APAC CIO Outlook: Share insights, not data


Article published in APAC CIO Outlook here.

How do you enrich data insights through collaboration, without surfacing the sensitive information present in it? This is the question that Dean Joscelyne, a creative agency veteran, was aiming to find an answer for back in 2011. His client at the time sat behind a distribution supply chain and was looking to better understand the end users of their products. Joscelyne was commissioned to develop a marketing program and needed a data model behind it to identify the right customers or prospects and their specific requirements. But developing a robust data model required access to and analysis of multiple data sets from different organizations. Scouring the breadth of the market, he soon realized that no effective and secure data collaboration technology solution existed. Although the efforts on this occasion met a bitter end, for Joscelyne, that was not the end of the road.

He knew there had to be a way to enable the full potential of big data analytics while removing the threat of data breaches and misuse. Joscelyne’s conviction and unconventional thinking came into play, and he soon developed a secure data collaboration software application that emerged as an antidote to the long-existing data privacy woes. At the heart of this solution is a distinctive level of security using homomorphic encryption. This unique technique allows data to remain encrypted while it is being processed. So two or more organizations can now derive unparalleled business insights by matching all their information, but without any of them seeing the other party’s sensitive information. To help different industries with the eyes up view of data, Joscelyne founded IXUP [ASX:IXU] (pronounced eyes up).

May the Control Be with You
IXUP enables organizations to remain in control of their own data. It eliminates the need for organizations to share their data with limited control over integrity and privacy. Modern companies can also bid goodbye to third-party data bureaus—which offer low visibility into the data while being expensive. They can now carry out their own data modeling with their network of partners and customers through seamless ‘connected information management.’ IXUP also overcomes the subpar performance of data anonymization which, despite securing the data, comprehensively keeps the insights locked. At a time when stringent compliance regulations and sophisticated cyber threats are growing each day, IXUP allows data-heavy companies to act smart and be in firm control of analytics.

With IXUP, sharing encrypted data means sharing just the insights. IXUP uniquely encrypts every cell of information, matches commonalities among many databases, and delivers the insights from the encrypted data in near real-time. While data owners remain in control of their data, the visualization tools—such as Tableau or Microsoft Power BI—integrated into IXUP depict the insights in a rich visual format, thus improving the decision-making capabilities. The solution operates entirely in Microsoft Azure cloud and leverages a unique governance control protocol that mandates the data owner to authenticate the usage of their data for analysis. Enabled with an audit trail and versioning system, IXUP adheres to the latest regulations in the industry. Built to support customization, it offers direct connectivity to all major data warehouses and business intelligence tools. With such assurance, high-quality data can be used for driving the value of actionable insights, which, in turn, improves business results.

“The striking feature of IXUP is its usability. Coming from a background that focused on enabling creative experiences for clients, I have designed the solution from the ground up keeping the user experience (UX) in mind,” says Joscelyne. “If you know how to drag and drop items in a web browser, you are ready to use our solution.”

Maximizing the Value of Connected Information
IXUP is at the epicenter of today’s data-driven business universe giving companies the confidence to bring their data out of their organizational walls and collaborate actively with different industry players and third-parties to push the innovation envelope. With foolproof data privacy on their side, government agencies, large enterprises, and researchers can confidently enter into new long-term, strategic data collaboration contracts. Industries cutting across financial services, construction, pharma, life sciences, and healthcare, among others, can step into the future using the new capabilities gained through the IXUP solution. For example, insurers can optimize policy pricing through deep insights into customer data and investment bankers can know where to invest and when. Banks, on the other hand, can revive their advertising effectiveness with new vigor by blending ads with the transactional data shared with their individual customers or use new insights to improve customer experience cost-effectively. “We are opening a new horizon in the area of connected information management and customer-centric data models. By combining our technology solution with the expertise of our partners like Deloitte our product continues to evolve with the business environment,” explains Joscelyne.

Case Study: IXUP in Action
An institutional bank and one of its customers a travel company, were having difficulties sharing data effectively. Both the bank and its customers wanted to leverage each other’s data for greater insights but were apprehensive  of sharing their data. The insights were crucial for the travel company to know the performance of their different marketing mediums—online, brick and mortar stores, and contact centers—in different geographies and vertical markets. IXUP provided a collaboration platform that both organisations could input required data, such as transactional data from the bank and financial data from the travel company. The IXUP solution then matched various data sets and extrapolated the data allowing the travel group to gain key demographic insights to assist their sales and marketing efforts. This is a typical case of market share analysis, which, “we aremexploring as an enhanced capability leveraging our base technology,” says Joscelyne.

A Diligent Partner to Maximize the Data Collaboration Outcomes
“While high level insights come easily using the IXUP platform, the technology really shines when targeting complex, multi-layered insights,” says Tal Morgenstern, Business Algorithms Partner, Deloitte Australia. Morgenstern explains, “IXUP uses selected insights that go with the user’s choice. So companies can achieve highly relevant insights. Moreover, they can share the data with their business partners in a compliant way, automatically. With such great capabilities, Deloitte collaborates with its clients and IXUP to build a wider ecosystem of partners and develop new algorithms that customise the technology to the clients’ specific needs.”

As an IXUP reseller, Deloitte brings the necessary legal governance, risk management and compliance awareness to this long standing business problem. It’s the combination of the IXUP technology solution and this expertise that provides a powerful platform for customers. Deloitte guides IXUP users to select, collate, and cleanse the right data sets, depending on their unique business requirements before the data is introduced into the solution. While IXUP’s solution breaks the traditional barriers of data collaboration and offers a seamless user experience, it was not fundamentally created for a specific business use case. In other words, the sky is the limit to how the solution can be put to use. Deloitte offers the building blocks for modern companies to build interesting use cases with the assurance that the data is always secure, and insights are highly beneficial and relevant. Deloitte brings its expert consulting skills to develop the right use case for a particular
business to use IXUP.

“The more a company knows its customers, the better solutions it can build for them, and the better the customer experience,” says Morgenstern. Unfortunately, most companies know only a fraction of their customers. By combining customer information from multiple sources, things can change for the better. “And IXUP is a game-changer because it brings control, security, and privacy to data collaboration through high standards of encryption,” he adds.

Also, Deloitte triggers innovative thinking and helps reform the DNA of today’s companies, preparing them to exploit the technology to the fullest. Deloitte guides companies on ways to leverage the right data sets to develop business products. Building on IXUP’s capabilities, Deloitte aims to allow secure sharing of not just the data but data algorithms while protecting the IP to foster greater innovation.

The future of data collaboration
As the early adopter of homomorphic encryption, IXUP is the first company to take big measures toward the standardisation of this technology. “We will continue to develop greater functionality around this technology,” says Joscelyne. “As customers developmore complex use cases, our enhanced capability will align with their needs.” With evolving data systems and greater data collaboration between multiple organizations, IXUP will enable each party in the collaborative ecosystem to play a more proactive role in increasing the value of insights. It’s an exciting journey ahead!

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