On the Cortana Intelligence and Machine Learning blog, Microsoft talks about the strides Cortana has made for Carnival Cruise Line, appliance maker Arçelik A.Ş., and Mars Drinks. All three companies were able shave costs and work more efficiently using Cortana Intelligence Suite.
Here a look at how each company was able to get things done using Cortana Intelligence Suite:
- Carnival needed a mechanism to predict the right amount of water to produce at the right time, without having to store any excess. Carnival’s partner, Arundo Analytics, a global provider of analytical and predictive solutions, helped them build a microservice on their proprietary big-data platform, and trained a model to help them do just that. Using the machine learning models, APIs, and templates in the Microsoft Cortana Intelligence Suite, Arundo analyzed historical data sets along with data such as the speed and position of the ships, age and nationality of passengers, historical weather data and more, to better understand exactly the drivers of water consumption. Their platform runs on Azure and is able to easily connect to and derive value from a variety of data, and from both Carnival’s cloud and on-premises databases.
- Arçelik A.Ş. decided to invest in a spare-parts demand forecasting built on Cortana Intelligence. With the help of solution provider BilgeAdam, they made their first move to the public cloud with this solution. Their decision started delivering benefits even before the impact on inventory management could be felt. For starters, the company went live with the solution in just three months, whereas they had anticipated an 18-month development schedule based on an earlier solution. They also got a highly scalable solution, thanks to their cloud bet, and one that’s much easier to integrate with external data sources such as weather or location, to enhance their forecasts. Furthermore, they avoided expensive investments in IT infrastructure and personnel that would have been needed to build and maintain their alternative solution.
- Mars Drinks needed the ability to better anticipate and manage stock levels across their machines, which are distributed throughout the globe. Working with Microsoft partner Neal Analytics, they were able to apply machine learning to their vending machines. Tapping into the data they gather from remote sensors on their vending machines, and coto the Microsoft Azure IoT Suite, Cortana Intelligence and Power BI, Mars Drinks is able to use and predictive computing to better maintain stock levels, understand consumer behaviors and account for changes in demand related to factors such as weather and holidays.
Microsoft’s Cortana Intelligence Suite offers enterprise customers in retail, manufacturing, healthcare, and financial services a number of solutions to help companies thrive.
