November 4th, 2020. How is artificial intelligence (AI) used? If companies know how to use AI, it can mean cost reductions estimated to be between 10% and 20% for certain sectors, such as industry and logistics, as it can help predict machinery failures, increases or decreases in demand and real production needs, as well as having many other advantages.
It should be noted that AI is suitable for any type of company, with smaller companies increasingly accessing this technology. So far this year in the Basque Country, companies rolling out artificial intelligence projects are smaller and smaller. Specifically, large companies with over 250 workers have made way for medium and small-sized companies with between 50 and 250 workers, and in some cases even smaller companies that are aware of the importance of their technological strategy have introduced AI projects, as the cost of this type of project has fallen below the 6 digit barrier.
Euskaltel currently works with around 500 Basque companies in a range of industries, including finance, industry and retail. The majority of these companies want better customer relations, demand forecasting and stock management.
Industrial companies are therefore able to anticipate a machine failure and prevent it from happening, thus avoiding the resulting repairs and even the production of damaged goods. Furthermore, AI can also predict increases or decreases in the demand for the products or services that companies offer, so that both material and human goods can be adjusted to meet the actual needs of the market at all times. Thanks to artificial intelligence, production and stock can be optimised, reducing costs by eliminating damaged products, returns and excess production, etc.
Furthermore, artificial intelligence can be applied to almost all sectors, from the financial sector where it can predict the risk of defaults on loans, to the insurance sector where it can detect fraud or false claims. Likewise, in the property sector, artificial intelligence can help establish the ideal selling price of a house and in the health sector it can identify signs of certain conditions.
Euskaltel advises companies on how to tackle the most common problems, reducing the time needed to deploy projects, which in some cases can be five months, correctly monitoring models and choosing the most appropriate artificial intelligence project.
Ignacio Vilaplana, head of Artificial Intelligence for the Euskaltel Group, summarises the Group's AI approach. "Internally, we are working on standardising the use of AI. We've created a specific department, BAI Analytics, to promote this technology in companies, starting with ourselves. We're a small team, but we work across companies and involve all areas of an organisation. This leads to better decision making and improves the customer experience. Our job is to involve teams so that they trust and are aware of the forecasts made possible by AI using predictive models that impact favourably on the business". Externally, BAI Analytics is the Euskaltel Group vehicle through which companies can access this technology and undertake short-term projects requiring less investment.
Euskaltel is already playing an important benchmarking role in these technologies, as it is not only committed to the latest telecommunications services, but also takes advantage of their capabilities to support business customers using IoT, Big Data and artificial intelligence services, in conjunction with specialised companies in each sector.
Euskaltel recently held a technology conference under the slogan "Data Driven Company". Aimed at companies interested in starting, or who have already started, a digitalisation process, the conference dealt with data management as a key lever for business growth and competitiveness.
Nuria Oliver, a telecommunications engineer with a doctorate from the Media Lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), scientific and technology advisor and renowned expert in artificial intelligence and Big Data, opened the conference on an easily accessible Teams platform with an attractive design that replicated a real auditorium. She spoke about her view of the world in which we live and the influence of artificial intelligence on our society and lives.
Against the backdrop of the population pyramid, the polarisation of wealth, increased natural disasters and a world now susceptible to pandemics, Nuria Oliver maintained that we are also living in a world full of opportunities, led by mobile technology, connectivity and a huge and diverse amount of data. In order to make these data reliable and understandable, they must be analysed and artificial intelligence is needed to do this.
In her opinion, AI is at the heart of the 4th industrial revolution we are currently immersed in. "Artificial intelligence plays the same role that electricity played in the 2nd industrial revolution, because it is a cross-cutting discipline, which can be applied to any field and to any economic industry. AI is invisible because it is software, it is scalable and expandable as needed, and it can also be upgraded because it is constantly learning".
When describing the current technological situation, she stated that "in the last 15 years, three factors have come together that have led to the democratisation of tools such as AI. These factors are Big Data or the availability of large amounts of data, which has led to the data economy (€739 trillion generated in Europe in 2020); the increased computing capacity of processors year on year and their availability at low prices, and finally, the development of learning models that can analyse data better than humans can".
This democratisation of artificial intelligence is being used in companies, where processes can be automated, failures in production systems detected and new services created, among other aspects. Nuria Oliver posed questions to the almost 500 company managers attending to see whether their companies have integrated data into their management processes. Questions such as whether they have sufficient data and adequate structures, whether they are investing in training their employees to update their AI knowledge and whether they have an appropriate corporate culture that adapts to this new reality.
She also encouraged companies that have not yet introduced artificial intelligence into their processes to take this step, "because the impact on productivity is huge".
The 450 plus conference attendees heard first-hand about real experiences of applying Big Data, IoT and AI. CEO, Higinio Iglesias, spoke on behalf of Ebroker to explain how his company, which specialises in technological solutions for the comprehensive management of insurance brokers, approached a project called SegData using the Mileva platform with the Euskaltel Group and Datu(a), "because data analysis is the future of insurance". He believes that SegData will benefit insurance companies through the analysis and transformation of intelligent data into knowledge. Iglesias ended his contribution by stating that "during this time of digital transformation, the future of companies that offer technological services is to help our customers build theirs".
Víctor Lorenzo, head of the IT department at Grupo Cuevas, an agro-food business that has been in operation for over 150 years, said that his company had adapted to each moment in time and that digitalisation is both a challenge and an opportunity. They introduced a system to prepare orders accurately and as a result, they now have 95% less errors during preparation and they have improved distribution routes, achieving savings of almost 28%. At points of sale, they have automated processes for making customer service more personal and understanding customers' purchasing needs, while also achieving considerable energy savings.
Euskaltel - Communication
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