Company profile
For over 30 years, KPI Digital has been helping clients create solutions and optimize all business processes so they can meet their business objectives. We offer proven solutions around Digital Transformation, Data, Analytics, AI and Performance Management. Our value stems from our team who have extensive and deep expertise in managing data and turning it into actionable insights.
Division: KPI Digital
Industry: Information Technology & Services
Year: 2019
Student Team
Francis McGuire
Project Role: Business Strategist
Education Background: B.Com., Management Information Systems and Analytics, University of Ottawa
Divya Jain
Project Role: Solution Architect
Education Background: B.Eng., Information Technology, University of Mumbai
Jing Cui
Project Role: Modeler
Education Background: B.Sc., Mathematical Sciences, the State University of New York at Binghampton
Shaan Kohli
Project Role: UX/UI
Education Background: B.Sc., Physiology and Mathematics, McGill University
Zewen (Joshua) Shi
Project Role: Solution Architect
Education Background: B.Com., Management Information Systems, University of Alberta
Project description
In this project, student collaborated with the Analytics Digital build team on building a solution for a local transportation consortium to solve various process efficiency initiatives. The provided recommendation was to more seamlessly automate data sources to scale and provide predictive analytics for various stakeholders in the public transport chain.
Pain Points
- Lack of Centralized system for route planning/scheduling
- Need for an improved synchronized platform for efficient performance
- Need for Backbone for IoT configuration
Data Inputs
- Public transportation schedules/routes
- City maps and historical run times
- Transport channel profile features including speed, passenger info, and fuel consumption
Analytic Methodologies
- Route optimization predictor tool with Feature Engineering and Hyperparameter Tuning on Seasonality Features and External Variables (ie Distance/Weather)
- Value proposition model to drive savings for end passenger
Technical Solutions Developed
- Data Lake architecture design and testing including Cloud Storage + PostgreSQL/MySQL + Python development
- Real-Time Dashboarding for monitoring team
- Integrated front-end App design
Partner Commentary
We really appreciated working with the McGill students on this project; they quickly became a natural extension of our team of Data Scientists who could look in-depth into technical challenges we did not have the resources to tackle. The students did a great job of analyzing and working with a very large and complex dataset. They also had presented an innovative perspective on the project from a business standpoint. The outcome of their work will be used as a foundation for building many products & offerings related to intelligent transit.
—Benny Cohen, Founder & President KPI Digital
Student Commentary
Divya Jain – Solution Architect
The project gave me a platform to apply and transform the theories, concepts, and ideas from a classroom perspective into building something impactful and future-focused. It has allowed me to think creatively and apply practical concepts towards problem-solving enabling me to better understand my own personal strengths and areas for development. Not to forget the importance of communicating effectively, time management, working collaboratively in a team environment and presenting our work to senior executives. Suffice to say, I believe, I have grown tremendously both professionally and personally with a strong desire to excel in all future professional endeavors.
Collaborating with KPI Digital, a pioneer in data analytics and digital transformation, and exploring effective solutions for optimizing public bus transportation systems is a significant milestone/learning experience in my academic and professional life. As a Solution Architect, I had the opportunity to explore, understand and implement end-to-end cloud architecture leveraging disruptions from AI and IoT. Working with our client helped me familiarize myself with and master the core technical and project management skills to drive opportunity identification and process reengineering needed to achieve business processes optimization and sustainable corporate growth.
The faculty, coach and client mentorship served as a framework to help identify and set priorities, and designate project roles, responsibilities, and benchmark for meeting the priorities. Faculty/client mentorship and guidance played a crucial role in developing a systematic roadmap for our team to carry out its goal and promote development in specific areas to facilitate the successful completion of the project.
We embraced agile methodology streamlining team interaction over processes and tools, designed comprehensive documentation supporting the processes, promoting client input for contract negotiation and responding to changes in business plans. The team members not only played to their strengths but also took the opportunity to learn and pick up skills they were not proficient in.
Zewen (Joshua) Shi – Solution Architect
As a solutions architect in the group, one of the important tasks is to communicate with clients to design and implement the solutions. Working with real clients helps me consolidate my communication skills with the ability to gather clients' needs and to explain technical solutions.
There were no specific guidelines for building the solution to the project. As a solutions architect, my teammate and I developed our customized intelligent automation tool to process big data using knowledge learned from classes and outside classes. The experience does inspire my creativity when coping with challenges using any possible combinations of my knowledge repositories.
Collaborating with real clients directly drives me to think about real-world business problems. It will also allow me to put myself in the company, to consider what are pain points and how I plan a solution to pitch my client and to build a solution that can solve the issues ultimately.
