Artificial intelligence has completely turned the business world upside down. Whether you’re a startup startup or a multi-billion dollar global conglomerate, the way you do business today is radically different than it was five years ago.
In the modern paradigm, one of your company’s greatest assets is the data generated by your employees, customers, and customers. And unfortunately, most companies leave money on the table simply by storing that data somewhere to collect digital dust.
The problem: How do you monitor your company’s entire data ecosystem, implement models to identify and derive actionable assets, and turn those insights into positive business outcomes?
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The solution: vertical intelligenceâ€
Unfortunately, “vertical intelligence” is a buzzword. If you try to google it, you’ll get pages and pages from companies that specialize in it and explain why it’s important. No one really tells you what it is in the context of modern AI solutions.
I spoke to the team on NuVertical Groupa big data company specializing in vertical intelligence, to find out exactly what it means.
And it turns out to be very simple. Vertical intelligence is the combination of human expertise and big data analytics, applied with surgical precision and timing.
As NowVertical Group COO Sasha Grujicic told Neural, we are emerging from a once-in-a-century pandemic. And, unlike most industries, the world of AI experienced a positive surge during the COVID lockdowns.
That means countless companies are caught catching up when it comes to industry regulations, federal and global compliance initiatives, and data governance. For those already left behind, the challenge of integrating new solutions may seem insurmountable.
Worse, as Grujicic puts it:
Momentum will not slow down… even in the current economic climate.
That’s not to say that everything is recession-proof, but AI has become a backbone technology for businesses, just like the Internet or electricity.
Fortunately, for those lost in the weeds, the concept of vertical intelligence is somewhat of an all-in-one solution. It’s not one-size-fits-all, that’s kind of the point.
Rather than buying a bunch of software packages and then hiring trained computer scientists to turn those generic solutions into something workable for your business, a vertical intelligence solutions company brings together industry-specific expertise with custom algorithms and data management solutions.
That’s a fancy way of saying that vertical intelligence always requires human expertise because it involves more than just deploying models.
You can deploy a thousand models and analyze a planet’s data, but if you don’t know what insights to look for or how to make sure your entire platform is compliant, you’re left in the dark.
And it goes beyond that too. How can you be sure that your data (and that of your customers) is protected with the most up-to-date protocols and privacy measures as businesses scale and platforms evolve?
As Grujicic explained, that’s all part of vertical intelligence too. According to him, the two most important questions every company should ask are:
What does your data look like and what risks are associated with it?
The bottom line is that any business generating actionable data can benefit from the integration of a vertical intelligence solution.
Vertical intelligence may be a catchy buzzword, but the simple fact is that combining domain-specific human expertise with AI-powered big data analytics isn’t really optional in the age of machine learning.