Tag Archive for: Artificial Intelligence

Real-time Insight in All Data, Present and Past

The promise of data-driven working is great: risk-based inspection, finding new revenue models, reducing costs and delivering better products and services. Every company wants this, but it often fails.
The most important business data cannot be fully unlocked by traditional analysis tools. Why does it go wrong and how do you manage to convert all data into insight?

The more you know, the more efficient and better you can make your products and services. That is why data-driven working is high on the agenda of many organizations. But an Artificial Intelligence or BI tools deliver, only partially or not at all, on the promise of data-driven work. That’s because they can only analyze part of the entire mountain of data. And what is an analysis worth if you can only examine half or a quarter of the data you have.

Insights are hidden in unstructured data

Many organizations started measuring processes in ERP and CRM systems over the past 20 years. They store financial data, machine data and all kinds of sensor data. These measurement data are easy to analyze, but do not tell where things go wrong during the entire operation.
This so-called structured data provides only partial insight, while you look for answers in the analysis of all data. It is estimated that 80% to 90% of all data from organizations is unstructured: we are talking about uncategorized data that stored in systems, notes, e-mails, handwritten notes on work-drawings and all kinds of documents across the organization. This valuable resource remains unexplored.

The unexplored gold mine of unstructured data

Organizations have terabytes of it: project information, notes, invoices, tenders, photos and films that together can yield an enormous amount of insights. This fast-growing gold mine is more of a data maze. Over the years, digitization took place step-by-step, process-by-process and department-by-department. During this digitization in slow motion, no one thought that it was useful to coordinate all information in such a way that you can easily analyze it later.

Artificial Intelligence and BI tools get lost

Departments of factories, offices or government agencies created their own data world through this so called ‘island automation’. Separate silos of application data, process data such as spreadsheets, presentations, invoices, tenders, and texts in all kinds of file formats. Moreover, departments and people all categorize information differently, and not structured like a computer would. Not everyone administers equally neatly, or categories are missing, so that colleagues simply write a lot of data away in the “other” field. The problem is that BI and AI tools cannot properly look into this essential and unstructured information. They lack signage, so they get lost in the maze of unstructured data.

Turning archives into accessible knowledge (and skills)

For many companies the future lies in the past. Because most organizations have boxes full of archived material from the pre-digital era, they are now digitizing at a rapid pace. Decades of acquired knowledge and experience are stored but hidden in these archives. Because, like many digital files, these are not well structured. Who categorized their project notes or files neatly into different categories, if they were available at all? If you want to use this unstructured data now, it will take you hundreds of hours of manual work to analyze. SynerScope’s technology searches terabytes or petabytes of data within 72 hours and provides immediate answers from all data.

Unstructured data harbor new revenue models

How that works? A non-life insurer did not know exactly where 25% of their insurance payments went. That is why SynerScope automatically examined the raw texts of millions of damage claims of the last 20 years. The word broken screen came up immediately for claims above 100 euros. The graph showed that screen breakage was rare until 2010, but then grew explosively. What happened? The insurer had never made the category of smartphones or tablets. As a result, they missed a major cost item, or to put it positively: for years they overlooked a new revenue model.


Turn data into progress

Thanks to the power of cloud computing in Azure, SynerScope is able to analyze large amounts of data in real time. And it doesn’t matter what kind of data it is. Spreadsheets, meeting minutes, drone images, filing cabinets full of invoices, you name it! Do you have hundreds of terabytes or even petabytes of satellite or drone data? Then it will be in the model tomorrow! Thanks to the analysis of the present and the past, organizations with SynerScope’s software live up to the promise of data-driven working. Leading companies such as Achmea, ExxonMobil, Stedin, VIVAT and De Volksbank are converting their data into progress with the solution from SynerScope.
Do you also want insight into your present & past to get a grip on the future?
Then request a demo!

Artificial Intelligence ready for “aincient” cultures?

Author: Annelieke Nagel

 

Google, Aincient.org, Synerscope and the Dutch National Museum of Antiquities are creating a revolutionary acceleration in antiquities research

Last Monday I was present at the launch of a fantastic initiative for Egyptian art lovers around the world! A more apt setting was not possible as the presentations were organized in front of the Temple of Taffeh, an ancient Egyptian temple built by order of the Roman emperor Augustus.

Egyptologist Heleen Wilbrink, founder of Aincient.org, Andre Hoekzema, Google country manager Benelux and Jan-Kees Buenen, CEO SynerScope were the presenters that afternoon.

Aincient.org is the driving force behind this pilot project. Thus all presentations were geared towards explaining the need for protection of the world heritage through digitally capturing the art treasures and even more importantly, being able to research them and accelerate discoveries by merging all data sources.  To secure the progress of this kind of research, it also depends on support of outside funds. (If you are interested, please go to www.aincient.org for further information)

The current online collection of the Dutch National Museum of Antiquities (Rijksmuseum van Oudheden (RMO)), consists of around 57,000 items and can now be searched within hours, in a way previously not possible, thanks to SynerScope’s powerful software built on top of Google Cloud Vision API.

The more in-depth technical explanation of the software and partnerships involved, was compelling as it linked Artificial Intelligence and deep learning together with artifacts and an open mind, in order to make this project possible.

This unique pilot program needed to unlock all data available (text, graphs, photos/video, geo, numbers, audio, IoT, biomed, sensors, social) easy and very fast!

The large group of objects (60,000 in this instance but the RMO has another 110,000 more to do) from various siloed databases was categorized and brought together into SynerScope’s data visualisation software: images and texts simultaneously available, linked to a time and location indicator. The system indicates the metadata and descriptions certain items have in common, and the similarities in appearances.

As CEO Jan-Kees Buenen put it: “At SynerScope, we offer quick solutions to develop difficult-to-link data and databases, making them comprehensible and usable”.

Through Aincient.org the RMO online collection can be linked to external databases from other museums around the world. Thus it generated a lot of interest from museums like Teylers Museum Haarlem, Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam and Foundation Digital Heritage (Stichting DEN). They were all present to absorb the state-of-the art information that was presented. Interestingly enough some Egyptologists present expressed their slight scepticism to embrace this new technology to unlock the ancient culture.

We will soon notice that the outcome of the researched data will be used as a source of inspiration for new exposition topics, and I am sure it will also progressively serve the worldwide research community.

I believe this latest technology is the future of the past!