Wireless infrastructure consultancy to present with the first MWC panel on infrastructure addressing “Planning for the 5G Connected Era”

MD7, the world's only dedicated global provider of mobile infrastructure consulting, will be represented at Mobile World Congress Barcelona presented by GSMA, March 2, 2022, as a member of the all-new Tower & Fibre Roundtable. MD7 Chief Strategy Officer Tom Leddo will cover "Planning for 5G" as part of the roundtable, emphasizing the need for advanced electronic data utilizing machine learning and analytics to manage and organize the real estate agreements necessary to deliver 5G. 

A wireless infrastructure consultancy, MD7 is achieving unlimited possibilities in a world connected by helping mobile operators in over 20 countries expand and improve their networks. With nearly two decades of experience, MD7 offers a dedicated focus on mobile infrastructure.

"As more and more cell sites are required, we must get the foundation of the lease agreements in advanced digital form so we can use tools like Artificial Intelligence to manage them proactively, or we will have a major mess on our hands," Leddo said. "MD7 has worked with over 60 operators across North America and Europe, and we see a constant need to proactively manage the underlying real property that houses their networks. It's becoming more and more urgent as 5G requires hundreds of thousands of new cell sites." 

The Tower & Fibre Roundtable will be held on Wednesday, March 2 at 9:15 a.m. Central European Time, at CC7.1 Hall Congress Square in Barcelona. The agenda includes:

1. The Impact of High Altitude Platform Systems/ Addressing HAPS – DT Towers
2. 5G RAN Impact on Tower Companies  - Cellnex
3. Addressing Private Networks - American Towers
4. Impact of New Technologies – Transcelestial
5. Planning for the 5G Connected Era – MD7

"This is an inspiring year to be at MWC Barcelona in person!" Leddo said. "It is a fantastic honor to be speaking and collaborating with so many communications experts providing valuable insights and information with the common goal of bringing advanced communications to the world, that can help speed solutions for health and prosperity in all countries." 

Mobile World Congress Barcelona is the first major in-person wireless industry event since the global pandemic, attracting critical decision-makers in the mobile ecosystem. MWC remains a truly international event, with exhibitions beginning Monday, February 28 through Thursday, March 3. Attendees come from 2,000 different companies and 155 countries. To register, visit: https://www.mwcbarcelona.com/attend/registration  

Partnership extends Fusion’s native crisis management capabilities and enables interactive communication from one centralized platform

Fusion Risk Management, Inc. (“Fusion”), today announced a partnership with AlertMedia, the world’s leading emergency communication provider. The integration will enable Fusion customers to identify threats faster during emergencies and critical events and leverage collaborative crisis communications to ensure more resilient operations.

More than 3,000 global businesses rely on AlertMedia’s multichannel emergency communication system and threat intelligence to identify and respond to emerging threats near their people, locations, and assets. Using AlertMedia’s real-time, analyst-verified intelligence and intuitive, two-way communication features, organizations can drastically accelerate incident response times and ensure impacted employees receive critical updates through all phases of an emergency.

The Fusion-AlertMedia Connector allows Fusion customers to quickly detect and respond to emergencies and other critical events before they escalate, communicate time-sensitive information to impacted groups, and confirm employees are safe with instant, two-way messaging that connects key personnel, third parties and customers in seconds. The Connector’s multichannel notification capabilities empower businesses to streamline collaboration for an agile, accelerated emergency response and manage all employee communication in real-time from one centralized platform.

“Seconds matter during an emergency, which is why organizations need the ability to quickly communicate context and coordinate an effective response,” said Jeff Branc, Chief Technology Officer for AlertMedia. “Through this integration, our joint customers will now be able to more easily reach impacted groups and ensure critical events are fully resolved—all within a single, unified interface—saving them valuable time when it matters most.”

With the Fusion AlertMedia Connector, stakeholders can streamline how they collaborate across teams in an emergency to quickly mobilize the right response and keep their personnel, third parties, and customers safe and informed during a crisis event. Bidirectional data synchronization between Fusion and AlertMedia saves time and delivers the critical data users need in one centralized view. Seamless notification tracking enables stakeholders to identify critical gaps in their response strategies and adapt their responses in real time to prevent incidents from escalating and mitigate future disruption.

“In a crisis, it’s imperative that risk teams have seamless access to the critical data, insights and communication channels they need to make smart, fast decisions that keep their employees, partners and customers safe and informed,” said Paul Ybarra, CRO, Fusion Risk Management. “AlertMedia is trusted by many of the largest global brands to power their emergency notifications, and we’re proud to partner with them to offer our customers a key integration that extends our native capabilities while keeping Fusion at the core of crisis management activities. As operational resilience becomes an ever-greater business imperative, Fusion continues to enhance our platform to provide the cutting-edge technology and services our customers need to build dynamic continuity into their resilience programs.”

75% of businesses who improved data quality in 2021 exceeded annual objectives, but data quality and skills shortage leave 56% of businesses still not able to capitalise on data

New research from Experian reveals that better data management and data quality¹ has helped businesses to navigate the Covid-19 pandemic, bringing them closer to customers.

The annual Global Data Management report, which surveyed 905 data practitioners and data-driven business leaders worldwide, found the majority (75%) of businesses who have improved their data quality in the last year have exceeded their annual objectives in some way.

This includes objectives relating to customer experience, managing talent and workforce development, data security, and improving business resilience. Meeting these objectives will ultimately help these organisations reach their revenue growth targets.  

Recognising data as a critical asset to build business resilience, most businesses (89%) say that contact data is key to customer engagement, indicating its use in building a recovery plan. Similarly, 88% suggest data management has allowed them to keep up with understanding their customers’ rapidly changing needs that continue to be impacted by the pandemic.

2022 data priorities

Almost every business respondent (97%) said they plan to make their data management programme more flexible and agile over the next 12 months.

Improving customer experience is a top priority (52%), with businesses eager to use data to enable more customer centricity though better operational efficiency (48%) and better customer experience for customers offline and online (44%), for example.

However, inherent barriers are hampering businesses from maximising on data usage, such as a lack of data skills and a decline in data accuracy. Over three quarters (77%) say that inaccurate data hurt their ability to respond to market changes during the pandemic, while 39% say poor quality data has negative effects on customer experience. Meanwhile, 84% think a lack of data skills in the business hampers agility and flexibility in their organisations.

Andrew Abraham, Global Managing Director, Data Quality, at Experian, comments:

“The last year has tested every industry, with a new requirement for business models to be agile and change in line with their customers’ rapidly shifting demands. Our research shows that businesses who have improved their data quality were not just better equipped for this but exceeded their performance expectations too.

“However, business experiences with data accuracy and issues around how data is managed remain and are unlikely to improve unless businesses upskill current employees and continue to work with wider industry and government on addressing the data skills gap.”

Delivering a data boost

The Global Data Management report highlights how businesses can seek to overcome challenges as a result of data management and data quality limitations.

Investing in talent – evidence shows a lack of data skills affecting data management. As well as investing in employee training, previous Experian research found more could be done to attract graduates into data roles. Most students polled (67%) said they wanted companies to do more to promote data roles, and over half (53%) said they were considering a career in data². With a data literate workforce, a business is armed with talent that can make timely, data-driven decisions.

Clean up your data – the report reveals that only 44% say that their CRM/ERP³ data is clean, and that they can fully leverage it (against 50% suggesting this in 2020). By enriching your data, organisations can open up new information about customers while also making sure your existing data is accurate. When you purchase a data set from a trusted source, you can be sure the data regularly refreshes to keep your data lists updated and reliable. 

Prioritising your insights – 72% say they have so much data in their organisation that it is difficult to prioritise where data management can add most value. DataOps for example, can shorten development cycles, increase deployment frequency, and create more dependable releases of data pipelines, in close alignment with business objectives. This practice helps organisations adapt more quickly to changing conditions and prioritise data effectively.

You can read this year’s annual report here.

You can find out more about how Experian can help your organisation with your data quality needs here.

From today, American Express is launching a series of limited time offers that sees the return of the most generous ever welcome bonuses on its American Express® Business Platinum and Gold Cards.

Between 21 February and 31 March, new Business Platinum Cardmembers that sign up and spend £10,000 in the first three months of their membership will receive a substantial welcome bonus of 100,000 Membership Rewards® points. New Business Gold Cardmembers are eligible for a welcome bonus of 50,000 Membership Rewards points when they sign up and spend £5,000 in the first three months.

Membership Rewards points, earned on their everyday business spending, give small business leaders flexibility to make the most of their rewards in a way that best suits them – from making a dent in monthly expenses that can help to manage cashflow, to treating their team, or taking a well-earned luxury break abroad. 

When it comes to travel, Membership Rewards points can be used with 13 different airline partners (including British Airways, Emirates, Singapore Airlines and Virgin Atlantic), as well as Club Eurostar and three hotel chains (Hilton, Radisson and Marriott). 

With recent American Express data1 revealing that 74% of business leaders are looking forward to travelling more in 2022, Cardmembers can use their business spending to help fund a memorable personal trip. 100,000 Membership Rewards points converted to Avios, for example, could get small business owners a return off-peak business class flight with British Airways from the UK to the likes of New York, Boston or Washington. 

On top of the welcome bonus, existing Business Platinum and Gold Cardmembers can earn points with a refreshed referral offer, also running across the same period. Business Gold Cardmembers who successfully refer new Cardmembers will get an additional 20,000 Membership Rewards points, whilst Business Platinum Cardmembers will receive an additional 30,000 points. Cardmembers continue to earn 1 Membership Rewards point for every full £1 they spend on their Card – with no limit, so they can use their points to offset their business expenses or save up to redeem on a great personal treat. Terms apply.

Stacey Sterbenz, General Manager, Global Commercial Services UK at American Express, said: “We’re focused on ensuring our products go further for small business owners, after what has been a turbulent two years for them. In addition to the rewards we offer on everyday business spending, these generous welcome bonuses on our Business Platinum and Gold Cards give hardworking entrepreneurs access to a greater range of rewards – accompanied by the dedicated backing and support of American Express that enables them to reach their goals in the year ahead.”

How to spend Membership Rewards points 

·         Take a break and gain a fresh perspective - American Express data reveals that 61% of business owners don’t go abroad as much as they’d like. Business owners can use Membership Rewards points to book luxury getaways to help them relax and recharge

·         Tech treats for home or business – Business owners can redeem their points for tech purchases from popular brands such as Apple via gift cards from Amazon or Currys PC World, or use them to pay for purchases at a wide selection of online retailers

·         Taking a bite out of monthly bills – By using their points on monthly bill payments to offset business expenses, a statement credit can go towards paying for essential utilities, internet or the cost of fuel.

Large, all-encompassing historical events have the ability to change the way that society operates. These changes happen rapidly, but our adaptability ensures a sense of normality in unusual circumstances.

In the case of the pandemic, businesses, and the way they operate, changed swiftly. But for the same reason that some businesses thrived during the pandemic, fraud also saw a new era of innovation. The same technology that allowed many businesses to continue operating while working from home also allowed fraud rings to continue their damaging efforts throughout this period.

Fraud rings have adapted to the new circumstances, using the pandemic as an opportunity. With the emergence of these new fraud opportunities, we must become aware of them as quickly as they have risen.

Fortunately, new data from Signifyd’s Pulse Report reveals why fraud is growing, with key transactional insights on the rising trends to watch out for. Here, we explore what fraudsters are doing and how you can avoid their abuse.

Fraudsters are innovating  

This new era of fraud innovation has become more pronounced than traditional forms of payment fraud, particularly online. As the volume of ecommerce has grown, in part due to the pandemic, and as the digital world has increasingly become all our worlds, fraudsters have sought out a variety of ways to take advantage of merchants and consumers.

In a May 2021 report from 451 Research, significant fraud trends were highlighted: “Bad actors are broadening their focus beyond payments, targeting touch points across the customer journey.

“Touchpoints from online account creation through to product returns have emerged as growing vectors for fraudulent activity, and consequently, both financial and reputational losses.”

We should always remember that these fraud rings are for-profit enterprises. And these fraudsters are continually looking to expand their total addressable market, just as a genuine business would. So as merchants have become better at protecting themselves from payment fraud with solutions like Signifyd’s Commerce Protection Platform, fraudsters have expanded into non-payment forms of fraud. 

Return fraud is a significant focus of nearly every enterprise that works with Signifyd, according to their Pulse Report. Return fraud is the practice of buying a high-value item and returning some lesser-value item for a refund.

Key fraud trends to watch for

So what are the big fraud trends that have arisen during the pandemic and continue to flourish today? Understanding how fraudsters are abusing your business is the best way to prevent them from continuing to do so.

Mule fraud

Fraudsters that recruit go-betweens are hardly a new trend. While its prominence may rise and fall, every blip in mule fraud activities comes with innovations.

During the pandemic, the use of mules has increased sharply. Fraud rings rely on armies of dispersed mules to receive stolen goods and forward them to re-shippers and out of the country, but it appears to have subsided since the pandemic.

Account takeover

Avoiding the point in the payment process where barriers to fraud are typically the greatest, account takeover fraud allows fraudsters to find an area of attack outside the checkout process. The increasing use of bots plays into this trend, as automation allows fraud rings to attempt to breach thousands of accounts in quick succession.

Synthetic identities

Fraudsters can make consumer identities from scratch — or more accurately from a mixture of stolen and self-generated personally identifiable information. Often starting with a stolen National Insurance Number — usually a child’s because there will be no credit history — the fraudster makes up a name, cooks up a billing address, and applies for a new credit card.

Order online, steal from the store

The pandemic saw a rise in purchases made online and then picked up in store or at the curbside. The behaviour persists today. In fact, Signifyd data shows that buy online, pick up at or in the store orders remain 210% higher than they were pre-pandemic. And with the BOPIS spike and continued popularity came a great opportunity for those with a criminal bent.

You don’t need a delivery address when you buy online and pick up at the store — a key signal in fraud protection. And by their nature, they need to be filled fast, leaving little or no time for manual review or pondering the legitimacy of an order.

Policy abuse

We’ve seen massive rises in abuse beyond traditional payment fraud. Take policy abuse, for instance, or the practice of breaking the rules for discounts or consideration shoppers get for referring a new customer to a merchant.

Keeping up with fraud detection

While fraud continues to innovate, utilising new trends and technology, so must businesses and their fraud detection techniques. Any fraud and abuse come with behaviour, developing a trail that can be tracked and assessed.

While technology has allowed fraudsters to increase their use of bot attacks, chargebacks and more, intelligent machine learning is also able to tackle abuse and fraud from the root. By understanding the dynamics of fraud, continually learning from buying behaviour, and seeking out potential risks, commerce protection platforms have the ability to identify fraud and block abusive transactions.

These innovations now allow us to accurately block fraud while providing positive experiences for genuine customers. Ultimately, businesses can avoid the golden age of fraud, boost their revenue, and get a leg-up on their competitors.

Platformable launched their latest report, “Using Open Banking and Open Finance APIs to Build Green Fintech” today. The report describes how Europe and the UK use open banking and open finance APIs to enable the growth of new sustainability-focused financial products and services. The report specifically focuses on key drivers including the current regulatory environment, partnership action, consumer demand, and how banking API products from open banking platforms are being used to build sustainability products.

The report also identifies the emergence of a new green fintech subsector enabled by the open banking sector (in Europe and the UK banks are mandated to make data accessible in the form of technological components for independent fintech to build new customer-facing finance products). Already, 93 businesses allow customers to securely connect their bank accounts to access sustainable services and solutions.

“Our research found that open banking and open finance APIs make it possible to create sustainability value and build new green fintech solutions. Consumer demand, regulatory and policy drivers, and partnership networks are creating a new green fintech market in Europe and the UK. Green fintech have started using open banking and embedded finance APIs to address key environmental objectives while focusing on some of the causes of the climate crisis and environmental destruction, but a better focus on impactful actions, greater production ideation, and more experimentation with business models are needed,” said Mark Boyd, Founder of Platformable.

“What is great to see is that fintech companies are ready for the challenge and are creating new products. But there is a danger that the industry could end up focusing too much on individual consumer behaviour and on less-impactful areas rather than building solutions that leverage the power of enterprises and whole industry sectors to play a part,” said Jannika Aalto, Open Sustainability Lead and lead author of the report.

The report’s findings can help banks understand new partnerships and aid fintech in identifying product opportunities. It can also inform consumers of the type of products to expect on the market and allow regulators to monitor sustainable finance products available in their countries. It is available for download from Platformable.com and is also viewable online as an interactive series of data visualizations.

cnvrg.io AI Blueprints deliver end to end and open-source ML pipelines and Model APIs to enable developers to deliver and productionize AI in minutes

cnvrg.io, an Intel company, provider of the artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) platform, today announced the release of cnvrg.io AI Blueprints to help developers quickly deliver AI applications, with easy-to-use ML pipelines that can run on any infrastructure. cnvrg.io AI Blueprints are a curated, verified and open-source library of ML model APIs and customizable pipelines to enable software developers to easily enhance their applications with AI to solve any business or product problem. 

cnvrg.io AI blueprints are built on cnvrg.io’s experience working with the leading data and AI teams in the world, learning and identifying recurring bottlenecks and engineering challenges that arise while putting ML in production.  The AI Blueprints are a collection of complete, data-centric and customizable ML pipelines focused on easy integration between data sources and targets.

The AI software market will grow to $37 billion by 2025 according to Forrester. However, one of the biggest factors slowing down AI adoption is the shortage of trained AI developers, and the engineering complexity of putting models in production.  With a rich library of open-source and ready-to-use AI blueprints consisting of data connectors, ML components and deployment options, developers can create a complete end-to-end AI solution and use it easily in any application. For example, a developer is able to apply sales forecasting directly on Salesforce data, perform text classification on their Snowflake data warehouse, predictions on data that is stored in S3 bucket or many others. cnvrg.io AI Blueprints can be used as is or be modified to fit specific needs in a simple, user-friendly interface or directly via code.

cnvrg.io AI Blueprints are community driven and offer a collection with dozens of AI use-cases with 100+ components that will continuously grow with community contributions. With cnvrg.io AI Blueprints, organizations will be able to host their own private repository of Blueprints and help data scientists democratize their work, enabling other developers in their organization to apply machine learning that is tailored to their business use case.

cnvrg.io AI Blueprints are powered by cnvrg.io Metacloud, a cloud native AI platform, with the ability to bring your own compute and storage, and run AI workloads anywhere.  cnvrg.io is also offering hands-on AI Blueprints workshops for developers interested in building their own end to end AI solution to apply to their business domain. Sign up today and join cnvrg.io’s community of developers.

“AI Blueprints is our way of enabling data scientists to share their work easily and help organizations to keep up with the demand, and apply more AI to more use-cases,” said Yochay Ettun, CEO and Co-founder of cnvrg.io. “The cnvrg.io AI Blueprints are developer-friendly, open source, and fully customizable - enabling any developer to easily add ML to their applications.”

“We’re excited to work closely with cnvrg.io to enable developers to get more value from their AI initiatives,” said Kavitha Prasad, VP Intel AI Strategy and Execution. “Now with cnvrg.io AI Blueprints, AI is more accessible, making it easier for developers in any industry to enhance their business outcomes with pre-built AI pipelines off-the-shelf.”

cnvrg.io, an Intel Company, will unveil cnvrg.io AI Blueprints today at mlcon 2.0, a community ML event hosted by cnvrg.io where CTO Greg Lavender, Intel’s Senior Vice President and General Manager of the Software and Advanced Technology Group will have a fireside chat about the future of developers and AI, and cnvrg.io founders, Yochay Ettun and Leah Kolben will present cnvrg.io’s current offerings and future road map.  To register for mlcon 2.0, The AI and ML developers conference, a virtual event taking place February 22-23, click here.

Leading AI-powered credit decisioning disruptor, Scienaptic AI announced that Avanse Financial Services has completed implementation and is now live on its platform. The implementation will enable Avanse to automate its loan decisioning to offer seamless education financing to students.

Avanse Financial Services Limited is a new age, technologically advanced, education-focused non-banking financial company (NBFC) on a journey to democratize education and education financing in India. This collaboration and implementation of AI-driven credit decisioning will enable Avanse to administer credit more effectively. This will further strengthen its technological advancement journey dedicated to providing a hassle-free experience to its stakeholder ecosystem.

“Investing in emerging technology has always been a top priority for the business. As a customer-centric organization, we have implemented a hybrid-operating model of doing business, which comprises best practices of traditional lenders and new-age fintech players to deliver the highest level of customer experience. This collaboration will enable us to implement the perfect amalgamation of an AI-driven approach and appropriate human intervention to analyze credit accurately. We will continue to explore innovative ways of creating consistent value for our stakeholder ecosystem and remain steadfast in our mission of making education financing seamless and affordable for every deserving Indian student,” said Amit Gainda, CEO of Avanse Financial Services.

“We are very pleased to deploy our credit decisioning engine for Avanse Financial Services to support the financing needs of students across the country,” said Joydip Gupta, APAC Head of Scienaptic. “Our AI-powered credit decisioning platform will enable speed to market, greater automation and better decisions, while minimizing risks.”