Evolving Data & AI
With all products, services and other industries adopting digital platform, a wave is coming. How do we manage this huge chunk of data and put it to our use? Analytics, data virtualization and playing with data are some of the tools which firms are using for business advantage. Sushil Ostwal – Head of Data Science at Motilal Oswal Financial Services, shares his insights:
This year’s global crisis has caught everyone off guard. Firms are trying to reduce their payback time. AI and data models are being scaled up across firms. New lockdowns have made it difficult for people to visit their offices. With retail physical businesses closed, more people are looking for digital solutions. This has brought in newer demographics online. Kids from 16 years to older people until 70 years are looking for trading through online.
Financial insecurity has brought in more people into trading, so that they can have additional income. This has accelerated the digitization of firms. Both the products offered and the firm’s processes are now on digital platform.
For better performance, we will have to put data and people together. Maintaining data quality is a big challenge for firms. The challenges are two-fold: (i)
How to bring data in one big pool? (ii) How to access it by different individuals?
According to Sushil Ostwal, another important change would be i n the mindset of people. The working methods used till now will undergo a drastic change, which people will have to accept. AI can be scaled to any measure, but it has to be woven with the organization, only then it will give better performance.
Addressing the customer at each touch point is necessary. With more customers joining the online trading this has to be resolved immediately. To serve them better and at right time, we will have to prepare processes and workflows ready for next step.
A great number of fintechs are coming with new products. This is speeding up digitization. This is also bringing in competition along with it.
How to bring together all the aspects of digital transformation? The IT department, business stakeholders and the data science team need to work together in harmony. Though data was available, it was spread across various formats, databases and systems.
What will be the road ahead from here? Organizations must create a roadmap so that future needs can be foreseen. AI needs to be scaled up. This will help in data driven decision making. In the future, technology should be used to interpret the data. Looking into use cases for creating the model, training the users will be the plan to tackle future demands.