Blog - Page 14 of 14

Blog

Read up on some of our recent blogs. Have a question or comment? We would love to hear from you.

October 22, 2019

The Intelligence of Artificial Intelligence

Let’s face it, we are in the age of technology. Maybe not quite floating cars or self-tying shoes, but our world has changed significantly from even 10 years ago. Though we do not have robots amongst us just yet, Artificial Intelligence (AI) is beginning to shape various aspects of our lives. These aspects spread from the devices in our homes to the work processes in our offices. AI has made the performance of tasks quicker and easier, whilst allowing for completion of even more difficult tasks. With AI’s ability for greater responsibility, one area of wonderment is the interpretation and analysis of data. We are slowly entering the age of AI’s understanding behind the meaning of data, providing us with interpretations and accompanying solutions that we may have never noticed.

Traditional data analysis takes the form of a computer sifting through data sets which contain answers to discrete questions. These responses aid in answering questions related to:

The frequency of “positive” words compared to “negative” words
The presence of a particular phrase
A selection made from five options

Answers to these basic questions can be sought after by basic computing actions. However, we are curious beings and like to understand why an event happened or how a result should be interpreted. Responding to these queries involves an added element of human logical interaction so as to notify the computer on the linearity of the interpretation. With this being said, AI’s ability to perform data analysis needs to be in balance with both the technological and the human; with the technology side answering the discrete questions and comparing these results to a benchmark created by human reasoning. The discrepancy between the human and the technological interpretation demonstrates the disconnect between validity and reporting. Your basic computer does not have the ability to understand the nuance and interpretation of a phrase. Where logical reasoning illustrates meaning and understanding (the validity side of the coin), computers report answers derived from data sets provided.

Data analytics in the era of AI will hopefully merge computing abilities with human understanding. Currently, the problems faced with the merging of these two entities takes the form of the continued access to the data set required to accurately provide both a report and interpretation of information. However, with this problem follows strides in creating a solution, two in fact. The first is Natural Language Processing, which allows for easier use of internet searching by allowing parties to speak to their device in a language deemed to be comfortable, thus affording these parties with the utmost accuracy for their inquiries. The second solution are Bots, which ask proactive questions to extract data and create a foundation to develop insights that are comparable to those created via human reasoning.

At Consentia, we take pride in our unique ability to both create and analyze data sets. Specifically, our Survey Department of Business Process Outsourcing utilizes both Consentia’s Managed and Professional Services to collect data, present findings, and analyze results. From creating and administering a survey to developing custom reporting and presentation of results (and everything in between), Consentia ensures excellence in Descriptive and Diagnostic Analytics. Descriptive Analytics answers the question “What Happened?” with Diagnostic Analytics answering the question “Why Did This Happen?” With the incredible enhancements in the field of AI, Consentia is poised to further our abilities to also include Predictive and Prescriptive Analytics, which analyzes data to predict what could happen and in turn utilizes this forecast to indicate how we can make a desired outcome occur.

The future is incredibly bright for this immensely exciting wave of analytics!

February 13, 2019

Data Security by Process Design: The Next Step for IT and IP Protection

I was sitting next to a HoneyBadger Bitcoin employee on a plane a few months ago – he was moving forward their kiosk deployment across Canada and I was half asleep heading home from Seattle – and finally got an answer to a question I’d been wondering for a long time: How do those ‘in the know’ secure their wallet numbers and passwords when everything is hackable?

His answer: pen, paper, safety deposit box. I’m not sure what I was expecting, but that certainly wasn’t it.

^ Yup. Still a thing. (Getty Images)

That message, in context with last week’s news that QuadrigaCX has now forever lost access to ‘cold wallets’ worth over $160 million – and the record $865 million dollars worth of coins stolen from exchanges around the world in 2018 alone, now makes a little more sense.

Pen, paper, safety deposit box indeed.

Electronic thieves have innovated. Clever phishing emails, fake websites and spoofed email addresses (many of you have seen them I’m sure) have taken over the ‘ prince’ emails. Faked wiring instructions from colleagues, fraudulent CRA phone calls and mysterious banking password verifications all seek to get through the IT infrastructure we’ve set up to protect ourselves with verified credentials. You don’t need a hack when you can convince targets to bring you behind the ‘silicon’ curtain – or avoid it altogether. Even blockchain security can’t prevent a compromised user from making changes to secure data.

^ A ‘Londoning’ Scam – One of the originals. When in doubt, call the hotel directly. Their confusion will be real. That, and your friend is really back in town but just doesn’t want to listen to your story about your dog. That happens.

Unlike an IT hack – a failure of your infrastructure to withstand attack – we are countering a new and different threat: a digital version of the failure of checks and balances that plague many businesses. Growth – especially in small, founder-led businesses – doesn’t often permit the vigilance of enforcement required to prevent financial ‘leakages’ (to use my colleague Salima’s favorite term). Founders need to sell, sell and sell again. Even with expense trackers like Expensify and small business back-office apps like (the rather brilliant, Edmonton-based Jobber), there remains gaps in our ability to provide the requisite checks and balances that will keep our money safe from phantom bills or instructions.

^ We <3 you, M-Files

Our solution – the best solution (though we may be biased) – is to fill the gap between costs and approvals by cementing your checks and balances digitally. A strong document management system (we use MFiles – it does this seamlessly) can build processes that manage file interactions – necessitating approvals, ensuring completeness, and protect against versioning errors – that mirror the numerous processes you already use to operate your business. We will also evaluate your processes with you to ensure that those that we are recreating accomplish the security tasks they are meant to.

That said, with or without us, I would implore you to protect your critical processes. Create a strict, two-stage process – both verbal and electronic – on how wire transfers, cheques over a certain amount, payment orders and confirmations, how users’ passwords get changed and updated and the digital permissions required for your employees access secure data. Ensure that passwords are changed at the very least biannually (the more the better, but people absolutely hate this I recognize). And, most importantly, keep a data trail – in some way – of these processes. The more automated and unbiased the better.

January 15, 2019

Data – Businesses’ ‘Gig’ Economy

Business has a new, annoying buzz word to go along with ‘synergies’, ‘disruption’, ‘productize’ and ‘jargon’. (If you haven’t had enough, venture over to Forbes’ list here to make your stomach churn further. Never have I hated clickbait so much). We all use them and it becomes increasingly painful to hear.

The ‘Gig Economy’ has become ubiquitous amongst MBAs and millennials, variously defined as the empowerment of underutilized supply, the biggest threat in the hotel/taxicab/power company/cable/restaurant/communications business and the latest, best ‘side hustle’ for people to make a bit more money. We might have predicted it (though, of course, hindsight allows us to have predicted anything, really). Economic theory posits that supply and demand will always tending towards equilibrium regardless of market pressures one way or another. Our vast supply of ‘things’ – cars, homes, hours in a day – that drive the gig economy can now be maximized to the very last minute and dollar.

Our data is no different. The information gleaned from our data has made Google rich, newspapers poor, people amused by the ‘People who purchased this item also purchased …’ section on Amazon and nerds (myself included) to search vast electromagnetic radiation records to search for extraterrestrial life with SETI. The Cambridge Analytica scandal is case in point; every data point in a vast sea of knowledge can be used for profit whether we realize it or not. We didn’t know our Facebook friends could indicate so much of our political preferences, but once someone had the data they found a way to use it. For predictive data analysis, maintaining institutional knowledge across generations or microtargeting for promotions, every data point tells a story, every time. Data – in every business – is now our most valuable IP, conceivably worth millions more than the innovations that created it.

Every business collects data, be it on sheets of paper, floppy disks, CDs or in cloud storage. Our customer history, level of purchasing, payment turnaround, revenue turnover, consulting or service hours and more. There is no corporate ‘Marie Kondo’ to cleanse us of our data lust – we collect and keep everything.

We now know the power this corporate data has. We can predict our clients’ future purchasing decisions, understand which SKUs to purchase and terminate and figure out which client or vendor gives us the greatest return on time or money invested. And every business has it.

We generally let this gold stay in the ground, though. It sits in a warehouse, or a basement, or a garage and degrades. That data can be worth thousands, feeding future growth and getting us back in touch with our best clients. Evidence surrounds us. Immense value can be generated from the throwaway details sitting in banker’s boxes and our unsearchable scanned records. We blame expense, time, manpower and ‘more important things’ to ignore it.

This is no longer reason enough – or true enough – to let our data go to waste.

We at Consentia use AI, exceptionally efficient staff and ‘smart’ hardware to sort, read and enter the precise data you want automatically (and discard that which you don’t), process and verify documents for completeness, meta-tag your information and securely deposit it in your document management system, data vault, accounting system, cloud storage or on floppy disks in large cardboard boxes (if you so chose – for some reason). Whatever you need to digitize, however you want to present it and at a price and schedule that meets your needs (without blowing your budgets).

The gig economy has taught us to take every skill, asset, or piece of knowledge we have – driving our cities, taking tourists to the sites and sounds of our homes, selling power to our utility grids from solar panels amongst others – and derive the maximum value out of it. Our data is no different. It’s time to make it work.

« First ‹ Prev 11 12 1314