Essex teams up with consultancy firm to design new AI tool

A world-leading consultancy firm specialising in corporate digital communications is partnering with the University of Essex’s Artificial Intelligence Research Group in a ground-breaking new joint-venture.

Bowen Craggs and academics from Essex’s School of Computer Science and Electronic Engineering will team up to create a powerful new private system that harnesses generative AI to measure the strengths and weaknesses of multinational companies’ online communications channels.

The academics involved hope to develop unique research which will advance the area of explainable Generative AI and information fusion and their applications to online communications channels evaluation.

The 30-month-long project is being funded under the UK Research and Innovation’s Knowledge Transfer Partnership program, which sees knowledge bases such as universities share their expertise and research with businesses and organisations to create innovative ideas and solutions.

Bowen Craggs has been measuring the effectiveness of corporate digital channels for more than 20 years.

The consultancy helps global companies to measure and improve their digital channels through benchmarking and visitor research. Bowen Craggs’ Corporate Digital Communications Index is the global industry-standard ranking of the world’s best online corporate estates and includes the Forbes Top 100 companies.

The new AI benchmarking tool will be based on Bowen Craggs’ unique qualitative methodology, currently being applied manually by consultants to a company’s corporate website and related online channels, such as country websites and social media channels.

Bowen Craggs’ continuously evolving benchmarking methodology covers eight top-level metrics and 26 sub-metrics, offering clarity about a corporate estate’s strengths and weaknesses; the areas where a company performs within best practice; and the areas where it falls short.

With recent advancements in AI, the automation of this methodology has the potential to make the application of it significantly more effective and valuable to clients – as well as more scalable.

Robert Schatten, Knowledge Transfer Partnership Manager at the University of Essex, said: “We’re delighted to be partnering with Bowen Craggs & Co. Ltd on a project to explore a tangible and commercial output for the power of generative AI. In the age of ChatGPT and the rapidly expanding Large Language Model marketplace, it is vital for tech-native companies to ensure they’re ahead of the curve in adopting the latest AI applications into existing workstreams.

“We look forward to exploring how such innovations can impact Bowen Craggs’ work in digital communications optimisation.”

By collaborating with the University of Essex, Bowen Craggs will gain access to cutting-edge research and methodologies that would not be available through other routes.