EXL’s 2021 third-quarter results mentioned that the company generated a revenue of $290.3 million, an increase of 20.5% compared to the third quarter of 2020. For them, it was their analytics that continued to lead growth with a 33.1% revenue increase from the third quarter of 2020. In fact, their analytics business has consistently driven growth across EXL’s business, generating 32.7% year-over-year revenue growth for the most recent quarter (Q3 2021). “By taking on significant projects in transformational areas like digital payments, AI-powered audit & compliance, and health IT, we are rapidly becoming the go-to resource for data-led businesses,” mentioned Rohit Kapoor, Vice Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of EXL.
EXL won 10 new clients in the third quarter of 2021, and interestingly, six out of those were in Analytics. The company was also recognised as Gartner Peer Insights Customers’ Choice for Data and Analytics Service Providers for the second consecutive year.
Since January 2021, EXL has expanded their advanced analytics solutions that combine EXL proprietary and client data with the deep domain expertise to enable better and faster decision-making. The company has expanded in AI-driven NLP solutions for content and conversation to integrate EXL’s industry and process knowledge into best-in-class technology for greater accuracy and speed to deployment. They have also expanded AI-powered operating models to orchestrate AI and data upstream on the cloud to leapfrog legacy models and get to market faster.
So, what has helped EXL’s analytics grow?
According to Kapoor, “The company is dramatically accelerating growth in data and analytics, AI-based content extraction, natural language processing, and cloud-based operations.”
He also informed Analytics India Magazine that EXL’s clients are increasingly investing in finding better ways to harness data to predict trends, deliver individualised customer journeys, and streamline workflows. Companies have recognised the need to invest in this area and that to stay competitive, it is essential to deliver speed, agility, customisation and efficiency, which is a key differentiator for businesses.
Healthcare became a booster dose
Healthcare analytics was a strong growth area for their analytics business, with major projects underway focused on payment integrity, real-world patient data analytics, risk adjustment and breakthrough care management solutions. In fact, EXL was named a Top Performer in KLAS Risk Adjustment and Analytics Performance Report in 2021 and also achieved Leader status in Everest Group’s Healthcare Analytics Services PEAK Matrix Assessment. EXL was also named a Leader in all six categories of NelsonHall’s 2021 Healthcare Payer NEAT Report.
Best performing solutions
Out of the many analytics solutions that EXL provides, the ones that stood out, and were the three top-performers, were AI-powered content extraction, behavioural analytics and conversational AI and point-of-sale financing.
Point-of-sale financing: The ‘buy now pay later’ solution developed by EXL seamlessly orchestrated credit analytics, pre-approvals, fraud prevention, and know-your-customer (KYC) support with loan servicing functions, including digital payment assistance. This allowed the merchant to share data about their customer with the bank who’s going to provide credit without ever revealing the identity or giving up on ownership of the relationship. Though the merchant’s customer always remains their customer, the credit profile would enable the bank to make a real-time credit decision and make an on-the-spot offer.
AI-powered content extraction: Using AI, NLP, ML and cloud deployment, EXL’s new content extraction solutions are currently being used throughout the insurance and financial services industries to extract and analyse large volumes of unstructured customer communication data to deliver actionable insights. “This is a classic example of data being widely available within an organisation but difficult to use because it needed to be keyed in manually multiple times in multiple different systems. Now, we can streamline and do it once, and it is there across the organisation, able to be ported over to any platform,” informed Kapoor.
Behavioural analytics and conversational AI: Through a combination of automated, digital interventions using conversational AI and face-to-face engagement with nurse care managers, the new solution tailors the right message to the right patient at the right time. “This is an example of how data leaders are using data to choreograph an omnichannel engagement, whether it’s chat, a nurse, phone line, etc. We’re delivering consistency of information across all channels, rather than requiring the user to reimport information every time,” said Kapoor.
Mindshift with the pandemic
For EXL, the pandemic served as a growth catalyst for their data-led strategy. “Now, more than 19 months into this pandemic-spurred digital revolution, it is becoming clear that the battle for hearts and minds through unique, highly personalised customer experiences, is indeed alive and well in the digital world,” said Kapoor, stressing on the point that the key for brands operating in this environment is to ensure that they are going beyond the basics of digital convenience to create fundamentally better interactions. According to Kapoor, one of the concerns that have emerged over the last year, as more aspects of the customer experience shift to digital channels, is the notion of brand homogenisation. “After decades and billions spent designing bank branches or training claims management professionals to work with people, would all of these services start to lose their unique brand identities in a world where everything happens over the internet?” concluded Kapoor.
