Sankey Solutions

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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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 11 2020

How to enable Digital Transformation in Pharmaceutical Sales

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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

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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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June 4 2020

How to select the best publishing platform for your business?

sankeysolutions Digital Transformation, Media Digital Media, digital transformation, Media, Publishing Platform, Sankey Solutions

In the last three decades, there has been mass adoption of the internet and thereby consumption of digital media has increased. People started moving from the traditional way (newspapers, magazines, billboards, radio, broadcast TV and direct mail) of consumption of news to digital ways (online advertising, search engines, social media, video streaming services, and websites) because of easy availability, cost-effectiveness and handy nature of digital media.

How a good publishing platform helps you make content distribution effective and easier?

As Print media is on the verge of extinction, the need for a digital publishing platform has ever since increased. A publishing platform is simply a platform to publish the content digitally to be consumed by its users. The whole idea is to digitize and distribute content (content such as articles, pictures, and to be able to share articles on Facebook, Instagram, etc.) through electronic devices.

There are essentially two types of publishing platforms: Custom and off-the-shelf

Custom: When a company has its own platform, they put features which they need in particular and they can choose to post what is relevant to them. Basically they put whatever expresses them in the best way. E.g.: pictures, photos, written content, videos, etc. without prior permission from any authority or without any additional charges.
Off-the-shelf: A few companies on the other hand create publishing platforms and provide them on a monthly/ yearly subscription basis to others for them to post content. In this case, the content is scanned and approved before putting it online and is of course chargeable.

Support: Once the publishing platform is in place, it needs regular up-gradation for smooth functioning (in terms of glitches, scalability, etc.) and minor enhancements to keep up with the changing trend. This is taken care of by the support team.

Need for a publishing platform:

A publishing platform essentially:

Ensures easy, cheap and 24*7 availability of news for customers
Ensures huge cost savings
Creates an opportunity for interactive Ads for advertisers
Creates an opportunity to gain exposure from social media shares
Gives a better chance to interact with its present and potential customers
Ensures better feedback mechanism

How to select a good publishing platform?

As a matter of fact, every news agency wants to generate revenue, expand their user base, reach out to maximum potential customers, get the best advertising deal and be better than their competitors by catering to the user’s needs in the best possible way which brings them to choose the most lucrative ways to do all of the above i.e. by to have a publishing platform in place.

The challenges faced by almost every media agency which is trying to go digital is similar. For a very long time now, there have been concerns about the best distribution platform because there can easily be gaps in features being offered and the features that one might want. According to a survey, 2/3rd of the online news consumers prefer to access news through algorithm-driven platforms such as news aggregators and social media websites which makes use of algorithms for best user experience. This is just one aspect, there are plenty of other factors that should be considered before committing to a publishing platform.

A few factors to be considered for choosing/designing the best publishing platform:

It should be easy to use and provide high performance and have basic CMS features
It should not be overpriced
It should let you create whatever you intend to create (no restriction on creativity)
It should include interactivity: e.g. adding videos, pop-ups, feedback, plugins, etc. to the publication
The content’s performance should be measured constantly and should have built-in analytics
The platform should be able to integrate with other services
It should allow targeting specific audiences/ user group
It should allow distributing the content across multiple channels. It should offer multiple sharing tools
The content that is created should adapt to multiple devices and platforms
The platform should offer support if and when needed
Data Migration – Data migration cost during first setup as well as the cost of moving data out of their platform
Data Risk- Hosting the application in vendor location you will lose your control over data
Should support multimedia content like- audio, video, news story, workflows, scheduling(News scheduling)
Should have SEO support, AMP, publishing support to the social platform, paywall.

Why is it important to have the good technical architecture to create the best publishing platform?

To build the most desirable publishing platform, we would want to have the following:

Security- Firewall, VPC, security group, etc.:

A firewall that provides comprehensive protection and helps to identify vulnerabilities and get them fixed through WAF rules. E.g. Indusface WAF, AppTrana WAF, CloudFare WAF

Different caching- CDN, varnish, memcache :

A general-purpose distributed memory caching system which can be used to speed up dynamic database-driven websites by caching data and objects in RAM to reduce the number of times an external data source must be fetched. Basically, when a similar request is asked for, the request is not sent to the database server, instead, a reply is sent from this caching system. E.g. Memcache
A content delivery network which provides a globally distributed network of proxy servers which can cache content, such as videos or other bulky media to improve access speed for downloading the content. E.g. AWS Cloud Front, Google Cloud Storage

Autoscaling- To handle the load for viral content :

A load balancer which automatically distributes incoming application traffic across multiple targets and can handle the varying load of your application traffic in a single Availability Zone or across multiple Availability Zones. E.g. Varnish ELB, AWS ELB, Drupal ELB.

Secure object storage :

A good distributed message queuing service. E.g. ActiveMQ, Amazon SQS, Redis, Amazon MQ
A service that provides object storage preferably through a web service interface. E.g. AWS S3, Microsoft Azure, Amazon EBS
A cloud storage resource for image queuing. E.g. Amazon bucket, Google Cloud storage, Heroku

Search-platform :

An enterprise-search platform including features like full-text search hit highlighting, faceted search, real-time indexing, dynamic clustering, database integration. So, when we enter search command, they give us multiple options using our keywords. This keyword is stored in this SOLR search. Just like a dictionary. E.g. SOLR search, OpenSearchServer, ElasticSearch

Database :

An easy to use, secure, scalable, highly flexible, highly productive & platform-independent database management system. E.g. MySQL, PostgreSQL, MongoDB

Apart from the above tools, we might want to make use of the below tools as well:

A scalable and highly available domain name system service that connects user requests to infrastructure and hence ensure routing. E.g. Azure DNS, AWS route 53, Google Cloud DNS
A cloud service that enables you to build a virtual network in the AWS cloud and lets you define your own network space and also controls how your network and cloud computing activities inside your network are exposed to the internet. We essentially want it to act as a security layer to our server which would not allow access to our application from outside the team. E.g. OpenStack, OpenVPN, AWS VPC (Virtual Private Cloud)
A platform (more like a content management framework) for designing amazing digital experiences that can be used for dynamic as well as static web pages. E.g. Drupal, WordPress, Joomla

Sankey belief system:

Sankey Solutions does not believe that every firm should start from scratch. We in fact believe that smaller firms should go with SaaS (software as a service) while comparatively larger firms can have their own publishing platform.

Sankey catered to digital initiatives of one of the biggest media agency groups. We are more into providing additional features, bringing minor enhancements especially when there is a major event about to take place, conducting events, etc.

E.g. during elections, we built pages in which viewers can get live updates on the count of votes.

The second project was paywall based where we made sure there was a paywall in place.
We have also catered to the festival specific activities like on the occasion of Diwali, Ganesh Chaturthi, Navratri, etc. when almost 25000 people watch live streaming.
Marathon events: We built in marathon App where the user can register on them and then get the current status of his location, road map of the marathon track, his position compared to other participants in the race, etc.
We essentially are working on digital initiatives, SEO, and other additional services.

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May 21 2020

Why your asset and wealth management business needs automation

sankeysolutions Asset Management, Automation Sankey Solutions, Wealth Management

“We always overestimate the change that will occur in the next two years and underestimate the change that will occur in the next ten. Don’t let yourself be lulled into inaction.”
Bill Gates

Since the last global financial crisis of 2007-08 assets under management have experienced a sustained growth across the globe. According to experts at PwC this is expected to continue and reach US$145.4 trillion by 2025. While the COVID-19 pandemic and the associated economic downturn might slow this development, the underlying trend will persist. Despite the positive outlook, the wealth and asset management industry is confronted with a paradigm shift which is in full progress – challenging the old ways and pushing traditional players to embrace digitalization. Companies with a limited understanding of the broadening role of technology will fall inevitably behind.

External factors drive automation

A company’s technological framework becomes an historical heritage that grows in complexity the longer a company exists and adjusts to evolving requirements. Therefore, it comes as no surprise that the main drivers for automation processes are not internal but rather external factors. For asset and wealth management companies these can be divided into three main areas:

Regulations: Since the global financial crisis, regulators have pressured financial institutions globally towards more transparency, requiring them to comply with their fiduciary duty towards their clients and to provide value-for-money services. As this regulatory oversight is expected to keep increasing, best practices have shown that it can be best addressed with the help of automation.
Cost-effectiveness: The pressure of decreasing profit margins, rapid technological progress, a shift towards passive investing as well as ultra-low to negative interest rates force companies to enhance their operational efficiency. Further, cost sensitivity of customers and an evolving competitive landscape with new digital entrants has become a primary determinant of flows across the global wealth and asset management community. Increasing operational efficiency while decreasing costs calls for automated processes to substitute work labour inefficiencies and reallocate resources to more valuable tasks.
Customer expectations: As in all areas of life, expectations towards personalized, anytime/anywhere, intuitive digital solutions have been on the rise also in the financial sector. This is further accelerated by the estimated large wealth to be inherited by a generation of digitally savvy. Hence, the digital customer experience has become a differentiator and a way to keep the next generation of wealthy clients.

Applications of automation across three areas

Within the wealth and asset management industry, automation can be applied to three distinct areas with each its respective objective: enriching the front office experience, enhancing the middle office processes and streamlining the back office operations. Following we have selected a few applications across these areas as illustrative examples.

Enriching the front office experience: With client expectations rising towards an upgraded digital experience, the client and advisory relationship can be improved at each interaction point. The most obvious example is the account set-up: it traditionally involves tons of paper, repeated data provisions from the client as well as several back and forth interactions. Automation can simplify this process, enhancing convenience and hence contributing to a better client experience from the get-go while facilitating anti-money laundering/know-your-client (AML/KYC) requirements. Interactiveness can be enhanced with smart chatbots that enable clients to tap into subject matter experts’ knowledge at any time and anywhere. Additionally, clients can be served with increased speed, accuracy and availability while better personalized services can be provided. With automated alerts, visually enhanced data information as well as analytics dashboards and reports, relationship managers can better serve their clients. To fulfil the increasing client demand for transparency tailor-made real-time reports with built-in data quality checks can be generated for review or queued for distribution via automated delivery to clients.
Enhancing the middle office processes: The possibilities of automation within the investment processes are very wide. On one end of the spectrum we find the automation of simpler high-volume and/or repetitive tasks – the socalled robotic process automation (RPA) which performs selected actions based on a defined ruleset. At the opposite end of the spectrum we find AI algorithms built around a learning model that enables it to take decisions based on experiences made and beyond what has been programmed manually. Exemplary applications within the various areas of the investment process include:
1. Research: From data maintenance, collection and cleaning to interpretation of relevant information via natural language processing.
2. Execution: From simple to complex execution algorithms taking account of regulatory constraints, individual client’s objectives, market conditions and impact.
3. Portfolio Management: From robo-advisors providing automated investment advice at low costs to deep learning automated trading systems mimicking the workings of the human brain in decision-making.
4. Risk Management: From tailor-made risk dashboards to detection as well as management of known and unknown risks of ever increasing volumes of data.
Streamlining the back office operations: During the trade processing phase automation can be used to match orders, verify transaction details and to handle exception alerts: while this increases speed of handling, it also eliminates potential incurring errors and frees employees to focus on more valuable business tasks. A single, automated bot could execute accounting and administration processes such as asset and cash reconciliation, including built-in support for tax assessment and filing requirements at a fraction of the costs. Bots can facilitate the hand-off of data across systems and ensure money has been transferred into and out of specific accounts. When we consider expensive penalties for lacking regulatory compliance combined with the continuously increasing regulatory complexity, intelligent automation appears the solution to help tackle these challenges and reduce breaches (e.g. by scanning investment management agreements, RPA can read and extract the most relevant information to then transpose it into compliance rule coding screens faster and more accurately than individuals could do).

Sankey’s approach to automation

The benefits of automation are multifaceted and include cost reduction, better usage of your resources, accuracy improvement, higher speed of processes contributing to an overall productivity increase as well as driving higher staff satisfaction altogether. While Sankey Solutions operates as our customers’ extended CTO team, at Sankey we take a partnering approach in developing custom automation solutions that best address a company’s needs while fitting into its framework – whether technological, organizational or other. Depending on your starting situation and requirements, customized solutions can be implemented over the course of few weeks and often on top of your current technology architecture – hence avoiding major infrastructure costs. Having worked on automation projects around the globe for clients ranging from start-ups to Fortune 500, we have enabled them to be better equipped to face their industry challenges – today and tomorrow.

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May 9 2020

How these Point of Sale (POS) trends are creating new business opportunities in the retail industry

sankeysolutions Retail Point of Sale, POS, Retail, Sankey Solutions

As technology advances, the retail industry is undergoing a transformation, unlike anything the industry has ever seen. New emerging Point of Sale trends is shaking up the retail space with retailers trying to keep up with the ever-changing needs of consumers.

POS systems have come a long way from just being a tool to record transactions to a dynamic platform that can integrate your marketing, inventory, accounting, and data analytics. Retailers who are leveraging the technology advancements are thriving and are finding new ways to interact with consumers. Here are some of the Point of Sale trends that are creating new business opportunities for the retailers:

Transition to cloud-based POS

According to Forbes, 61% of merchants have embraced cloud-based POS for their business. As technology advances, businesses are more connected than ever. Cloud-based POS has enabled various game-changing features for retailers like location-based discounts, real-time reporting, and customer management. To make the most out of technological advancements in the payment industry, it is necessary that POS systems are driven by agile, cloud-based software in order to enjoy the full benefits of today’s cutting-edge technology.

The biggest advantage of using a cloud-based POS solution is that retailers can do everything from easily accessing their data to upgrading their software across all the stores at the same time. Multiple stores can be updated and upgraded in just minutes, which makes doing business easier for retailers. Cloud-based POS systems are able to keep up with the retailer’s daily operations and are also able to scale up if the situation arises in the future. Cloud-based POS solutions also provide crucial features like CRM solution, guest feedback, reporting & analytics, and payroll. It also gives you an option to add a feature vital to the success of your business should the need arises in the future.

Mobile Payments

Gone are the days when cash was the preferred medium of the transaction at retailers. Customers want to spend as little time as possible while making a purchase. So, those long queues at the checkout line are doing anyone any favors. According to Harvard Business School professor’s research paper, Americans wait in lines 37 billion hours a year. Advancements made in the payment technology space have amplified the customer experience, driven loyalty, and boosted the overall success of the retail business. Mobile wallets are increasingly being embraced by consumers to easily pay for things in person or online.

Today’s consumers love the convenience, the security and authentication features of mobile payment options. Mobile payment offers a wide variety of advantages over cash with a range of options from credit cards to contactless payments. Cashless payments provide speed, convenience, guaranteed payment for merchants, and security and transparency for both consumers and merchants. Recent trends indicate shoppers using less cash than in the past and eight of 10 customers worldwide use a tablet, smartphone, a computer, or some form of digital technology within the store as they shop.

AI Integration

The influx of disruptive technologies like Artificial Intelligence is bringing exciting change to the retail industry and transforming the industry for better. ABI Research projects the total installed base of AI-enabled camera systems in retail is expected to grow from 420,000 in 2020 to 2.37 million in 2024. AI integration is helping retailers keep their customers engaged, delighted, and convert the majority of opportunities into sales.

The younger generation is more receptive to the inclusion of AI in their day to day lives. AI enables various features like better shopping experience, fraud prevention, and real-time tracking of inventory. Artificial Intelligence is extensively being used to collect crucial data points into customer’s behavior and offer relevant products based on their preferences and past purchases. AI-Integrated POS solutions have proved to be a crucial tool in targeted marketing campaigns. Retailers can now gain valuable insights from tons of customer data which is being used to reach the right set of customers. AI algorithms have paved the way for a better understanding of consumer preferences which in turn is used to create more personalized and relevant promotional campaigns leading to improved customer acquisition.

Usage of Big Data & Analytics

The retail industry has never seen this amount and variety of data being produced across various domains of the business. POS systems are evolving to provide an abundance of data and analytics solutions that can help retailers make smarter, data-driven decisions about their business. In order to personalize and enhance the customer experience, one has to understand every aspect of the customer buying journey, and that can be done through analyzing data and analytics through your POS.

Retailers are observing increased sales per visit with a deeper understanding of consumer’s purchase patterns, cross-selling, and up-selling trends along with improved inventory management. The data gathered from social media is used to identify changes in customer demand for products and new emerging trends. Retailers are actively looking to correlate their products and services to viral events and social topics. All these insights into customer’s purchasing habits have dramatically improved the efficiency of marketing campaigns.

For instance, restaurateurs in high-end establishments now have pre-built dashboards and individualized reports to their disposal which has helped create a more personalized customer experience for their frequent visitors.

Source: Sevenrooms.com

Unmanned Retail

The scale and pace of the unmanned or automated retail have picked up a lot in recent years. Earlier it was only limited to vending machines but now we see unmanned kiosks and unattended grocery stores all around us. Experts predict that the interactive kiosk sector in the US will be worth more than $1 billion by 2020. The current epidemic is only going to push this trend to greater heights with consumers having the chance to experience the unmanned retail service in full capacity.

The popularity of zero-touch shopping is going to dramatically increase especially for food retail. Supermarkets are experimenting with cashier-less stores with core functions such as store monitoring, checkout, and payment is handled by AI technologies. According to a recent survey, 8 out of 10 Americans would prefer fully-automated stores to traditional brick-and-mortar stores. There is a clear business case for unmanned retail when you take into various driving factors like lower labor costs, new data collection capabilities, and improved operational efficiency.

As a tech services company, Sankey Solutions have architected POS solutions for multiple retailers across Europe and Asia enabling real-time tracking of inventory, storing customer profiles, and keeping the retail operations running like a well-oiled machine.

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