Digital Reasoning: From Intelligence Centric Text Retrieval to Wealth Management
November 12, 2018
Vendors of text processing systems have had to find new ways to generate revenue. The early days of entity extraction and social graphs provided customers from the US government and specialized companies like Booz, Allen & Hamilton.
Today, different economic realities have forced change.
The capitalist tool published “Digital Reasoning Brings AI To Wealth Management.” The write up does little to put Digital Reasoning in context. The company was founded in 2000. The firm accepted outside financing which now amounts to about $100 million. The firm became cozy with IBM, labored in the vineyards of the star crossed Distributed Common Ground System, and then faced a fire storm of competition from companies big and small. The reason? Entity extraction and link analysis became commodities. The fancy math also migrated into a wide range of applications.
New buzzwords appeared and gained currency. These ranged from artificial intelligence (who knows that that phrase means?) to real time data analytics (Yeah, what is “real time”?).
Digital Reasoning’s response is interesting. The company, like Attivio and Coveo, has nosed into customer support. But the intriguing play is that the Digital Reasoning system, which was text centric, is now packaging its system to help wealth management firms.
Is this text based?
Sure is. I learned:
For advisors, Digital Reasoning helps them prioritize which customers to focus on, which can be useful when an adviser may have 200 or more clients. At the management level, Digital Reasoning can show if the firm has specific advisors getting a lot of complaints so it can respond with training and intervention. At a strategic level, it can sift through communications and identify if customers are looking for a specific offering or type of product.
Interesting approach.
The challenge, of course, will be to differentiate Digital Reasoning’s system from those available from dozens of vendors.
Digital Reasoning has investors who want a return on their $100 million. After 18 years, time may be compressing as once solutions once perceived as sophisticated become more widely available and subject to price pressure.
Rumors of Amazon’s interest in this “wealth management” sector have reached us in Harrod’s Creek. That might be another reason why the low profile Digital Reasoning is stirring the PR waters using the capitalist’s tool, Forbes Magazine, once a source of “real” news.
Stephen E Arnold, November 12, 2018
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