Customer Highlights

Unkapt is an alternative lending, cross-border capital raising platform offering APAC small and lower middle market issuers (SMEs) the opportunity to use innovative financing to raise capital among a network of accredited investors.

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  Business challenge
  
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  Solution
  
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  Solution Components
  
• 
  Results
  

Business challenge

Unkapt was looking for a solution that could efficiently deal with incoming inquiries and provide accurate and immediate answers to the customers who are filling in a complex set of registration forms. The registration forms require a good understanding of financial literature and terminologies.

Unkapt wanted to simplify the customer onboarding process that could be implemented quickly and used to help customers in commonly asked questions while filling up the form.

Solution

Unkapt chose Nexright to implement IBM Watson enabled Chatbot solution to automate it’s platform support FAQ, by providing contextual answers to customer queries quickly, efficiently and round the clock.

Solution components

• IBM Bluemix
• IBM Watson Developer Cloud
• Conversation Service

Watson Conversation service

IBM Watson ™ Conversation service, that understands natural-language input and uses machine learning to respond to customers in a way that simulates a conversation between humans.

Product Q&A

A knowledge base driven FAQ solution allowing customers to easily ask questions and receive immediate answers without leaving the registration process.

Context Driven Solution

Chatbot understands the user context, for example what section of the form the user is filling in.

Result

• Reduce Customer support cost

Minimize dependency on higher cost support channels by letting Watson Chatbot handle customer queries.

• Improve User experience by simplifying customer onboarding

Self-service to deflect and resolve simple queries while allowing customer support to focus on more complex issues.

• Resolve customer concerns and scale the business globally with round the clock support

Real time support by solving the most common customer issues on the first touch.

Nexright’s IBM Watson enabled Chatbot solution simplified our customer onboarding journey with immediate answers to hundreds of frequently asked questions.

Yanese Chellapen, Director at Unkapt

Nexright helped a federal agency to implement and secure and effective business integration solutions utilizing IBM Websphere Datapower Appliances

Adopting a B2B strategy can streamline business processes and cut costs by enabling Government organizations to communicate electronically with other federal agencies. The emergence of XML and Web Services as the standards for B2B interoperability allows business information to be exchanged via a variety of technologies, from a simple web browser to a fully integrated solution, to suit the size of the enterprise.

• 
  The Challenge
  
• 
  The Solution
  
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  The Benefits
  
• 
  Nexright Advantage
  

The Challenge

• As the client build B2B value chains, they must open up systems which were previously never available outside the firewall to partners’ access.
• Multiple servers, proxies, and other products in the DMZ for security, breaking the fundamental principal that the DMZ should be an uncomplex, barren, hostile environment to any potential intruder.
• Complex environments are also difficult and expensive to administer, often requiring different skills, teams, and product knowledge.
• Security behind the DMZ and in other areas (private, trusted zone, extranet) is important as well, and often weak or neglected due to expense and integration challenges.
• Technology stacks running in silo environments that can’t exchange security, services or messages, lack of true enterprise-wise single sign-on.
• They decided to use XML, Web Services, and SOA as their standards-based approach in order to speed delivery of business value, but they found that it was natively insecure. This approach was introducing risk and reducing overall performance.
• Secure information exchange was a high priority, but it was a complex topic which slowed down their projects. They wanted a simple way to secure, manage, mediate, and protect messages.

The Solution

• Nexright helped the customer in start using the DataPower appliance to quickly mitigate the problems inherent in XML. This resulted in lower costs and faster value because on-boarding new users no longer placed such a burden on both sides. It also relieved an anticipated performance degradation.
• With a more efficient and flexible system in place, the agency has expanded its Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) infrastructure and achieved integration with the other partners, while increasing customer satisfaction. The solution provides a higher degree of security and compliance, which are crucial in this industry.

The Benefits

Key to any successful engagement is to facilitate integration with existing applications by exposing enterprise applications as Web services, and defining and implementing XML security, data transformation and data validation.

Nexright WebSphere DataPower Consulting Services are the perfect complement during any phase of the project. They include:

• Security: Moving more applications into Web services and SOA means greater exposure to XMLspecific threats. Nexright implemented IBM WebSphere DataPower solution to protect against vulnerabilities by acting as a proxy and performing security checks. Additionally, DataPower natively has full encryption/decryption capabilities, and enables the use of digital signatures.
• Access Control: DataPower implementation inspects all incoming messages, performs authentication and authorization for each message, and reject and log invalid requests, to help ensure that only valid requests reach the backend servers. Instead of implementing access control in each XML application, centralizing access policy enforcement, DataPower provides an architecturally sound, easy to manage, and cost-effective solution.
• Speed: Nexright increased overall efficiency with a DataPower XML routing solution which offers improved manageability, performance and reliability routing XML messages based on message content, SOAP headers, and network-level metadata. Additionally, it can inspect XML documents or SOAP requests and, based on XML payloads, direct them to appropriate backend servers. It can also perform wire speed XML transformation to re-format incoming messages.
• Compliance: With the increase of compliance issues and regulations, more and more companies are having to re-think their infrastructure to avoid steep fines or worse. Nexright implemented DataPower solution which will adhere to regulations and by offering a central point to provide the security to protect networks, encrypt sensitive data, filter for common virus and hacker attacks in addition to being the central place to monitor compliance.

Nexright Advantage

• A team of dedicated Datapower certified consultants. The consultants have very strong Integration, Security and Java skills. Consultants have many years of Datapower experience.
• Strong experience in Identity & Access Management & SOA security solutions
• Nexright’s pre-built integration and security Datapower modules saved a lot of time in building foundation framework.
• Datapower Automation Framework

Unkapt is an alternative lending, cross-border capital raising platform offering APAC small and lower middle market issuers (SMEs) the opportunity to use innovative financing to raise capital among a network of accredited investors.

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  Retail foundation & SOA drives a smarter shopping experience
  
• 
  Complete view of the customer
  
• 
  Challenge overview
  
• 
  Results
  

Retail foundation & SOA drives a smarter shopping experience

• Retail Customer is a leading Australian fashion house specializing in female & junior ranges.Following the successful growth in Australia, Retail Customer is expanding aggressively in UK, Asia & e-Commerce channels.
• Retail Customer went through a major digital transformation initiative, which involved leveraging Service Oriented Architecture to consolidate data from various systems to build the foundation for future application.
• This will allow Retail Customer to improve sales, increase margins and align with its global expansion strategy as it provides a single source of the data, which is always current.

Complete view of the customer

• Retail Customer implicitly understood that to successfully implement the kind of customer centricity envisioned, a comprehensive customer data strategy was a pre-requisite and developing one would not be easy.
• Its first order of business was to consolidate the data repositories duplicated in multiple business applications. Realizing the importance of this foundation work to its long-term customer data strategy, Retail Customer turned to service oriented architecture (SOA).
• Retail Customer engaged Nexright as their MuleSoft partner to implement a retail service bus leveraging SOA principles to allow a dynamic, data driven and integrated e-Commerce solution.
• MuleSoft ESB was the solution of choice because it has an extensive list of out of the box connectors and data mapper components which can be used to quickly and easily integrate On-Premise and SaaS applications reliably and securely.
• With the first stage of its transformation virtually complete, Retail Customer has already started working toward putting in place the architectural elements it needs for its most fundamental capability: a 360-degree view” of its customers, product, inventory, pricing, voucher and promotions to support a strategy of multi-channel integration.
• This will mark an important milestone in Retail Customer journey and will allow Retail Customer to operationalize it in a way that personalizes and enriches the customer experience.
• This is also expected increase in sales and revenue per customer due to closer engagement, stronger retention and targeted promotions and strengthened the brand via a more consistent and integrated cross channel customer experience and connected marketing.
• With the ability to use real-time site information including inventory and sales information enabled the company to develop more targeted—and ultimately more profitable pricing and promotional programs. This also improved decision making via the seamless integration of consistent, high-quality data from across the enterprise.
• With complete visibility into customers purchased products and channel partner relationships to drive more personalized marketing campaigns and improve cross-sell and up-sell, available-to promise across channels.

Challenge overview

• Information silo and lack of visibility
• Process inefficiency & higher operational overhead
• Speed to market

Result

• Expected increase in sales and revenue per customer due to closer engagement, stronger retention and targeted promotions.
• Strengthening of brand via a more consistent and integrated cross channel customer experience and connected marketing.

Unkapt is an alternative lending, cross-border capital raising platform offering APAC small and lower middle market issuers (SMEs) the opportunity to use innovative financing to raise capital among a network of accredited investors.

Nexright have developed an API management solution for Banks that allows digital banking innovation running alongside the slow-speed, transaction-focused legacy systems.

Nexright has helped the customer in automating sales and order management processes by integrating SalesForce with NetSuite and ultimately improving the overall sales visibility with cloudhub, streamlining revenue operations, resulting in huge cost savings. Customer leveraged MuleSoft CloudHub platform to integrate SalesForce with NetSuite.

• 
  The Challenge
  
• 
  The Solution
  
• 
  The Results
  

The Challenge

• Sales processes and tactics are often unique for each organisation. Customer leverages Salesforce and NetSuite SaaS platforms globally to embed their own sales methodology and back end processes to ensure efficient management of its customer relationship as well as sale of its products and professional services.
• This includes sales order automation and integration with NetSuite invoice management system. For example, when an opportunity is created in Salesforce, it leads to creation of customer, contract and sales order in NetSuite. Once the sales order is approved an invoice and contract is created.
• All these business functions provide value to Customer by enduring consistency and discipline in sales process and better overall visibility.
• Process automation and integration ensures efficient communication throughout the company and more importantly stops things falling through the cracks.
• To continue its impressive growth and support a global sales and professional service organization, Customer needed to automate some of these processes. Lack of automation resulted in substantial efforts spent in synchronizing the information between disparate systems, duplicate information and ultimately lack of visibility.

The Solution

• Nexright assisted in automating many of the sales and order management business processes by partnering with Nexright and selecting MuleSoft CloudHub platform.
• Customer integrated Salesforce and NetSuite to quickly automate existing business processes and automate opportunity, customer, sales order, invoice and quote to name a few.
• An example where CloudHubs flexibility shines is, once an opportunity is created in Salesforce, it leads to the creation of a necessary order in NetSuite. Simultaneously, it also creates a renewal quote for that contract. This renewal quote will be considered as an opportunity for Customer at the end of the contract tenure. With CloudHub integration, Customer automated many of its processes including complex business logic.
• MuleSoft CloudHub was the solution of choice because of the out of the box connectors for Salesforce and NetSuite and the integration as a service platform which is the fastest way to integrate SaaS applications reliably and securely.
• With no hardware to maintain or software to upgrade, CloudHubs secure multi-tenant platform delivers the freedom of the cloud with the flexibility of deploying Customers integration.
• Nexright leveraged its NZ Government approved Cloud Service Brokerage, pre-built integration patterns, MuleSoft technology accelerators combined with its unique delivery approach to roll out the complete solution. Agile methodology combined with Salesforce and MuleSoft certified consultants were also some of the key drivers for a successful outcome.

The Results

• Instant quote to cash process with real-time event-driven integration, saves many hours of manual efforts in synchronization.
• Achieved single view of customer to support.
• With CloudHub software as a service platform, significant reduction in maintenance and operation cost.

IBM watsonx Code Assistant for Red Hat Ansible Lightspeed technical preview generated over half of Playbook content

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  Business-critical apps
  
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  Adopting automation, exploring AI
  
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  Driving modernization
  
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  About IBM CIO Organization
  

Business-critical apps

The Hybrid Cloud Platforms team within the IBM Chief Information Officer (CIO) Organization is responsible for delivering, securing and modernizing an immense, diverse IT environment that powers applications used by hundreds of thousands of IBMers every day. “We have a broad scope of responsibility for business-critical application infrastructure. Take, for example, our manufacturing or sales applications. If those go down, IBM business comes to a halt. It’s those types of applications that our team supports,” explains Bob Epstein, Leader, IBM CIO Hybrid Cloud Platforms.

The team’s mission is not just to keep the lights on. Their mission is to accelerate business transformation across IBM. “Our work to optimize IBM’s infrastructure is essentially the cornerstone that enables everyone else to run fast and innovate in their role,” adds Melissa Santisteban, CIO Strategy Lead at IBM. The team is always looking for new ways to streamline and automate tedious, repetitive IT maintenance tasks that are required across the entire IT estate. They seek to eliminate drudgery and instead give their developers the time they need to contribute to transformational initiatives.

This is why the team relies on industry-leading technologies such as Red Hat^® Ansible^® Automation and why, when the Technical Preview of IBM^® watsonx^™ Code Assistant for Red Hat Ansible Lightspeed began, they volunteered to test out the solution.

Adopting automation, exploring AI

Before the technical preview program began, Epstein’s team was already relying on Red Hat Ansible Automation to support a wide range of tasks within their IT environment. “We use Ansible automations every single day, whether it’s through patching, resolving vulnerabilities or running regular health checks of our systems,” explains Epstein. When they began testing watsonx Code Assistant for Red Hat Ansible Lightspeed, Epstein’s team started by focusing on their existing use cases.

With watsonx Code Assistant for Red Hat Ansible Lightspeed, developers can build a task for an Ansible Playbook using natural language inputs. Once the input is submitted, the solution then offers suggestions on how to build that task.

“Our team of people who could produce Ansible Playbooks before the technical preview program began was around 10. Once the Enterprise Version of watsonx Code Assistant for Red Hat Ansible Lightspeed becomes Generally Available, we expect we would be able to ask our extended team to produce Ansible content because it will generate content recommendations based on natural language inputs. In that sense, we expect our pool of individuals who can produce this content to grow by about a factor of 10,” says Epstein.

60%

Of IBM’s Ansible Playbook content was automatically generated by watsonx Code Assistant for Red Hat Ansible Lightspeed in tech preview

Our team of people who could produce Ansible Playbooks before the technical preview program began was around 10. Once the Enterprise Version of watsonx Code Assistant for Red Hat Ansible Lightspeed becomes Generally Available, we expect we would be able to ask our extended team to produce Ansible content.

Bob Epstein
Leader
IBM CIO Hybrid Cloud Platforms

Driving modernization

During the technical preview of watsonx Code Assistant for Red Hat Ansible Lightspeed, the team was able to achieve 60% initial build of an Ansible Playbook using recommendations provided by watsonx.

“I like to look at our modernization journey in these stages: crawl, walk, run, fly. In the past, we were crawling, doing a lot of things manually. Then, when we started automating, we were walking. Once we implemented Red Hat Ansible, we were running. And as we look ahead, with watsonx Code Assistant for Red Hat Ansible Lightspeed, I think we will be able to fly,” adds Robert Barron, Architect, Hybrid Cloud Platforms, IBM CIO Organization. See how watsonx Code Assistant for Red Hat Ansible Lightspeed can help you fly.

Every company will have different use cases and will, therefore, experience different results. Client examples, like IBM’s, are illustrative, but actual results will vary based on client configurations and conditions. Generally expected results cannot be provided as client results will depend on the data, systems and services used.

About IBM CIO Organization

The Chief Information Officer (CIO) Organization leads IBM’s internal IT strategy and is responsible for delivering, securing, modernizing and supporting the IT solutions that IBMers, clients and partners use to do their jobs every day. The CIO strategy encompasses creating an adaptive IT platform that makes IT easier to access across the enterprise, accelerates problem-solving and serves as an innovation engine for IBM, catalyzing business growth.