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>> Traditionally, the proposal management process

has been plagued by disparate data sources,

manual processes, and lack of collaboration across groups.

Despite the rise of industrial lending,

lenders who are struggling with

their loan processes wind up

with missed lending opportunities,

dissatisfied customers, and employees

burdened by highly manual and iterative processes.

Without digitization, it's estimated

that some banking staff still spend about 80%

of their time on repetitive and manual tasks.

Introducing Microsoft's Proposal Manager solution.

It helps kickstart the transformation lenders need

to complete more lending cycles without compromising

on risk assessments and to remain disciplined

in a competitive market.

Built on Microsoft 365,

Proposal Manager is fully customizable,

so lending teams can easily

create professional, winning proposals,

streamline and accelerate the process,

and improve productivity and teamwork.

Here's how it works.

Meet Robin, a loan officer.

She's using Proposal Manager

to assemble and collaborate with

the deal team to create

a proposal for a prospective client.

With Proposal Manager, she can

ensure the team captures client needs on the go

while keeping the proposal moving forward from anywhere.

By incorporating team members who

have a deep understanding of the client

and legal and compliance teams to

manage risk and compliance processes,

she can easily engage people with the right expertise.

She can build a detailed workflow with key tasks,

content owners, and schedule.

Built in tracking and notifications make it easy to keep

the proposal progress moving seamlessly

and meet tight deadlines.

Risk and compliance approval processes

are simplified with pre-built workflows,

checklists, and the ability to link

document repositories to to-do items.

It is easy to collaborate and co-author

the draft proposal by assigning

sections of content to the expert on the team,

ensuring key tasks are completed on time and securely.

They can seamlessly edit, iterate,

and track proposal content across the group

while ensuring the completeness

and consistency of documentation,

pricing, risk, and proposal terms and conditions.

The proposal drafting process harnesses

disparate data through links to

external sources such as market data

so that the content in the document is always up to date.

Before Proposal Manager,

data fragmentation made it very difficult

for Robin and her team to be agile,

accurate, and compliant.

Now, they can secure final sign offs to present

the formal commitment letter

and record the client decision.

Built on Microsoft 365,

Proposal Manager helps lending teams

better meet client needs

by delivering more effective collaboration.

Proposal Manager enables lending organizations

to engage the right people and resources,

to transform proposals into an agile,

collaborative, secure, client-centered process.

This enables loan officers like Robin to put together

the most compelling proposals to enhance

the customer experience and grow revenue,

all without requiring significant IT involvement.

To learn more about Proposal Manager,

visit aka.ms/ProposalManager.

For more infomation >> Proposal Manager solution for financial services - Duration: 3:17.

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Accenture AI Testing Services: Teach and Test - Duration: 6:16.

ROGER MAGOULAS: We are here to talk about AI and we understand that there

is an AI imperative you have been working on.

You can tell me a little about it.

KISHORE DURG: As you look at a lot of these AI systems that are being built, these systems

are being built for businesses which are taking decisions, and it's impacting human lives.

So, the clear imperative is that these systems that are being built need to be transparent,

responsive, have to align with some of the societal values that are out there, and essentially

ethically they' are taking the right decisions.

The imperative for us is to ensure that the systems, as they are built, are in the right

track.

It's just like, you know, when you look at a kid which has to be taught the right things,

between right and wrong, the right values from a societal perspective, and you want

to ensure that they do grow up to be strong adults who contribute to the society.

We look at the systems similarly.

The imperative for us is – how do we ensure these systems are responsive, and they imbibe

the societal values.

ROGER MAGOULAS: So, you're making a compelling case for that, but it's also why should businesses

care about this.

KISHORE DURG: 92% of the business executives said: oh, we really want to get customers'

trust, we want to win their trust, lot of the growth comes from a lot of our customers

trusting our businesses.

And, aligned to that customers have to trust you, you need to ensure that your systems

are supporting that trust imperative.

And that's, that's exactly why businesses need to care, because we've seen a lot of

things that have gone bad.

A lot of the conversational agents aren't learning things they should be learning, and

there have been cases of autonomous vehicles going off-track, there have been cases where

you have machine-learning algorithms picking up the wrong behavior.

So, you know, businesses, if they are going to implement these AI systems AI systems,

we believe that they need to care, because customers trust businesses which have verifiable,

explainable, trustworthy systems.

That's a big imperative for business.

ROGER MAGOULAS: So how does the Accenture Teach and Test framework raise responsible

AI systems.

Raise is a good term given in the analogy with kids.

KISHORE DURG: When you raise these AI systems and just like kids, you need to teach it the

right way.

One of the things that we need to be worried about, lot of the AI systems right now have

gender bias, racial bias, ethnic biases.

And lot of the corpus of data that is used to train them are done by humans.

When you actually use the same data to train these AI systems, you're going to perpetuate

the biases that you have, into a system.

Now this could be different in different parts of the world, but essentially what we have

is a Teach phase in which we try to neutralize a lot of these biases.

Since you have a corpus of data, which is neutral to the biases that are out there,

that is what we call it the Teach phase.

And in the Test phase, just like kids, kids make mistakes as they learn new things, they're

going out of your house, they're learning a lot and picking up a lot of new things.

And when kids make mistakes, we teach them how to do it.

And similarly, for the AI systems we have the Test phase, so we monitor for behaviors

that are not ethically right, and we address it.

So, it's a very simple concept of Teach and Test.

It's just like bringing up your kids.

ROGER MAGOULAS: I was curious in any reference to reinforcement learning, hearing the describing,

it sounds a little like it.

KISHORE DURG: It is very aligned with that, and I'm trying to simplify it for us, so that

people can understand what exactly means.

It's a very complicated algorithm in terms of how we debias these systems, how we address

these biases.

There is also metamorphic testing that we use for some of the algorithm issues that

are out there.

So, in a simplified way, we're looking at how you raise kids, you need to ensure that

the systems behave similarly.

ROGER MAGOULAS: That's great.

You know, a use case will probably help explain this.

KISHORE DURG: Sure.

I mean, just taking autonomous vehicles.

And if you look at it, you know how you need to ensure that these systems know there's

a stop or there.

It's not that you could be able to train everything.

It would take one and after two years to actually train the systems to get every possible conditions

that are out there.

And there are cases where you are actually putting them out for the human to test them,

and obviously.

They may not end up with the most likely alternative in terms of what you would like it to be,

because there are unknown parameters that you would have never taken care as you validate

the systems.

So, one of the constants we have there, is around knowledge to presentation, qualitative

reasoning, bringing that together with machine learning is a way to go to address these systems

that are out there on autonomous sites.

And essentially, that will help us understand the knowledge gaps and reasoning on why it

took a decision the way it took, and builds in transparency, in the decision making.

And that is something that we have been working on.

Similarly on the data part of the equation we have been working with banks to kind of

develop virtual agents which are neutralized from a gender bias, racial bias and others,

so that the corpus of data that's used to train these agents are neutral in nature and

unbiased, and as they pick up and learn, we do look at monitoring of the activities that

are out there.

So even a virtual agent can go rouge.

That's a very simple way of looking at, you know, these systems that are out there.

You need parenting.

You need to raise them properly, and it needs some governance.

And that's the construct of responsible AI.

For more infomation >> Accenture AI Testing Services: Teach and Test - Duration: 6:16.

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Mike Larkin - Cheshire Fire and Rescue Services 'Safe and Well' intervention - Duration: 2:20.

For more infomation >> Mike Larkin - Cheshire Fire and Rescue Services 'Safe and Well' intervention - Duration: 2:20.

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Services for fallen Brookhaven officers - Duration: 0:28.

For more infomation >> Services for fallen Brookhaven officers - Duration: 0:28.

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Verizon 5G Services - Duration: 0:59.

For more infomation >> Verizon 5G Services - Duration: 0:59.

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The newest car trend isn't electric. It's subscription services - Duration: 9:43.

Imagine this: a gleaming new car is delivered to your doorstep with a full tank of gas

The baby's car seat is securely buckled in the back. Your favorite radio stations are pre-programmed

Next month another car shows up. And again. And again. The latest trend in the auto industry is not electric or self-driving vehicles

It's subscription services. Instead of a three-year car lease, consumers agree to monthly contracts

All vehicle maintenance costs and insurance fees are bundled into one payment. There are no long-term commitments

A new car can be yours with a tap on an app. A handful of carmakers including , , , Volvo and Lincoln are already testing these membership programs to build brand loyalty and gain an edge over the competition

Rebecca Lindland, executive analyst at Kelley Blue Book, describes subscription memberships this way

"It's an evolution of mobility," she told ABC News. "You're paying for flexibility

Car ownership is no longer measured in years." launched its subscription service, Access by , this spring in Nashville

It offers three tiers of membership, ranging in price from $1,099 to $2,699 per month

Want to try out that ridiculously fast M5? It's included in the highest price "M tier," which also gives drivers the ability to take home the German automaker's i3 electric car and new X2 SUV

('s i8 supercar, unfortunately, is excluded.) A company spokesman would not divulge numbers but said feedback from customers has been "heavily positive

" "Consumers are looking at vehicle ownership in new ways," he said. "The service allows members to switch in and out of the vehicles anytime and anywhere

and as often as desired." According to Court Kasten, manager of Access by in Nashville, participants in the pilot program are switching out their vehicles twice a month on average

Many are first-time clients. "There are plenty of customers who have never driven a before," he said

"Others are longtime guys. They value the simplicity and flexibility." could decide within a year to expand the program beyond Nashville and it has already been forced to tweak it

The M tier now costs $1,000 less than its original $3,700 price and the Legend tier was slashed by $600

A third, more "affordable" tier, was also added. The biggest barrier to this service is price, Lindland noted, adding that subscription programs are often three or four times the price of a regular lease

There could also be an unintended effect on consumers. "The risk is that people could become less emotionally attached to their vehicles," she warned

"It's a new mindset and a totally different animal." According to a recent study by Cox Automotive, one in four drivers has heard of car subscription services

Generation Z and millennials found the subscription model the most appealing compared to Gen X and baby boomers

has been testing its BOOK by subscription service in New York, Los Angeles and Dallas

For $1,800 a month and a one-time initiation fee of $500, members can choose from a variety of models by making a selection on 's app

Eighteen vehicle swaps are permitted in one year and driving mileage is limited to 2,000 miles per month

Ninety percent of BOOK by customers are new to the brand, according to Christopher Smith, a spokesman

More importantly, the program has helped shed 's stodgy image. "We are trying to attract a younger demographic with this," he said

"They want this flexibility. We're making this as easy and seamless as possible." Drivers in the Atlanta metro area have the option of signing up for Passport, the German sports car maker's subscription program

Need to impress someone? The 911 Carrera S is yours. Going on a road trip? Take your pick of the Cayenne or Macan SUV

Twenty-two different models are available for a monthly price of $3,000. Or pay $2,000 for eight s

Having the ability to drive a new car every week or every few months can be tempting

Who doesn't love that new car smell? But these programs also make driving a little less personal

There's no customization. What if you want a black M5 instead of red one? How would you feel about a stranger moving your personal belongings from one car to the next? "We have a lot of stuff in our cars," Lindland noted

"It's our storage bin." Current drivers may not be swayed by these subscription models

But automakers are preparing for the future. "This service is a little ahead of its time," Lindland said

"Drivers today may not see the value in this service. But it will start to gain traction

In 10 years people may not need to buy cars."