iHack Alpha: AI-Enabled Solutions

Problem Statement: How can you use AI to help retail evolve and stay relevant?

Retail is predicted to decline by over 10% Y0Y in the South East Asia Region in 2020.

Opportunity Areas:

• 57% of consumers prefer to shop online, 31% of consumers prefer visiting the physical shop, while 12% of consumers said both ways are the same for them. What innovative ways can you use AI to help reposition retail stores be attractive to consumers?
• Retailers are increasingly adopting the Online-to-offline (O2O) strategy to use digital to drive foot traffic to physical stores. How can you help to overcome the digital blind spot in marketing when going from Online to Offline (O2O)?
• Open Innovation: You can address other opportunities you have identified that targets the problem statement.

Suggested AI Microservices: Automatic Speech Recognition, People Counting, Text-to-Speech

Problem Statement: How can you use AI to improve customer service experience?

According to a brand loyalty survey by Microsoft, 61 percent of consumers say that they have switched brands due to poor service experience.

Opportunity Areas:

• 48% of customers want to communicate with companies via calls for customer service. However, phone support is much more expensive than channels such as email or online chat. How can you increase the performance and productivity for call support through AI, automation and analytics?
• 33% of customers are most frustrated by having to repeat themselves to multiple support representatives due to support channels that are not integrated. Can you think of ways to improve the integration of the different support channels? (Eg. Call support, Live chat, Email support and Knowledge bases?) 90% of customers rate an "immediate" response as important or very important when they have a customer service question. 60% of customers define "immediate" as 10 minutes or less. Can you think of ways to help companies achieve faster support response times?
• Open Innovation: You can address other opportunities you have identified that targets the problem statement.

Suggested AI Microservices: Automatic Speech Recognition, Text-to-Speech, Named Entity Recognition, Word Sense Disambiguation, Taxonomy Matcher

Problem Statement: How can AI help to create value in media consumption and production?

Worldwide, internet users spend an average of 6h 43min on digital media, about 40% of waking time.

Opportunity Areas:

• How can you help to make media production easier and more efficient?
• Media companies have massive databases of content that are stored but left unused. How can media companies tap into this database to deliver value?
• With attention span being an increasingly scarce resource, companies and institutions are resorting to gamifying content to help improve retention of attention, through formats such as quizzes, spin-to-win and assorted minigames. Can you come up with tools and solutions that help content producers make gamification efforts easier or more effective?
• As digital media becomes an increasingly prevalent channel for users to inform themselves, through the help of content in various media forms such as video, podcasts, blogs and infographics, can you create a solution that helps users better navigate this sea of resources?
• Open Innovation: You can address other opportunities you have identified that targets the problem statement.

Suggested AI Microservices: Automatic Speech Recognition, Text-to-Speech, Named Entity Recognition, Word Sense Disambiguation, Taxonomy Matcher

Problem Statement: How can you use AI to empower the disabled in the workplace (eg. hearing and visually impaired, wheelchair-bound)?

In South East Asia, persons with disabilities have an unemployment rate that is usually double that of the general population and is often as high as 80% or more.

Opportunity Areas:

• Can you create a solution to efficiently collect and provide data on mobility and accessible places for people with disabilities?
• How can we empower people who have hearing impairments in group conversations such as conferences or meetings?
• Open Innovation: You can address other opportunities you have identified that targets the problem statement.

Suggested AI Microservices: Automatic Speech Recognition, Text-to-Speech, Object Detection