Brighterion: 2021 Was the Year of Adaptability

At a time when businesses need to be more flexible than ever, artificial intelligence may hold the key to bringing back-office functions up to speed to meet customer demand. Sudhir Jha, senior vice president and head of Brighterion, says finding the right platform partner can help finance teams meet the challenge. Read his thoughts in the PYMNTS eBook, “In a Word: 50 Thought Leaders Sum Up 2021.”

While many expected 2021 to remain somewhat challenging, the year had many more twists and turns than our wildest predictions. Every time we started to see COVID-19 in the rearview mirror, a new wave disrupted all our carefully thought-out plans. Adaptability became the only viable strategy and the one word that described how we navigated the year like none before.

One common example of adaptability across many businesses is the offering of hybrid products and services. For example, most of us participated in conferences or classes that were offered both virtually and in-person. Or we picked up boxed meals from restaurants that could be eaten at the restaurant or taken home. This flexibility allowed businesses to deal with the changing environment and customers’ comfort level with safety protocols. Combined with the advancement in digital and touchless payments that accelerated throughout the year, this fluidity drove strong commerce growth despite the challenges.

Businesses also realized the value of artificial intelligence (AI)-based solutions in making their decisioning system more nimble. Most rules-based systems could not react quickly to changing data patterns and failed to predict events or behaviors accurately. Whether it was fraud management, credit risk predictions, customer attritions or personalized offers, AI-based solutions performed much better in this environment. Although there continues to be some trepidation about the costs involved in developing and maintaining AI solutions in-house, many organizations have started exploring turnkey solutions for their specific challenges. 

Companies like Brighterion offer solutions with built-in AI models that can be deployed right away. This allows businesses to gain value from the solution while it keeps improving by processing more and more data. Agility and nimbleness will continue to be a competitive advantage, so wider adoption of AI solutions is likely to continue.

Finally, buy now, pay later (BNPL) is another example of adaptability on the part of merchants and lenders to meet the demands of customers who are looking for flexibility in payments and alternative credit solutions. Its rapid growth over the past few years underscores the demand for more payment innovations like these. AI and machine learning can help address any fraud or risk issues that may occur when implementing these innovations at scale and ensure that the risks are balanced against the advantages.

All the challenges and opportunities of 2020 and 2021 have prepared us well for the exciting times ahead. I am very optimistic that our growth will continue to lead us to great heights in 2022!