Elucidate AI

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the COO of a pre-paid airtime advance system.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Elucidate?

We’re a credit provider. You have a choice between credit to one and to get paid by all of them or you go one credit to many and you reduce that and make sure you manage your bad debt. For us, we wanted to increase the base that we lend to while maintaining their low debt levels.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

They helped us with machine learning development to maximize our lending opportunities. We look at the population that we’re granting credit to and then put it into models where we can go crediting more people or, targeting the current people we’re granting it to, grant them higher values so that we can earn more.

We worked collaboratively. We knew what machine learning could do but we didn’t know how we could get there. We came with an idea of what we wanted to do. They’d go away and then bring us solutions on how we could achieve it. Then, once it was implemented, we’d have interactions on a weekly basis or more frequently to see how the product was working.

What is the team composition?

We worked with a project manager and a senior machine learning specialist.

How did you come to work with Elucidate?

We heard about them by word of mouth. We got together and we found ourselves to be similar in culture from a business perspective. We decided to try them out.

How much have you invested with them?

We spent 1 million rand ($63,000 USD).

What is the status of this engagement?

We worked together from November 2019 until June 2020.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement?

Every time we put in a machine learning model, we can assess quite easily, based on revenue, whether the model is successful or not.

How did Elucidate perform from a project management standpoint?;

Project management has been great. It’s been a trying year now that we’re all working from home, and it’s been excellent under the circumstances. We communicated via Zoom and email.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They’re smart and know what they’re doing. They can get it done. They’re very smart people.

Are there any areas they could improve?

They could up their communication, although it was all high. They did a lot of work in the background. Sometimes we thought was happening but ultimately, we knew it was. Maybe they could just broaden the communication within our business on what they’re doing.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Be open and transparent about what you’re trying to achieve so that they can work out ideas on how to solve your problems.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m a team leader for a scholarship program. It’s funded by the government, and we provide master scholarships and show courses to participants from Africa to go and study in Australia.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Elucidate?

We receive thousands of applications every year for the scholarships; so much so that we didn’t have the manpower to process all the applications we received. We needed help to streamline the application process.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Elucidate built a predictive analytic system using their machine learning to help us predict what'd be a good application versus a poor one. They ran the analytics through different sets of data to identify applications that we needed to assess.

We had some contact data from 2011 and 2012, and their team ran it to define what we had done in the past. This was in order to design what the system would consider to be an application that we’d previously have considered a good application. They used natural language processing.

What is the team composition?

There was a client manager and 2–3 staff members in their offices that worked on it. We mainly had face-to-face correspondence with the AI technologist.

How did you come to work with Elucidate?

We put out a tender, and they responded.

What is the status of this engagement?

We worked together from September 2019–July 2020. We’ve had some engagements since then as well.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement?

The system we built can be used for as long as our selection criteria remain consistent. The solution improves every year but remains a standalone system that we can continue to use. We’ve been incredibly satisfied. Our team felt the model was very successful. It reduced our human resource input in the process substantially. The results have received positive reviews as well. I recall it had a 94% success rate against our manual assessments. 

How did Elucidate perform from a project management standpoint?

Elucidate was incredibly professional. Their ability to understand our requirements and translate them into that program stood out to me. Our work is quite specialized and a lot of us have been working on it for many years. It took them a very short time to understand the actual details of what we were looking for and to build a product that specifically met our requirements.

What did you find most impressive about them?

We appreciated the way they structured the contract. It wasn’t milestone-bound but rather product-bound. Until they delivered what we signed off as an accurate delivery of a milestone or until we were satisfied with the different milestones, they wouldn’t bill us.

Are there any areas they could improve?

I was incredibly impressed with the way they did their work. I can’t think of anything they needed to improve. The invoicing was accurate. They delivered based on what they said they would. The engagement was regular and appropriate. They also trained our staff which wasn’t part of the original contract.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Engage with their consultants and technologists. Their technologists have the capacity to understand what your project needs. Sometimes, just spending time and talking with them helps to define what they need to deliver on rather than a paper-based request. Have face-to-face meetings to ensure they get the maximum return out of the activities.