AI4A - A.I. for Automation

Intro

The proliferation of AI (Artificial Intelligence) products in the last year has opened the doors to a series of possible applications aimed at automating processes connected to applications and services rendered on the Cloud.
In particular, our company has recently launched services with the SaaS (Software-as-a-Service) formula provided by a software product created in house, called “3FS – 3rd Millennium Fleet System“.
The development of a new “Low Code – No Code” platform identified by the brand: “3P – Proge Power Platform”, which explores innovative forms of involving end users in the creation of management software, is also underway.
For both of the aforementioned supply lines, scenarios of strong innovative value are opening up, made possible by the use of AI, aimed at automating operational support for users, development planning and control, corrective and evolutionary maintenance, the evolution technical-functional and self-checking on the quality of software and services.
The use of the Cloud also requires careful attention to Security, both infrastructural and application, which can also be automated with the tools made available by AI.
From these considerations was born the company decision to invest in the creation of an R&D project that incorporates these automation objectives in a scenario of progressive implementation of increasingly more complex functions, aiming for a goal of complete automation, always under rigorous control over the adoption and compliance with current and future regulations.

Goals

Starting from the above scenario, the following R&D actions have been identified to be pursued through experimental development phases:

• Study of the 3FS software product, in particular of its methodological and documentary structuring, in order to understand its contents and proceed to a first optimization phase aimed at making the online Help more efficient and integrating an effective workflow that allows the creation of a hierarchical tree structure where each user is enabled, within their skills, to define the underlying collaborators with their respective authorizations;

• Implementation of advanced functions for predicting future rental needs and automatic planning of vehicle purchases and sales, aimed at satisfying rental needs by optimizing costs through an Automated Rotation module;

• Creation of an automatic responder to user requests, capable of providing solutions to the problems represented and of independently activating second level support if necessary, associated with the constant monitoring of its effectiveness and the generation of evolutionary maintenance tickets addressed to the Team Technical Support in cases of reiteration of requests of the same type;

• Creation of a self-checking process capable of identifying system shortcomings and suggesting possible optimizations and integrations, in a virtuous path of gaining decision-making autonomy, always subjected to the rigorous attention of managers and their approval;

• Introduction of a powerful automatic tool for diagnosing the system’s compliance with the rules dictated on the subject of Privacy and Security, both at an infrastructural and application level, in order to constantly have an alert on any violations and immediate suggestions for their solution ;
  Evolution of the 3P product aimed at integrating automatic tools for planning and controlling development activities supported by AI.

Activities already carried out

• Scouting of the most popular AI products on the market and analysis of their usability for the purposes of the project objectives.

• Scouting of the most advanced operational research products and analysis of the possible implications of their use for the purposes of the project objectives.

• Execution tests of the selected products and analysis of the results in order to guide the definition of the project standards.

• Creation of a first experimental version of the 3P product.

Results to be achieved

The planned activities are concentrated on the following points:

• 3FS Improvements, aimed at providing the system with an Authorization Workflow that gives possibilities and guides users in implementing integrated management of authorizations in the 3FS service, in a tree structure in which everyone is enabled to define the underlying collaborators by giving them authorizations within their competences;

• Automated Fleet Rotation based on powerful and innovative mathematical models aimed at optimizing the management of purchases and sales by aiming to use the least expensive or most profitable vehicles, subjecting the results to the scrutiny of interactions with users supported by AI;

• Automated Customer Support which is not limited to the mere interaction of the current chatbots but is capable of providing real first level support to user assistance requests, providing the system with effective, automatically powered Help-on-Line from the detail of the Functional Analysis, solving the simplest cases and activating the User Support Team in the more complex ones; it must be integrated with constant monitoring of its effectiveness, acquiring knowledge of the limits to be overcome from the reiteration of requests and ungiven responses to constantly raise the level of service and, therefore, to identify possible optimizations to propose to the Technical Support Team;

• Self Improvements Algorithm: will be the further evolution of the system, which must be capable of proposing corrections and improvements both in documents and in the software code to be submitted for approval by the Technical Support Team;

• Privacy and Security: in parallel with the milestones set out above, a powerful self-diagnosis tool for compliance with the rules regulating privacy and security must be created, which is not limited to simply reporting violations, but is capable of suggesting the solutions to be submitted to management;

• 3P Improvements: will be the further implementation to be carried out in parallel to the previous ones, which will have to equip the 3P product with automatic activity planning and control algorithms based on the appropriate exploitation of AI.