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How Machine Learning Is Changing CIO’s Role

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While machine learning (ML) systems have been around since the 1950s, today we are witnessing breakthroughs in the enterprise because of enormously increased amounts of data, significantly improved algorithms, and substantially more powerful computer hardware. ML helps enterprises by maintaining & acting on the current state of the customer without manual intervention. The implementations that previously took ages to complete, can be completed in a much shorter amount of time, sometime several weeks. It provides a highly scalable solution that keeps adapting to changing business dynamics.

A number of players are already working on this area, helping enterprises to boost revenue, improve profitability, and enhance customer experience by taking action based on real-time, customer behavior insights. Founded in 2010, Toovio is a SaaS-based marketing solution provider focused on enabling multi-channel offer orchestration primarily on customer lifecycle-based analytics like acquisition, cross-sell, and customer retention scenarios. Ashutosh Mehrotra, Business Head at Toovio Software throws light on the key trends driving the growth and adoption of ML in the enterprise and how this technology is changing the CIOs’ responsibility and shaping IT industry on the whole.

CXOToday: How is Machine Learning (ML) shaping IT industry today? How is it changing the role of IT Leaders?

Ashutosh Mehrotra: ML gives businesses the ability to push the best offer or the best content, at the best time, to the best channel (medium). Over the past a few years, IT market has doubtlessly witnessed a number of disruptive technologies and ML is one of them. Today, ML is driving digital transformation across industries and business processes. Thinking along the same line, technology leaders and C-suite executives need to shift their gears from wishful thinking to machine augmented thinking. We can’t deny the fact that computers can learn without being explicitly programmed and without the need of deploying a R&D team, team of data scientists & huge infrastructure costs, which in turn helps in driving data-based prediction in real time. In fact, we are increasingly interacting with machines (computers) by with one click, whether it is Amazon’s Alexa, Apple’s Siri, Microsoft’s Cortana, or other voice responsive systems.

CXOToday: What are the key trends driving the growth in ML?

Ashutosh Mehrotra: In the ever-changing IT landscape, 2017 was no different. This year has witnessed many disruptive technologies emerge and make headlines worldwide. Terms like Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Cloud and Blockchain became the brainstorming topics of discussion for boardrooms across the world. These technologies will continue to impact businesses and will certainly become integral parts of companies’ plans to lead in the future. The machine learning market is expected to grow from USD 1.41 billion in 2017 to USD 8.81 billion by 2022, at a CAGR of 44.1 percent globally.  Below are the three key trends in “data technology” that are likely to dominate the IT market in coming years and will have an immense impact on how companies will be doing business in 2018.

– Companies will look for an Advanced Decisioning Platform that can- “Sense” –“Comprehend” –“Act”

– Companies will head towards “Hybrid Multi-Cloud”

– Predictive Analytics to offer radical discoveries and solve complex business challenges

– Data-driven businesses will be the future for companies competing in today’s era of big data

CXOToday: How C-suite executives can leverage data to deliver business value to their organizations?

Ashutosh Mehrotra: With the IT market changing, disruptive technologies are taking over; it won’t be surprising that the role of C-suite executives will also take a turn. Indian C-Suite executives like chief information officers (CIOs), chief data officers (CDOs), and other data and analytics professionals/leaders must evolve traditional approaches and start focusing on business outcomes, go-to-market trends, and adopting new technologies in coming years.

To harness the benefits of data, we believe that the IT leader must start:

 Handling customer life cycle in a more logical manner rather than gut feeling

– Predicting the next purchase of the customer and match the offering accordingly

– Predicting lifetime value for the customer

– Predicting the best offer, channel & time of communication

– Aligning the business acumen & decision basis the customer behavior based prediction

CXOToday: How can businesses efficiently extract the value from data, without increasing cost and complexity?

Ashutosh Mehrotra: The future is here! Organizations need to start using BI, ML and data analytics platforms to leverage the full potential from data. At Toovio, we assure customer response must increase by 300-400% through accurate prediction. With SAAS based cutting-edge technology, bundled with adaptive predictive modeling, machine learning, natural language processing, we reduce at least 20% churn month to month through behavior models.

CXOToday: What is Toovio’s USP? How do you plan to stay ahead of your peers?

Ashutosh Mehrotra: What makes Toovio unique is the way we leverage predictive modeling and artificial intelligence including self-learning algorithms and natural language processing. We offer a highly scalable, real-time interaction management platform that can be plugged into any channel to optimize customer engagement. It enhances the user experience with behavioral data, response history, and advanced analytical capabilities, resulting in unique and personalized customer interactions. Our implementations are fast, API-based, and low in complexity. We strongly believe in teaching machines, specifically to make them understand marketers’ strategies, tactics and objectives so they can apply advanced data technology solutions in a better way that can be consumed and deployed by organizations at larger scales. Our ability to determine “when, what, and on which medium to promote”, significantly improves customer experience, raises revenues and share of wallet, lower churn, improve marketing ROI, sets us apart from our competitors. 

CXOToday: What are business benefits of handling data analytics & implementing a real time decisioning platform?

Ashutosh Mehrotra: We are witnessing a huge amount of data being generated on a daily basis. How can an enterprise utilize that data in real time to better serve their customers? With today’s real-time analytics platforms and tools, businesses have the power to transform their large data sets into relevant, actionable insights that help in driving business growth in an efficient way.

When it comes to usage, companies that are looking for immediate improvements in business performance and gain a competitive edge must take advantage of business intelligence and analytics tools to garner strategic insights and drive operational decision making in real time. The valuable asset “Data” needs to be processed, aggregated, organized, and analyzed in a meaningful and understandable format. It helps organizations respond faster and make smartrt decisions to achieve business objectives.

As modern organizations strive to become more data-driven and make data-backed decisions, it’s important to harness the full potential of data. For example, improve customer engagement with increases in customer response by 300-400%, enable optimal use of installed infrastructure and Zero-capex deployment cost and optimize costs across the value chain.

CXOToday: What is your business plan for India in 2018? 

Ashutosh Mehrotra: In the coming months, we’ll solemnly focus on establishing Toovio as a niche player providing complete RTM (Real Time Marketing) & Analytical suite for Enterprises. We have a good hold in Telco and Retail verticals. We would look beyond these sectors and will create a strong footprint in the untapped zones and verticals through strategic partnership & tie ups in the APAC region.

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