We caught up with Greg Nichelsen, Executive Manager, Customer Data and Analytics, from Suncorp to gain insight on Artificial Intelligence in combination with analytics, and how it impacts the organisation and the customer.
I am always keen to understand the reasons why analytics fail to make the impact in organisations that it should. The industry has investigated several factors from the performance of our data assets to the way in which we visualise results.
Removing the “People”
One of the biggest breakthroughs in data and analytics though has come from injecting analytic decisions directly into our systems, where we remove people from the analytics use case. This not only takes our data from being something interesting in a report that may or may not influence business activity, this takes the data to something that is specifically and measurably driving outcomes for the organisation.
Building decisions into processes
Of course, using data to drive outcomes is not new, as we have been doing it for years in our risk assessments, pricing decisions and marketing targeting. However, our ability to more easily build this into any organisational process has seen a great focus on this as an organisational need. APIs and microservice architecture along with the ability to analyse large volumes of data in near real-time, have facilitated this progression. Now it is not uncommon to have decisions built directly into operational processes, call routing and our customer experiences.
These decisions may take the form of:
- Simple pathing
- Complex next best action calculations
- 1:1 personalisation
- Curation of customer experiences
AI: Enhancing effectiveness of data
The rise in technologies to streamline our interactions with our customers through digital interfaces such as; chat, as well as advances in our ability to use algorithms to understand, think and communicate via artificial intelligence and robotics, have boosted the effectiveness of injecting data directly into processes. We are constantly challenged by new precedents for intuitive customer experiences. Artificial intelligence combined with intuitive communications interfaces is proving effective in the experiences it can create for our customers.
You can hear Greg present his topic: The New Analytics Game Changer: Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence, at Chief Data & Analytics Officer Melbourne, taking place on the 4-6 September 2017