2_0_DiscoverGermany_July 2015_Issue28:Scan Magazine 1
26/6/15
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Page 96
Discover Germany | Special Theme | Perfect Software Partners
Portrait: Marc Vontobel (left), Starmind Founder and CTO and Pascal Kaufmann (right), Starmind Founder and CEO Below: Based on the query of an employee, Starmind’s know-how management system autonomously identifies the proper contact within a company
aged because they do not know each other. Boosting corporate efficiency with a selflearning corporate brain With Starmind, when an employee has a question it is fed to an intelligent corporate brain and the question gets analysed and automatically forwarded to the right person within the company who the algorithm has identified as the suitable expert. Through rating the quality of the answer,“the system continuously shapes the organisational know-how map”, Marc Vontobel, Starmind Founder and CTO adds. Semantic analysis allows Starmind to find out what a question is about, then this knowledge is stored in a “corporate brain", so that a next similar question can automatically be directed to the correct person. By gathering information this way, very precise profiles of experts are automatically developed and Starmind learns with every interaction.
Brain technology pioneers from Switzerland It was only recently that one could carry 1,000 songs in one’s pocket. Today organisations are dreaming of when they will be able to compress the know-how of their smartest people and access it at the touch of a fingertip from anywhere, at any given time. Starmind, a Swiss company and leading pioneer in corporate Brain Technology, has made this knowledge accessible. TEXT: NANE STEINHOFF | PHOTOS: STARMIND INTERNATIONAL AG
Based on self-learning technology which applies the latest insights from artificial intelligence, brain and neural network research, Starmind has developed an awardwinning and innovative way to network and map internal know-how for large corporations. With roots at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) in Zurich, Starmind was founded by entrepreneurs Marc Vontobel and Pascal Kaufmann in 2010, currently with offices in Zurich, Frankfurt and New York. Pascal Kaufmann, a neuroscience graduate with the vision ‘to
96 | Issue 28 | July 2015
think with the power of 1,000 brains’, together with computer scientist Marc Vontobel, who created Starmind’s algorithms, they formed the perfect match for an innovative business undertaking. “We believe there are answers for each question and that this knowledge should be accessible to each company employee,” Pascal Kaufmann, Starmind Founder and CEO, explains. Often when an employee in subsidiary A has expertise in a certain area, which is required by an employee in subsidiary B, this knowledge remains unlever-
“This gives a competitive advantage. Organisations will achieve significant cost reductions by better leveraging their existing internal expertise to reduce dependency on external resources. Internal proceedings become also much more efficient,”Marc Vontobel says. It also links time savings with salary costs and frees up time for other tasks, as well as retaining know-how as the corporate memory automatically stores the expertise. Starmind is currently in use in over 40 countries by various high-profile companies. The application meets the highest industry standards and hosted onpremise solutions are available. www.starmind.com