Episode 3 - From Travel Insurance to IPMI - A Platform's Origin Story

Episode three brings the show's first guest: Casper Søgaard-Petersen, Chief Product Officer at Ice-Tech, joining Elliott Draga and Lloyd Overton (plus the obligatory World Cup catch-up) to talk through the history of the ICE platform. Casper and Elliott worked together for 15 years at Nordic Insurance Software, and they trace its journey from a single-customer claims and assistance platform in the 1990s through to the multi-line, multi-currency system it is today.

The core of the conversation is the pivot from travel insurance into international private medical insurance (IPMI), triggered by COVID wiping out the travel market almost overnight. Casper and Elliott walk through how the business used that disruption to rebuild its platform foundations, what carried over cleanly from travel into IPMI, and what needed extending - while Lloyd brings a personal lines perspective, drawing parallels with his own experience of the market's uneven pace of digital transformation.

The episode closes by looking ahead: an open API strategy, third-party integrations, and what Casper calls the "orchestrator" - a governance layer for AI-driven workflows and agent-to-agent connections. Both guests are candid about the risks of over-building features without market validation, landing on a shared view that focus and stability matter more than chasing every new AI capability.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:05

Hello and welcome back. Uh episode three of the Breaking the Ice Podcast. I am one of your hosts, Elliot Draga, joined by my co-host this week, Lloyd Overton. Lloyd, how are you doing?

SPEAKER_00 0:18

Good guys. How are you?

SPEAKER_02 0:20

Yeah, yeah, doing pretty well. Doing pretty well. For the first time ever this week, we have a guest. So I would like to welcome Casper Sogar Peterson. Casper, how are you doing?

SPEAKER_01 0:30

I'm all right. Thank you. And thanks for having me.

SPEAKER_02 0:33

Yeah, that's great. Caspar, do you want to do a bit of an introduction for everyone?

SPEAKER_01 0:38

Yeah, sure. I I can do that. Um, so you mentioned uh mentioned my name. Um my my role is uh, well, first of all, I'm I'm working with Ice Tech, where I am the chief product officer. Um I have a fairly long background in in the insurance industry, at least the tech site uh coming up 15 years now. Um started out with Nordic insurance software um yeah 15 years ago and then progressed uh slowly through the organization, ended up being the CEO of that organization before we merged with Insure Tech um earlier this year. Um that's the really short version of the journey that I've been on. Worked with a ton of different uh clients out there, uh a ton of different uh partners, and well, seeing a lot of different things.

SPEAKER_02 1:30

Yeah. So we are uh what what Casper is not giving the full background. I think I was probably about employee number 10 at at Nordic Insurance Software, and I think you are number nine uh or number eight, depending on who walked through the the office door first between you and Sammy. But uh we you and I have been colleagues for for a very long time. 15 years is is an eternity uh these days. So uh it's great to have you on the podcast. Um we're gonna talk about uh IPMI today, international private medical insurance. So wanted to get you on, wanted to talk about the platform. But before we do, naturally, we have to talk about the World Cup because it's still on. Casper, you're in Denmark. Uh, you know, you and I can air our grievances. My Italy, your Denmark, you know. But but we have we have our our our um English uh compatriot here. So we're all we're all going for England today, right? That's that's the that's the talk track. I'm sorry, I'm just reading my notes that I I've been instructed to say here.

SPEAKER_00 2:34

I'm not gonna play the Badio and Skinner song just yet, um, but we might well hear it. We might well hear it at some point uh during one of these podcasts if we can uh if we can get to the next stage. I mean, you know what? I've never watched an England game where I haven't chewed off my fingernails, but I think I'm starting to chew off parts of my fingers as well. I mean, it's just every single one of them is like uh it's just like slitting your wrists at the point where you're like, come on guys, you you've got you've got the scruff on the neck of this, and you you're sort of stepping back and not doing the right things. But you know, they've scrogged their way through, they're in another game.

SPEAKER_02 3:08

Yeah, you're not making it easy on yourselves, that's for sure. Um I have to say, I've so I've enjoyed obviously the games have been in North America, so there's been a lot of late games. Uh I I've had absolutely terrible timing and have had meetings during yesterday's semifinal, again during today's semifinal, and then I'm on a flight on Sunday during the final. So, you know, I I got to watch a uh a fair bit of it uh in the early stages, you know, like I I got to watch uh Cabo Verde and some other countries, but when it really counts, I'm I'm not gonna get to watch any of it. So, but I I I will be I will be uh I will be voting uh or cheering you you your side on.

SPEAKER_00 3:46

So you watched the second division of the World Cup and now you're seeing the premiership of the World Cup. That's probably the best way to describe it. Um but I mean, you know, Norway, Norway, I've got to give them their due. They were great in defeat, they were very kind. It was nice to see the camaraderie between the players. They played a great game, they nearly got it done. There were a few kind of dubious decisions on both sides of the fence, I think. Um last night's was good though, to be fair. I mean, I was kind of saying, look, you know, France are gonna just breeze through into the next round. Spain done the business. France couldn't, they just couldn't shot them, they could not break them down. So, you know, they moved the ball really well, as the Spanish do. So yeah, we'll see. We'll see. We're just gonna shut messy down.

SPEAKER_02 4:23

Let's uh let's let's let's pivot off this. So I I don't want to lose Casper. He's about to hang up because uh Denmark's not in it. So um okay, Casper. So so I guess you know, before we get into the IPMI stuff, um, let's just talk through our history a little bit more. Because I think, you know, um I think it would enlighten people to hear a little bit more about the history of NIS um and how we made this pivot from really focusing heavily on travel insurance and travel assistance into IPMI. Uh so yeah, do you want to just give a little bit more of a background about um NIS and the platform on that half of the business?

SPEAKER_01 5:02

Uh-huh. Sure. I can do that. Um without going into sort of like all the historic milestones that we've gone through. Uh sorry, it started in the middle of the 90s. That's when uh NIS was founded. And uh we started out with a claims platform, claims and assistance platform um for a single customer. Um and it's evolved from there. Uh so started out with a good idea and then started getting traction um and getting getting more more customers on board and expanding the product from from there on. So as the platform started out, it was claims and assistance as mentioned, but soon after we had policy administration added um on a single database, single API um structure. So gaining the the knowledge from both sides when considering feature improvements on either side. So when we do something on uh when we did and when we do uh something on the policy side, we will automatically uh have the the claims and assistance perspective thought into that feature because it's it's end-to-end, as I mentioned, it's working off of the same API. Um early on, uh the the structure and decision making has been to build an application, to build a platform where uh the users and the customers would be very much in control of their own configuration and how what how they would like things to function. Um so, although it's a core platform, it is implemented in many different ways, um, mostly via configuration. So that will be how you design your workflows, what your SLAs would be, how your products are structures, your documentation outgoing, um, and how your digital sites, all of that is configured and and and built. Um and that's where um that's where we found a good place to a camp. This is what we do. Uh we have we have a strong core, we we maintain the core, and we we're focused on having a strong core that is that is stable and works and comes with the capabilities that that any customer would would require. Um and having the capabilities of then building on top if you need to, and personalizing the experience for first of all the the end users, which are uh well the agents and uh and and the claims handlers and so on. Um, but having having the capabilities of of making sure that the information can pass on from the insured into the back-end or back office side of things uh to get processed the right way. So it started out started out heavily on travel. Um the next step was made into expatriate.

SPEAKER_02 7:48

Um before we get there, we'll we'll we'll uh sort of we'll just slice this into some, I think, key milestones, right? Because uh yeah, the business was started in the 90s. Casper and I were not there when it when it was started. We were uh in diapers at that point in time, or or maybe, you know, maybe maybe just uh uh a little bit older than that. Um so the business went through an evolution from when it was founded to to when we eventually joined. Uh I like to say, you know, the sort of 20, 25-year-old software businesses are kind of like cats. They've they've lived nine lives. I mean, to have made it that long, you've survived. I mean, we've survived the transition from physical infrastructure to cloud infrastructure. We've survived uh, you know, business disruption events. The first one I think that I remember was the big ash cloud from Iceland that uh was a heavy uh travel disruption event and and predated uh the big one, uh the big travel disruption event that we all lived through. Um and and I think you know, I've always seen that as being the I mean our significant inroad into IPMI. So maybe, I mean, I'd be curious, uh, you know, I'll I'll I'll I'll I'll weigh in on my experience living through that. But uh uh Casper, I'd be I'd be curious to to see, you know, how did you feel on the product side? Because when that happened, you had already moved into the product and platform role within the organization, right? So I mean, how were you seeing it? Uh all of a sudden uh you know the travel world's entirely disrupted. Our core market is travel. Um, what happens next?

SPEAKER_01 9:38

Yeah, so so that wasn't some some interesting periods, and and I'm sure we'll we'll get uh unfortunately get more of those um as as time goes by. Um so how we filtered on on our own organization was sort of like in a delayed fashion. Uh so the first ones that were affected by this was our customers that that started to well um to be honest, scramble and figure out what do we do about this situation. Um and um it came clear to us fairly quickly that in order for for everyone to go to get through this, I'm talking mostly about the COVID situation. Yes, cloud was was a couple of weeks, right? Uh COVID was was was a much worse situation. Um what we what we realized early on was that um we really need to focus on the partnership uh perspective of our agreements with the customers. Uh because if someone is going uh going belly up because of this, it's not in our interest, it's nobody's interest, essentially. Uh so management at that point in time was was was clear in that messaging. Um and we made um we we did what we possibly could to make sure that that people were able to stay in business and help them go through. It did give us time to repurpose our resources on on our side. Uh so during that period we didn't have any layoffs, but we we we took the opportunity of of starting to build a a brand new foundation of the next generation of the platform, which we refer to as the Nordic platform. Um so we we actually got into a period where not a lot of work came through uh through through the customers because the appetite simply wasn't there, you don't know what's going on in the travel market, um, and the time was invested into a new product, which is actually still the foundation that we're building our our our our our next line of products on. Um so from I guess I guess there's good good things and bad things in in such a situation because you get a chance to revisit priorities uh and and things that are that is important but but never quite have gotten the attention that that you wanted it to get. I actually got a chance to get that where we took out. Uh I don't think it would be lying if I say it was over 50% of the engineering capacity that we had at that point in time was was put on the Nordic project uh to have that built from the bottom up. Um and I was overseeing that. Uh it was a fun, chaotic, and uh difficult and well, a lot of different words uh uh period where we need to figure out well, how's the loop UI going to look? UI is one thing, how's the UX? Start to talk to some of the customers and see how they would like it to function. Also, um, I've been in the company at that point in time for for I guess must have been eight years. So I had some things I would like to change where I thought the the process could be smarter. Um so that was an opportunity to revisit everything, which is well interesting.

SPEAKER_02 12:33

Yeah, but it but again, uh you know, Lloyd, just to paint the picture, I mean, you know, we were uh it was a bit of an existential uh moment for us, right? You know, your your entire core market craters out uh for an indefinite amount of time. And uh, you know, I I think uh through uh uh a combination of serendipity and ingenuity, uh, we started to you know expand our uh target market. We started to expand our target base and some of the unique nuances of the travel market that were embedded into our platform that have made us a resilient travel platform, things like supporting a multi-language interface, things like supporting um, you know, multiple currencies throughout the entire policy and payment and claim lifecycle. Uh those were necessary components within the IPMI space, but there was a lot that we didn't have. And and so, you know, when Casper's painting the picture of uh uh refactoring an entire application, we're also now layering in the complexity of of now expanding a function set to meet this new uh market that we were going after. Um Casper, I'm curious to know from your perspective, what do you think you know was an early asset for us in making this transition and and what were some of the biggest gaps? And particularly, I mean, was it more on the policy side or more on the claims side?

SPEAKER_01 14:10

Do you mean in in stepping into the IPMI scene or in generally moving into a new platform?

SPEAKER_02 14:16

No, no, no. Specifically, I mean focusing on IPMI.

SPEAKER_01 14:19

Well, um I think if we start from the policy side of things, I think most of the capabilities that we need to have or functionality was was already picked in um from a from policy side compared to sort of our our our uh our call offerings at that point in time. The main differences that we saw when stepping into these kind of of policies was in the limitations area. Um so so having different types of limitations. Um and uh that was a fairly small extension that we needed to do to the to the limitation engine that was built in. Um so so it was um we had a good starting point on the policy side with something that flexible as travel insurance, um, and then being able to extend it with the new um restrictions or limitations uh that we needed. Uh on on the claim side, um well, um came to the system side, the travel assistance uh part was a huge stepping stone for us, where um our our mindset has always been around the medical side of uh of any claim. Uh the claim is just the end product, just air quotes, the end product of something that is funneled through uh through the assistance side, side, how you used to view it back then, because assistance was the the main thing that we did, and uh and handling the the financial side and the financial consequences of uh of a case was uh was a downstream activity. Um so so I do think that perspective um on our application and how we viewed things back then uh gave us a good head start in stepping into the IPMI scene. Um and then the the the way that we really carried it out was to to partner with uh with a with some customers that want to to be in this area to get their experience and and how they uh view the market, what kind of capabilities they would like to offer, have available to them when they when they go live or when they expand their uh portfolio of of product lines that they have. So some of it was was um stepping on on the good things that we've already built in, some of it was was own thinking, and and some of it was a huge part of it was was to talk to the market uh and to see what are you looking for, what are the kind of extensions that we need to do. But in all honesty, it wasn't a lot of extensions that we needed to do from the get-go. There's been incremental changes to the application as we've gone through uh in the years, and the requirements have also changed. Um, we see that when we step into new geographical markets, that uh that there are different uh different components, different uh requirements to uh something like the invoice. The invoice is a big thing. Everybody knows this, that's that's worked with well, both travel, medical, and uh well any any insurance uh product and and the medical side, those bills can be can be really big. Uh and being able to capture all of those details has always been extremely important to us. Some of it is is detail that is actively used on the case to do assessments and to validate whether you're on cover or not. And some of it is saved as metadata because this is what the this is the data that we received when we originally got the invoice. And that data can become valuable at valuable at some point. Um it's just not something that is being um utilized uh directly in how invoices were processed back then at least.

SPEAKER_02 17:48

Yeah, I I mean my my take on it to to give sort of a one-liner is I feel like the transition uh on policy was to add more complexity and more flexibility. And then the transition on claims was to add more efficiency and and streamline things more, right? Because you're talking about a lot. I mean, on the on the policy side, there's a lot more dynamism to those products. Uh things are much more a la carte, catered toward large corporates, large, large contracts, um, as opposed to being a much more transactional. I mean, well, you know this from the UK travel market. You can buy a travel policy at the at the grocery store, right? Um it's it's commod it's commoditized, right?

SPEAKER_00 18:33

Well, I was I was gonna say actually, I mean, I'm a personal lines guy by by definition. That's that's kind of my background in insurance. But my wife who sits in the opposite room to me and also works from home on a on a regular basis, has been in private medical insurance for 25 years. In fact, she was it was weird that I was working on the ICE platform at one point and she was uh she was a user of the Actress platform working for for Marsh, which are a huge global broker that's specialized in in private medical insurance, not IPMI. Um but you know, as you can imagine, our conversations are so uh are so riveting talking about private medical insurance and uh and personal lines insurance. Thankfully it does go beyond that. Um but it you know it's it's interesting to hear you know you guys talking about actually exactly what insurance does to everybody, right? You know, a terrible thing happens, an insurance company responds to it, and they provide a cover that that can then in the future hopefully put people in a better position when that that sort of thing arises again. You guys were actually slightly different to that in terms of something really bad happens, so hey, we've got to come up with a system that handles something completely different to what we're doing today. So to hear the way that you pivoted to to survive, arguably, was was was quite interesting for me to hear. I guess one of the things I was going to ask is, you know, did COVID actually kind of, you know, off the back of that, did it did it change the way IPMI was was sold or administered, or are there any other considerations that you know you guys learned? Because I mean you were doing that on the fly while going through that kind of that kind of tragic situation.

SPEAKER_02 20:04

Yeah, I mean, like Casper, I'll I'll jump in here first, which is to say that um there were a lot of expats that were stranded uh overseas, right? So you might be like an IPMI policy might be to cover us a convent on a temporary basis, but but now you're domiciled there. And so I think, you know, uh underwriters uh and and benefits administrators had to had to you know take a different look at the rules that govern the policies just on the basis of what was happening in the world. So, you know, uh from a travel side, obviously there was absolute chaos in terms of uh, you know, trip trip cancellation, trip delay claims, uh people being stranded, needing to get home, what was the you know, what was covered, what wasn't covered. There was a bit of a knock-on effect within IPMI where because there was so much uncertainty hanging over, and then because uh countries started to enforce different types of rules in terms of entry and exit, um, you know, I I think that put a lot of strain on uh on the capacity it in those markets, right? Casper, I don't know if you have anything else there.

SPEAKER_01 21:17

No, I I think I think what you mentioned there is is sort of like uh well uh a different take on it was it was we we we became as a company uh aware of uh of um of the vulnerability that we had serving serving only only one market um and we needed to to diversify uh like many others uh that was hit in in that situation. Um and then then you start to um go through an analysis where is our product relevant, where could it be relevant with with a number of investments? Um and that's how we pivoted into to this area more seriously, uh because it were close to what we were doing as as as as as a core uh core. uh capabilities.

SPEAKER_02 22:02

Would I I would be remiss uh and would probably get a talking to also if I didn't take the opportunity to plug um the IPMI global article that we were just featured in. Uh, because I think what started at that point in time and and what's pervaded over the past five years was just this constant evolution in terms of digital transformation. And every different line of insurance has gone through its own journey of digital transformation. I think that was was really sped up for a lot of different lines. I don't know, I'd be curious from a personal line standpoint, you know, what the experience was during COVID or how much was digitalized pre-COVID versus post-COVID. But I think within the travel space, within the IPMI space, uh, you know that that was a key inciting incident in in forcing companies to to really start to digitize what what they were doing from uh customer interaction but then also from a back office standpoint. They had capacity now, right? All of a sudden companies had capacity to invest in these type of projects.

SPEAKER_00 23:12

I would I would completely agree with that. I mean you know there's there's been a talk of of digitizing and transforming and and and those kind of conversations for years. I mean I worked in the Lloyd's market for a number of years. They were doing blueprint too for God knows how long it was probably blueprint 22 by the time they canned it um you know trying to kind of evolve is is difficult unless you're given almost a problem where you need to and actually you know when you look to to what COVID did I mean me from a kind of sales guy perspective was sitting there thinking God you know like sales is a personal thing right you know you can do some of this over the phone but you want to be you know sat next to someone you know when they go and gets gets tough or you're getting into the weeds because you just build that relationship and this industry is very much in the a relationship-based industry but you know we couldn't do that so we had to start making sure we went through these entire sales processes digitally which was was interesting and we and we successfully did that with a with a big um win from an ICE perspective just as we went into COVID. But then I think you know you to your point around insurance you know insurance historically certainly in personal lines is was a lot of call centres and a lot of people sat on phones um and and you know you couldn't be crammed into call center rooms with lots of people you had to go and kind of do that back at at home so you know being able to kind of spin that up quite quickly was difficult for a lot of insurers because they just didn't have that capability in place.

SPEAKER_01 24:30

And actually once they'd done it it was then right okay in the in the in the example I gave earlier how do we evolve moving forward right well we need to do more of this online we need customers to be doing more of it rely on less conversations with advisors and make sure that when they are having those conversations it's for the really important things and I think you know the other big win off the back of it from a kind of system perspective for ICE was you know as you know Eddie we go through due diligence questionnaires we go through RFPs and RFIs all the time so actually what's better to to kind of just give an example of your disaster recovery process than having been through one and showing that you've gone through it successfully and survived it you know it's easy for us to say we've got all these processes in place on a bit of paper but actually that's probably the best BCP and and disaster recovery uh uh kind of scenario we've ever been through yeah absolutely absolutely um uh Casper taking it back into the uh the sort of IPMI space um you know where we are where we are today what what comes next in your mind um from uh from a market standpoint and then from a platform standpoint oh that's uh that's a big one elliot um I okay start start with the platform yeah yeah yeah or or I can tell you what I think I can tell you what I think from from a plat from a market well let's let me go first and you can see if you agree and others we'll have a long long session on this um so from from a platform perspective what we know that we need to do is we need to have an an open api where we can um where we can allow to be to have the process enriched by specialized third third parties so we're really as I mentioned earlier on really can uh conscious about the fact we want a strong core want the core to be as bug free as as something could could could be um and to uh grasp the the core functionality that one would expect to be in the platform and that sort of like grasping is is is evolving over time it's coming bigger and bigger uh that's a natural thing right we can do more and more new features come in we release six times a year new features new features new features uh but there will be situations where someone has an excellent idea an excellent set of data um an excellent something where we would simply be be lagging behind for for too many years and why not offer that to to our existing customer base via a a partnership and and a key a uh a seamless integration uh to get those capabilities into the platform for the the end user of the application they don't they don't really they shouldn't really care where the functionality is being delivered from they should care about getting the support that they need we see a lot of energetic um features coming into into the market every day and we're trying to figure out which which are the ones to bet on uh to get into the application which are the ones that we want to deliver ourselves um and to have that library of things you could be able to plug into the process to make sure that you that you work as streamlined as as possible that is that is something that's really interesting to follow I also think that we'll see um a lot of updates to um the regulations around ai uh moving forward so so that's something to keep an eye open on and to be aware that we're we're we're in the early the early days um you know on on on on this and we we simply don't know where we're going. And it's it's a matter of keeping your eyes open and uh and and uh selecting the the right things to to put into the application as core capabilities and and the right ones to get from the outside. I think I think that's where we spend most of our time making those decisions. But there's no doubt about the fact that you need an API that's ready for this. You need an MCP if if you want to have the real integration with from agent to agent. And you need to make sure that you need to make well you need to make sure that you you do it in the right way and you need to make sure that you're only to like disclosing or sharing the information that you'd like to be shared. And those things are the boring things to to consider when when we're talking about AI and we were talking about um machine learning and and and slightly older technologies it you need to make sure you're in control of what you're doing and not uh ending up with your whole data set being available to everybody or wrong decision making um that will impact your business and we've already seen a lot of regulation around the decision making part of things um so I wouldn't be surprised if we see more tightening on that over the over the coming years. But Iliad I'm interested to hear what's where your head is at.

SPEAKER_02 29:18

Well first I just have to say I mean you know uh travel and IPMI insurance platforms are normally not boring so you know it's it's a it's a shame that uh we're talking about uh you know the boring side of them because otherwise it's riveting right uh um no I I mean I think I you know my two takeaways here first of all I think you know we were focusing on you know you hear about you know RAS reliability availability scalability I mean we were focusing on those things before it was maybe uh cool to do so right so I think that's very much ingrained in our ethos is to focus on stability and scalability and and I think now that we've entered this sort of this new era uh you know the post-AI era um having that as our foundation and and having it ingrained into our decision making um is gonna avoid you know uh I think a lot of uh potential risk in in how the platform evolves um and I think I you know I think I think the other thing is is from a market standpoint uh IPMI is going to evolve I mean it it naturally based on the based on the type of product that it is it's much more prescriptive than than it is sort of reactive right it is much more focused on um a uh high frequency low severity uh you know predicting someone's health outcomes but based on their overall lifestyle and we're seeing underwriters start to incentivize uh you know policyholders for good good health patterns it's a little bit of like this usage-based concept that's entering into the personal health side of things and Lloyd I'm sure your wife's probably seeing it in the PMI side as well right where there's this concept of being much more preske prescriptive than than you know handling things on the underwriting side as opposed to handling things at time of claim. And so I think from our platform standpoint, you know, I think there is going to be a a more heavy emphasis on uh on on that side of the fence. And that's where having the resilient API that we have as you mentioned is is so critical because you don't really know uh what the value chain is going to look like in three or five years. And there's going to be innovation that's going to happen and more so there's going to be solutions that are going to be actuarily validated. And I think that's part of insurance innovation that sometimes gets neglected is that great ideas eventually need to be validated by actuaries. And it takes time to collect data to be able to justify those things. So unless you're talking about something that doesn't affect the bottom line, which is not going to yield much investment dollars, right? Um, the things that are actually going to move the needle or disrupt an insurance take time to be implemented because actuaries need to be able to justify the outcomes, right? And so we don't know what those things are going to be in three to five years, but but we as a core platform provider need to be flexible and need to be well positioned to to be able to partner you know when when those opportunities do do you know bear fruit in the market. So that's kind of my take on it from a market standpoint. And and Lloyd, I mean I think we're doing the same thing on the ICE platform side as well, right? It's it's in building that sort of that stable and scalable core. Casper you did say I I think uh you you did mention the word orchestrator do you want to take two seconds just to talk about you know our theory on um you know orchestrating an ecosystem and and and what's coming down in the immediate future on that front from a product standpoint sure sure I I can do that.

SPEAKER_01 33:22

I think um at some point fairly early on we we recognized the need for for orchestration and that is um well the AI component of of of any workflow and any AI enhancements that we're enhancement that we're going to either provide ourselves or have third parties provide to have that funnel through a platform where it can be um put into uh uh a numbered line and we'll know at this point in time this is when we trigger this uh sort of like effect of have a a cascading uh set of actions to it um we we identified that that there's tons of opportunity out there in terms of of connecting and you you you need you need reassurance that the what you're connecting to and how you're dealing with that and how that is affecting your platform and your data is is done in in a safe way and in a in a coordinated way. So so this layer of the platform was was added um to to the platform. So instead of having the integrations going um straight to the orchestrator oh sorry straight to the platform we'll actually go through this layer though make sure that we that we uh that we govern uh the the transactions and the calls that's being made and we put it into uh we can put it into a scheduled um that was a schedule or we can put it into a more complex workflow this also includes us being able to to to create brand new workflows that perhaps not is calling any features out there but it's built via agents uh so we now have um chatting capabilities that will where we can explain to the orchestrator what are we trying to accomplish and and our own um agents will help us set up that workflow in inside the the application and the reason for doing this is well there are multitude of them but I think the biggest one is to empower our our customers to be in control of how their platforms are working how they're functioning and how they're catering for specific scenarios and then to build out complex scenarios for well I guess being able to slice existing scenarios into more precise scenarios if that makes sense because it's easier now to to build out these complex ways of working um with human in the loop perspectives but also having um having the uh the agents do a lot of work for you or or or third parties and then you can separate into many different workflows whereas in the past that will become quite cumbersome to to deal with um so overall the idea is that we need something that is that we can trust something that is secure something that could be monitored so we know what's going on in in this space. Yeah so I mean really it's a big it's a big implementation right so it's difficult just uh to to do the the two-minute version of it but but essentially that is that is the need that we see and the solution to that would be what we call the orchestrator.

SPEAKER_02 36:29

Yeah yeah and and this is this is where each of our respective roles come into play because you're you're you're you're supposed to give the the full technical explanation and I'm supposed to give the two minute uh summary but it but I mean the gist of it right is um you know we've we've we've now uh created a platform that that gives our customers the ability to um to seamlessly integrate uh you know their entire uh tech stack their entire software landscape and to be able to build uh you know cross platform cross platform workflows cross platform agenti capabilities with uh the ability to govern and the ability to create that reliability uh you know framework that resiliency framework around it right so they can define the rules of engagement uh you know they they can define um from a business user standpoint how systems should interact with each other all through this orchestrator platform so uh you know it's it's it's a very exciting next evolution that that we're that we're moving into yeah you're right it's it's one of those situations where where you come up with with something that is that is surely and truly a swish army knife as what we thought we were going to do with it a week ago is is is well it's not completely changed this week right but but it we see more um more ways it can be utilized and how it can be it can be integrated across different platforms across different customers and and the features that that that might hold is is really interesting.

SPEAKER_01 38:12

But right now is also the time to focus and it goes for it goes for us as as a vendor also goes for all of our customers and anybody in the market needs to focus on what's important and what is actually adding value and not just all the things you can do because anybody can sit down with their agent and whitecoat something that looks as something that might work. And it's great for prototyping um we've found that we really need to make sure that what we're doing is what strategically makes sense and what is being requested in the market. Otherwise we just come up with new features that need to be maintained for the next 20 years that might not actually have a big adoption in the market.

SPEAKER_02 38:50

So you need to be focused I think that's that's one of the learnings we've had as well you didn't ask about learnings but but that's a learning that I have uh that I've taken with me in in in this new um era of uh of uh of of doom software developed yeah yeah yeah well well said well said Casper well listen uh you've been very gracious with your time uh so uh we're gonna wrap things up now Casper you spend you know a good majority of your day or or uh you know a good chunk of your day uh predicting uh you know what the future is going to look like and how we need to be positioned for it. So I'm gonna put you on the spot. I want you to predict the outcome of tonight's match and and then the eventual outcome of the World Cup. I know I know it's a sore spot. I know you've boycotted this year's World Cup because your your dear Denmark is not in it. But let's have some fun uh you know what's what's the score of tonight's game and then and then what's the eventual outcome here?

SPEAKER_01 39:48

Well it's just for me not to look completely silly against England tonight right yeah yes okay I see nodding and I have no other option to say that England's going to win and it's going to be two to one I I feel that I feel strongly about two to one okay love this guy love this guy yeah and then and then do make this one do you think they do you think they pull through against Spain then in the finals I'll be in Spain at that point in time all right well thanks very much everyone that was a great episode all right Casper great chatting with you uh I think we have another meeting of 15 minutes talk to you take care of