Kategorie: technology

Cloud-based receipt management enhances mobile banking

How many times have you looked at your bank statement, noticed a line item like “WITHDRAW / POS 0217 2013 975246 MARSHALLS #1199” and racked your brain trying to figure out what you bought?
You likely had to dig through your wallet for the paper receipt (if you even kept it) or rummage through your inbox for the electronic copy – but no longer.
Now, when banks incorporate the receipt management capabilities of Sensibill into their mobile apps, customers can see purchase details and more in the palms of their hands. Sensibill integrates with banks’ existing mobile apps and web interfaces for an easier way to keep track of purchases, expenses and budgeting.
How Sensibill works
When a customer takes a picture of a receipt with a smartphone, the picture is sent to the Sensibill service based in the IBM Cloud. Sensibill then extracts the data and creates an enhanced receipt; a smart receipt.
Sensibill’s smart receipt system can remind you about return and warranty information, as well as pull information about the merchant, including a contact number and address.
Sensibill uses a proprietary algorithm to process any receipt with a high level of accuracy. Since there are approximately 150 data points on receipts, Sensibill counts on an R&D team of experts whose single mission is to extract receipt data and classify it.
Machine learning: An essential component
The R&D team specializes in machine learning techniques – deep learning, specifically – to read and understand receipts. This means identifying items, the categories items belong to, the merchant, the total and so on.
The idea is that as the machine continues to “learn” and become more complex, it will be able to recognize the item “Levi’s 501 jeans”, and categorize it as clothing or men’s apparel. Understanding the true identity of an item means that the machine can provide deeper, enriched insights.
Proprietary technology and advanced algorithms enable Sensibill to take full advantage of machines to perform work at a scale that is just not possible for humans.
Sensibill’s “machine” can also learn to understand historical and habitual purchases. With that information, users can track spending and budget, or banks can use it to present customers with appropriate advice or offers.
Anticipating needs
As the Sensibill system continues to learn and add layers to its hierarchical neural network, it will be able to discern increasingly complex information based on customers purchase data. Beyond identifying items, it will understand the meanings attached to common spending patterns until can perform basic inductive reasoning.
Ultimately, the Sensibill system will be able to predict a customer’s needs in real time based on changes in behavior, then alert customers to offers they need and want, maybe before they even know they need or want them. This capability will augment bank services profoundly.
How banks benefit
Sensibill developed its solution to work with banks concerned about fintechs disrupting the industry and eroding their customer bases. The solution has been built from the ground, with security in mind, and offers a robust experience.
Banks often do not employ subject matter expertise outside their core offerings, so rather than try to build something like this on their own, they can partner with Sensibill. Incorporating the receipt management solution into its service greatly improves a bank’s ability to serve and retain customers.
Sensibill credits its ability to work well with banks to its receipt management solution running on IBM Cloud. Banks trust IBM and its solid expertise in the financial services industry.
Read about other IBM clients who built their success on the IBM Cloud here.
The post Cloud-based receipt management enhances mobile banking appeared first on #Cloud computing news.
Quelle: Thoughts on Cloud

Why GPUs are taking over the enterprise

With IBM InterConnect just a few weeks away, we’re gearing up to showcase how the MapD graphics-processing-unit (GPU)-powered data analytics and visualization platform has evolved over the past year.
When MapD participated in InterConnect last year, we were just starting to ramp up. Our mission then, as now, remains unwavering: to provide the world’s fastest data exploration platform.
So much has changed. Since the last InterConnect, MapD launched its product offering and announced A round funding while steadily building on momentum throughout the year, culminating in the release of version 2.0 of the MapD Core database and Immerse visual analytics platform in December.
In the meantime, we were fortunate to pick up some prestigious awards including Gartner Cool Vendor, Fast Company Innovation by Design, The Business Intelligence Group’s Startup of the Year, CRN’s 10 Coolest Big Data Startups and Barclays Open Innovation Challenge.
One major reason for all this attention and praise is that GPUs are taking over the enterprise. We’ve written about this extensively in several blog posts, but GPUs are no longer a technology novelty item. They are mainstream, as Nvidia’s tripled data center revenues attest.
What makes MapD unique is that, from the ground up, we’ve built a querying engine and visual analytics platform that takes advantage of GPUs. With CPUs come the limitations of Moore’s Law. As more as more businesses place an emphasis on massive quantities of data, machine learning, mathematics, analytics and visualization, GPUs are poised to take over.
Here’s a simple example: say you want to run a query against a billion or more records, a pretty common request. With today’s legacy database solutions you should plan a two-martini lunch because that’s how long it’s going to take to run.
You better have your question nailed too, because if you want to modify it, you are going to want to eat dinner before you see the updated query again.
The experience is similar to the days of dial-up page load times, which wouldn’t that problematic if we didn’t know what real speed felt like.
In the past year, we’ve been able to validate our claims in a series of powerful independent benchmarks published by noted database authority Mark Litwintschick. To date, we remain the fastest platform (by a factor of 75) that he has ever tested against the 1.2 billion-row New York city taxi dataset.
We are delighted to be speaking at IBM InterConnect again. It is a homecoming in many ways. We can’t wait to show you how transformative the MapD platform can be when tackling big data problems.
Check out the session “Speed, Scale and Visualization: How GPUs are Remaking the Analytics Landscape in the Cloud,” at InterConnect Thursday, 23 March, from 11:30 AM to 12:15 PM.
Attend this session and more by registering for IBM InterConnect 2017.
We’re looking forward to another great event in Las Vegas. If you’d like to set-up an appointment or demo, send us an email at info@mapd.com.
The post Why GPUs are taking over the enterprise appeared first on #Cloud computing news.
Quelle: Thoughts on Cloud

Cognitive computing and analytics come to mobile solutions for employees

The Drum caught up with Gareth Mackown, partner and European mobile leader at IBM Global Business Services, at the Mobile World Congress this week in Barcelona to ask him about how mobile solutions are becoming more vital for not only an enterprise’s customers, but also employees.
“Today, organizations are really being defined by the experiences they create,” Mackown said in an interview. &8220;Often, you think of that in terms of customers, but more and more we&8217;re seeing employee experience being a really defining factor.&8221;
IBM partnered with Apple to transform employee experiences through mobility, he said, and it&8217;s just getting started. Internet of Things (IoT) technology, cognitive computing and analytics will make those mobile solutions &8220;even more critical&8221; for people working in all kinds of different fields.
Mackown pointed to the new IBM partnership with Santander, announced at Mobile World Congress. &8220;We&8217;re helping them design and develop a suite of business apps to help them transform the employee experience they have for their business customers.&8221;
The video below includes the interview with Mackown, along with mobile business leaders from several other large companies.

Find out more in The Drum‘s full article.
The post Cognitive computing and analytics come to mobile solutions for employees appeared first on #Cloud computing news.
Quelle: Thoughts on Cloud