IPBN member Carlos Justino has been working in marketing and technology for the past 15-16 years, mainly in the B2B area. In the last three years, his work has evolved to include projects in technology, software development, building mobile apps, and eventually, AI, all while continuing his marketing career in tandem.  

Carlos’ work in AI began for corporate clients in 2016 when the technology was quite new and expensive. “I've always been responsible for innovation and leading people in the right direction in tech and I moved quite a bit. Initially, I was in the UK, then moved for 11 years to São Paulo, Brazil, and then in 2020 I moved back to Portugal [where] I work in an Innovation Lab where I develop cool things with AI.” 

Now, Carlos is working out of the TEC campus run by IPBN partner institution, the University of Algarve, where he is snugly settled in the presence of this accelerator for startups. When it comes to AI, Carlos has been working in partnership with AWS, Google, and Microsoft among others, so his services are becoming even more valuable in this sphere. 

So it was with great excitement that the IPBN arranged this interview with this tech guru once we heard about a truly exciting opportunity for IPBN members: A Complementary Data Assessment.  

But what does this mean? Carlos explained, “We've been working very closely with AWS for quite a few years now, and one year ago we started a strong partnership with them to help companies with tech and modernization...With AWS, we created the funds needed to help companies by looking at the entire data they have, understanding what they can do with that data, and we show them a road map. That's usually something that a company would pay around €10,000 for. And that's why many companies don't take a look. If they don't understand the pain that they are facing, why would they pay 10K for something that they don't even know anything about?”  

Good question. In a recent study by McKinsey, 75% of companies wanted and/or needed to do something around AI and data, but the problem is they had no clue where to start. And it makes sense, as new technology is often off-putting both personally and professionally. 

The best part? Carlos is offering to provide companies with this data assessment for free. He said, “We cover the cost, AWS sponsors the investment on the cloud servers, AI servers, and machine learning algorithms, and we sponsor the data scientists and data engineers who run the assessment for companies. Our goal is to help as many companies as possible with the tech modernization so they can fit in the life of businesses that we are living right now.” 

So basically, if you have data, if you want to save money, if you want to make more money, and if you want to optimize something in your company, then you are a good fit for a data assessment. Carlos laid out some case studies to better explain. 

"When we look at available data and we run AI algorithms on top, we can tackle all the departments so we can the finances, for example, when it comes to supply chain optimization. We can see where they're spending more money, what items cost more, and how much of those items they have in stock. We create a visualization dashboard that shows them exactly who they should buy from and when to lower the cost. We can work on preventive maintenance and discover customer behavior.” 

Carlos assessed a big bank in South America that wanted to understand who on the client database would be the best fit for their platinum credit card for investments. Carlos used an AI algorithm that looked at their historical data to understand if clients were investing, what they were earning per month, and when they invested, and he created market patterns to come up with an appropriate list.  

“We've even done projects with AI that we could predict when someone was going to miss work the next day and why. We looked at historical data about the person's health, where they lived, weather data, and public databases that show areas affected by high influenza rates. So if the AI predicted with 95% accuracy that, for example, John wasn't going to work the next day. The factory could then get another person to cover his shift so they would never stop working.” 

It doesn't matter if you're a small, medium, or large business. These days, if you don't look at the data that you have available, it means that you are more or less going in the dark. You don't know where to go, or where to move next. You're at a disadvantage. 

“I worked with a company that operates shipping containers. Their data assessment showed that the majority of the containers were only going 70% full so we created software for them that optimizes the amount of things that they could put in a container according to where the container was going and mapped the entire journey so instead of going at 70%, they start going 100% full. In three months, they saved $1.8 million just by doing that, and they paid us 150K to run the project. So the ROI on that is outstanding. 

It’s important to point out that unfortunately, not all companies get approved for the assessment. Either they don't have the amount of data available that can be worked or they are too small to be able to carry out a project after that. Creating a road map that shows them how to save 1,000,000 in three months means nothing if it can’t be executed.  

After an hour-long meeting, Carlos will be able to know whether the assessment is right for you and he will submit the project to AWS for approval. The project acceptance (or rejection) will be known in about 3 weeks and the assessment itself, the interviews, the KPIs, and road map building will take another three to four weeks maximum. 

So how do you seize this opportunity? “The best way to get in touch,” Carlos says, “is directly with me through my IPBN contact page or asking Arnold to get them in contact. I'm also available on LinkedIn. My goal is to help as many companies as I can in Portugal before moving on to other regions.” 

Conversely, you can chat directly with Carlos at the upcoming IPBN Dublin Innovation Conference on Thursday, June 20 where he will be a moderator for the second panel discussion on the Power of Technology Transfer and Innovation! Register today here to reserve your spot.