The hype on artificial intelligence and Machine Learning (AI & ML) arrived in style after the ChatGPT launch. Although the global mobility industry is no stranger to this reality, everyone talks about AI & ML and the revolution resulting from its adoption. Since the launch of ChatGPT, negative projections on what it will do to the world, our jobs, and businesses have been made. In the past APIs dominated relocation industry discussion panels but things didn’t move fast enough. Let’s hope this time it will be different.
In reality, AI & ML were already present in our lives, we just didn’t realize it. Face and fingerprint recognition, plagiarism or similarity detection, melanoma or pneumonia detection, autonomous driving, document processing, and many other applications are part of our daily lives in one way or the other. So, what changed? In addition to being a trend, access is now easier. In fact, it’s such an appealing subject that now everyone wants to be a Data Scientist. I remember the time when such a position or job was not so attractive and was known as Mathematician.
Is the industry ready to use AI?
The global mobility industry will take advantage of AI and ML but probably not in the way that most people expect. Workforce replacement as we see in the movies is still far away, although the same cannot be said for other industries. This industry deals with huge volumes of data, mainly unstructured (documents and emails), and in recent years many destination service providers (DSP) and relocation management companies (RMC) invested in IT like never before. The implementation of new systems changed the landscape and the way we do our work. Part of the data is now more structured, and tasks are recorded while being executed. All this is at our disposal, and from it, we can extract trends and behavioral patterns. The challenge lies in the time it takes to process and analyze it and this is where Data Science and Artificial intelligence (AI) can help. But first, we need to look at AI in more detail.
Machine Learning (ML) is one of the 6 branches of AI. There are others like Neural Networks (NN), Robotics, Expert Systems, Fuzzy Logic, and Natural Language Processing (NLP). NLP allows a machine to perform tasks such as categorization or estimation from a given data set. NN tries toreplicate the human brain and uses mathematical algorithms to find relationships across data imitating the way our brain works. It’s used for fraud detection, risk analysis, sales predictions, and much more. Robotics is focused on designing and creating robots and it is mainly used in manufacturing and combining it with ML we can create robots that can interact at the social level. Expert Systems rely on the knowledge base and can deal with complex tasks, where one of its typical applications is spelling and error detection. Fuzzy Logic implements machine learning but is flexible, imitating human thought. NLP helps the communication between computers and humans using natural language.
How can AI help the global mobility industry?
We need to bring data science into the picture and integrate it into our work processes and systems. Many DSPs consider collecting data merely an additional workload. This might be true if you don’t plan to use it to your advantage. However, knowledge is power; what if you want to have an advantage? How can we benefit from all the information we collect? Imagine you collect feedback from your expats about the area where they live in, about commuting, schools attended by their kids, and about cultural and sports activity. Now apply data science to it, using AI, to detect patterns between expat nationality, age, skills, and the information mentioned above. How will this help me? You will be better prepared to welcome a new expat. You will know that the likelihood of an expat from a certain country, age, or set of skills will have a better experience living in a certain neighborhood, their children probably will prefer school A instead of school B, and so on. AI can also be very useful from a management perspective. It can help with cost projection, property appraisal, or measuring consultant performance, among other things. Detecting trends and insights will help RMCs and DSPs to deliver better future relocations and get more business. Even the moving industry, mainly in package handling, will benefit from adopting AI.
ML, NLP, and NN will be critical to help RMCs DSPs, achieve the desired advantages. Its adoption will also create the opportunity to have a more resilient system. MLOps will also have a chance to contribute. Modern systems must have the capability to learn, to be better, and more accurate. How? Having the capability to update the prediction models once more data is added, ensures we have more accurate insights.
Finally, how do we make sure we follow policies and data privacy restrictions? Data science also helps you with it. In fact, there are best practices that will ensure privacy restrictions are enforced and IT systems are also ready to handle it.
I strongly believe that the relocation industry will benefit from adopting AI. Current systems must adapt and fulfill a new purpose. These are indeed exciting times and early adopters will be for sure the first ones to benefit from the leverage AI can provide.
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