What do industry-leading companies like FedEx, Siemens, Cisco, and Mitsubishi all have in common? The answer has nothing to do with revenue goals or global reach—these companies are all past recipients of the Frost & Sullivan Product Leadership Award. After navigating an unprecedented year for virtually every industry, SparkCognition™ has officially joined the club. We are honored to take home the top award for the cognitive analytics and artificial intelligence industry.
For background, these annual awards recognize companies that have created products with “innovative features and functionality” that also achieve real-world results such as ”rapid market acceptance” and “[enhancing] customer value.” According to Brian Schettler, Managing Director at Boeing HorizonX Ventures, “SparkCognition’s cutting-edge technology has enabled it to solve some of the toughest problems in the world.”
SMART SOLUTIONS
Frost and Sullivan evaluate candidates based on a wide-reaching list of nine criteria encompassing both the product and its business impact. Winning product elements include things like the product “[serving] a unique, unmet need that competitors cannot easily replicate” and having a design that “[enhances] both visual appeal and ease of use.” A winning product must also have a concrete positive impact, such as sparking “strong overall financial performance… in terms of revenues, revenue growth, operating margin, and other key financial metrics.” SparkCognition earned recognition not for any one innovation; we earned the award for our entire suite of AI products—the Darwin® automated machine learning product, the DeepArmor® cybersecurity product, the DeepNLP™ natural language processing product, and the SparkPredict® predictive analytics product.
Major Exploration and Production (E&P) Operator
Frost & Sullivan explicitly cited two real-world case studies. First, one E&P company in the oil and gas industry relied on the Darwin product to prioritize maintenance tasks to concentrate on its most productive wells. Working with SparkCognition, this company was able to develop cognitive models that could predict well maintenance, production, and events accurately. The engineers leveraging the Darwin product were ultimately able to predict rod change, workover, and cleaning operations requirements in 12 out of 17 wells across its field with up to 80% accuracy. These results allowed the company both to better plan in advance and to lower operating expenses, which generally led to expensive emergency repairs and maintenance, too.
Aker BP
In another cited case study, a different E&P company championed its experience using our SparkPredict product. The SparkPredict product uses machine learning and predictive analytics to analyze sensor data and accurately predict impending failures, thus giving companies a chance to prevent unplanned downtime. In particular, the SparkPredict product helped Aker BP to more easily utilize data and advanced analytics to make informed maintenance decisions that improve the availability of their offshore production assets. In this instance, they effectively improved the stability of a multi-phase pump on an unmanned platform, saving over USD $5 million.
THE PANDEMIC PIVOT
Regarding navigating the uncertain reality of the COVID-19 era, Frost & Sullivan wrote, “Successful companies overcome the challenges posed and leverage them to drive innovation and growth.” Recognizing SparkCognition’s work, the firm said, “[This award] is a reflection of how well SparkCognition is performing against the backdrop of these imperatives.”
For those in the AI industry, the pandemic has slowed robotics development (a common place for AI application), and the budget freezes this situation has caused mean new initiatives such as research and development have often been put on indefinite pause. For SparkCognition specifically, COVID-19 meant finding a way to maintain momentum with our core business while things behind the scenes shifted drastically. Our employees, processes, and structures rapidly adapted to a work-from-home model, and facilities previously used to build and test products suddenly pivoted to activities like churning out personal protective equipment (PPE) or building intelligent sensors for ventilator prototypes.
Within 2020 alone, we have filed 29 new patents. Just last summer, we began partnerships with global companies like Siemens and Cendana Digital. Even in SparkCognition’s most unexpected and unusual year to date, our team has found a way to keep growing.
“With the accelerating Internet of Things and artificial intelligence application and digitalization, customers require secure and interactive tools to ensure large data volumes transfer, advanced data privacy, and monitoring of their most crucial assets. SparkCognition is at the forefront of providing such industry-leading AI solutions for companies across defense, aviation, building, and other segments enabling customers to reach higher efficiency and reduce their operational and maintenance costs significantly.” – Frost & Sullivan