Context for a Connected World: A look back at QuanCon 2020

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230 attendees. Six speakers. One mission: to create context for a connected world.

Held in the impressive backdrop of Illuminate at The Science Museum, QuanCon 2020 connected industry experts and global organizations to explore the game-changing impact of ‘Context for a Connected World.’ Focusing on the ever-growing volumes of data, the evening highlighted the importance of creating context to connect the dots and gain value from all this information.

‘Our mission is to identify and connect the relationships that matter the most to empower all organizations to make better decisions.’

– Vishal Marria, CEO at Quantexa

Everyone leaves a footprint

All around us, everyone leaves a footprint – and we can see that footprint in the data. Global data is growing exponentially and, according to IDC, there will be more than 175 zettabytes (that’s 175 trillion gigabytes!) of data by 2025. It’s difficult to imagine 175 zettabytes of data, but as explained by Senior Vice President, David Reinsel at IDC, “If one were able to store 175ZB onto BluRay discs, then you’d have a stack of discs that can get you to the moon 23 times.“ Just two years ago, there was only 33 zettabytes of global data, showing a compounded annual growth rate of 61%!

So, how can we gain value form this data and convert it into actionable knowledge?

With an all-star line-up of speakers at QuanCon 2020, we explored these key challenges and ways to overcome these growing issues.

The future of Intelligence

Kickstarting the presentations, our keynote speaker, Neil Ward-Dutton, Vice President, AI and DX European Research Practices at IDC, discussed the future of intelligence and the impact of context on decision making. Focusing on the future of how businesses process data, the key is all about taking raw facts about people, places and other entities, and building context to understand the connections and relationships between the entities.

Global Co-Head Financial Crime Compliance at Standard Chartered Bank, David Howes, highlighted the importance of forming partnerships in the fight against financial crime. This fight is not an easy one, as the digital landscape not only involves more data, but increased fragmentation across multiple players. But, by using context to move away from siloed investigations and creating partnerships, we can make progress in catching sophisticated financial criminals.

Anthony Scriffignano, PH.D., SVP & Chief Data Scientist at Dun & Bradstreet, provided compelling insights on advanced anomaly detection and how businesses need to change their focus in a more connected, complex and challenging environment. Before we understand how things are connected, we need to understand what they mean, and this proves to be one of the greatest challenges in investigating clusters of unusual behavior. By utilizing contextual analytics, businesses can adopt the right approach needed to break through the huge volumes of noisy data.

Markus Schulz, Global Head Change Management Financial Crime Compliance at ING Bank, focused on connecting the dots within data. Financial institutions are failing to make progress in realizing the value of data. As a result, a fundamental rethink is required in not only the technology that we are using, but how we can go beyond the siloes that we operate in today. Financial institutions of the future need to realize they are data companies, requiring the enrichment of global networks enhanced through public-private partnerships and the need to utilize context to gain real value from data.

Mehmet Orun, Senior Director of Product Management at Salesforce built upon the importance of connecting the right dots, but focused on the other side of fraud: data stewardship and governance. Analyzing data and overcoming quality barriers is not just about detecting anomalies, but requires a need to address how we can overcome these challenges on a continuous basis. Organizations need to use dynamic entity resolution to bring together multiple internal and external data sources to create a single view of the customer.

Rounding up the evening, CTO at Quantexa, Jamie Hutton, showcased some of Quantexa’s latest product innovations followed by a live demo. Leading in the industry for entity resolution and specializing in networks, scoring and visualization, we are continuously adapting and developing our platform for best-in-class solutions, strengthening real-time data analysis for better decisions.

Each speaker provided their own unique snippets of knowledge surrounding the changing nature of digital everything, including predictions for the future and beyond. With the continued growth of data, we can see the future is already here. But, the key takeaway is ensuring that businesses are increasingly moving towards efficient, effective and contextual processes. With financial crime in our heritage, this all leads to part of the bigger picture in our ongoing efforts to solve real-word problems by using context to tackle financial crime. We have amazing technology at our fingertips and data quality problems should not be a barrier to making true progress. We need to utilize the right tools and understand the power of context to make better decisions.

Following on from our inspiring presentations, we had the opportunity to enjoy food, drinks and a live jazz band. Our live demo stations showcased our solutions across Trade and Markets AML, Customer Intelligence, Investigations and Know-Your-Customer. If you didn’t have a chance to see a demo on the evening, please get in touch to book a demo from one our experts.

Take a look at our gallery of images from the evening.

Thank you for everyone who attended, and we look forward to seeing you all again next year for an even bigger and better QuanCon!