“Computer: How’s our cashflow looking?”

Computer: Your near-term picture looks good, but next quarter could get ugly: Several major contracts are up for renewal, and all of those clients are non-responsive recently. That behavior indicates likely churn, which will cause significant disruption to working capital.”

“Hmm… what we can do about that?”

Computer: You should consider selling your unused assets, or do some targeted layoffs in operations. Our recent workflow optimizations have created numerous redundancies in supply chain processes. You also have several under-performing contractors whose agreements can be canceled immediately. Those actions combined can buy you at least three more months.

“Excellent. Make it so!”

The Future Is Here Already…

Fans of Star Trek know and love the boldness of Captains Kirk, Picard and Janeway (her voice!), but most probably thought we’d never experience such forward-looking dialogue between humans and machines. Well, buckle up, stargazers. It’s here!

As someone who’s covered Enterprise IT for all of this millennium and then some, I can tell you without question: We made it! The future envisioned in those legendary sci-fi television shows (and movies) can now be reasonably allocated to the present! And, to quote legendary philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein:

“Death is not an event in life. We do not live to experience death. If we take eternity to mean not infinite temporal duration, but timelessness, then eternal life belongs to those in the present!”

Boom!

That powerful passage comes from his Tractatus Logico Philosophicus, a remarkable tome in which the author demonstrated mathematically everything that can be said. One could argue that his vision has now come to life in the form of Large (and even Small) Language Models.

To wit: these linguistically focused foundational models convert text into vectors, then reflect back mathematically generated text based upon prompts. WIth the use of sophisticated RAG models (Retrieval Augmented Generation), that generated text can be very accurate.

Which brings us to…

The Executive Cockpit!

Just like those starship Captains of the future, today’s executives can now wield tremendous power right from their computers, even with vocal commands. They can gather up vast troves of information, even from a range of far-flung systems, at a moment’s notice, and then take action.

It’s hard to explain just how massive and amazing this shift really is. Look at it this way: What once took whole teams of people days if not weeks, poring over countless dashboards and reports, manually stitching together hundreds or even thousands of data points…

… can now be done with a quick question and a rapid-fire, incredibly detailed, fully drillable and verifiable answer, delivered in any number of human languages, just like that. Bam! And then, that executive can take action to address whatever insight has just been ascertained!

“Computer: Please set up a meeting with all my regional VPs, and prepare a 5-page report detailing our recent supply chain optimizations, our current and projected cash flow, and highlights about our personnel issues in operations. And add some charts to show our options.”

…It’s Just Not Evenly Distributed

So, the big question is: How? What can be done to achieve this kind of amazing, lightning-fast leadership mechanism? The answer is relatively straightforward:

Every smart company will convert some portion of their data center to deploy a private, well suited Small Language Model, then train it on their Data Warehouse, ERP, CRM, Salesforce, Customer Support, and other critical systems, ideally via automated, detailed report generation.

Then, set up Kafka Topics from all those systems into an adjacent Vector Database (I’m told KX is the best). Create a sophisticated RAG model to enforce data quality, governance, security, and compliance. Slap a snazzy UI on top, and… Voila! You have the Executive Cockpit™!

Sound too good to be true? It isn’t. Drop me a line, and I’ll show you how! Let’s ride the razor’s edge of innovation to boldly go where no one has gone before!

p.s. Are you going to Boomi World? If so, find me there this week!

About Eric Kavanagh

Career media professional who designs and manages an array of Web-based research and media products, including: The Briefing Room, World Matters, Hot Technologies; as well as DM Radio & InsideAnalysis which are both now broadcast coast-to-coast in 25+ markets, reaching upwards of 1 million listeners per episode. Recognized as a luminary in the field of Big Data. Recognized by Techopedia and Big Data Republic as one of the top experts to follow on Twitter