During the past 6 months we proceeded on with the assessment of the technical, operational and economic viability of “GDC+”, as core action of the SME Ph1 objective.
The activities carried out to assess the project dealt with the following:
▶ Economic viability (priority level, strategic to the Ph1 objective): confirming the hypothesis related to the present Business Model as well as the “GDC+” potentials to penetrate the European domain; this enabled us to elaborate a Business Plan (BP) as route to successfully enter the market.
▶ Technical feasibility of the framework (secondary level);
At business and operational level, we carried out a series of activities investigating core issues as regard market, potential customers, key partners, key distribution channels, IPR issues as well as promotion and dissemination activities.
Step #1: we conducted a sound in-house market research analysis, resulting in the identification of market potentials, relevant industry applications, target audiences;
Step #2: we carried out a detailed customer segmentation, resulting in a crystal-clear scenario of our target groups, archetype personas and related “gains&pains”;
Step #3: we consolidated our Business Model and revenue model, enabling us to assess and fine-tune our market penetration strategy and to define costs/benefits stream;
Step #4: we elaborated our marketing strategy (market penetration strategy, policy price), including promotion and communication activities to engage users/customers, resulting in a first pre-commercialisation plan.
Step #5: we intensified our on-going relevant partnerships with key-players (still on-going), resulting in robust relationships facilitating the market entry;
Step #6: we conducted a detailed IPR study and regulatory investigation, resulting in the assessment of a first complete IPR management plan.
On a technical level, we tested the actual prototype efficiency as follow.
Step #1: Tests for validating the question answering capacity performed together with BancaSella Holding (specific skills in financials), University of Salerno (specific skills in informatics, linguistics, data analysis), University of Reggio Emilia (DISMI, Sciences and Methods of Engineering – specific skills in Big Data Dynamics, Analytics, Intelligence), EBAN (specific interest in morphological analysis, network dynamics, multi-dimensional problem solving approach, decision making matrix and solutions), e-Residency (specific capacity in e-governance, secure identity management, security/privacy issues, decentralised services). The validation of tests and performance was achieved through reiterated routines, routing analytics, and circulation of ad-hoc surveys.
Step #2: Periodic internal (X23 lab) tests to further assess the technical feasibility of the framework and validate main functional points (technical requirements/functional points). As a result, screening bugs and implementation issues, were checked, validated.
Step #3: “GDC+” features and functions on-going testing to cope with current industrial needs. The results of these activities allowed us to understand wether the innovative mechanism, as well as the novel hybrid (human~machine, unstructured~structured) approach of “GDC+”, can provide tangible added value to our potential users/customers. This is extremely important when our framework is applied and used within the industrial and financial domain [private equity, investment sectors, bank system, quantitative finance, real economy], as well as other (crucial) fields where sub-granularity of data analytics in process, multidimensional scaling, high frequency secure transactions, decentralisation of services and systems, blockchain technology, are requested. In particular, we applied further specific routines, factor analysis, model checking, validation tests to: healthcare sector, and the market field of “complex integrated, data-driven digital-tourism” (—> see in the next paragraphs)], where customer intelligence can disrupt the entire value-chain.
Step #4: Through the cooperation with the above mentioned partners, we validated the capacity of “GDC+” in exploiting unstructured Big Data processing, and the powerful integration with the human layer of “hounds” (human-ware>against
Results achieved so far: Technical Assessment (TA) and Economic Feasibility Analysis (EFA) resulted in the actual stage of “GDC+” framework which is organised in several components.
The intense work carried out and the outcomes achieved showed us that we will have to refine a few mid-term targets at both commercial and technical level to be further implemented in the SME Ph2 project, i.e.:
● Transaction(s) High Frequency(-ies) [specific ranges to improve]; HCP - High Computational Performances [Urgent Computing for Decision Support in Critical Situations; (some types of-) Data Uncertainty; (private) Repositories Standards]; NLP Analytical Models, Text Analysis, Text Mining, Unstructured and Semi-Structured Data Parsing, Transformation, Integration Process; GUI (Graphic User Interface), AUI / ABUI (Advanced (Behavioural) User Interface) Tools; Algorithms – Heuristic Analysis with Behavioural Whitelisting, Meta-heuristics, Genetic;
● Experts involvement, Network Spread Index – (assessment), improving measures, gamification methodology, spillover effects, Internationalisation Spread Index (assessment);
● Block-chain technology – fully integration of probabilistic transactions, nano-transactions, Bitcoin (crypto-currencies) enabling payment(s), security-protected billing and transactions, sub-granular and “dust” dynamics, crypto-mashup.