Vedrai
Technology-Driven Decision Making For Businesses

That takes decades of experience and unmatched dedication to attain was already gifted to Michele Grazioli, an entrepreneur, since childhood. A child prodigy in mathematical management and computers, Grazioli not only learned to program in his elementary school but fell in love with the macros of Excel and double entry. At the young age of 13, he explored the world of artificial intelligence, creating software for the management of his father’s yard, intending to fill some existing gaps through algorithms that could update themselves. His goal was to provide his father with tools to help him in the management of his business and to evaluate the actions to be put in place so that his father had more time to devote to the family.

Grazioli’s vision and desires have always been to work with entrepreneurs, essentials for the economic framework, and help them in dealing with the decision-making process in the easiest way possible, trying to reduce uncertainty and maximise value. For this reason, some months ago, he founded, with other three experienced entrepreneurs in the digital and manufacturing sector, Vedrai SpA.

Vedrai’s core product is DecidereTM Platform, a software as a service that is powered by AI algorithms and helps to analyse a company’s data, combining them with a vast number of external variables such as sentiment data on social media, financial data, and more. With the Decidere platform, entrepreneurs and decision-makers have concrete support while taking essential business decisions. The platform gets its name from the Italian word Decidere meaning to decide. “Making decisions in the company is inevitable and time-consuming and above all it is a daily task. Artificial intelligence thus becomes an ally, showing entrepreneurs some variables they would not think of on their own and making the company’s future less risky,” states Michele Grazioli, CEO and President of Vedrai SpA.

Reimagining the Decision Making process via AI

Vedrai’s goal is to simplify the use of artificial intelligence and allow companies to optimise their time making decisions in a more straightforward way, thus being able to imagine already what will happen the next day. Even before the decisions are made, Vedrai’s technology calculates the impact on the client, analysing tens of thousands of variables (corporate and environmental) and identifying the possible causerelation effects between what happens in the organisation and what happens in the context in which it operates. The final result is to notify clients of the events that may occur in the future.

Vedrai’s core product, DecidereTM, can analyse a large number of complex variables and provide the client with the necessary elements to make an informed choice about the best path to achieve the objectives it has set itself.

The platform requires an initial setup when the indicators (KPIs) on which the client intends to estimate the impact of decisions are defined. Once the sources are collected, the platform prepares the data for analysis and the primary variables for the model. In doing so, it learns the cause-effect relationships between the company variables under control and the reference KPIs. The platform leverages interpretable neural networks (“White Box”), the causal correlation algorithm, Artificial Intelligence to synthesise and make these relationships readable, simple and immediately understandable. These technologies help improve accuracy and reliability and as a result, improve the quality of data entered. The models present in the platform are automatically updated when new data is periodically inserted. The platform’s goal is to exploit predictive models based on artificial intelligence to estimate the impact of a decision on business data before that decision is made. All thanks to AI algorithms, and non-linear correlations run by AI neural networks, which allows decision-makers to simulate different scenarios with a high level of accuracy and reliability. “Typically, when entrepreneurs make a decision, they consider around 50 variables, while our platform can process tens of thousands at a time, reaching a reliability level of 94.7 per cent, against the 65/70 per cent of the human mind,” explains Grazioli. With such unparalleled capabilities of Decidere™ platform, users can “play” with company data and simulate numerous corporate strategies until their final objective is reached. The goals include enhancing the company’s turnover, reducing warehouse costs, optimising marketing campaigns’ ROI, and more.

Equipped with all the latest security systems, Decidere™ encrypts any connection and any information exchange, ensuring maximum security and abiding with the European GDPR Regulation. The Decidere™ platform also helps entrepreneurs in being more sustainable. A concrete example of this Vedrai technology’s function of Predictive Maintenance, which allows a reduction of the unexpected, a decrease of the maintenance costs and significant waste control in the company. Lastly, Vedrai provides a remarkable example of the use of AI to improve the internal operation of the company. Thanks to this technology, Vedrai can allocate resources as best as possible and automate and optimise all the possible procedures.

Into the World of SMBs

Despite the positive impact of innovative decision-making technologies, there are several organisations, tiny and medium-sized businesses that are still hesitant to deploy or make strides towards it.

As SMEs struggle to make effective business decisions by themselves, they seek a dynamic partner that can not only offer robust technology but also help them in implementing and harnessing the full benefits of the decision-making system. To that end, Vedrai meets the needs of small/medium enterprises and has designed the Decidere platform with a straightforward interface and front end, allowing companies, and in particular, entrepreneurs, who are not computer specialists, to use it while merely exploring all its functionalities. The company mainly focuses on the application of AI on the business and tries to answer the question: “how can AI help my company?” Moreover, Vedrai’s solutions can be customised according to clients’ specific needs. Indeed, the client can choose to personalise Decidere™ Platform choosing from a wide range of KPIs - Key Performance Indicators - in different areas, such as Finance and Control, Marketing, Production, and Human Resources.

"Making decisions in the company is inevitable and time-consuming, and above all, it is a daily task. Artificial intelligence thus becomes an ally, showing entrepreneurs some variables they would not think of on their own and making the company’s future less risky"

Carving a New Path for the Business World

Elaborating more on their value proposition, Grazioli highlights a case scenario where Vedrai helped ZatoSrl, an SME specialised in manufacturing machinery for the recycling and recovery of ferrous and non-ferrous metals. When Zato decided to deploy a decision-making tool, against the pressing need to achieve business goals, their in-depth market search came to an end with Vedrai. Upon installing Decidere platform, Zato’s managers were able to successfully control the company from a broader perspective at a predictive level. The platform has permitted Zato to significantly reduce machine downtime, thus optimising time and eliminating waste by predicting with certainty the costs of the orders offered to customers. With the help of Vedrai’s AI-Platform, Zato has been able to opt for targeted strategic investment choices, including the decision to preproduce semi-finished products in quiet periods and make them available to salespeople. This has made it possible to anticipate market demands, thus increasing turnover and margins. This is just one of the many success stories.

With such expertise, today, Grazioli is considered as one of the leading experts in artificial intelligence applied to Proactive Decision Making and predictive intelligence. In 2019, he entered the Forbes Under30 ranking in the top 5 of the 100 most influential young Italian innovators in Italy. With Michele’s leadership and the power of AI-based decision-making tools, Vedrai is all set for a bright future. By continuously improving their production capabilities for both big and small companies, Vedrai aims to be at the leading position in the AI Space. All in all, for organisations that are looking for an easy to use, powerful decision-making tool, Vedrai has to be their go-to partner. With a partner like Vedrai, decision making is more comfortable and more straightforward than one thinks.