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November 19 2020

Interview with Motor Fuel Group IT Director – Paresh Patel | The role of technology in the evolution of retail industry

The retail industry is constantly disrupted, since its birth, modern retail has significantly changed over time. As technology advances, the retail industry is undergoing a transformation, unlike anything the industry has ever seen. Forecourt retail has been at the forefront of this transformation. Forecourts are no longer just used for refueling purposes but it has become so much more than just a Gas/Fuel station. The modern forecourts are now designed to compete with big convenience stores and quick-service restaurants. Few other business verticals are as full of disruptions and challenges as retail. Retailers have responded to the digital opportunity by using digital as an enabler of better customer service and greater operational efficiency. Others have embraced it an opportunity to shape a long-term sustainable business model which leverages technology to enhance the customer experience and thus keeping up with the ever-changing consumer behavior.

Paresh Patel is a retail industry veteran with over 15 years of extensive track record of driving digital transformation across forecourt retail. He is the IT Director of Motor Fuel Group (MFG), UK’s largest independent forecourt operator. With over 900 stations across the country, MFG is UK’s preferred destination for premium fuel brands. Formerly, he was the Director of Forecourt Sales at HTEC Ltd., managing point of sale, payment and loyalty solutions for world’s leading retailers.

Recently, Paresh sat down with Suhas Patil, Founder & CEO at Sankey Solutions to discuss the role of technology in the evolution of retail industry and the challenges and opportunities in transforming the industry.

Paresh, thank you so much for spending some time with us today. To begin with, how is technology revolutionizing the retail and consumer sector?

As consumers have turned towards smaller store formats, they are interacting with convenience retailers in new and different ways. Most interestingly for me, digital engagement has grown massively over the last few years. At the front end, we are seeing the use of app and online drive consumer discovery, engagement and loyalty. Of equal importance to retailer success, though, are advances in the back office. Enhancements in real time business information, analytics and reporting technology has provided retailers with a much greater understanding of their customer base. Armed with this knowledge we’re seeing retailers make quicker, smarter decisions, all aimed at improving the customer experience.

What are the most important challenges retailers and their supply chains need to overcome to take advantage of technological advancements?

As a guiding principle, technology must enhance the customer experience and satisfaction. Technology for technology’s sake is expensive for the retailer and confusing for the customer. Retailers should embrace only those technological advances which will improve their efficiency and the customer experience. Ultimately, this will drive probability.

To be successful, all departments (not just IT!) must understand and engage with the technology that has been adopted. If there is not a buy-in across the business, the potential of the technology will not be fully unlocked.

How is MFG keeping up with the new digitally conscious customer? How influential is the need for a human connection in retail?

As mentioned, MFG offers customer mobile app and loyalty schemes that provides incentives and promotional discounts. We also work hard to provide a coherent digital offering across all our major food to go brand partners such as Greggs, Subway and Costa Coffee. Continuing our mission to increase our digital footprint, we also offer a delivery service via UberEats for the majority of our 900+ stations.

Whilst we are seeing great engagement digitally, we recognize that a multi-channel approach is key. Often our digital platforms drive people to store, but it is our excellent customer service and great people that keep customers coming back. In forecourt retail the technologies that enhance and help cashiers and site staff are often the most successful.

How can the retail industry truly embrace Big Data and Customer Analytics? What are the indicators expected to drive the retail analytics market?

The growth in the retail data points is driven by customers combining the use of retail websites, point-of-sale, loyalty card, mobile apps, and in-store sensors. Like never before, retailers have an opportunity to embrace this data to accurately reveal patterns, trends, and associations in customer behavior. This knowledge will enable companies to create customer recommendations based on their purchase history, resulting in a personalized shopping experience.

The influx of disruptive technologies like Artificial Intelligence is bringing exciting change to the retail industry and transforming the industry for better. What are some of the emerging use cases of AI in the retail industry?

The use of artificial intelligence will allow retailers to offer an improved shopping experience for their customers. Retail stores will be able utilise loyalty accounts to personalize the preferences and buying patterns of each customer who walks into the store. Buying patterns consist of the categories of products purchased, combinations of preferred brands, amount spent and frequency of buying. In addition to current loyalty offerings, this model can also predict customer’s needs and anticipate their arrival at the store location for a particular list of items to buy.

How can retail organizations best make change management part of the remodeling or digital transformation equation?

For successful change management it is essential that the entire business from the executives to the retail store servers buy in to it. This needs a systematic approach to manage the digital transformation that includes employee consultation and training.

Retail consumer behavior is changing at an unprecedented pace with a dramatic surge in ecommerce. How will the modern retail adapt to digital commerce?

It is essential to embrace the benefits of digital commerce. However, there is still a place for physical retail. In order to be successful, retailers need to complement their digital offer by providing unique experiences to customers in-store that they would not get when shopping online, such as in-store exclusives and incentives that offer value and convenience to customers.

About Sankey Solutions:

Sankey Solutions is a next generation Technology Services and IT consulting firm offering advanced software, data engineering and analytical solutions with a special focus on the retail sector. Through its unique talent approach, Sankey Solution is disrupting technology services model by creating agile and interdisciplinary teams who can architect and engineer innovative technology and analytical solutions for clients. In 5 years with average employee age of 25, Sankey has emerged as a digital transformation partner for many small, medium and Fortune 500 clients across UK, Singapore, HK, UAE and India.

August 28 2020

Sankey Solutions now has the ISO 27001:2013 certification under its belt

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We are very pleased to announce that we have been certified for compliance with the ISO 27001:2013 standard. This standard reflects effective security practices and established controls that are fine-tuned to keep pace with changes to the various security threats and vulnerabilities.

Data protection and information security have always been a priority at Sankey Solutions. We believe in creating our own high standards and continuously raising it. We never really needed a certification to demonstrate our commitment to protecting our client’s data but we have reached a point where many companies specifically seek these quality standard certifications and, thus we are happy to announce that we are ISO 27001:2013 certified.

About ISO 27001 Certification:

The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) 27001 is a prestigious global recognition for managing risks to the security of information that an organization holds and supports our clients’ compliance efforts. The international standard ISO 27001 guarantees the confidentiality and integrity of the data and information, as well as the systems that process it. To obtain it, organizations must demonstrate that they have outstanding information security management along with other good practices and established controls. ISO 27001:2013 (the current version of ISO 27001) specifies the requirements for establishing, implementing, maintaining and continually improving an information security management system within the context of the organization. It also includes requirements for the assessment and treatment of information security risks tailored to the needs of the organization.

About Sankey Solutions:

Sankey Solutions is a next generation Technology Services and IT consulting firm offering advanced software, data engineering and analytical solutions. With a unique talent model and matured learning ecosystem, Sankey Solutions is designed to unlearn, learn and implement new technologies at the fastest pace giving businesses a true competitive advantage. Our current clientele includes some of the marquee Fortune 500 companies to start-ups across Europe, USA and APAC region.

For more information about Sankey Solutions, visit https://sankeysolutions.com/

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August 26 2020

Interview with former Sanofi VP, Arturo Zanni | Digital Transformation in the Pharmaceutical Industry

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As the healthcare industry has moved quickly to adopt digital technologies, the pharma industry also needs to transform itself from the traditional to the digital ecosystem. Digital Transformation in the pharmaceutical industry offers a possibility to revamp its business model, to improve production processes, and to create unparalleled customer service.

Additionally, pharmaceutical firms are generating vast amounts of data at an unprecedented pace. Pharmaceutical organizations must act quickly and move to transform their operations around digital capabilities and incorporate greater collaboration and technology use.

Arturo Zanni is a veteran pharmaceutical executive with a proven track record in driving organizations that constantly reinvent themselves, explore the future while excelling at exploiting the present, cultivate an innovation and execution culture that lives in harmony, and compete on a superior business model and transcend traditional industry boundaries. During his 15-year tenure at Sanofi, he was involved in various groundbreaking transformational projects.

Recently, Arturo sat down with Sandeep Patil, Co-Founder, and Director at Sankey Solutions to discuss digital transformation in the pharmaceutical industry and the challenges and opportunities in transforming the industry.

Arturo, thank you so much for spending some time with us today. To begin, what is your insight on the digital transformation process of the pharmaceutical sector and the need for such a transitioning?

Dear Sandeep, it’s a pleasure for me to have this conversation with you, and thank you so much for this opportunity to talk about digital transformation in the pharma industry. Compared to other industries the pharmaceutical industry has a delay in digital transformation and the reason is that the perceived risk to be exposed to digital disruption is one of the lowest in the industry as it is well shown by the Digital Vortex observatory by IMD.

In the last few years, the investments have been increased, mainly in the R&D, and the experience in the recent COVID 19 crisis has increased the sense of urgency to accelerate the transformation in other departments.

What are some of the most important challenges pharmaceutical organizations and their supply chains need to overcome to take advantage of digital transformation?

Pharmaceutical industries have used as the preferred channels to interact with customers the face to face and even today the weight of this channel is extremely high when compared with other industries. Thanks to the high margin generated by patent protection the urgency to explore new ways to interact with customers have been exceptionally low and the strategy has been product-centric.

Recently, the diffusion of more targeted therapies has moved the strategy toward being more patients centric and the increased need to have more patient’s insight to develop more targeted medicines has open the way to new channels to interact and build new experiences with customers.
The supply chain model is changed a lot, its complexity and competition level has been strongly increased. There are several key challenges to face, among them, I think the possibility to deliver at home the medicine and protect patients from counterfeit medicine are those more relevant.

What changes did you implement to unlock the true potential of digital transformation at Sanofi?

One of the main barriers in a big multinational company is the approach to manage projects as they use the same approach to manage a multi-billion budget process where execution is key to deliver the financial objectives persevere every year on a standard approach and a digital transformation process where exploration of new ideas is key to realize a tailored solution to be evolved continuously through testing and pivoting the best solution.

I believe it is possible to unlock the full potential of digital transformation only if you use a lean startup approach, engage the different teams, and learn from their experiences what is the best solution to adopt. Diversity and inclusion are really making the difference in this approach, which is a must to create an optimal ecosystem to facilitate this approach where people are motivated to iterate new ideas.

Can you talk about the impact these measures have brought to the business?

We have compared the business performance in different test zone where we have utilized the old approach via medical reps, a mixed one, and a fully digital. The best results validate by a structured analytic method have shown that the mixed-mode offered superior performance.

Customer engagement has increased progressively in old customers while the adoption of the digital tools allowed medical reps to expand the audience ad build solid partnerships with new clients.
Once that the solution was validated, we have scaled-up it across all the nations, and we started to search for new solutions to maintain a continuous improvement process.

What will pharma’s future digital leaders look like?

They should be a genuine supporter of this transformation, starting from the inclusion of digital strategy into the business strategy and cascade it from corporate to business to function. I see these leaders able to develop a culture of exploration and exploitation that’s live in harmony. They should leverage diversity and inclusion to empower an ecosystem where open innovation and quality in execution are creation a persistent competitive advantage vs a competitor.

They should promote a culture of risk-taking, supporting an evaluation system to reward not only a high performer but also innovators with an entrepreneurial spirit.

What are some of the areas pharmaceutical companies are not focusing enough and how could this be a problem?

I think one of the main problems is the culture, values, and processes are not updated to support the digital transformation with two main side effects: one, the new tools are not integrated with the old and after a while, they are abandoned, the second exploration create a high risk of failure that is fundamental to learn but not good for your personal performance evaluation based on execution.

The second problem is the organizational model, too much focused on execution while it should be ambidextrous, with equal weight on execution and exploration allocation of resources.

How is the digitalization in the pharma industry going to facilitate the healthcare transformation?

I think we should consider a larger horizon as digital disruption is embracing all the industries creating a 3D domino effect. The new industry will appear as the customer will develop new needs. I think the distinction between pharma and healthcare will be overtaken in the future to generate a new concept of wellbeing industry, where big data, analytics, integrated solution, and new tools will offer to each individual the opportunity to be the master of his future thanks to the opportunity to manage more directly their health.

What are some of the problems facing the pharmaceutical industry in a post-coronavirus landscape? Also, what are some of the opportunities and courses of action for pharma companies in the midst of this pandemic?

In the so-called new normal the urgency is how to manage the personal interaction, it could be company to employees or company to the customer. What is called today the smart working is far to be a real smart working, it is simply a digitalization of the personal interaction with limited evolution of the value of these interactions. I am thinking of interaction between doctors to patients, how we can ensure the quality of a diagnosis? And what about a medical resp detailing a new scientific data to a doctor, how can we make this experience better than a video on a web site?

We started this conversation telling that the pharma industry is in a delay vs other industries, now I hope the new normal will be a good motivation to speed up the transformation and offer to all the customer a superior experience when they face a health problem.

About Sankey Solutions:

Sankey Solutions is one of the fastest-growing digital transformation consulting and solution companies with a special focus on the pharmaceutical sector. We have been working closely with Fortune 500 pharmaceutical companies like Bayer other multinational pharma companies around the world as their technology partner.

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August 5 2020

Microsoft Lists Explained

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In the corporate world, it is of very important to keep track of the tasks and status of issues that arise every day. In such cases, writing them down is not a very efficient approach. Tracking it and thousands of other related items – across geographies, keeping in sync with team members as status and details fluctuate – well, that is Lists; an app to track your information and get to work.

Microsoft Lists is a new smart information tracking app in Microsoft 365 that is built using SharePoint Lists. It’s a new app for businesses that can be used to track issues and their progress that need to get completed, manage assets inventory to keep track of all the physical assets that the team is using, manage events itinerary, and much more all while ensuring everyone on the team is informed.

This Microsoft application can be accessed from the web, a new mobile app, or from within Microsoft Teams. Users can view their recent lists, favorites, and create new lists from the Lists Home.

Application provides ready-made templates, you can quickly start lists online, on the new mobile app, and directly from within Microsoft Teams. And because it is part of Microsoft 365, we can rely on enterprise-grade security and compliance.

Using Microsoft Lists we can automate things with rules as well. We can create a rule that emails someone when there is a new item on a list, for example. Using rules, you can also create reminders, etc.

User can also share entire Lists with others (with specified permissions) or can share individual list items with others. Users can apply other constraints too, like setting expiration dates and password protection for accessing shared Lists.

The Microsoft List Application

The quickest way to get started with Microsoft Lists is the Lists application available in Microsoft 365 App Launcher. The List app shows you all the lists you have recently accessed, including the lists you have created, lists shared with you, or lists that you own. Here, you can start a list in several ways – either by a blank list, which allows you to form your list from scratch with your own structure.

You can also create lists from Microsoft defined templates. These will have some common elements to help make creating lists easier. That includes a basic structure with formatting, forms, conditional formatting. You will be free to edit and fill out things as you see fit.

How to Customize the List

You can customize your lists based on your business needs. Lists not only help track information; they help determine the type of content of your list, clearly and visually. You can keep everyone in sync – especially when things change with ease.

Default views: There are four main views when configuring lists: list, grid, gallery, and calendar. Grid is the main style you see when you first create a list – primarily rows and columns that can be configured and reordered. The grid is best when you want list information to be easily edited.

You can adjust how the information appears in these views by using conditional formatting.

For example, you can change the background fill color of an item from orange when status is “In review” to green when status equals “Approved.” Background, font color and icons dynamically change when certain criteria are met. You can also select an Icon for the list to easily identify the content of the List which will be shown on the List Home.

A List in Gallery View

A List in Calendar View

Rules: Building rules is as easy as writing a sentence. Once you decide on the outcome, click-fill if/then steps to design your rules. Choose people, status, and value changes to send notifications or programmatically update values elsewhere in the list. Finally, use rules to set reminders to keep everyone informed.

Sharing: Whether a list is short or long, simple, or complex, it’s important to work with others and do so in a way that is efficient and manageable. When you share a list, you can share the entire list with editing or read-only permissions. Or share individual items, where you allow or disable the ability to edit, set an expiration date, or require a password before granting access. And once shared, invitees can add comments on the full list or on…

Microsoft Lists with Microsoft Teams

Microsoft Lists is for people who get things done as a team. Use Microsoft Teams to collaborate on lists, using flexible views like grids, cards, and calendar. This brings content and conversation side-by-side in one integrated experience. You can either add an existing list to a Teams channel or create a new list directly in Teams and chat on individual list items.

When you click “+” to add a new tab to a Teams channel, select the List app to begin. The List app is used to both create new and embed existing lists – all within Teams. Further refine your list by adding new columns, defining choices in a drop-down menu, create, view or edit, share links, create custom views and filters, and set up rules – all to ensure the list works for you and your team. No compromises. You get the full power to configure…

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July 30 2020

Sankey Solutions Founder & CEO Suhas Patil accepted into Forbes Technology Council

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Forbes Technology Council Is an Invitation-Only Community for World-Class CIOs, CTOs, and Technology Executives.

Mumbai, July 30, 2020 — Suhas Patil, CEO of Sankey Solutions, the next-generation digital and technology consulting company, has been accepted into Forbes Technology Council, an invitation-only community for world-class CIOs, CTOs, and technology executives.

With over 18 years of consulting experience with multiple Fortune 500 firms across various domains such as Technology, Marketing and Analytics, Suhas has a track record of successfully impacting business growth metrics, as well as personal and professional achievements and honors. Suhas was vetted and selected by a review committee based on the depth and diversity of his technology and business experience.

“We are honored to welcome Suhas Patil into the community,” said Scott Gerber, founder of Forbes Councils, the collective that includes Forbes Technology Council. “Our mission with Forbes Councils is to bring together proven leaders from every industry, creating a curated, social capital-driven network that helps every member grow professionally and make an even greater impact on the business world.”

“Being accepted into the Forbes Technology Council is a testament to Sankey Solutions’ customer-centric work, and I am delighted to join the league of top technology leaders around the world to engage in the industry conversation around the impact of technology on business in a unique way. I look forward to sharing my experiences and insights through the Forbes Technology Council and meeting some great executives and entrepreneurs along the way.” said Suhas Patil, CEO of Sankey Solutions.

As an accepted member of the Council, Suhas has access to a variety of exclusive opportunities to collaborate with other respected local leaders in a private forum. Suhas will also be invited to work with a professional editorial team to share his expert insights in original business articles on Forbes.com, and to contribute to published Q&A panels alongside other experts.

Suhas’s Council profile is available here.

ABOUT FORBES COUNCILS

Forbes Councils is a collective of invitation-only communities created in partnership with Forbes and the expert community builders who founded Young Entrepreneur Council (YEC). In Forbes Councils, exceptional business owners and leaders come together with the people and resources that can help them thrive.

For more information about Forbes Technology Council, visit forbestechcouncil.com. To learn more about Forbes Councils, visit forbescouncils.com.

ABOUT SANKEY SOLUTIONS

Sankey Solutions is a next generation Technology Services and IT consulting firm offering advanced software, data engineering and analytical solutions. With an unique talent model and matured learning ecosystem, Sankey Solutions is designed to unlearn, learn and implement new technologies at the fastest pace giving businesses a true competitive advantage. Sankey Solutions works with leading corporates and startups across Europe and Asia with offices in UK, Singapore and India.

For more information about Sankey Solutions, visit https://sankeysolutions.com/.

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July 20 2020

Twitter Scam is buzzing! Do you know what happened?

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Home / Blogs / Twitter Scam is buzzing! Do you know what happened?

1. What happened?

It was the afternoon (4pm) of july 15th, the day on which one of the biggest bitcoin scam was pulled off by a group of anonymous hackers. Security of the social media giant (twitter) was compromised which resulted in this fraud.

15+ high profile twitter accounts were hacked and they were used to tweet the same message saying any bitcoin sent to the link in the tweet will be doubled, this offer will last just for 30 minutes given in the tweet.

Apple and Uber were the first to be impacted initially, the list grew to Elon Musk, Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, former US President Barack Obama, former US Vice-President Joe Biden, media billionaire Mike Bloomberg, rapper Kanye West, his wife Kim Kardashian West and more in just a matter of minutes.

2.How it happened?

Official twitter handle said that a “coordinated social engineering attack” was executed by the hackers, in this attack the target wasn’t twitter account users but the employees of twitter who were having access to internal systems and tools. Hackers exploited this to gain control over many highly viewed accounts and tweet on their behalf.

The fact that so many different users have been compromised at the same time implies that someone has managed to get hold of some sort of administration privileges and gain access to twitter’s internal dashboard bypassing the passwords of pretty much any account they want to use.

3.How did twitter & Law enforcements respond

Law enforcement, as well as many angry users, will have some strong questions for Twitter about how this could have happened.

In order to damage control twitter stopped all verified accounts from tweeting at all initially, deleted the messages and then slowly restored the accounts back

Person named Kirk (alias) gained access to an internal Twitter tool, which he used to take control of accounts, it is found that a webpage: https://www.cryptoforhealth.com & an Instagram page (@cryptoforhealth) posted a story which said: “It was a charity attack. Your money will find its way to the right place”.The description of the profile read “It was us”, alongside a slightly smiling face emoticon.

This scam has resulted in a gain of bitcoin wallet over $180,000 i.e 20 BTC via at least 300 transactions.It has found that the scam is pulled by few individuals who are in their 20s and met each other on an online platform (OGusers.com) however their real identity is still unknown. Two individuals who go by the name “lol” & “why so anxious” are linked to the bitcoin wallet which was used in the scam were involved in hacking twitter handles. Krik was already involved in hacking twitter handles in exchange for Bitcoins in the Past, he used to send pictures of twitter’s internal dashboards as proof that he has taken control of the requested accounts.

Sent out by Kirk after he gave a customer access to an account, showing Twitter’s backend for the @R9 account

4.Conclusion

Twitter runs its security program on many open platforms such as hackerone and gives millions of dollars to security researchers all around the world to make their platform secure for their users but this scam is a result of security breach in twitter system and not on the user side.

So sometimes a low impact attack like Social engineering combined with a compromised system can cause such big damage to companies reputation.Twitter’s stocks fell by more than 3% after the attack.

This breach could have been much worse; other circumstances like spreading disinformation among the netizens, creating chaos in the middle of the pandemic, giving war threats to rival countries using accounts of senior defence officials/organizations, can just imagine the extent of damage that can be caused.

So in order to keep the businesses safe in the digital world companies should hire professionals that are capable of providing efficient security solutions. A secure environment is not an option anymore but a necessity in this digital world for the very same reason Sankey Cybertech Solutions are committed to provide complete Cyber Solution.

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June 25 2020

The role of voice in Human-Machine communication

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What is human-machine communication?

As the name suggests, it has something to do with interactions between humans and technology. But in reality, human-machine communication is both a concept and an area of research within the communication.

So, what are some of the examples of human-machine communication?

It can be as simple as typing on a keyboard. With the rising acceptance of advanced technology, humans have started to interact with machine using their voice or speech.

Voice recognition also known as speech recognition is a computer software program or a hardware device with the ability to decode the human voice. It is commonly used as an operating device or a software program to perform daily routine tasks such as clicking the mouse or typing on the keyboard. This is done with ASR (Automatic Speech Recognition) programs. To cite a few examples Amazon’s Alexa, Apple’s Siri, and Microsoft Cortana. A rather more common example would be navigating via Google Maps Voice Assistant!

The history of ASR goes back as long as 1952 in that year the first ASR device recognized single-digit spoken by the user it was not computer-driven.

The technology has evolved to a point where you can now open your Netflix app with a few commands or rather a few words with your device

Going even deeper, systems today can also choose to recognize a particular individual’s voice while rejecting others’ voices. This is the power of the transformation in this area. In fact, I am not typing this article but I am dictating my iPad to do it for me!

As is our mission, Sankey has not stepped back in leveraging this technology as well to provide value to one of our key clients, a giant in the automobile industry.

Sankey has made a smart voice recognition solution with Alexa via which potential customers can be redirected to the vehicle of his or her choice. A few basic questions such as car color, engine capacity, model release date, etc. are asked. Now just imagine the daily footfall which the sales representative would have had to cater to and consequently how many salespeople would have to be employed. This has quite tangibly so, added immense value to the company.

A typical test drive today comprises of a Sales Executive who sits alongside the prospective customer and highlights the various features of the automobile. However, at times it might so happen that the Sales Executive might miss out on certain features offered or may simply be not motivated enough to engage in the conversation with the customer during a test drive.

Sankey has made it possible for the potential customer to carry out a test drive without a sales reps sitting next to him or her. The voice recognition power device in the car keeps the customer engaged and answers relevant questions like engine capacity mileage and many more. This enables the staff of the company to focus the talent on higher actions such as branding, post test drive communication with the client digital marketing and strategizing. The voice-powered device also gives the customer a sense of elitism whilst using superior technology. The customer thus feels more connected and a deep desire to associate herself with the company brand.

Following is the Architecture for the use case of VR for one of our leading clients using Alexa :

The flow of the above diagram:

The user asks a question or gives a command to the Alexa device.
Alexa device sends voice command to Alexa Voice Service (AVS).
AVS converts voice input into text and identifies the skill’s name.
Alexa skill analyzes and understands the user request and sends a structural representation of user request to AWS lambda or on-premise service processes the JSON request and returns JSON response to Alexa skill which contains text output.
Alexa skill sends a returned text to AVS.

Another powerful application of voice recognition is in voice biometrics. This technology performance in-depth data mining on recorded audio from previous sales calls and can identify important: information like age language, gender, emotion, and more. Also, voice biometrics can help redirect the caller to a suitable salesperson which the caller can connect on a deeper level.

This technology is rapidly finding applications in a plethora of industries such as aviation hospitality, e-commerce, sports, retail, etc. Space and is sure to be a game-changer. Sankey solutions is keeping pace with the transformation and breakthroughs and disruptions in voice recognition. The developers at Sankey or cybersecurity savvy and make sure that every piece of development modules are compliant with security measures!

Sankey Solutions is one of the fastest-growing digital transformation consulting companies with a special focus on the healthcare and pharmaceutical sector. We help organizations make the promise of digital transformation a reality. We work collaboratively with you to create a deep understanding of the risks and opportunities presented by new emerging technologies and think creatively about how you can use these technologies to improve business performance.

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June 23 2020

Webinar Summary: Fundamentals of Securing your Platform

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Home / Blogs / Webinar Summary: Fundamentals of Securing your Platform

On 18^th June 2020, Suhas Patil, Founder and CEO – Sankey Solutions and Karan Rao, Lead – Sankey Cybertech Solutions delivered a webinar on the Fundamentals of Securing your Platform. In the webinar, Suhas and Karan unraveled the different types of cyber-attacks that can make a particular tech platform vulnerable and how organizations can make security a core requirement of the development process. What follows is a summary of the webinar:

What are some of the recent cybersecurity trends that you have noticed?

As we have been building engineering applications while working with several large enterprises, we have observed quite a bit of change happening in the security space. Some of the most prominent trends we have seen for the last few years is large data breaches. When we say data breaches, we mean the ability to take data(in most cases customer data) through any hacking mechanism and posting it on the dark web to be sold illegally. The first quarter of 2020 was the worst in terms of data breaches in so many years of hacking history. It has become so common and serious that it has started to impact everyone now. Earlier it was thought that only big enterprises will suffer major data breaches, now even a small startup has to take care of the security scenarios.

In the last few years, cloud adoption has gone up. Cloud adoption has naturally created more exposure and a lot more endpoints for someone to attack. The other engineering trend that is amplifying cyber threats is microservices and automation. Microservices provides hackers with more entry points as you break the application into smaller parts. As the architecture and technology advances, we become more vulnerable to cyber-threats, just recently we have heard about many cases of connected vehicles getting attacked.

In addition, everyone is talking about AI being the prominent application capability, but hackers are also using AI technology to create patterns that can mimic users and attack the applications. Another underlying threat that comes around is open-source. We all use open source but very few of us actually follow the proper guidelines to vet the open-source code for malware and other threats.

In short, the trends are really worrying because of the number of attacks, the type of attacks, and the increase in numbers of entry points.

How can AI and Automation be utilized to defend against these cyber threats?

Hackers have been one step ahead of the developers thus far. Developers now have to think about the new scenarios which hackers can exploit using AI and thus there is a need to create a more restrictive environment for AI to penetrate. We have a number of threat intelligence tools at our disposal these days which can help us monitor the traffic in real-time, give you a predictive flag based on past activity and IP address scanning and blacklisting. The bigger theme is that developers have to not just be reactive but be preventive and proactive. We also need to have a mechanism in place where once a threat is identified, it is then propagated in various networks thus slowing down the spread.

How has Covid-19 impacted the whole security landscape:

COVID has not created any new types of threat but it has created a lot of vulnerabilities. The biggest threat has come from employees working remotely where they are connected to public networks which are not as secure. A lot of organizations have faced ransomware attacks because of this vulnerability. The number of entry points has dramatically increased for hackers to exploit. Phishing attacks are also on the rise resulting in devasting financial fraud. A lot of COVID related maps and dashboards were eventually found to be malware, so there a lot of opportunities for these hackers to exploit. COVID has made the lives of hackers much easier.

What are the different types of attacks at different layers of an architecture?

Cyber-security Webinar Architecture

To answer this question, we need to first understand the doors of a typical application that are vulnerable to attacks. Typically, at Layer 1, we will find presentation layers where we do scripting of HTML codes for the front end part to present our application. In Layer 2, users interact with the application where they first have to go through a DNS server, and then the traffic goes through cloud caching servers (Level 3), and then it enters into the application (Level 4). If you have a gateway at level 4.1, it will go through microservices or monolithic core backend. The most common way to secure the backend layer where microservices endpoints are open to attack is by using secured APIs. But that is not enough. There is a lot more we need to think about given the vulnerabilities we have seen in recent years. Typically, we make sure that we do the IP binding of the services with the gateway. On top of it, there are a number of API discovery-based tools where you don’t map the endpoints directly with the API gateway and you create a registry where the application is smart enough to know what is the request and where to send it.

What are some of the common types of attacks that can take place from the mobile app or browser?

For web applications, Open Web Application Security Project has been a standard protocol for a while now. One of the most common ways hackers are trying to compromise an application is by injecting code from your front end. For instance, suppose you have a text box where you are asking for comments, hackers will inject a JavaScript code that will actually be malware and will go inside your host application and start tracking and sending data. SQL injection has been a very common issue in the past where you can actually download something from the database by injecting a SQL code from either the console or by changing the query parameters. So, to summarize following OWASP standards, making sure APIs, domains, endpoints are not very common, refraining from using common ports, and making sure that query parameters have a security check can go a long way in securing web applications.

When it comes to mobile, its less vulnerable compared to the web application. However, there are still a lot of ways through which hackers can exploit the platform. Some of the things to keep in mind is not embedding passwords and endpoints of APIs in frontend code. Not failing to do so will give the hackers an opportunity to reverse engineer your code and get all the endpoints and query parameters. There are also a number of tools out there to make your code more complex and difficult to reverse engineer.

How do security professionals stay one step ahead of the hackers?

There are not enough security professionals in the industry today. The cybersecurity industry is going to grow from $160 billion to almost $220 billion in a year alone. There is a huge lack of awareness and skillset with respect to security. One thing that has got to happen is making security part of your learning, increasing awareness about the different security threats at different levels, and how to mitigate these risks. It has to be a part of every organization from startups to Fortune 500 companies. It’s no longer an option or choice. And it should not be only limited to developers. Everyone in the company including IT Directors, CXOs need to go through application-level related security training and build the skillset with respect to security.

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June 11 2020

How to enable Digital Transformation in Pharmaceutical Sales

sankeysolutions Digital Transformation Sankey Solutions

We are in an era of AI or should I say “Weak AI”; wherein if you are not using it, you will be outsmarted by competition sooner or later.

The digital tools and technologies have allowed pharma executives to ensure a robust sales pipeline with more and more physicians translated into sales. The Pharma industry is one of the biggest investors in this area and has subsequently demonstrated a lot of successes.

Sankey Solutions is working closely with one of the world’s largest pharmaceutical companies from Germany (Fortune 500 company, with global pharma rank 14), and other multinational pharma companies, as their digital transformation partner.

Pharmaceutical Sales is one of the most challenging field sales jobs with the need to operate in a highly regulated environment with in-depth product and domain knowledge. Kudos to the industry, as they have been evolving the sales function with more sophisticated technology and data. However, the challenges have also evolved and require more than just problem-solving abilities. The industry needs a combination of defining the right problems, picking up the ones to solve, and being able to solve them at scaled levels.

Let us look at a few challenges faced by the pharma sales currently:

Reduced access to physicians and KOLs (this is even compounded with outlier events)
The overall cost of sales is going up while the topline revenue is shrinking
The knowledge gap and time taken to bridge the gap are a hindrance to upscaling

Before we don the solution hat, let us pause and visualize this in a 2-dimensional problem space:

There are a couple of key takeaways from this framework. The first one is that the problems do not occur in isolation, rather they are interconnected. The second helps you define what actions should be taken. The unproductive zone problems are the last ones to be taken up or taken up as a sub-project for solving dependent problems. The disruption zone is where the C-suite should typically focus their energy on. Empowerment Zone problems should be gamified and allowed for the field teams to solve this will ensure innovation at the edges. The intervention zone is where the most interesting problems get solved through a combination of business context, data, AI (ML), and technologies to scale.

The effectiveness and efficiencies of modern-day sales teams lie in the intervention zone and I would like to present 2 different use cases of this problem space:

Barking up the wrong tree: How often have we seen sales personnel, targeting a particular physician because he or she is easier to access and is sweet-natured. These biases in the field leave out potentially higher return sales opportunities. With so much data being collected, it’s important to create a closed-loop sales system where the sales representatives receive a daily target list which also tells them what will be the most potent content for each physician. This requires not only a robust AI model but an effective technology platform to deliver the messages and collect the feedback. The feedback makes sure the AI model is most current.

Sankey has now equipped one of our large pharma clients with a real-time propensity score provided to salesperson along with recommended sales tactics to prioritize who to talk and what to talk. It is powered by Advanced ML models that use data about the physician, the demographics, and physician’s previous interactions. Their sales effectiveness has gone up by 3x by using such a data and technology-driven approach.

Flash & Bang: The only reason the Homo Sapiens survived over their more superior species was due to their ability to build networks. Networks are the DNA of sales teams. However, they are now more burdened with learning the content, which itself is very dynamic. What if Augmented Reality and Voice Assistants take away this burden and let them focus on the softer aspects! It is not just possible but also it makes the training and development department more efficient. The end-users in this case the physicians would really appreciate the ability to get complete, unbiased and at disposal information in a unique way. A feedback system helps improve the content. The ability to scale for the Sales heads increases tremendously with such initiatives.

Another of our multinational pharma clients is doing a POC with an AR app where the physicians can get details of the drugs, molecular structure, etc. just by scanning a card which the sales representatives leave with them. For some physicians, they are also experimenting with a voice-based virtual assistant to get the information on demand. 90% of physicians in these control groups perceive the company as more digitally advanced than others and the projections are that once fully implemented, the project will self-fund itself in its first 6 months of launch.

Summarizing, these are just 2 of the multitude of problems that technology and data have helped us solve. While most opinions are sounding alarm bells for the sales teams, it is just transforming from an army of mavericks to an army of empowered trendsetters.

Sankey Solutions is a next-generation IT Consulting & Services Company with a special focus on the healthcare and pharmaceutical sector. We help organizations make the promise of digital transformation a reality.

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June 6 2020

Robo-advisory – Shaping the future of financial advisory

sankeysolutions Asset Management Sankey Solutions

Digital transformation is radically impacting the financial sector being information and service-based industry. The financial advisory business is no exception: as demand continues to increase due to various aspects such as geopolitical uncertainty, ultra-low or negative interest rates, and increasing life expectancy, robo-advisors are becoming an essential part on how services are provided and delivered to clients.

Traditionally financial advice is provided by a financial advisor based on a client-specific investment policy statement which includes his return expectations, liquidity requirements, time horizon, tax concerns, regulatory and legal factors, ability, and willingness to take risks as well as any other unique circumstance. Upon final agreement with the client, the investment policy statement builds the basis for all investment decisions of the client’s assets. The investment portfolio is monitored on an ongoing basis and rebalanced if required. Its performance is reported to the client in a compliant and timely manner.

1+ Trillion AUM by robo-advisors and growing

The robo-advisory market grew out of the 2008 financial crisis as small investors looked for wealth managers who charged lower fees, at a time of historic low interest rates on savings. According to Statista, AUM at robo-advisers surpassed 1+ trillion and are expected to experience strong growth over the next years as they can be a great solution for various types of investors – from beginners not having yet the financial knowledge to professionals lacking the time to actively manage their wealth.

Different use of automated, algorithm-driven financial planning services

Robo-advisors are digital platforms providing automated, algorithm-driven financial planning services with minimal human intervention. They provide customers with tailor-made services with a digital point of contact and a standardized system in a compliant and affordable manner. Information about their current financial situation as well as goals are collected and the data is used to offer advice and invest automatically a client’s assets. This allows us to benefit from passive management lower fees with the advantages of more adaptive and active asset allocation than just pure indexing.

Robo-advisors can have different forms. They can be made directly available as a tool to the end user and, based on her/his specific investor profile, give him either investment recommendations or letting the robo-advisor do the asset allocation independently. Alternatively, it can be a tool for the financial advisor himself to support him both in terms of speed and quality, the preparation for meetings with clients, optimally leverage the information exchanged during the appointment or increase the number of portfolios she or he can effectively manage. The robo-advisory platform can also be used as a way to ease interactions between the advisors, the portfolio managers and the customers. The best robo-advisors offer an easy client onboarding process, customized and suitable portfolio management services to reach her/his financial goals, low fees, attentive customer service, comprehensive client education and high security standards.

Main advantages for financial advisory businesses

From streamlining operations to enhancing the user experience, here are some of the main advantages financial advisory businesses profit from when using robo-advisors:

Low costs and low account minimums: the costs of a robo-advisor are around a 1/3 to 1/2 compared to the costs of a traditional advisor and allow high economies of scale. It enables to serve clients who have been historically difficult to serve at all or to offer them more sophisticated investment practices. This includes for example households with relatively lower income or younger individuals with lower investable funds.
Automated processes: automating processes reduces operational risks and saves time. Robo-advisors offer clients tailored services while enabling individuals to widen their scope, freeing them from certain basic tasks for them to focus on more complex issues.
Self-service digital distribution: the virtual aspect of the services increases the accessibility and availability to 24/7 from anywhere with an internet connection and without the need of a physical presence.
Higher user experience and data analysis: client demands for cutting-edge technology are ever growing. Millennials which constitute the largest group in the labor market are tech savvy while the next generation, Gen Z which is entering the labour market, is considered tech native. Further, a significant growth in tech adoption is observed among older generations. Robo-advisors allow investors to invest in a range of different asset classes conveniently via mobile phones or web applications. Furthermore, they provide full access to portfolio management tools and performance results which are completely transparent and easy to understand. The ever growing amount of data (big data) exceeds the analytical capabilities of humans while robo-advisors, if enhanced by new technological developments (e.g. AI), can provide better and more tailored offerings.
Reducing behavioral biases in the investment process: behavioral biases lead to suboptimal decision of investors. These biases may be categorized as either cognitive errors (resulting from faulty reasoning) or emotional biases (resulting from reasoning influenced by feelings). Robo-advisors are not subject to these biases and could even profit from them happening in the financial markets, if developed correctly.

The Sankey’s approach to robo-advisory

At Sankey Solutions, we work on projects for several financial advisors and provide them with tailor-made solutions based on their clients’ needs. With our very agile approach in designing, building and testing, we help building successful and flexible robo-advisor platforms to achieve highest customer satisfaction and profitability. Our engagement can vary based on individual requirements and set-ups: it spans developing the full range or only components, from building a robo-advisor from scratch to designing and developing a front-end using APIs to connect to existing third-party providers, for B2B and B2C use and accessible as multi-channel service through SOA services (service-oriented architecture, web, mobile and cloud). Here are few examples of some of the main components of a robo-advisory our team is able to provide:

- User interface: with client expectations rising the focus has long shifted from product-centricity to user-centricity. The user interface needs to be intuitive, accessible across all channels and devices, easy to interact with, visually appealing and responsive. The overall experience needs to show your clients that you know them and what they value, that you will ensure their individual needs are matched and you will ultimately reward them. Further, the user interface is customized with brand design, cultural behaviors and language for users to experience the brand

Components include:

- Client onboarding: it needs to move away from the onerous task of making clients fill out forms to transfer and set up accounts. An omnichannel onboarding process needs to be offered and should be based on a storytelling approach tailored to the user to create a strong first impression.
- Client profile building: the regulatory compliant investor profile can be created using digital tools based on gamification aspects, investment education scorecards or predictive and dynamic questionnaires. Combining big data with artificial intelligence methods offers new ways of gathering information and creating the investor profile. It could include virtual, digital or voice assistants interacting with users with their natural language.
- Investor dashboard: market data as well as research information can be presented. It enables the client to monitor the development and risk parameters of her/his portfolio as well as individual financial instruments (in real-time and historically) with user-friendly analytical tools. Visualization tools tell users the story of their finances by representing the data in an interactive, attention- grabbing and easily digestible form. It can be built as a separate application or integrated in an existing website or app.

Asset allocation, rebalancing, monitoring and reporting: a cutting-edge platform which is highly scalable and API-ready guaranteeing easy connectivity to third-party services (e.g. data providers, banks, custodians, trading venues) is at the centre of any robo-advisor. An analysis of the existing IT architecture to evaluate the degree of potential integration should be the starting point. Regarding the investment aspects various solutions are possible.
- Portfolio construction: the range of possible algorithms making the investment decision across different asset classes is very wide – from simple and more passive (e.g. based on modern portfolio theory) to complex and more active based on state-of-the-art machine learning techniques and alternative data. The algorithms require a very disciplined approach in development and rigorous testing. They can be used in different ways:
  - The robo-advisor makes recommendations and serves as a decision support system to identify opportunities and matching them with the investor profile.
  - The robo-advisor performs asset allocation and rebalancing on its own, but requires some human intervention to take action, from a portfolio manager or a committee validation.
  - The robo-advisor is in full-blown automatic mode. It can allocate a fixed amount of capital or use a fixed monthly payment to implement a pre-defined strategy. It can provide the investor with the possibility to choose between several themes to customize her/his portfolio with special investments.
- Rebalancing: It ensures that any deviations from the target portfolio, break of restrictions or change in client preferences are identified and determines necessary transactions or submits appropriate recommendations. The process can be both rule-based with a fixed regular frequency and event-based with alerts triggering the system when necessary. This event-driven feature is of prime importance in order to do the necessary reassessment of investor profiles and soliciting human intervention when market data or performance demands it. It can also include liquidity modules controlling the correct implementation of capital withdrawals and capital injections while managing risk as well as tax-loss harvesting.
- Execution: depending on the business model, trade orders can be generated by the user or automatically by the robo-advisor. After built-in checks these can be automatically shifted to back office for further processing or directly routed to the selected trading venue for execution. Buying and selling of financial products generates costs for the clients which need to be minimized. To reduce commissions, slippage (price change between signal and order execution) and market impact (change in price of an asset caused by buying/selling of that asset) an execution module can be built to.
- Reporting: automated report generation allows maximal flexibility with masses of reports generated within a short period of time or customer-specific ones ad hoc to keep clients informed in a timely and compliant way (e.g. Global Investment Performance Standards).

Data protection and cybersecurity: the sensitive and personal nature of client’s information that robo-advisors are entrusted and work with on a daily basis requires the implementation of the highest security and encryption standards. Processes and strategies to prevent, detect and respond to cybersecurity threats and vulnerabilities are an absolute must to protect client data, wherever it is stored or accessed from, any communication and to be compliant with all legal as well as regulatory requirements.

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