Presentation on "AI beyond the hype: Local (Belgian) Machine Learning success stories" by Peter Depypere (element61), at the BI & Data Analytics Summit on June 13th, 2019 in Diegem (Belgium)

1. “Artificial Intelligence beyond the Hype":
Local Machine Learning success stories
Peter Depypere, Data Strategist

2. My name is Peter Depypere
I’m a Data Strategist in Data Science & Strategy team
Part of element61, 53 FTEs focusing on purely data &
analytics consulting
I want to inspire you in
“how to get started with AI in your line of work”

3. What we are about ...
Corporate
Performance
Management
Business
Intelligence
& Data Warehousing
Data Science &
Strategy

4. What’s happening in the world?
Increase in data generation1
• Mobile Phones, Apps and IoT have boomed
unstructured data-streams
(e.g., logs, clicks, pictures, video, tweets, etc.)
• Through the increased ability to track behavior,
there is a lot more data-to-capture
– e.g. online cookies, smart meters
• Trend to “store now, use later” (Data Lake)

5. What’s happening in the world?
Boost in connectivity2
Connectivity allows us to connect to any
device and manage them
• As source of insight:
e.g., a phone or sensor (IoT)
• As tool of insight:
i.e., spread the load of one computation
across >1 machine
• As solution provider:
e.g., apps become the user-interface for
providing solutions

6. What’s happening in the world?
Access to analytics3
• Complex algorithms have been translated
into simple to-use functions
• Expensive software is now available for
free (= Open Source)
(e.g. SAS vs. Spark, Tensorflow, R, Python)

7. What’s happening in the world?
Enhanced computational power4
Through the evolutions in computational technology
we can work…
• On larger data sets - e.g., Query 50GB (in <1sec)
• In a fraction of the time (GPUs → TPUs)
• At a lower cost
– i.e., major drop in price of chips (Moore’s Law)
• Abstracted
– i.e. without even the need to touch hardware
Any connected device offers computational power
(Fog computing)

8. What’s happening in the world?
More Cognitive tools5
• More & more technologies can
directly connect w. humans
• Speech and gesture recognition
• Assistant devices
• These allows to use robots to replace
human labor
• Manual tasks …
e.g., manufacturing
• … and knowledge tasks
e.g., Customer-service bots

9. “Am I tapping into all
information me, my
customers and my processes
are generating?”
“Am I understanding
all the available information
and using it in the
smartest way possible?”
Reflections to make…
These technology trends urge organizations
to make 2 reflections
Big data; defined as “the
process of collecting, organizing
and using large sets of data”
Data Science or “the use of
new mathematical approaches
aimed to turn data into new
insights”
… resulting business activities

10. Winner’s prize?

11. Winner’s prize?
Redefine
customer
service
Open new
business
opportunities
Build
competitive
edge
Gain insight
and agility

12. “Ok, we need to get started with Deep Learning”

13. “Deep Learning” is a hot topic
but also the more advanced area of AI
COMPLEXITY
BUSINESS OUTCOME
Typical Belgian
organization
• Deep & Reinforcement
Learning
• Robotics
• Tactical Machine Learning
• Data Driven Process
improvements
“WOW”

14. Complex but game-changing:
Robots being able to do parcour
Deep & Reinforcement Learning

15. Complex but game-changing:
Learn human patterns to adjust your heating based
on your personal needs
Deep & Reinforcement Learning

16. Complex but game-changing:
Self-driving cars – revolutionizing the transportation
industry
Deep & Reinforcement Learning

17. We shouldn’t forget about the low hanging fruit
COMPLEXITY
BUSINESS OUTCOME
Typical Belgian
organization
• Robotics
• Deep & Reinforcement
Learning
• Tactical Machine Learning
• Data Driven Process
improvements
Less “WOW”
but huge Business Value

18. Open new
business
opportunitie
s
Build
competitive
edge
Use Real-time & historic
alarm data
Sensors trigger alarms when values
exceed threshold
Leverage
5 000 000+ sensor entries
50 clients > 5-25 cooling systems
> 6 sensors > every 2-10 min
3. Predictive
Maintenance
1. Proactive
Notifications
2. Interactive
Reporting
We help Sabcobel move from
a Break-Fix model to Prevent-Optimize
Tactical machine learning

19. Contracts specify
a certain volume
commitment
… but the actual order
quantities might differ
influenced by end-product
customer demand or
alternative supplies
By having automated alerts
towards account managers to
(1) Have the customer buy the
goods anyway
(2) Sell the goods to another
customer
The sales department wants a higher
contract fulfilment
We help an international B2B-er to manage their
sales contracts data-driven & automated
Tactical machine learning Build
competitive
edge
Gain insight
and agility

20. We are helping an HR office to leverage data to be
3x more efficient
Our Customer:
Recruiting
organization
3xmore efficient
We profile all incoming applicants &
give each applicant an ‘employability’
score.
Tactical machine learning Build
competitive
edge

21. We help detect & predict Sales trends
Tactical machine learning
“Sales of ribs next weekend will be X
in shop X and Y in shop Y”
• We have historical data with
various products on various locations
• We can detect the impact of
trends, macro-events, weather,
seasonality, promotions, etc.
• We run an automated demand
forecast
How?
• Belgian Retailer with butchers all
over the country
Who?
Redefine
customer
service
Build
competitive
edge
Gain insight
and agility

22. Our Customer:
A bank
Impact: 80% of Churners could be identified 90
days prior to churn
CRM
We help to dedicate your efforts to those customers
churning
Tactical machine learning Redefine
customer
service
Gain insight
and agility
Each customer is – as of
now – tagged with a
likelihood to churn & this
information can be used in
marketing and customer
communication
- Specific offers
- Special attention by
account managers
- Embedding in call center

23. Smart & directed communication through
a data-driven segmentation of your customers
Tactical machine learning
Customers differ based on
Socio-demographics
Geographical coverage
Historical sales
Interactivity & proximity with
your company…
What we know…
… We can use this segmentation for
tailored customer interactions and upsell
opportunities
▪ Who should we send leaflets & when
▪ Who should we invite for specific
events
▪ Who is interested in buying which types
of products and at what time of the
year
Redefine
customer
service
Gain insight
and agility

24. We help HR to give a Next-Best-Training
Recommendation
Need in HR
Employees want to get the opportunity to grow themselves and expand their skillset
There is a vast amount of training opportunities defined (soft skills, technology, …)
Our objective is to identify growth opportunities in your organization & define which
training an employee is most likely to benefit from given his profile and organizational needs
We gather employee
details
- age, gender, education,
job description, job
history, performance
reviews, #trainings,
We train a statistical
model aimed to
determine which
training a person would
benefit the most from
Personalized
recommendation on
training opportunities
improving efficiency of time
and resources.
Approach
Tactical machine learning Gain
insight and
agility

25. How do you get started?

26. What does it take to be successful?
Strong use-case with strategic importance
The right team with the right skills
Technology to enable your ideas

27. Find a strong use-case
with strategic importance
What is a real pain-point in
the organization today?
Where are we losing money
today and what insight would
avoid it?
What do our customers expect
us to know (but we don’t)?
On what insight-aspect
are we blind today?

28. Build the right team with the right skills

29. Evaluate technology to enable your ideas
Some misconceptions:
… No, you don’t (always) need a Big Data platform
… No, you don’t (always) need to build a Hadoop cluster
… No, you don’t (always) need a whole data science team
What you do need…
… start simple (eg use the cloud)
… enable good collaboration within your team
… work in open source

30. Peter Depypere
Data Strategist
element61
peter.depypere@element61.be
+32 471 21 18 96
www.linkedin.com/in/peterdepypere
Thank you!
Data Science & Strategy Day
24th September -Living Tomorrow – Vilvoorde
https://www.element61.be/en/event/data-science-strategy-day-2019