The evo­lu­tion of ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence and its use in the lo­cal mar­ket was brought in­to fo­cus for the ex­port and ship­ping sec­tors at last week’s Trade and In­vest­ment Con­ven­tion.

Wiz­dom­CRM’s coun­try man­ag­er Charielle Plow­den ex­plained that the event served as a ma­jor show­case for its Glob­al Ex­port AI prod­uct.

“We’re here with our glob­al ex­port prod­uct, and we would have signed an MOU with the Cari­com Pri­vate Sec­tor Or­gan­istaion and the T&T Man­u­fac­tur­ers As­so­ci­a­tion, TTMA, to bring our glob­al plat­form to their mem­bers. This plat­form al­lows ex­porters to have ac­cess to da­ta-dri­ven in­sights and mar­ket in­sights that can help them in the ter­ri­to­ries that they would like to ex­pand in­to,” Plow­den told the Busi­ness Guardian.

“So we have over 1,000 booths here to­day. Many of them are al­ready ex­port-ready. Some of them are look­ing to ex­port. They can use our plat­form to get ac­cess to mar­ket in­sights and train da­ta an­a­lyt­ics that could help them with their strat­e­gy in terms of en­ter­ing a new coun­try,” she said.

“So if a coun­try is think­ing of en­ter­ing in­to Suri­name, Ja­maica or Eu­rope, they can use our plat­form to save their prod­uct. Let’s say, for ex­am­ple, we have steel or ce­ment. They can now use our plat­form to see which mar­kets are best to go in­to that are ex­port-ready, and get in­for­ma­tion to help them with their strat­e­gy.”

Plow­den said the re­sponse at the con­ven­tion was more than en­cour­ag­ing, as while Wiz­dom­CRM had de­vel­oped the plat­form with SMEs in mind, the com­pa­ny re­ceived feed­back from be­yond that tar­get­ed de­mo­graph­ic.

“We’ve ac­tu­al­ly had some large com­pa­nies, even the small com­pa­nies as well, the SMEs, come to our booth and sign up. We’ve had over 100 peo­ple reg­is­ter for the plat­form.”

She added, “They can now sub­scribe to con­tin­ue to get ac­cess to the mar­ket da­ta. So com­pa­nies that have prod­uct specifics, like peo­ple do­ing sauces and wines, and bev­er­ages. They can then search by their HS code or by the prod­uct, and they will get ac­cess to the coun­tries that they should be look­ing at for ex­ports.”

She said the plat­form could al­so be a game chang­er for for­eign ex­change gen­er­a­tion in the coun­try, as it would aid com­pa­nies in de­vel­op­ing in the in­ter­na­tion­al mar­ket.

“Of course, we know they will now be­come net earn­ers of for­eign ex­change, which we know is need­ed in this coun­try. So the en­tre­pre­neurs have tru­ly loved the plat­form to be able to give them eyes to see where they should go next,” Plow­den said.

Plow­den said the Wiz­dom team, which had al­ready found suc­cess via its Stock Ex­change game and Ed­u­ca­tion plat­forms, was look­ing to de­vel­op a pro­gramme for agri­cul­ture as well.

Cub­by Car­go, a re­cent­ly es­tab­lished com­pa­ny un­der the um­brel­la of Ramps Lo­gis­tics, was al­so get­ting at­ten­tion from com­pa­nies in­ter­est­ed in the im­port and ex­port mar­ket.

The com­pa­ny us­es AI, al­beit through a fa­mil­iar plat­form, to keep its clients in­formed on trends with­in ship­ping lanes.

Shiv­ana Loach, re­gion­al head of trade lanes at Cub­by Car­go, ex­plained, “Cub­by stands for your Con­tain­er Unit Book­ing Bud­dy. We are the change in the lo­gis­tics in­dus­try. We want to make things easy and sim­ple, and we be­lieve that AI is the fu­ture. So we have in­tro­duced AI in our What­sApp so that every­thing that we do right now, you (will) get rates in­stant­ly. It takes about two min­utes, but it’ll al­low cus­tomers to have more time for them­selves, and you have to ac­tu­al­ly see the in­ter­ac­tion so any­body can ac­cess it. “

She said clients can What­sApp them and re­ceive al­most im­me­di­ate up­dates on the ser­vice.

Loach said, “That’s why we are al­ways like just say hi, and it gets your rates in­stant­ly. You can get rates from Brazil, from In­dia or from Chi­na, which is where we iden­ti­fied a lot of peo­ple im­port from, and our sys­tem al­lows you to do this, have more time for your­self.”

She ex­plained that Ramps CEO Shaun Ram­per­sad had shown in­ter­est in the idea and the team had col­lab­o­rat­ed to ex­plore the best way to reach its client base.

Loach told the Busi­ness Guardian, “It came about from our CEO, Shaun Ram­per­sad, and then he start­ed dri­ving this through. So that’s where it re­al­ly start­ed. We on­ly reg­is­tered this year, but this com­pa­ny has been in the works for al­most two years now.”

She added, “Two years ago, we start­ed kind of brain­storm­ing, a lit­tle bit like, what can we do dif­fer­ent­ly? We have been see­ing a lot of op­por­tu­ni­ties com­ing, but we didn’t feel like we were at the right place, and we spent a lot of time and re­search try­ing to see where we should ac­tu­al­ly fo­cus on. So it was a lot of re­search. “

The Cub­by Car­go re­gion­al head not­ed that the in­dus­try had to be alert giv­en the volatile geopo­lit­i­cal sit­u­a­tion world­wide, but felt this on­ly made the AI so­lu­tion more valu­able in such an en­vi­ron­ment.

“Geopo­lit­i­cal­ly, there are things that’s on­go­ing right now that, you know, it’s way be­yond any­body’s con­trol, and it is a very touchy sub­ject, and it’s some­thing that can change from time to time, but every­thing that’s go­ing on in the in­dus­try right now, it puts us in a very sen­si­tive place, un­for­tu­nate­ly, be­cause we al­ways suf­fer from it,” Loach said.

“We be­lieve that the best you could do is stay abreast and stay in­formed. And what we do here at Cub­by Car­go is en­sure that we do all the right re­search and put those tools to­geth­er, put that re­search to­geth­er in a very ac­ces­si­ble way.

“So we post things on LinkedIn, on In­sta­gram, so that all the in­for­ma­tion that’s out right now is ac­ces­si­ble for any­body to go and read. So you’re gonna know what’s hap­pen­ing in the world, what was go­ing on with the Chi­na tar­iffs. How it’s gonna af­fect you. What rates look like, and it re­al­ly guides busi­ness­es to make de­ci­sions that re­al­ly help them make bet­ter de­ci­sions for their busi­ness­es.”

Loach said the de­ci­sion to use What­sApp had helped those less fa­mil­iar with AI get on board with the ser­vice.