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ACM International Conference on Computing Frontiers

Siena, Italy

On May 15 - 17, this years ACM International Conference on Computing Frontiers (CF ’17) was held in Siena, Italy. The conference was hosted at the University of Siena and aimed to drive scientific breakthroughs by exploring and extending emerging technologies. The conference featured three co-located workshops handling more specific topics in the area of Data Analytics, Malicious Soft- and Hardware and Embedded Systems.

As part of the Big Data Analytics Workshop (BigDAW ’17), Matthias Carnein, Dennis Assenmacher and Heike Trautmann presented their findings of the paper “An Empirical Comparison of Stream Clustering Algorithms”. Clustering is a research area in data analytics which allows to find groups of similar objects. It can be a valuable tool, e.g., to identify customer segments that share similar interests and behaviour. This allows to target each group based on their specific needs. Stream clustering extends this concept by working on a continuous stream of data which allows to apply it in real world senarios with much larger data sets. The paper explores and evaluates the most popular algorithms in the area and identifies key strengths and weaknesses. The research helps to choose a suitable algorithm for stream clustering as well as customer segmentation and also provides valuable findings to devise new algorithms.

The published paper will be shortly available through the ACM digital library.

For more information on the Computing Frontiers Conference and Big Data Analytics workshop, please go to: http://www.computingfrontiers.org/2017/

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Lab works with key EU educational initiative

Ensuring good collaboration between academic research and business is a top priority, especially in innovative and fast changing areas like information systems. Funded by the Erasmus+ Program of the European Union, the MASTIS project aims to do just this. 

Karsten Kraume, CIO/CSO at Arvato CRM, highlighted the benefits at a recent seminar hosted by ERCIS at Münster University with attendees from the Ukraine, Italy, France, Germany, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Norway, Sweden and Slovenia.

Karsten said: “It’s crucial that students develop prototypes that pragmatically address the real challenges that businesses face – especially as the information systems space is changing so rapidly. My key goal is to provide that ‘bridge’ between academic research and business.

It’s a win-win: we benefit from having access to innovative solutions and the very best talent; and the students benefit through learning how to apply the theoretical from their studies and are better prepared for a jobs market characterized by digital transformation”.

Project seminars like this are a key part of Arvato’s ongoing partnership with ERCIS, which began in 2016.

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Final Presentation of the Project Seminar Tech-Enabled Omni-Channel CRM

Final Presentation
Final Presentation

In the Winter Term 2016/7 started the first project seminar of the ArvatoLab. Due to the close collaboration within the Lab the team consisted of five bachelor students, three advisors and several Arvato employees. As a business process outsourcing provider Arvato provides tailor-made solutions for customer interaction via various communication channels to its clients, e.g., chat, e-mail, voice or social media. So far customer information is mostly available per channel only, so that a call centre representative who interacts with a customer is unable to access the customer’s entire contact history across multiple channels. This missing information can lead to customer dissatisfaction since the customer may be forced to repeat his or her concern.

The students have implemented a graphical component that integrates and represents customer information from Facebook, Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, E-Mail and a CRM system. As data sources, they use Novomind for e-mails, Salesforce for CRM data and OBI4WAN for WhatsApp. Since it is implemented as a web service, the tool can easily be integrated into other software products. Besides technical interfaces the students have worked on collaboration tool JIRA and the so-called customer journey. This is used to follow a customer from the beginning of the product search, via getting product information to the conclusion of a contract. The result is a platform that provides a quick overview about the contact history, preferred channel, latest bookings as well as the importance of a customer.

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Omni-Channel Lab on CeBIT

ERCIS at the CeBIT
ERCIS at the CeBIT

As part of a bigger CeBIT-presence the Omni-Channel Lab (ERCIS & Arvato) is presented in Hannover this year. Besides selected research projects and results, Klaus Voormanns (Vice President Global Portfolio Management Arvato CRM Solutions) and Leschek Homann (Researcher ERCIS) elaborate on "Research meets Practice: The Omni-Channel Lab". The presentation takes place on Thursday 23rd March 2017, 1:30 pm, at the joint stand of the State of North Rhine-Westfalia in hall 6, stand E29/C30. Prof. Dr. Jörg Becker, one of the academic leaders of the Omni-Channel Lab: "It is great to have the Omni-Channel Lab with us at CeBIT this year as their work gives a good insight into our practice-oriented research at ERCIS."

For more information please go to: https://www.wi.uni-muenster.de/de/news/2360-ercis-auf-der-cebit

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Arvato acquisition boosts Omni-Channel Lab’s access to technological innovation

Arvato CRM Solutions (Arvato), the global customer relationship management company and subsidiary of Bertelsmann, has acquired India-based IT and analytics company Ramyam Intelligence Lab Pvt. Ltd. (Ramyam) in a multi-million Euro deal. Ramyam, which was among US research company Forrester’s top-ten emerging business technology companies in India in 2015, will continue to trade under its current name.

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

“Ramyam is at the forefront of technology solutions for Omni-Channel so will play a key role in our partnership with ERCIS and the Omni-Channel Lab. Arvato handles more than 1.7 million interactions every day for many of the world’s best-known brands by phone, email, chat and social media and one of the key challenges we face is how to bring together these multiple communication channels into a ‘single view of the customer’.

Ramyam has developed a unique technology – Enliven CEM® - that makes this possible, along with more advanced predictive analytics capabilities, and gives Arvato a distinct competitive advantage across its 110 contact centers around the world.“

In addition to Ramyam’s technology innovations and deep knowledge of the Customer Experience market, this acquisition also allows the Omni Channel Lab to access Ramyam’s extensive academic links in India.

For more information on Ramyam, please go to: http://ramyamlab.com