A new frontier for decision-making

It’s been just over eight years since Angie, Andy and I set up Faculty. What a journey: from a kitchen table to a team of 250 amazing colleagues and a brand new product launch today.

Over that time, we have built hundreds of AI systems and solved some really important problems for our customers. Everything from taking down terrorist propaganda, to mitigating train delays, and helping the NHS deal with covid.

In doing so, we’ve been forced to think deeply about how to do applied AI well, and we’ve learned a bunch of things along the way. Our key takeaway? The most important thing you can do with AI today is use it to help make better decisions. 

We’re (hopefully) still a ways away from artificial general intelligence, and so, right now, we think the best way to get the most out of AI is to use it to supercharge human intelligence – to help make sense of the firehose of data that overwhelms every decision maker today. 

The way that you do this is through supporting decisions with technology that aligned to three basic principles: 

• It unlocks deep understanding from the data;

• It rapidly turns that analysis to action; and then 

• It connects the whole organisation. 

We have spent the last two years taking the very best of our experience in doing this, and the most advanced science our brilliant team can develop, building it into our new product: Faculty Frontier. 

Frontier is designed from the bottom up to implement these three principles of decision-making into software. So that you can see exactly what is happening, what will happen, and why, inside your business.

We believe the market is ripe for this capability. The speed, volume and complexity of operational decision-making is now frequently beyond the level that executives and managers can reasonably stay on top of. And most current methods and processes for decision-making are not fit for purpose. 

For example, many businesses are under tougher constraints than ever before because of the supply chain crisis over the last few years. Or put another way, good decisions are more important than ever. 

We have thought very carefully about how to add value for our customers, so that this isn’t just another widget on your ERP. Frontier connects to your existing tech stack to make it work harder and smarter. It is an additional layer of intelligence, which makes best use of what is already there, including your own data and your expertise. A combination of human and machine intelligence. 

We’ve also built the partnerships necessary to make Frontier integrate seamlessly with our customers’ existing cloud and SaaS infrastructure.

At Faculty, our best work is ultimately about helping someone to make a decision that improves the outcome of something they care about. Frontier is both the culmination of that experience, as well as the next step in bringing our expertise to an even broader market. We look forward to helping even more customers make the best possible decisions.

Marc Warner, CEO Faculty