Beyond common features like ML and automation, CRM products can vary dramatically as each vendor takes AI in its own direction. The following AI-powered CRM platforms -- including Salesforce Einstein, IMB Watson and Azure Cognitive Services -- have their own strengths and weaknesses. Salesforce Einstein is the vendor's AI that powers many features in the Salesforce Customer Success Platform. Einstein's weaknesses include modest visualization features and limited or unproven utility beyond the sales and marketing domains. IBM Watson is an AI system that organizations can apply in various use cases, such as advertising, customer service, financial operations and sales.

My co-author Henry King and I have been asked several times since launching our series on Flow whether the model can tell us anything about the coronavirus pandemic as it is currently being defined by the WHO (as of March 15, 2020). We aren't health professionals, so we are reluctant to comment on the virus, how it works and spreads, or on medical interventions and antiviral technologies. But we can make observations about the emerging, and now normalizing, response to the virus at least in the USA, what we may learn from it, and what, if any, long term implications there might be for business and our society more generally. From cancelled conferences to disrupted supply chains, not a corner of the global economy is immune to the spread of COVID-19. The mandate we have all been given, from health professionals, from politicians, from our employers, is "stay at home".

Oracle have been steadily and quietly working on AI for the better part of the last two decades. It started as an initiative to apply intelligent automation to back-end Oracle infrastructure maintenance.