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Lab presents its work at ERCIS annual workshop

Members of the ERCIS network recently gathered for their annual workshop, kindly hosted by the Leiden Institute of Advanced Computer Science (LIACS) at Leiden University, in collaboration with the Leiden Center of Data Science. The workshop is an ideal opportunity to introduce new members from around Europe and to discuss current trends, new developments and plan joint research initiatives.

A key theme this year was the confluence of data science and information systems – specifically, the huge impact of social media and implications for data privacy with the advent of the GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation).

This is a key focus area for the ERCIS Omni-Channel Lab - a partnership between Arvato and ERCIS – and Karsten Kraume (CSO/CIO at Arvato CRM) and Markus Heuchert (ERCIS) presented the Lab’s ‘Social Media Monitor’.

This proprietary tool, designed and developed by the Omni-Channel Lab, automatically gathers data from social media platforms, crunches the numbers, and derives KPIs for service quality. An important aspect is its ability to compare the competitive landscape within and across industry verticals.

“The Lab’s Social Media Monitor tool can deliver very valuable market insights into service quality across industry verticals.” said Karsten Kraume, from Arvato. “Of course, as a global leader in the CX/Customer Services sector, data privacy is a top priority for Arvato. Being able to explore the topic at our workshop, delivered valuable feedback and new insights on how ERCIS partners approach data privacy issues.”

Exploring solutions to tackle ‘hate’ on the web

There’s no doubt that global social networks have made a huge contribution to improving the way we communicate with each other. However, they can also be a platform for spreading ‘fake news’ and hatred.

ERCIS’s Cyberhate Mining Project tackles the problem of hatred on the web through automated text scanning with a specially developed algorithm. Suspected posts can then be prioritized for ‘human’ editorial teams. This data-driven approach means that masses of data can be quickly analyzed and processed.

The research team at ERCIS used the 2015/16 refugee crisis in Germany to develop and finely tune its algorithm. More than 375,000 comments on 20,000 articles from 14 different news sites were used to teach it how to identify hate.

Moreover, the underlying natural language processing algorithms can also be used in Customer Service scenarios to leverage self-service capabilities. Arvato – who partner with the ERCIS Omni-Channel Lab - designs, delivers and differentiates customer service for many of the world’s most respected brands. This means that innovation in Self Service is a key area for continuing academic and industry collaboration.

Pioneering advances in Electric Mobility

The Service Science Competence Center is the largest third party funded research group in the ERCIS network, with two post-doctorate researchers and 12 research assistants. Partnering with industry, this specialist unit carries out research in Service Management and Service Engineering, with a specific focus on Electric Mobility.

The research group has two key goals. Firstly, to explore and assess the nature and impact of service orientation on commercial businesses, on the public sector, and on society as a whole. And secondly, to contribute towards shaping the course of the service economy by designing new business solutions and software solutions. A particular focal point is facilitating service-orientation in close collaboration with key market sectors including high-tech, banking, retail and facilities management.

Most recently, its research team has focused on the special challenges of Electric Mobility, analyzing current developments and building software prototypes with commercial and public partners. This has included service modeling, service portfolio management and service process management – all of these areas have significant links to the continuing work of the ERCIS Omni-Channel Lab, in partnership with Arvato.

Click here for more information on the work of the Service Science Competence Center.

Arvato named as ‘a clear leader’ in global customer experience services

Arvato has been named as a leader in Everest Group’s Contact Center Outsourcing (CCO) – Service Provider Landscape with PEAK Matrix™ Assessment 2017. The report recognized Arvato as a leader based on our market successes and our ability to deliver services to clients.

Katrina Menzigian, Vice president, Customer Experience Services research, said:

“Arvato CRM Solutions is a clear leader in the CXS space, with notable strengths in the scope of the customer experience spectrum that it addresses for its clients and the breadth of its global delivery footprint.”

In its overview, Everest Group specifically mentioned Arvato’s focus on innovation and its long-term partnership with ERCIS and the Omni-Channel Lab.

Karsten Kraume, CIO/CSO at Arvato CRM Solutions, said:

“We are proud to be recognized as a global leader by Everest Group, and delighted that they highlighted our innovative long-term partnership with the ERCIS Omni-Channel Lab. Our leadership position is proof of our ability to deliver exceptional levels of customer service, and underlines why some of the world’s most respected brands choose to work with us.”

Everest Group’s report is an annual piece of research into the world’s leading CCO service providers, ranking respondents on a comprehensive set of quantitative and qualitative criteria. Key factors in service delivery include technology and innovation, buyer feedback and scope.

Click here to read the full report.

The 6th International Workshop on Modeling and Management of Big Data

In November 2017, the 6th International Workshop on Modeling and Management of Big Data (MoBiD'17) will be held in Valencia, Spain in conjunction with the 36th International Conference on Conceptual Modeling. The workshop is co-chaired by Prof. Heike Trautmann and Prof. Gottfried Vossen and submissions are welcome until June 30, 2017.

About the Workshop
Enormous amounts of data are already present and still rapidly growing due to data sources such as sensors and social networks. There has been an increasing interest in incorporating these huge amounts of external and unstructured data, normally referred to as “Big Data”, into traditional applications. This necessity has made that traditional database systems and processing need to evolve and accommodate them. We view that several key themes with the Big Data trends include (i) managing Big Data projects to discover business values; (ii) developing an architecture for a Big Data environment to conceptualize goals, tasks, and problem-solving methods to apply to domains; (iii) exploring problem-solving methods for Big Data; (iv) using a cloud for managing large-scale external and internal data; (v) providing an easy-to-use but powerful services to access/manage/analyze the Big Data in the cloud; and (vi) exploring and improving the security and privacy of these repositories.

Therefore, this new era of Big Data and cloud environment requires conceptualization and methods to effectively manage Big Data and accomplish intended business goals. Thus, the objective of MoBiD’17 is to be an international forum for exchanging ideas on the latest and best proposals for modeling and managing Big Data in this new data-driven paradigm. Papers focusing on novel applications and using conceptual modeling approaches for any aspects of Big Data such as Hadoop and its ecosystems, Big Data Analytics, social networking, security/cyber resilience/privacy, hybrid cloud, Big Data warehousing, data science topics, and industry-specific challenges that arise in Big Data scenarios (e.g. in Customer Relationship Management), and how to approach them from a modelling as well as from an implementation perspective are highly encouraged. The workshop will be a forum for researchers and practitioners who are interested in the different facets related to the use of the conceptual modeling approaches for the development of next generation applications based on Big Data.

For more information on the MoBiD'17 workshop, please go to: http://er2017.pros.webs.upv.es/mobid-2017/

Update: The submission deadline has been extended until July 10, 2017.