As being the closest thing to the stereotypical “tech guy” around here, I’ve been tasked with highlighting the various aspects of tech-driven developments: advantages, obstacles, use cases, and such. You know – adamantly pointing the finger when a certain technology is working and being a cool, suave know-it-all dude in cases where it’s struggling. Like being Q to someone else’s James Bond.
It’s a proposition I’m sure I’ll enjoy because there’s tons of exciting stuff happening right now. And what better way to kick things off than to highlight companies that are doing a kick-ass job of nailing the BI (business intelligence) part? Perhaps an opening party with a bit of champagne?
Excellent.
Now that we’ve got that out of the way, the point of this post is to accentuate how business intelligence can help in different aspects of day-to-day operations and improve decision-making across the business landscape. We are living in an era of data whose volume is being measured in mountains instead of petabytes and exabytes because there’s too much of it. As technology slowly but surely figures out what to do with it, we are witnessing actionable data being implemented in all aspects of life. So, here are four companies in different industries that are leveraging the use of BI in an awesome way.
Skyline AI
The easiest way to describe what Skyline AI does is to say it provides a platform that brings together real estate investment and AI into one comprehensive and modern investment managing package. The combination of data science, software engineering, and real estate is a fierce one that helps establish the next-generation of investments augmented by AI.
More than 130 different sources (consisting of both on-market and off-market deals) are working in the background, mining data that goes through extensive AI analysis and underwriting powered by supervised and unsupervised machine learning models. This includes everything from predicting future rent and disposition prices to renovation decisions and rent increases and everything in between that can be used to gain an investment advantage. The end result is an AI-driven accurate and ultra-deep set of predictions that lead to real-time profitable investment decisions. Equally important is the fact that these are unbiased decisions distinguishing from the gut feeling that’s often present when investing.
What’s interesting here is that Skyline AI is not a data provider. It does not sell data, insights, or license its proprietary technology. Instead, this AI investment manager uses its technology to gain a competitive edge in commercial real estate investments, a multi-trillion-dollar industry that’s been slow to adapt.
Aidoc
Healthcare is undergoing huge changes facilitated by rapid advancements in technology so I wanted to have a company that deals exclusively in this particular area. You could say Aidoc is on a mission to make AI standard of care in radiology.
Unlike Skyline AI, the company provides a modern approach to healthcare through the use of AI-based decision support software, meaning it works side by side with radiologists. Aidoc’s technology includes analyzing medical imaging to detect acute abnormalities in the body. This, in turn, helps radiologists to prioritize life-threatening cases so they can be timely treated.
It’s a noble purpose that ultimately streamlines radiology by incorporating all relevant diagnostic and clinical data into a complete and holistic patient view. Thanks to a potent mix of computer vision, deep learning, and natural language processing algorithms, the commercially deployed system is having real-life clinical impact, so much so that support for oncology, X-ray, an MRI scans is planned to roll out soon.
Cortica
Having an AI that’s deeply based on brain research up to the point where it successfully simulates the natural processes of the mammal cortex and thinks and reasons like a human is a big deal. That’s exactly what Cortica has on its hands.
At the center is an autonomous AI that utilizes unsupervised-learning methodologies to mimic the way the brain processes information. Roughly described as image identification platform, Cortica provides an understanding of visual information in a reverse-engineered way. It maps input signals to high-dimensional, lossless concept signatures, where the information is translated into a universal, text-based structural representation. Because of it, the data is easily searchable, better organized, and lightweight, providing a deep and real-time understanding of the environment.
Practical application includes autonomous vehicles and drones, smart cities, and other instances where there is a need for a system that’s able to instantly learn and operate the same way a human being does. One important thing to note here is that the technology operates in a closed loop. As such, it’s highly adaptive to specific conditions and constraints, making it endlessly scalable.
Logz.io
Last but certainly not least, is Logz.io and its AI-powered log analysis platform. Admittedly, this is not the sexiest entry you’ll find but being sexy is not the point. Basically, all software applications and systems produce log files, and effective log management is of the utmost importance to security and compliance of those applications and systems.
What Logz.io does is rooted in machine learning technology, where machine-learning algorithms help whoever is using the platform (usually DevOps engineers, system administrators, and developers) identify critical events before they occur. And let’s face it – they frequently occur in IT environments.
The company’s advanced AI-driven analytics that combines machine learning, crowdsourcing, and anomaly detection, identifies and correlates events in the volumes of information so teams can easily gain important insights and resolve errors before they affect customers. You don’t get to see every day a platform that unifies monitoring, troubleshooting, and security into one flexible package. Plus, it can even be used to predict who will claim the Iron Throne on the Game of Thrones (spoiler alert)!.
Final words
That would conclude my shortlist of companies that excel at business intelligence. On its own, it should be evidence enough of how BI can be used in virtually every segment imaginable. However, one must always look at the big picture – not every BI-powered company is a guaranteed success right out of the gate. There are plenty of examples, like the short-lived Primary Data whose data virtualization software, despite raising $103 million in equity, never turned into a compelling piece of technology.
Examples like that show we humans are the ones who ultimately decide how to use the data. The machines will never solve all the problems for us. Regardless of huge achievements and sometimes equally huge failures, one must remember that this is still a growing industry and there are many more companies that do really cool things. For now, let these four be the example (if not proof) of what a competitive edge looks like – one that makes all the difference in this day and age.
Image credits:
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