Faceware Technologies

Bank Rakyat Indonesia (Bank BRI), one of the largest banks in Indonesia, was faced with the challenge of increasing financial inclusion among unbanked Indonesians. The bank had an ambitious target of having 84 percent of Indonesians participating in the banking system by 2022. However, the bank's legacy technologies were proving to be a hindrance in achieving this goal. Each of the bank's products had their own public APIs, which were difficult to manage, secure, and monetize. Additionally, the process of onboarding new partners using host-to-host and VPN technology was time-consuming, taking up to six months. The bank also faced the challenge of reaching a largely rural population, with an estimated $8.3 billion in currency being held outside the banking system.

Wandering is a common symptom of Alzheimer’s and dementia even at the early stages (60% of Alzheimer’s patients will wander off and become lost at some point). These diseases kill brain cells and destroy people’s memories, most notably short-term recall. Patients forget the last thing they did, so their first impulse is to stand and start moving with the intention of doing something. This is compounded by the fact that individuals with dementia are easily disoriented and become confused in crowded or unknown situations, and they have a strong tendency to want to escape.

Campaigntrack, Australia’s largest real estate marketing company, faced several challenges in its customer service department. The company initially relied heavily on individual agents for support, primarily via phone and email. However, as the company grew, this structure proved unsuitable due to the dependency on individual agents, leading to issues when they were unavailable. To address this, Campaigntrack tried creating agent groups to handle issues, but this led to difficulties in coordination, especially when the team was not in the same location, resulting in missed inquiries. Furthermore, there was a lack of transparency regarding the team's activities and workload balance. The company was also receiving a high volume of phone calls, approximately 8000, which needed to be reduced and distributed more evenly across other channels such as email and self-service.

Toshiba was faced with the challenge of building the next generation of its TCx™ Sky retail optimized operating system. The new system needed to provide stability, security, and performance for today’s widely distributed Point of Sale (POS) systems and also serve as a foundation for emerging IoT innovations such as biometrics and anonymous facial recognition. With TCx Sky powering over a million checkout lines and running a streamlined embedded Linux kernel suitable for retail applications, Toshiba needed a technology partner to help it keep up with the constant evolution and security monitoring associated with embedded Linux deployments. The challenge was further compounded by Toshiba's diverse customer base, which necessitated the constant release of new products to keep up with the latest silicon and security features.

The global pandemic has put an unprecedented strain on the healthcare industry, particularly on the medical supply chain. One of the most critical needs has been for ventilators, which are expensive and time-consuming to manufacture. The Open Source Ventilator Project, a global coalition of engineers, designers, and medical practitioners, rose to this challenge by creating low-cost Field Emergency Ventilators (FEVs) using 3D-printed components. However, the project faced significant challenges in terms of collaboration and coordination. With over 3000 volunteers from different companies, individual engineers, medical device designers, and programmers from all over the world, the project required a platform that could facilitate seamless collaboration and sharing of PCB designs.

The Covid-19 pandemic has acted as a catalyst for the FinTech sector, accelerating investments and technological progress. However, data and technology remain significant challenges, hindering further progress for FinTechs and their partnering traditional financial institutions. Among FinTechs globally, 81 percent have reported data to be their biggest technical challenge. These data issues are split between leveraging data for AI-ML (faced by 41 percent) and connecting to customer applications and data systems (faced by 40 percent). Other data issues faced by FinTechs include security (40 percent) and deployment in multiple clouds (39 percent). The consequences of these data issues include trouble innovating further due to a lack of clear picture about the type of products and services that customers require and about the businesses themselves. The inability to connect to customer applications directly impacts the user experience and the ability to offer their present products to the wider customer base. These issues also hinder securing partnerships with incumbent banks, and more seriously, regulatory compliance.