Exploring the use of AI to enhance the Sales Process
| Reference number | |
| Coordinator | RISE Research Institutes of Sweden AB - RISE SICS East |
| Funding from Vinnova | SEK 300 000 |
| Project duration | November 2018 - November 2019 |
| Status | Completed |
| Venture | Personal mobility between societal sectors |
| Call | Funding for staff exchange and artificial intelligence (AI) |
Purpose and goal
The goal of the project is to explore how different AI techniques can be integrated into the sales process to provide recommendations on the next salesman action and to prioritize between activities. While doing so we also aim to lay the fundament for a joint long-term cooperation between the two participating parties, RISE and Yooba, in applying AI into Yooba´s products. The activities conducted during the project closely align with the above stated objectives.
Expected results and effects
Several directions have been considered - knowledge-based approach, markov decision processes and deep learning. The first two were explored in more details and exploration of the third one was about to begin before the end of the project. Natural language processing techniques were outlined as complementary to the others and considered an opportunity for future cooperation.
Planned approach and implementation
The problem has been formulated as a recommender system and advantages and disadvantages of collaborative filtering and content-based recommender systems have been considered. The beginning of the project (WP1) was concerned with the analysis of the existing data in order to evaluate its suitability for the different methods. The second phase (WP2) outlined several AI techniques, of both immediate and long-term interest, and started looking into more details in each of them before the project has been terminated.