Technology Reseller - v16

Financial services industry positive about disruptive technology Almost two thirds (65%) of senior financial services industry decision- makers expect technologies such as Artificial Intelligence, blockchain and robotics to have a positive impact on their business, even if only 33% are deploying them today. According to a study by Intertrust, 65% believe disruptive technology will deliver most value by driving back-end operational efficiencies in areas such as KYC reporting, due diligence and compliance. Artificial Intelligence is expected to play the biggest role in revolutionising the financial services industry in the next five years, cited by 77% of respondents, well ahead of blockchain (56%) and robotics (27%). www.intertrustgroup.com Humans still best Three quarters (75%) of consumers prefer to have customer service enquiries handled by a live agent than self-service options or a chat bot, reveals a new survey by NewVoiceMedia. Just 13% would be happy for all service interactions to be handled by bots. The main concerns people have with chat bots are their failure to understand an issue (65%); an inability to solve complex issues (63%); not providing answers to simple questions (49%); and impersonal service (45%). People feel most uncomfortable interacting with a chat bot for large banking (82%), medical enquiries (75%) and small banking (60%). Dennis Fois, President of NewVoiceMedia, said: “When a situation becomes emotional or complex, people want to engage with people. For this reason, companies must find the right balance between automation and human support. Frontline contact centre teams will continue to make a difference in the battle to win the hearts and minds of customers, and organisations deploying self-service solutions should ensure that there is always an option to reach a live agent.” www.newvoicemedia.com Wellington goes into cyber- battle with LogRhythm Independent boarding school Wellington College has chosen LogRhythm’s NextGen SIEM Platform to boost its cyber security. The platform combines user and entity behaviour analytics (UEBA), network traffic and behaviour analytics (NTBA), and security orchestration, automation and response (SOAR) in a single end-to-end solution. Tony Whelton, IT Director at Wellington College, selected the LogRhythm solution for its enhanced functionality, seamless reporting features and advanced analytics. He said: “Our students and staff are constantly accessing our network on-the- go as they roam the campus, which can make it much more challenging to identify and locate threats. LogRhythm’s platform is able to correlate data from multiple sources to reveal what is infected, where and when. For example, we are now able to merge data picked up from our firewall with WiFi data to get the exact location of a malware-infected device.” He added: “What’s really useful is that this data is analysed and stored on one single dashboard, making it much easier for our IT department to create and share reports.” www.logrhythm.com TCO Certified promotes longer IT lifecycle TCO Certified, the sustainability certification programme for IT products, has been updated with more focus on circular and sustainable lifecycles for IT products. TCO Certified, generation 8 includes new criteria relating to product durability, repairability and upgradeability, in addition to existing requirements for material recovery and recycling. https://tcocertified.com/ NEWS : TRENDS 01732 759725 04 One in two businesses sees greater customer intimacy as the main reason to adopt artificial intelligence (AI), claims an MIT Technology Review Insights report sponsored by Genesys. A pan-European survey for the study found that 90% of firms are already using AI solutions to improve the customer journey and more than 90% are investing in AI tools to automate processes and enhance customer channels. The vast majority of respondents have seen measurable improvements as a result of their investment in AI, including faster complaint resolution (92%) and call volume processing (82%). On average, respondents indicate that 25% to 50% of enquiries are now completely resolved through automated channels, leaving agents with more time to handle complex tasks. www.genesys.com Business leverage AI to improve customer intimacy Rainbird technology automates assessment of R&D tax claims Accounting firm Grant Thornton is using an AI-powered decision-making platform to automate the assessment of Research & Development (R&D) tax claims, saving clients time and money in their dealings with advisors. The Rainbird platform lets clients perform their own R&D tax assessments and, thanks to an in-built audit trail, produce evidence reports of their claims assessments for faster claims sign-off. Rainbird is designed to replicate human judgements and handle uncertainty and ambiguity as a human would. Because Grant Thornton is able to view the rationale behind each Rainbird decision, it can avoid processing risk-heavy claims and focus instead on ones that are more likely to be accepted by HMRC. Grant Thornton Partner Earl Keddy said: “Assessing R&D claims can be a convoluted undertaking as there are so many factors to consider when determining whether or not it qualifies as R&D. By using Rainbird technology we’ve been able to harness the valuable background knowledge of our R&D specialists to automate the assessment process. It has two significant benefits: for our clients, it is a more intuitive way for data to be collected; and for our people, it frees up time to spend on value-added advice to our clients, which can have most benefit and be more rewarding.” He added: “Early feedback from clients has been positive and we are now looking at other applications for this powerful technology.” www.rainbird.ai Tony Whelton

RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy NDUxNDM=