Technology Innovator Awards 2017

4 Corporate Vision / Technology Innovator Awards 2017 , Best AI Market Research Software Provider - UK Shaping Tomorrow offer pioneering AI software solutions to clients across the corporate landscape. We invitedMike Jackson to provide us with a fascinating glimpse into this futuristic technology and how it is changing the business world for the better. Since 2002 Shaping Tomorrow have been on a mission to help its members and clients to ‘anticipate and prepare for tomorrow by making better decisions today’. Mike outlines what this entails and how the firm strives to create solutions which are both innovative and functional. “Here at Shaping Tomorrow, our 12,000 members and 40+ international clients come from diverse backgrounds in sectors including strategy; planning; R&D; product management; S&T; community development; foresight; change management; consulting; IT; education; risk management; design; policy-making; and intelligence. “We provide these clients with extraordinary breadth and depth of global insights into the future, fresh forecasts and ideas covering all aspects of economics, the environment, healthcare, industries, lifestyles, organization, politics, society and technology. We illuminate the potential implications for organizations through combining the increasing use of visualization, heuristics, and algorithms to spot significant emerging signals of change early and to respond at the right time.” There are lots of organizations offering semantic analysis, taxonomies, natural language processing, and equal numbers of people creating futures-oriented, horizon scanning content and strategic foresight platforms but only Shaping Tomorrow does both in real-time, setting it apart from competitors and highlighting its focus on excellence, as Mike explains. “As a global horizon scanning company we use what we learn to improve our service as well as to help our members and clients. Our firm is focused on acting as a ‘constant start-up’: always looking for ways to improve our offering by reading, learning and listening to clients in order to be able to provide them with the service they need.” Going forward, Mike believes that the increased focus on AI technology will help his firm to build upon its current success and continue to grow in the coming months and years. “Increasing use of AI, machine/ human-learning and designing for emotion are three of the key challenges and opportunities we see for ourselves right now as well as spreading our influence to reach our overall aim: to engrain and enhance the use of collaborative, holistic strategic foresight worldwide.’” Company name: Shaping Tomorrow Limited Web Address: www.shapingtomorrow.com Address: The Red Barn, Hurstpierpoint, BN6 9UZ Founded in 2004, ClearStructure draws on the vast market experience of its team to deliver cutting edge solutions that meet the needs of its clients in this ever-evolving space. As a result of the recent increase in regulation within the financial markets and subsequent decrease in traditional institutional lending, the number of investment firms filling the lending void has risen dramatically. Along with this rise in direct lenders comes a demand for better technology. The large and outdated loan platforms common among institutional lenders do not meet the needs of this industry that is quickly gaining so much traction. ClearStructure recognized an opportunity to further enhance Sentry PM, to meet the challenges facing the lenders. Direct lenders need a system that boasts a deep breadth of functionality while maintaining ease of use. With an established history of supporting various loan markets, ClearStructure understands the complexities that direct lenders face and extended the core portfolio management solution in Sentry PM to meet the industry’s needs. The firm’s flagship Sentry PM™ solution offers managers full front-to- back-office functionality on a single platform across all asset types. Sentry PM allows direct lenders to utilize a single system for all of their research and operational needs, from due diligence to origination to the daily administration of each loan. Sentry PM’s flexibility allows direct lenders to customize loan structures to meet the unique needs of their borrowers. In addition, lenders can leverage collateral tracking, covenant monitoring, and borrower reporting requirements with automatic alert generation to proactively manage their borrower relationships. For those lenders that also manage the agent role inhouse, Sentry PM has the ability to automatically generate, track and send notices to the borrower which eases the burden on the administration team. Looking ahead, the future of ClearStructure looks bright. With a continued push towards everything “mobile”, the ClearStructure team is already enhancing the Sentry platform to allow users system access on their mobile devices. Whether lenders choose to monitor their dashboards or run a series of reports, they will soon have the ability to manage funds on-the-go. The ClearStructure team looks forward to continuing to deliver cutting-edge solutions to the growing direct lending industry. Best Direct Lending Solution: Sentry PM™ Address: 83 Wooster Heights Danbury, Connecticut, 06810, USA Phone: 001 203 205 2700 Website: clearstructure.com ClearStructure Financial Technology delivers state-of-the-art technology solutions capable of meeting the diverse needs of the investment industry. We profiled the firm to find out more.