Guest Author: Michael Svilar, Advisor to CEO
LIFELENZ is a Workforce Management SAAS solution that is focused on driving value to our clients’ businesses while being loved by their employees. We do this by leveraging true AI in the platform to bring hyper localized forecasts based upon historical pattern as well as holidays, days around holidays, events, weather and promotions. True AI is a term I am using to differentiate from all the claims of companies that claim to leverage AI in their solutions while in reality they are using what is better characterized by “business school forecasting, i.e., taking 4, 5, or 6-week averages.”
The term AI is obviously an important concept in our world. Artificial Intelligence means that there are algorithms that were developed to mimic the way the brain works, i.e., to mimic the neurons in the brain. The first construction of a neural network was done in the late 1950s. These neural networks have become more complex and massive, the most popular version applied to language are Large Language Models (LLMs) used in GenAI solutions like ChatGPT, Grok, etc. Some people now mistakenly classify statistical models like linear regression which leverages least squares invented by Gauss in 1795 as AI. This is akin to someone classifying the shooting arrows hundreds of years ago, as the same as an ICBM, because they are both delivering “projectiles”. I have a difficult time thinking of basic statistics as the same as AI, solely because it uses math and data. This also allows some people who are not using real AI to claim to be using AI, while doing something as simple as taking averages. Sorry, but for someone that has been doing statistics, econometrics and now ML and AI work, for over 40 years, I have to call it out. Business School Forecasting, taking averages of the last few weeks of sales is not using AI to forecast sales, it is using averages.
At LIFELENZ, with a team of PhDs in Math, Statistics, and Physics, we are leverage True AI in our software, especially used in producing forecasts for labor drivers, such as Sales, Transactions, Burgers, Fries, Pizzas, Drinks all down at the 15-minute level. Our approach leverages multiple AI techniques including deep-learning, shallow neural networks, and other statistical and regression techniques leveraged in an AI driven Ensemble Model that looks across the set of different models to build a robust forecasting solution that consists of the weighted value of the other groups of models that scales and learns.
In the future we are planning on focusing AI on other component parts of our solution, but for now we provide a key value driver for our clients through providing labor driver forecasts that are 20%+ more accurate than traditional solutions using business school forecasts. These more accurate forecasts reduce periods of overstaffing, which reduces profitability due to having too many workers, and understaffing, which reduces sales. We use true AI to make sure that we have the right people working at the right time to drive value for our clients.
