Sage CRM 2023 R1 – A sneak peek at the new Company Narrative feature now in development.

1 minute read time.

We have a new feature for Sage CRM 2023 R1 called the Narrative Tab. 
The option will appear in the Company tab menu.  It will turn company data, including ad hoc relationship information into a summary.  The summary will appear like a blog that depending on how much text is generated, will take between one minute and seven minutes to read. 
This is our first feature that implements "Near-Natural Language Generation" (NNLG).   
We have used a set of algorithms to analyse and understand the company data and then generate text that describes all the interactions with that company in a narrative summary. 
"Near Natural Language" is often used to describe text generated by deterministic AI systems. Deterministic AI systems, such as rule-based systems or decision trees, use predefined rules and logical reasoning to generate text that resembles human language. And this is what Sage has used for the Sage CRM 2023 R1.  This generated text may not be perfect or indistinguishable from human-generated text, but it is close enough to be considered "near natural language." 
The use of "near" indicates that there may be some differences between the AI-generated text and human-generated text, but the goal is to make the generated text as close to human language as possible. 
The Company Narrative is designed to provide business insights. 
  • The new feature automatically analyses and summarizes large amounts of sales, customer service and communication data and presents it in a condensed form that is easy to understand.  
  • It obeys the security policies implemented in Sage CRM so that the generated summary is tailored to each user. This can help to make the information more relevant and useful for specific audiences. 
  • Raw company data is turned into information by providing a clear and easy-to-understand explanation of the key findings and patterns. 
This new feature will only be available in English for 2023R1.  If the new feature is positively received, as we hope it will be, then we will look to localize it and provide it in German, French and Spanish from 2023 R2. 
  • Thanks, looking forward to seeing it in action.

  • The image above is from an early mock up of the feature.  So the implemented feature will look and feel a little different.

    One way of thinking of the Narrative is as an executive summary. Imagine you are a unfamiliar with a particular company. You may be a newly assigned account manager, or a senior manager being included in a meeting and you want to make sure that they are briefed about the company before you get into that meeting.

    It's is designed to save people time. You don't have to click on every tab and examine the data displayed there. It will save people time in digesting the data and determining the implication of that data.

    By reading the Narrative a user will get a comprehensive picture of the company within a few minutes read. They will be able to understand the 'big picture' state of a company.

    They will see

    • What was the last conversation about.
    • Have you got deals in play with this company?
    • How long have these been in play?
    • How long does it typically take to close business with this company?
    • What are the major issues open at the moment?

    We have developed this using the.net API, so it will be an local extension containing all of the decision tree. The Narrative is built each time it is requested from the application data. It passes through the security structure of Sage CRM and it is fast to build the result set.

    I hope this helps.

     

  • Will it be a "local" engine that generates the data or is there a feed to a cloud service that generates the Narrative? If local, do we know the build time on the narrative within well established datasets?

  • It sounds cool, but I am not exactly sure how it would apply to our day-to-day sales operations. Can you provide additional context or screenshots?