Xerox | Advanced Office Systems, Inc.

9
Feb

Xerox Research Labs Working on the Future in Retail

Imagine in the future when you’ll be greeted by a digital wall when you step into a store. Displaying a custom view of products that are personalized to your past purchases and recommended by people who share your interests. Touch any product on the screen, and get more information about it, including a demo video and customer reviews. Or you can request assistance from a store associate.

Add products to your virtual shopping cart, and a fulfillment process places the actual products in a bag waiting for you by the exit.

This scenario may not be possible yet as of today, but at Xerox, we are working on new technologies that will enable these kinds of experiences in the future.

The Xerox vision is personalized, real world, real time optimization will be present — a natively digital experience that digital natives have come to expect through their interactions with companies such as Amazon, Netflix, and Uber. These new types of brick-and-mortar stores will be “phygital” — all the features of an e-commerce website combined with the service and availability of a physical store.

Take a look below at some of the work in Xerox’s labs that will enable retail’s phygital future.

1. Video Analytics

Cameras, image processing and automated analytics will help retailers understand customers’ in-store browsing behavior. These insights will help retailers optimize their layout and merchandising, and it will help them understand the right time to send associates to help their customers.

2. Retail Robot

A robot that scans store shelves, automates signage checks, out of stocks, and merchandising compliance at a lower cost and with fewer errors.

3. Human-Computer Teams

Systems that combine the respective strengths of people and computers. Xerox is designing how the interaction between people and computers can make each better and more productive.

4. Virtual Assistants

Automated intelligent virtual assistants that can have conversations with people. Over time, the virtual assistant builds a shared context and understanding with the consumer. This will result in better service.

5. Hyper-Personalization

More than just understanding people by their behaviors and actions, Xerox is designing systems that understand your customers as individuals, including their personalities, so that you can tailor your communications styles.

6. Privacy-Preserving Analytics

Performing predictive analytics on encrypted data can deliver all the value of context-aware, personalized services without actually seeing your customer’s personal data information. Only with these types of advanced security technologies will users allow service providers to access and mine their data. This research is particularly valuable in a world where we use a variety of sensors to understand consumer behavior, ranging from cameras to wearables.

A Digital Native’s World

The future of retail is no doubt natively digital. It is about the integration of the physical and digital worlds to deliver personalized, real world, real time optimization.

So is it inevitable that machines will be replacing people in the future? No, in fact Xerox believe that even as computers get more capable to perform even complex tasks, the future will be about people and computers collaborating together as a team.

It is exciting to see glimpses of this future in the works. The future will surely be interesting.

by Lawrence Lee – Xerox Blogs

Edited by AOSI

28
Jan

How Regulation and Homebuyers are Transforming Mortgage Processes

Digital Processes Gain Traction as Millennials, Regulations Disrupt Home Buying: Xerox Survey

JAN 28, 2016 — FINANCE & ACCOUNTING SERVICES

NORWALK, Conn. — Today’s paper-intensive, home-financing process can seem old-fashioned to millennials and other borrowers accustomed to the effortless nature of today’s many digital services. While a paperless mortgage world remains a dream, an annual Xerox survey reveals an accelerated pace toward making it a possible reality.Three Key findings in the 11^th annual Xerox Path to Paperless Survey pointing to a rapidly changing mortgage landscape include:

Accelerated Paperless Delivery Adoption: About 78% of the mortgage professionals polled have technology in place for eDelivery of disclosures or other documents to borrowers — an increase of 15% from the past year.
More Borrowers to Receive Documents Electronically: An overwhelming majority of respondents; 92% expect an increase in their use of eDelivery as a result of the TILA-RESPA Integrated Disclosures rule, helping offset closing delays as the industry adapts to the new regulation (only 15% cited a smooth implementation of TRID).
eMortgage Optimism Rising: More than half of respondents (51%), compared to 33% the prior year, believe that half of all loans will be closed as eMortgages in four years or less.

“While completely digital mortgages are not yet the norm, our survey shows continued movement away from shuffling paper from one desk to another and toward online platforms that enhance communication between all parties at every stage of the loan,” said Jeffrey Nuckols, senior vice president of Xerox Financial Services. “The new regulatory effort to improve the mortgage process comes at a time ripe for engaging today’s borrowers who increasingly demand an interactive, digital experience.”

Additional survey findings supporting the path to paperless include:

Millennial Engagement: With millennials representing the largest segment of recent homebuyers[1], the majority (51%) of respondents have applied new business strategies or introduced new technologies to appeal specifically to this tech-savvy generation (common ages 18 to 34). A social media presence (51%) and a consumer portal (43%) are the most popular implementations among respondents to attract millennials.
Going Mobile:32% of respondents are leveraging smartphones and mobile tablets in their business transactions – doubling from 16% in 2014.
Simplifying Signatures Remains Key: eAcknowledgment and eSignatures is considered “very important” by 61% of mortgage professionals – making it the top-rated feature in technology evaluations for the 2nd consecutive year. This feature allows borrowers to sign a virtual document and eliminates the need for lenders to tote and manually track paper documents.

Xerox’s BlitzDocs^® intelligent, cloud-based network simplifies the mortgage process by integrating all parties involved throughout the loans lifecycle – from origination to closing to servicing. Its collaborative, paperless capabilities support the mortgage industry’s path to eMortgage adoption.

Complete results of the Path to Paperless Survey are available online herewww.xerox-xms.com. The blind, online survey was conducted within the US in October of 2015 on behalf of Xerox Mortgage Services and surveyed professionals who work in origination, servicing and other mortgage areas.

Xerox