We chat to Principa’s Chief Executive Officer, Jaco Rossouw, about the thrilling new world of data and how businesses can work wonders with data-driven insights.

Here’s what we discovered:

We live in this wonderful new world of technology, AI and data, but what does this new and exciting world of wonders mean in Principa?

The time we are living in today, we see technology fusing the digital, physical and biological worlds. This is what is commonly referred to as the 4th industrial revolution. Now this might sound foreign or strange, but it’s not, it’s already part of our everyday life. The fitness tracker that you are wearing is linked to your medical service provider. The data generated by that device is used to reward you with free coffee or muffins based on your behavior. It’s a great example of digitizing biological feedback and using it to drive a retention strategy. Another example would be a tracker installed in your car, that feeds data back to your vehicle insurance provider. The data could be used for either tracking down a stolen car or for lowering your insurance premiums based on your driving habits. This is an example of physical data being used to inform pricing strategies.

For Principa, the journey is really to understand how can we simplify the complex. How do we find value in data? How can we package that value in a way that is easy to consume and that delivers data-driven decisioning? So it’s all about efficiency, automation and data-driven insights.

This sounds fascinating, but what does this mean for larger and especially for smaller organisations?

That’s a good question and that’s where it gets exciting, especially for SME’s. None of this is new to the tier 1 financial services providers, retail banks and retail credit providers. They have been in this world for many years and they’ve always invested in technology and data science. So a lot of the words are new, but the science is fairly well established.

What has happened with this explosion in technology processing power, as well as the availability of data is that it has became a lot more accessible. (Click to Tweet!) We are looking at software and application pricing models that are really supportive of small and medium businesses: usage-based models. That makes it easy to implement data-driven decisioning within your business.

From a Principa perspective, what we would really like to talk to you about is what is the question that has the power to transform your business? What limit to give to a specific customer, what is the probability of default, or what is the exact amount that you should contract with a debtor that would give you the best yields: these are the questions that we want to answer with the available data. At Principa, we use data to predict human behavior. Human behavior translates into making the right decision, at the right time, at the right point of your engagement with a customer. (Click to Tweet!) 

If you’re interested in finding out more or would like to discuss how Principa can help your business answer the questions you need to be answered, get in touch. 

Videography by Retroyspective.