Tag Archives: Microsoft Azure

Business, Economy, Finance, Retail, Technology

FinTech: End to End Framework for Client, Intermediary, and Institutional Services

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Is it all about being the most convenient,  payment processing partner, with an affinity to the payment processing brand?  It’s a good place to start; the Amazon Payments partner program.

FinTech noun : an economic industry composed of companies that use technology to make financial systems more efficient

Throughout my career, I’ve worked with several financial services  teams to engineer, test, and deploy solutions.  Here is a brief list of the FinTech solutions I helped construct, test,  and deploy:

  1. 3K Global Investment Bankers – proprietary CRM platform, including Business Analytics, Business Objects Universe.
  2. Equity Research platform, crafted based on business expertise.
    • Custom UI for research analysts, enabled the analysts to create their research, and push into the workflow.
    • Based on a set of rules,  ‘locked down’ part of the report would  “Build Discloses” , e.g. analyst holds 10% of co.
    • Custom Documentum workflow would route research to the distribution channels; or direct research to legal review.
  3. (Multiple Financial Org.) Data Warehouse middleware solutions to assist organizations in managing,  and monitoring usage of their DW.
  4. Global Derivatives firm, migration of mainframe system to C# client / Server platform
  5. Investment Bankers and Equity Capital Markets (ECMG)  build trading platform so teams may collaborate on Deals/Trades.
  6. Global Asset Management Firm: On boarding and Fund management solutions, custom UI and workflows in SharePoint

*****

A “Transaction Management Solution” targets a mixture of FinTech services, primarily “Payments” Processing.

Target State Capabilities of a Transaction Management Solution:

  1. Fraud Detection:  The ability to identify and prevent fraud exists within many levels of the transaction from facilitators of EFT to credit monitoring and scoring agencies.  Every touch point of a transaction has its own perspective of possible fraud, and must be evaluated to the extent it can be.
    • Business experts (SMEs)  and technologists continue to expand the practical applications of Artificial Intelligence (AI) every day.  Although extensive AI fraud detection applications  exists today incorporating human populated Rules Engines,  and AI Machine learning (independent rule creation).
  2. Consumer “Financial Insurance” Products
    • Observing a business, end to end transaction may provide visibility into areas of transaction risk.   Process  and/or technology may be adopted / augmented to minimize the risk.
      • E.g. eBay auction process has a risk regarding the changing hands of currency and merchandise.  A “delayed payment”, holding funds until the merchandise has been exchanged minimized the risk, implemented using PayPal.
    • In product lifecycle of Discovery, Development, and Delivery phases, converting concept to product.
  3. Transaction Data Usage for Analytics
    • Client initiating transaction,  intermediary parties, and destination of funds may all tell ‘a story’ about the transaction.
    • Every party within a transaction, beginning to end, may benefit from the use of the transaction data using analytics.
      • e.g. Quicken – personal finance management tool; collects, parses, and augments transaction data to provide client  analytics in the form of charts / graphs, and reports.
    • Clear, consistent, and comprehensive data set available at every point in the transaction lifecycle regardless of platform .
      • e.g. funds transferred between financial institutions may  have a descriptions that are not user friendly, or may not be actionable, e.g. cryptic name, and no contact details.
      • Normalizing data may occur at an abstracted layer
    • Abstracted, and aggregated data used for analytics
      • e.g. average car price given specs XYZ;
      • e.g. 2. avg. credit score in a particular zip code.
    • Continued growth opportunities, and challenges
      • e.g. data privacy v. allowable aggregated data
  4. Affinity Brand Opportunities Transaction Management Solution
    • eWallet affinity brand promotions,
      • e.g. based on transaction items’ rules; no shipping
      • e.g.2. “Cash Back” Rewards, and/or Market Points
      • e.g.3. Optional, “Fundraiser” options at time of purchase.
  5. Credit Umbrella: Monitoring Use Case
    • Transparency into newly, activated accounts enables the Transaction Management Solution (TMS) to trigger a rule to email the card holder, if eligible, to add card to eWallet

Is Intuit an acquisition target because of Quicken’s capabilities to provide users consistent reporting of transactions across all sources?  I just found this note in Wiki while writing this post:

Quicken is a personal finance management tool developed by Intuit, Inc. On March 3, 2016, Intuit announced plans to sell Quicken to H.I.G. Capital. Terms of the sale were not disclosed.[1]

For quite some time companies have attempted to tread in this space with mixed results, either through acquisition or build out of their existing platforms.  There seems to be significant opportunities within the services, software and infrastructure areas.  It will be interesting to see how it all plays out.

Inhibitors to enclosing a transaction within an end to end Transaction Management Solutions (TMS):

  • Higher level of risk (e.g. business, regulatory) expanding out service offerings
  • Stretching too thin, beyond core vision, and lose sight of vision.
  • Transforming tech  company to hybrid financial services
  • Automation, streamlining of processes, may derive efficiencies may lead to reduction in staff / workforce
  • Multiple platforms performing functions provides redundant capabilities, reduced risk, and more consumer choices

 Those inhibitors haven’t stopped these firms:

Payments Ecosystem
Payments Ecosystem

 

Business, Economy, Finance, Law, Legal, Technology, Work

G.E. Plans Big Entry into IoT, Providing Analytics and Predictive Rules

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G.E. Plans App Store for Gears of Industry

The investment of $500 million annually signals the importance of the so-called Internet of Things to the future of manufacturing.

G.E. expects revenue of $6 billion from software in 2015, a 50 percent increase in one year. Much of this is from a pattern-finding system called Predix.  G.E. calls its new service the Predix Cloud, and hopes it will be used by both customers and competitors, along with independent software developers. “We can take sensor data from anybody, though it’s optimized for our own products,” Mr. Ruh said.

[Competitive solutions from IBM, Microsoft, and Google] raises the stakes for G.E. “It’s a whole new competition for them,” said Yefim Natis, a senior analyst with Gartner. “To run businesses in a modern way you have to be analytic and predictive.”

G.E. is running the Predix Cloud on a combination of G.E. computers, the vast computing resources of Amazon Web Services, and a few [local] providers, like China Telecom.

China, along with countries like Germany, [are] sensitive about moving its data offshore, or even holding information on computers in the United States.  
The practice of “Ring fencing”  data exists in dozens of jurisdictions globally.  Ring fencing of data may be a legal and/or regulatory issue, that may inhibit the global growth of cloud services moving forward.

Source: G.E. Plans App Store for Gears of Industry

Business, Economy, Mobility, Retail, Science, Science Fiction, Technology

People Turn Toward “Data Banks” to Commoditize Purchase and User Behavior Profiles

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Anyone who is anti “Big Brother”, this may not be the article for you, in fact, skip it. 🙂

The Pendulum Swings Away from GDPR

In the not so distant future, “Data Bank” companies consisting of Subject Matter Experts (SME) across all verticals,  may process your data feeds collected from your purchase , and user behavior profiles.  Consumers will be encouraged to submit their data profiles into a Data Bank who will offer incentives such as a reduction of insurance premiums to cash back rewards.

 

Everything from activity trackers, home automation, to vehicular automation data may be captured and aggregated.    The data collected can then be sliced and diced to provide macro and micro views of the information.    On the abstract, macro level the information may allow for demographic, statistical correlations, which may contribute to corporate strategy.

On a granular view, the data will provide “data banks” the opportunity to sift through data to perform analysis and correlations that lead to actionable information.

 

Is it secure?  Do you care if a hacker steals your weight loss information? May not be an issue if collected Purchase and Use Behavior Profiles aggregate into a Blockchain general ledger.  Data Curators and Aggregators work with SMEs to correlate the data into:

  • Canned, ‘intelligent’ reports targeted to specific subject matter, or across silos of data types
  • ‘Universes’ (i.e.  Business Objects) of data that may be ‘mined’ by consumer approved, ‘trusted’ third party companies, e.g. your insurance companies.
  • Actionable information based on AI subject matter rules engines

 

Consumers may have the option of sharing their personal data with specific companies by proxy, through a ‘data bank’ granular to the data point collected.  Sharing of Purchase and User Behavior Profiles:

  1. may lower [or raise] your insurance premiums
  2. provide discounts on preventive health care products and services, e.g. vitamins to yoga classes
  3. Targeted, affordable,  medicine that may redirect the choice of the doctor to an alternate.  The MD would be contacted to validate the alternate.

The curriated data collected may be harnessed by thousands of affinity groups to offer very discrete products and services.  Purchase and User Behavior Profiles,  correlated information stretches beyond any consumer relationship experienced today.

 

At some point, health insurance companies may require you to wear a tracker to increase or slash premiums.  Auto Insurance companies may offer discounts for access to car smart data to make sure suggested maintenance guidelines for service are met.

You may approve your “data bank” to give access to specific soliciting government agencies or private research firms looking to analyze data for their studies. You may qualify based on the demographic, abstracted data points collected for incentives provided may be tax credits, or paying studies.

 

Purchase and User Behavior Profiles:  Adoption and Affordability

If ‘Data Banks’ are able to collect Internet of Things (IoT) enabled, are cost inhibiting.  here are a few ways to increase their adoption:

  1.  [US] tax coupons to enable the buyer, at the time of purchase, to save money.  For example, a 100 USD discount applied at the time of purchase of an Activity Tracker, with the stipulation that you may agree,  at some point, to participate in a study.
  2. Government subsidies: the cost of aggregating and archiving Purchase and Behavioral profiles through annual tax deductions.  Today, tax incentives may allow you to purchase an IoT device if the cost is an itemized medical tax deduction, such as an Activity Tracker that monitors your heart rate, if your medical condition requires it.
  3. Auto, Life, Homeowners, and Health policyholders may qualify for additional insurance deductions
  4. Affinity branded IoT devices, such as American Lung Association may sell a logo branded Activity Tracker.  People may sponsor the owner of the tracking pedometer to raise funds for the cause.

The World Bank has a repository of data, World DataBank, which seems to store a large depth of information:

World Bank Open Data: free and open access to data about development in countries around the globe.”

Here is the article that inspired me to write this article:

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/you-might-be-wearing-a-health-tracker-at-work-one-day-2015-03-11

Privacy and Data Protection Creates Data Markets

Initiatives such as General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and other privacy initiatives which seek to constrict access to your data to you as the “owner”, as a byproduct, create opportunities for you to sell your data.  

Blockchain: Purchase, and User Behavior Profiles

As your “vault”, “Data Banks” will collect and maintain your two primary datasets:

  1. As a consumer of goods and services, a Purchase Profile is established and evolves over time.  Online purchases are automatically collected, curated, appended with metadata, and stored in a data vault [Blockchain].  “Offline” purchases at some point, may become a hybrid [on/off] line purchase, with advances in traditional monetary exchanges, and would follow the online transaction model.
  2. User Behavior (UB)  profiles, both on and offline will be collected and stored for analytical purposes.  A user behavior “session” is a use case of activity where YOU are the prime actor.  Each session would create a single UB transaction and are also stored in  a “Data Vault”.   UB use cases may not lead to any purchases.

These datasets wholly owned by the consumer, are safely stored, propagated, and immutable with a solution such as with a Blockchain general ledger.

Business, Technology

WordPress Shortcode API to Cloud Storage to Sell Any Digital Intellectual Property.

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So, I was a browsing, going through bills, and thinking, hey relating to my other article on Google Docs and their new API where you could use them as a data warehouse, it occurred to me.   Why can’t we have a public API for all the Cloud Storage systems like Amazon Web Services (AWS) S3 (or Box.com), create a plugin to WordPress, add E-Commerce, and you now have your own place to sell digital music, or any Digital intellectual, property store, or host your own database OLTP or OLAP.

And my bro, Fat Panda, might have been thinking the same thing.  He’s one step behind, but he will catch on.  I will try to update for ‘the cheap seats’ in a bit.

For the cheap seats, even those static files stored up in the cloud, you can use a similar model to Google Docs <-> Google Fusion where you add tabular data to storage, read,over-write, or update using home made table locking mechanism, and essentially use the cloud as a data warehouse, or even a database.  Microsoft seems to have a lead on transitional and analytical storage with Microsoft Azure, relational in nature in the cloud, but it is so much simpler than that with cloud storage, although if not implemented with ‘row’ locking,there is an issue with OLTP (On Line Transaction Processing) row level, high volume, but with OLAP, On Line Analytic Processing, not so much, analyzing the way your business does business, and profit more from your consumer data.  There are easy ways to implement row level locking for row level locking of tabular data stored in cloud storage like AWS or Box.Net,  The methods to implement row level locking for OLTP systems using storage in the cloud are easy to implement, and will remind you of old school type alternatives to supplement the AutoNumber columns in MS Access or Identity columns in SQL Server. At the end of the day to either sell digital intellectual property from a WordPress implementation, or run your entire business with a robust cloud database solution for OLTP or OLAP systems using flat file storage!  Why go through all this when the Amazons AWS and Microsoft Azure have or will yearn to start building these solutions in parallel?  Cost effective solutions, and the entire database arena monopolized by Oracle, IBM, Microsoft, and MySQL, just got extended to a whole lot of database vendors.  It may take a while, but we already know the big Gorilla in the room Google is the first to strike in this game, as a non-traditional database vendor, cloud storage provider with their updated Google Docs API, and optionally usage of their Fusion application.