, and here’s why :

    The objective of no-code AI is to help businesses to turn data into actionable information via predictive analytics in minutes rather than weeks or months. Programs can be built from the ground up with end-to-end scalability in mind. From rapid deployment tech to plug-and-play integration, No-Code AI has it all.

    More and more businesses are shifting towards AI and ML hounding the promise of success via AI and rightfully so. By democratizing access to machine learning capabilities across any team, it is easier to optimize the businesses once the tools are properly integrated.

    There is a significant demand for skills and talents in the technology business. No-Code AI would bridge this demand and supply gap by allowing non-programmers to manage the addition of fundamental functionalities, which in turn frees up IT staff to focus their efforts on more challenging tasks or strategies with higher business value. This tradeoff also saves the company valuable time and resources in the long run.

    Managing and maintaining no-code machine learning environments can be done from a single comprehensive dashboard, which empowers IT professionals, to design every app within the boundaries of their organization.

    The Benefits of No-Code AI

    There are diverse advantages of using no-code, given that they are “effortless and suitable.” We’ll go over a bunch of them for you.

    1. Evolve into data-driven business without a data science team

    Because the speed at which an application can be developed is faster and has even become simpler, the IT or Data Science department is no longer flooded with requests. Work that once took months is now completed in hours or days, so putting forth your ideas and work program samples are easier than ever before. In return, No-code AI can deliver a data-driven application that can work for you independently to the data science team.

    2. Deploy machine learning-driven strategies and scale them

    Traditional coding has the drawback of making it difficult to update functionality, especially if the code is written in a language you are unfamiliar with. You can quickly revise the functionality with no-code in only a few hours. With the ever-evolving market, it’s never been easier to utilize No-code ML tools to leverage data directly to drive your product sales or scale your business.

    3. Improve decision-making

    Machine learning appears to most firms to be a sophisticated, pricey, and talent-intensive technology. But in reality, Machine learning platforms can be wonderful efforts without much investment and infrastructure needs, whether the goal is to construct a recommendation engine or a machine learning API to harness your real-time social informatics, ML can help you make better decisions by working faster with data but also develop a visual data information output you can understand quickly.

    4. Eliminate costs while improving profit

    The maintenance of ML and AI was scary not so long ago because of the complexity required in the pre-no-code era. But with No-code ML, even during maintenance, you don’t need a programmer which reduces the costs significantly both in terms of maintaining a data science operator and also the costs that would traditionally be levied to pay for updating the model and keeping the algorithm in check.

    How to get started with No-Code?

    If you decide to get started with machine learning and integrate it into your existing programme, Experience HyperSense No Code AI platform which provides unique combination of automation and customization of machine learning pipelines to help enterprise scale faster.

    In high-load, data-intensive situations, they are not a replacement for specialised ML models. These technologies are only liable for what they are: no-code platforms that allow non-technical users or ML newcomers to quickly adapt to the models and apps.

    It is evident now that the future with No-code Machine Learning at the core will bring great results towards businesses opting to deploy them. The sooner the deployment of ML into the system, the better will be the results from the self-taught algorithm in AI.

    Operationalize Machine Learning models with MLOps

    Learn more