The overarching term "artificial intelligence (AI)" is a hub with many spokes. One of the most exciting of these from a business perspective is machine learning. As I explained in my first blog in the series, at its most basic, machine learning involves'teaching' a computer to learn and change when given a vast amount of data. The computer is not necessarily explicitly programmed for these changes, but instead learns to spot patterns and make connections. Therefore, the machine learns (get it?)

In financial services, the near future will see a shift in power toward the customer. That was the general consensus among SAP and the bankers and insurers participating in the first SAP Next-Gen Boot Camp on Machine Learning in Financial Services, held at the SAP Innovation Center Potsdam last week. Forty-six SAP customers from banking and insurance gathered to discuss the current and future challenges these sectors face, as well as to gain hands-on experience as to how machine learning can help master them. Machine learning and artificial intelligence provide unheard-of opportunities to banks and insurers to gain actionable insights from the large amounts of data they are dealing with on a daily basis. Banking is currently experiencing the need to accommodate the wishes of a generation who expects to have "a bank on their phone" (Stephen Lofthouse, University College London), a development that FinTech startups have caught on to much faster.

Machine Learning is no longer a thing of the future. It's here now, and SAP is putting it in your hands. SAP Clea is a revolutionary new machine learning-enabled intelligence that allows new levels of automation and new ways of doing business. SAP systems touch more than 70 percent of the world's business transactions. Incorporating Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning into enterprise software opens the opportunity to simplify employees' everyday lives and to grow your business.