Increase in interest rates, drop in real estate prices of almost 50% in two years; Nexity is not doing very well, like the entire real estate sector.
“The sector is blocked,” lamented the company’s CEO last week, explaining “is making a very significant effort on prices.”
But this slump does not seem to have any impact on the company’s Innovation projects. Invited to Oracle’s Data & AI Forum, François Desgardin, director of innovation at Nexity, discussed 3 innovation topics that use AI within the group.
Automate compliance with the standard
“The question of the standard for making a building is very important” indicates François Desgardin. “In a very imaginative normative environment, we want to help employees integrate the standard, on construction site safety for example.”
The subject was put on the table by the legal department. “We work with people who want innovation” explains the innovation boss of Nexity, “innovation must come from the profession”.
“We have put the standards documentation in a database and we have created tools to allow site managers to benefit from decision support in this area.”
The implementation of the PoC lasted 3 months, “we loaded the models and released the first results” says Mr. Innovation. The project is still in the testing phase, and was presented to the legal department two weeks ago. It remains to ramp up and deploy more massively.
Generative AI to reduce communication costs
The second transformation project initiated by Nexity in terms of generative AI concerns its communication.
“We train employees in the field of communication to generate images and text with AI. We have the feeling that we can lower our Opex costs from this point of view” assures François Desgardin.
Finally, these generative AI projects are also part of broader digital transformation plans, initiated a few years ago by the promoter.
Moving towards accounting analysis using AI
This is the case of the Finex program, initiated in 2018. This program involves the implementation of an ERP Cloud solution from Oracle (public cloud) intended to align the accounting and financial processes of the group’s 80 subsidiaries with the standard of the solution.
Enough to harmonize supplier, customer and general accounting processes and unify financial standards and data: single supplier database, common operational account plan, analytical key common to the group’s different activities.
“Yes we use Oracle for accounting reconciliation, but we want to go further with the analysis of our figures” indicates François Desgardin on this subject. “We really want the analysis to do the work in terms of financial analysis.” To do this, training AI models could go further.
In terms of employee training, the HR department and the IT department have started a face-to-face and remote training cycle on the subject of AI. “We start from the Internet revolution, from the Cloud, to help them understand technological developments.”