Reimagining Hospitality: How AI Can Deliver VIP Experiences for Every Guest

Posted on May 9, 2025 by Don Oswald

Let’s face it—resorts and casinos are designed to be an escape. But too often, guests arrive ready to relax and are met with a barrage of decisions. After a long flight, the last thing anyone wants is to scroll through multiple apps, dig through outdated websites, or wait on hold just to figure out what to do next. That’s not the five-star experience today’s guests expect—and it’s certainly not what keeps them coming back.

What if every guest had access to a personal VIP host—without the VIP price tag?

At Kopius, we’re redefining the hospitality experience with our AI-powered Casino Virtual Concierge: a smart, intuitive solution that brings convenience, personalization, and luxury service to every guest’s fingertips. Designed for modern resorts and casinos, this tool blends intelligent automation with real-time customer data to create an experience that feels exclusive—without requiring extra staff or costly infrastructure.

Personalization in Every Moment

Imagine this…

You walk into your hotel room, drop your bags, and open an app. Within seconds, it recommends the perfect dinner spot based on your previous preferences and dietary needs. Craving entertainment after your meal? It suggests a show or event that aligns with your interests and helps you book a seat instantly. See clear skies in tomorrow’s forecast? The concierge offers up available golf tee times or spa appointments you’d actually enjoy. All with just a tap.

With the Virtual Concierge, guests spend less time planning and more time experiencing—and that leads to higher satisfaction, increased spend, and stronger brand loyalty.

Behind the Scenes: Smart Hospitality in Action

What powers this seamless experience is contextual data and AI-driven personalization. The Virtual Concierge dynamically learns from guest behavior and leverages property-specific data to deliver meaningful suggestions and streamline decision-making. Here’s how it works:

Tailored Recommendations: The concierge suggests restaurants, entertainment, and on-site amenities based on guest profiles, preferences, and real-time availability.
Revenue Optimization: Push personalized promotions to underutilized retail spaces, kiosks, or spa services to drive foot traffic and increase non-gaming revenue.
Intelligent Comping: Enhance gaming retention with data-driven insights that identify which guests to reward, and when, to maximize ROI.
Operational Efficiency: Offload repetitive inquiries like “what time does the pool close?” or “can I book a late checkout?” to digital channels, freeing up staff for high-impact service moments.
Scalable Luxury: Deliver five-star experiences at scale, without increasing labor costs or sacrificing quality.

This isn’t just about convenience. It’s about creating a competitive edge in a saturated market. Resorts and casinos that adopt AI-driven personalization stand out by offering something truly memorable: hospitality that feels personal, anticipates needs, and keeps guests engaged across every touchpoint—not just the casino floor.

From check-in to check-out, the Kopius Virtual Concierge helps properties boost non-gaming revenue, streamline operations, and deepen customer loyalty in a way that’s scalable and future-ready.

Ready to Elevate Your Guest Experience?

The future of hospitality is smart, seamless, and deeply personal. With Kopius, you’re not just offering services—you’re crafting unforgettable, revenue-generating experiences powered by AI.

Want to see what this could look like for your property?
Let’s talk: doswald@kopiustech.com

Unlocking Enterprise AI: Overcoming Pilot Project Paralysis with Proof of Value

Posted on May 5, 2025 by Kopius

The world of artificial intelligence is evolving at an astonishing pace, leaving even the predictions of Moore’s Law in the dust. While the potential of AI to revolutionize businesses is undeniable, the reality is that only 48% of AI projects make it into production, according to Gartner. This stark statistic highlights a critical challenge: bridging the gap between AI’s promise and its practical implementation.

A key culprit in this bottleneck is the over-reliance on the traditional Proof of Concept (PoC) model. While PoCs can demonstrate the technical feasibility of an AI solution, they often lack the depth and breadth to address the complex realities of enterprise deployment. Furthermore, the average time it takes for successful AI projects to move from prototype to production— a lengthy eight months— is simply too slow in today’s rapidly advancing technological landscape. By the time a PoC is deemed successful, the underlying AI technologies may have evolved so significantly that initial assumptions and approaches are already outdated.

Despite these challenges, the enthusiasm for AI within the enterprise remains strong. A vast majority of companies are actively experimenting with AI and have ambitious plans for further investment, particularly in Generative AI. However, the struggle to translate this enthusiasm into tangible, scalable solutions persist.

The Limitations of Proof of Concept

The fundamental flaw with many PoCs is their narrow focus. They typically answer the question, “Can this AI solution be achieved technically?” However, successful enterprise AI deployment requires a much broader understanding. Questions around business value, integration complexities, data readiness, security implications, and user adoption are often left unaddressed in the PoC phase. This lack of comprehensive insight creates significant hurdles when attempting to move a promising PoC into a robust, production-ready system.

Proof of Value (PoV): A More Strategic Approach

To overcome these limitations, we advocate for a shift towards the Proof of Value (PoV) approach. Unlike a PoC, which primarily focuses on technical viability, a PoV aims to answer a far more critical set of questions that are essential for informed decision-making and successful deployment. A well-executed PoV provides a holistic understanding of the AI initiative, addressing not just if it can be done, but also how it should be done, what value it will deliver, and what considerations need to be addressed for successful integration and adoption within the enterprise.

Key Questions Addressed by a Proof of Value:

Business Objectives: What specific business problem are we trying to solve? What are the measurable goals and key performance indicators (KPIs) for this project? Is the aim to enhance internal productivity, create new customer-facing products, or optimize existing processes? Understanding the business rationale is paramount.
Technology Selection and Futureproofing: Which AI model or architecture is most suitable for the solution, both today and in the future as technology advances? Will the chosen technology be easily adaptable and scalable? We need to consider the rapid evolution of the AI ecosystem.
Project Parameters and Configuration: What are the critical parameters that need to be fine-tuned to achieve the desired outcomes? For example, in a natural language processing application, how should context windows be managed or how should different confidence scores be handled?
Data Readiness and Integration: What specific data is required to make the AI solution effective? Where does this data reside, and is it in a format suitable for AI processing? What data cleaning, transformation, and integration efforts will be necessary? Data readiness is often a major bottleneck.
Security, Governance, and Trust: What security protocols and governance frameworks need to be implemented to protect sensitive data and ensure compliance? How can we build user trust in the accuracy and reliability of the AI outputs?
Financial Viability and ROI: What is the estimated cost of developing, deploying, and maintaining the AI solution? What is the projected return on investment (ROI) and how will its value be demonstrated over time?
Change Management and User Adoption: How will the introduction of this AI solution impact the daily workflows of users? What training, communication, and support will be required to ensure successful adoption and maximize the value derived from the technology?

Consider the example of implementing an AI-powered customer support chatbot. A basic PoC might simply demonstrate the ability to create a chatbot that responds to simple queries. However, a comprehensive PoV would delve into whether the chatbot can accurately answer complex questions, understand nuanced language, seamlessly integrate with existing CRM systems, maintain data privacy, and ultimately improve customer satisfaction and reduce support costs.

Breaking the Inertia: A Call to Action

To truly harness the transformative power of enterprise AI, organizations must move beyond the limitations of basic PoCs and embrace the more strategic and comprehensive approach of Proof of Value. It’s about drawing a line in the sand, committing to a well-defined idea, executing a thorough PoV to gain critical insights, and then iterating based on real-world understanding. While the AI landscape will undoubtedly continue to evolve, the knowledge gained from a robust PoV will provide a much stronger foundation for building and scaling impactful AI solutions.

Kopius Insights 360: Accelerating Your AI Journey

At Kopius, we understand the challenges of translating AI potential into tangible business results. Our Insights 360 solution is specifically designed to provide a fast, cost-effective, and proven path to AI success. We offer end-to-end capabilities for configuring, integrating, and preparing your data for AI, empowering you to drive real innovation.

Our approach begins with collaborative JumpStart workshops to deeply understand your business challenges and identify the key barriers to scaling AI. We then develop a tailored AI solution design, outlining the optimal architecture, application design, and potential cost and timing implications. Our agile development process focuses on building a unified and secure data and AI platform. Crucially, we culminate in a targeted Proof of Value to validate the strategy, refine cost and timeline projections, and ensure the solution is poised for scalable deployment and demonstrable business value.

Insights 360 is built to operate at the speed of your business, enabling you to move beyond the pilot phase and start realizing the tangible benefits of enterprise AI, quickly and effectively.

Introducing the Kopius Virtual Concierge for Airports—A GenAI Powered Solution to Improve Passenger Experience and Drive Non-Aeronautical Revenue

Posted on March 31, 2025 by Rob Carek, Vice President, Client Solutions

Non-aeronautical revenue, which encompasses everything from parking and car rentals to retail venues and restaurants, accounted for a full 37% of total global airport revenue in 2023, according to The Moodie Davitt Report. That’s a substantial percentage, and it’s growing—fast. In fact, Technavio estimates that the global airport non-aeronautical revenue market size will grow by almost $44 billion from 2025-2029. This is due in part to steadily increasing passenger traffic, which has now exceeded pre-pandemic levels.

As airports become more crowded, passengers have higher expectations for their travel experiences. To achieve these goals, they want more seamless, automated journeys, premium and personalized services, as well as environments that are wellness-focused, and they want technology to play a role in all of this. According to the Airports Council International World’s 2024 Global Traveler Survey report, “Travelers increasingly value technology that personalizes and streamlines their journey, enhancing their overall wellbeing throughout the airport experience.”

The surge in passenger traffic isn’t just a challenge, it’s an opportunity for airports. Imagine boosting non-aeronautical revenue by creating personalized, seamless journeys for every traveler, from departure to arrival. It’s a win-win: happier passengers and healthier bottom lines.

And Kopius has a GenAI-powered Virtual Concierge solution to make it happen.

By leveraging your existing airport and passenger data, along with GenAI, you can gain deep insights into passenger behavior, enabling highly personalized recommendations and experiences that increase traffic and spend at airport venues.

Now, imagine that you could build on your existing data to offer goods and services, based on individual passengers’ preferences and behaviors. And imagine that based on choices they made during previous visits to your airport; you could anticipate the types of experiences they might enjoy during future ones. How would that impact the passenger experience? And what would that do for your airport in terms of increased non-aeronautical revenue?

GenAI can close that gap, and it isn’t just a promise of what’s to come—the technology is available today.

The Kopius Virtual Concierge for Airports—Personalized Recommendations that Drive Non-Aeronautical Revenue.

The Kopius Virtual Concierge for airports is a flexible, GenAI-powered app that delivers personalized recommendations, pre-ordering capabilities, and services to your guests. It connects to your existing data sources like reservation and parking systems and builds on that data as guests enjoy airport amenities like shopping and restaurants. With the Kopius Virtual Concierge, you get a comprehensive view of passenger behavior as they make their way through your airport, so you can optimize your non-aeronautical offerings for maximum impact.

With the Kopius Virtual Concierge, you will:

Offer tailored itineraries: Create personalized plans for departing, connecting, and arriving passengers to make their way through the airport and visit retail, restaurants and other airport services.
Boost dining revenue: Offer targeted recommendations, and pre-ordering capabilities based on passenger history and preferences, and driving traffic to restaurants.
Streamline airport foot traffic: Help passengers navigate to and through the airport seamlessly and direct them to venues and services with wait times that support arriving at their gate on time, every time!
Optimize airport floorplans with data: Leverage app data and passenger feedback to optimize venue locations and increase foot traffic.

The possibilities are endless.

Elevate Passenger Experiences and Drive Non-Aeronautical Revenue with the Kopius Virtual Concierge

At Kopius, we harness the power of people, data and emerging technologies to build innovative solutions that help our customers navigate continual change and solve formidable challenges.

Learn more about the Kopius Virtual Concierge.

Introducing the Kopius Virtual Concierge—A Gen-AI Powered Solution to Improve Guest Experience, Increase Loyalty, and Drive Non-Gaming Revenue

Posted on February 14, 2025 by Rob Carek, Vice President, Client Solutions

Non-gaming accounts for nearly 17% of total casino revenue, according to the American Gaming Association, but in some cases, it can contribute as much as 70%. That’s a substantial differential, and it demonstrates just how large the opportunity is for casino operators to drive revenue growth through non-gaming channels. In fact, the 2024 LaneTerralever (LT) Non-Gaming Player Insights Report indicates that across all age and income demographics, non-gaming activities and amenities like restaurants, bars, spas, bowling alleys, arcades, and live entertainment, are an important consideration in determining which casino to go to.

For years, casino operators have known that personalized experiences build loyal customers and that player’s clubs and loyalty programs provide valuable data on gaming habits. But they miss a crucial piece of the puzzle—non-gaming spending. As these experiences become increasingly meaningful to guests, how can casinos gain a complete view of customer behavior and drive revenue growth across their entire property?

GenAI is here to help.

By leveraging your existing loyalty program and other data, along with GenAI, you can gain deep insights into non-gaming guest behavior, enabling highly personalized recommendations and incentives that encourage exploration of all the amenities on site.

And Kopius has a Virtual Concierge solution to make it happen.

The Who, What, Where, and Why of Non-Gaming Casino Revenue

While gaming remains important to consumers across all demographics, individual preferences, behaviors, and importantly, the opportunities for casino operators vary widely based on generation and income. The LT report indicates that:

All demographics are increasingly going to casinos in groups, and 70% of them say that non-gaming activities are more important when they are with a group.
79% of affluent consumers consider non-gaming offerings in choosing a casino and are more likely to spend 50% of their time engaged in non-gaming activities, and are particularly interested in live events.
86% of Gen Z consumers visit local casinos in groups. When visiting a destination casino, non-gaming amenities like restaurants and live entertainment are top priorities, but at 14%, they allocate the least amount of total spending to non-gaming relative to other generations.
Non-gaming activities are more important to millennials than to any other generation, with 89% of them saying they have a significant impact on which one they choose and 69% saying they budget specifically for non-gaming.
Only 34% of Gen X consumers say that non-gaming activities impact their loyalty to a casino, but like their boomer and Gen Z counterpart, food matters. Gen X prioritizes non-gaming spending in restaurants.
41% of boomers factor in non-gaming activities when choosing a casino, and they allocate 18% of their spending to them. For boomers, restaurants and bars are the most important non-gaming activity.

Insights like these are incredibly powerful when developing non-gaming offerings for specific demographics. But imagine if you could target offerings even more closely, based on individual casino guest preferences and behaviors. And imagine that based on choices guests made during previous visits to your casino, you could anticipate the types of non-gaming activities they might enjoy during future ones. How would that impact the guest experience? And what would that do for your business in terms of loyalty and increased revenue.

GenAI can close that gap, and it isn’t just a promise of what’s to come—the technology is available today.

The Kopius Virtual Concierge —Personalized Recommendations that Drive Non-Gaming Revenue

The Kopius Virtual Concierge for casinos is a flexible, GenAI-powered app that delivers personalized recommendations, incentives, and service to your guests. It connects to your existing data sources like players clubs, loyalty programs, reservation systems, and builds on that data as guests use non-gaming services. With the Kopius Virtual Concierge, you get a comprehensive view of guest behavior across your entire property, not just on the gaming floor, so you can optimizing your non-gaming offerings for maximum impact.

With the Kopius Virtual Concierge, you will:

Boost dining revenue: Offer targeted deals and recommendations based on guest history and preferences, driving traffic to your restaurants and increasing spend.
Upsell related services: Proactively suggest relevant offerings based on guest bookings and activities—like a golf lesson after a tee time—increasing revenue per guest.
Craft tailored itineraries: Create personalized plans based on past visits, encouraging longer stays and maximizing guest engagement and spending.
Optimize offers with data: Leverage real-time data and guest feedback to refine promotions and personalize experiences, driving non-gaming revenue growth.

The possibilities are endless.

Imagine a casino experience perfectly tailored to each guest. That’s the power of the Kopius Virtual Concierge. The more guests engage with it, the more personalized their experience becomes. Meanwhile, casino operators gain access to invaluable data on guest preferences, creating a continuous feedback loop for optimizing offers and experiences.

Elevate Guest Experiences and Drive Non-Gaming Revenue with the Kopius Virtual Concierge

At Kopius, we harness the power of people, data and emerging technologies to build innovative solutions that help our customers navigate continual change and solve formidable challenges.

Learn more about the Kopius Virtual Concierge.

JumpStart Your Technology Project—and Stay on Track—with Kopius!

At Kopius, we harness the power of people, data and emerging technologies to build innovative solutions that help our customers navigate continual change and solve formidable challenges. To accelerate our customers’ success, we’ve designed a JumpStart program to prioritize digital transformation together.

Let’s connect!

Increase Innovation with Kopius' JumpStart Program

JumpStart Innovation! Overcome Ambiguity and Create Value with a Technology Future State or Digital Ideation Workshop

Posted on January 30, 2025 by Danny Vally, Chief Operating Officer, Kopius

Female freelance developer coding and programming. Coding on two with screens with code language and application.

According to Deloitte’s 2024 Mapping Digital Transformation Value report, there is a sea change in how companies are investing their innovation budgets. Fewer dollars are being invested in transformational change. Instead, “Budgets are going toward more concrete business cases: entering new markets, launching new products, and modernizing the core.”

And a primary driver for this change is value.

The survey indicates increased investments technologies respondents perceived as driving the most value—GenAI, traditional AI, and data architecture are chief among them.

Overcoming Innovation Ambiguity and Identifying Value

Innovation is inherently ambiguous. It is in complete opposition to a concrete business case. You may have a concrete problem but be unclear about whether or how an emerging technology can solve it. Or maybe you know you need to start experimenting with new technology, but you haven’t defined what it can do for your organization. Both those scenarios are a long way from a business case and even further from demonstrating value.

So how do you bridge the gap?

While it may seem counterintuitive, putting some structure around the innovation process can be advantageous, particularly when it comes to narrowing in on a business case and demonstrating value. It can provide you with space to think things through, home in on a problem, and explore solutions from several different angles. It can unearth the unknowns and root out costly gotchas that might prevent you from moving forward. A structured innovation process provides an opportunity to figure out if something.

Innovation often ends with proof of concept that demonstrates that something can be done. That may solve the business-case challenge, but it’s not enough show value. Proof of value is a more modern approach. Proof of value is about more than if something can be done—it’s about whether it should be done. It’s intended to show whether it solves your business problem, is financially and operationally viable, and what it will take to pilot and scale.

JumpStart—A Value-Based, Guided Process for Technology Innovation

Kopius’ flexible future state and product ideation program, JumpStart, is a framework for innovation designed to help you explore possibilities, narrow down business use cases, and demonstrate value. And while JumpStart is a great launchpad for exploring both traditional and GenAI, it’s also a good fit for other types of innovation. Manufacturing, healthcare, and retail organizations, for example, may want to get a better understanding of their physical environment through IoT. And companies of all types have ideas for digital products they’d like to develop, but just don’t have the capacity.

JumpStart is technology agnostic—often, the solution to a particular challenge includes many integrated approach involving AI, IoT, AR/VR, etc.

The possibilities are endless.

Regardless of what you’re interested in exploring, the foundational process is similar, and typically entails—and it typically wraps up with a proof of value.

Research – First, we explore emerging trends in your space, how early adopters in are using new technologies, and what’s happening in other industries that might be applicable.
Dialog & Discovery – Next, we bring all the key stakeholders to the table to explain any relevant new technology, present the research, and discuss challenges and opportunities.
Brainstorming & Whiteboarding – Then, we brainstorm and whiteboard potential solutions, prioritize by need and impact, and provide space for you to consider next steps.
Proof of Value – Last, we bring together a team to prototype a solution that tangibly demonstrates whether something can be done, and what it will take to make it happen.

The goal of the JumpStart process is to for you to have the information you need to determine if the innovation path you are considering makes sense—whether it’s achievable, what the business case is, what the obstacles are, and if it will drive value for your organization.

While JumpStart typically ends with the proof of value, it’s rarely the end of the project lifecycle. If you’re looking to launch a pilot initiative or scale a program or technology across your organization, we can help with that, too.

JumpStart in Action—Three Real-World Examples of How

Innovation looks different.

To get a better understanding of how JumpStart future state and product ideation workshops can help you innovate and solve your most pressing challenges, I’ve pulled together three real-world examples.

An AI solution for triaging automotive warranty claims – A leading auto manufacturer with a large warranty business wanted to explore how AI could help them triage claims. They needed to understand if it was a practical solution and what implementing it would entail. The JumpStart and proof of value process proved their idea was achievable, but it brought to light some underlying issues around data and integrations. They came away with not only a better understanding of what was possible, but also what it would take to get there.
An IoT solution for monitoring vaccines storage temperatures – A global healthcare nonprofit that provides vaccines needed to monitor the temperatures of refrigerators in remote locations with inconsistent power supplies to ensure the vaccines’ efficacy. The JumpStart and proof of value process was the launchpad for a viable solution that included everything from building a circuit board, to operationalizing it with 1G connectivity in the Azure Cloud. Once the initial project was a starting point for a host of related solutions, including refrigerated backpacks and fanny packs.
A competitive gap analysis for a robotics company’s app – A manufacturer of robotic household appliances wanted to benchmark their app experience and physical against their competitors’ solutions. They needed objective real-world insights into their strengths and opportunities for improvement, so they knew where to focus future development efforts. The JumpStart and proof of value process led to tangible enhancements to both their app and product that improved customer experience.

JumpStart Your Technology Project—and Stay on Track—with Kopius!

Let’s connect!

From Innovation to Fully Scaled—A Roadmap for Experimenting with New Technology and Identifying Practical Applications

Posted on January 30, 2025 by Danny Vally, Chief Operating Officer, Kopius

Male IT Specialist Holds Laptop and Discusses Work with Female Server Technician. They’re Standing in Data Center, Rack Server Cabinet with Cloud Server Icon and Visualization.

Enterprise technology adoption typically follows an S curve, with organizations first undertaking frontier innovation, then experimenting, piloting, and scaling, as McKinsey explains in their latest Technology Trends Outlook. But innovation has never been easy, and staying ahead of the emerging technology frontier is an infinite race. It’s hard to take care of today’s problems when you’re focused on tomorrow. Consider AI or GenAI—you may not have in-house expertise, or if you do, their efforts are focused on existing programs. Maybe you just don’t have the time and space to figure out what types of problems emerging technologies can solve and what the best use cases are in your business. 

To take advantage of AI and GenAI, innovation and experimentation are necessary first steps. It’s the only way to figure out what’s going to work for your company and to get buy-in before investing.

That’s why more companies are looking to external partners for help.

Technology Experimentation and the Art of the Possible

When IoT was first introduced, it was complicated, and companies didn’t know what it meant for their businesses. So, at Kopius, we started holding future state workshops to help our clients understand what it was all about, the types of problems it could solve, and to identify some specific use cases within their businesses. We quickly came to think of it as the art of the possible.

We’re seeing much the same thing with AI, and to meet the need, we’ve designed a full-fledged innovation and experimentation service offering we call JumpStart.

Our JumpStart process provides a roadmap for frontier innovation and experimentation. It entails:

Research – Over the years we’ve learned how valuable it is to come to the table with a big picture understanding of your business, what the emerging trends are in your space, how early adopters in your industry are using it, and even if other industries are using it in ways that might be applicable.
Dialog & Discovery – Once we’ve wrapped our heads around all that, we bring all the key stakeholders to the table to explain the technology and present the research, which then generates good discussions about the business problems you’re having and opportunities you could potentially take advantage of.
Brainstorming & Whiteboarding – This is where the art of the possible comes to life. Using a design thinking approach, we brainstorm and whiteboard potential solutions to your most challenging problems and opportunities. Then, we prioritize them based on greatest need and impact. We also give you some space to think about what the best opportunity to move forward with is.
Proof of Value – The last step of the process is to demonstrate proof of value. We bring together a multi-functional team to do some light, rapid prototyping that tangibly demonstrates the use case. Proof of value isn’t just about whether something can be done—it’s about whether it should be done. Does it solve your business problem? Is it financially and operationally viable? What will it take to pilot and scale?

While the proof of value typically marks the end of the JumpStart process, it doesn’t necessarily mark the end of our partnership. For many of our clients, it’s just the beginning. Kopius can also pull together the right resources to pilot the project and scale it across your organization.

JumpStart in Action – For a Leading Auto Manufacturer, JumpStart Brought Critical Information to Light

A leading auto manufacturer with a large warranty business wanted to use AI to make more informed decisions about what claims to automatically approve vs. look into more deeply. Before fully investing in the project, they needed to better understand if it was a practical solution and what implementing it would entail.

JumpStart was a perfect fit for their needs.

After some initial research, we brought key stakeholders to the table for in-depth discussions about the possibilities, the opportunities, and their business challenges. Then, we brainstormed and white boarded potential solutions. A big part of this was mapping out a detailed service blueprint that detailed every step of the warranty claim process.

Next, we tackled the proof of value, which brought critical information to light. While the AI solution was possible, they needed to address some upstream challenges before it could be implemented. Since claims were being submitted by so many different people through so many different systems, they would first need to build integrations and standardize the way data was coming in.

This gave the auto manufacturer the necessary insight to weigh the effort and expense vs. the long-term benefits of the undertaking and make an informed decision about moving forward.

The Value of a Fresh Perspective

When you are laser focused on solving today’s problems, it’s hard to break away and orient yourself to the larger world of advancing technology. That’s why an external technology partner like Kopius can be a real asset. We bring fresh perspectives, objectivity, and use cases from within your industry and outside of it to help you drive innovation, experiment, pilot, and scale.

Wherever you are on your AI innovation journey, we’d love to help you explore the art of the possible.

JumpStart Your Technology Project—and Stay on Track—with Kopius!

Let’s connect!

How Design Thinking and User-Centered Design Build Trust—Lessons from Designing Tucson Medical Center’s Digital Front Door

Posted on January 23, 2025 by Hieu (Sam) To, Manager, UX/UI Design

Design thinking is about empathy—putting yourself in another person’s shoes to solve a problem they are facing. User-centered design is about, well, useability. It narrows in on the part of that solution that is tied to a digital or online experience, whether that’s a product, an application, or a website. The two concepts go hand-in-hand, and as Kopius went about building Tucson Medical Center’s (TMC Health) digital front door, both were at the forefront of our thinking. 

The reason? Trust.

It’s important for people to be able to trust their health care system and its providers. And we wanted to send that message loud and clear in every digital interaction. Empathy and useability were the keys.

Key Strategies for Overcoming Complexity

Healthcare can be complicated, overwhelming—even scary. A digital front door, which is an online portal or platform where a health care system, its staff, patients, and even their families or other caregivers, can easily interact and access the information, should be designed to make it less so. Design thinking and user-centered design drove every aspect of our approach to building the new site, which we did using the Payload content management system.

Among the many strategies we used, three stand out. First, every decision we made was centered on the user journey, which was a bit tricky, since there was more than one user. Second, we made access to critical information as straightforward as possible. And third, we used visual branding to simplify and guide users.

While these are particularly critical in a health care setting, they are truly universal and applicable when developing any digital product or solution.

1. Prioritize the User Journey—Even on the Backend

When developing any digital product, the user journey should always be your top priority. But in TMC Health’s case, they needed to welcome both new and established patients, and their journeys are very different. For example, new patients are often looking for educational and marketing materials about what the health system offers while returning patients need to quickly find specific services and providers, schedule appointments, etc. We had to create pathways for both.

Digging deeper, we realized those aren’t the only two user personas that matter. TMC Health’s team uses the site to upload and manage content. They had their own user journey that had to be addressed. Not only did we need to structure the backend so they could work efficiently, but we also needed to build guardrails so that they uploaded new content, they didn’t make changes that would impact the user experience.

Websites often must address the needs of more than one user persona, both on the front end and the back. You may not be able to tackle everything at once. That was the case with the TMC Health project, so we took a phased approach. First, we addressed the established patient journey, then the needs of new patients.

2. Make Sure Important Information is Just Two Clicks Away

TMC Health’s previous website grew to include more than 1,300 pages of content. It was a maze to navigate. Our challenge was to simplify it so people could find what they needed with minimal effort. We started by conducting a content audit and inventory, then we built a restructured site map with improved hierarchy that prioritized important information. We also condensed content and sunset out of date information. In the end, we were able to get those 1,300 down to about 400, so that no critical information was more than two clicks away.

Next, we turned our attention to TMC’s internal users. To make sure they could add necessary content without overwhelming the site or patients using it, we developed content writing guidelines tailored for healthcare that focus on clarity, accessibility, and relevance. Then, we streamlined the back end to make it simpler for content writers to manage and update information across the network and reduce the need for training. We also added formatting and character count limits in the CMS to ensure new content was concise and is easy to skim.

While finding the information you need fast is critical when your health is on the line, it’s true on any website. Many companies, especially in the business world, overcomplicate their sites—they want potential customers to spend time on it. But I would caution to pick your moments. Customers come to your site for many reasons—sometimes they need information fast, and other times they’re there to learn. Prioritize accordingly.

3. Use Visual Branding to Create Cohesiveness—and Differentiation

TMC Health is comprised of 10 clinics and facilities. On their previous site, these were all visually branded the same. Typically, consistent branding is a best practice, but in this case, it created confusion for users. Our challenge was to find a way to create alignment with the primary TMC Health brand structure while making it easy for people to quickly differentiate between locations. We solved this by developing an overarching color scheme and using different but visually related colors for each location. Importantly, though, we kept the page layout consistent so users could quickly find or navigate to the information they needed.

This situation isn’t exclusive to healthcare—large corporations with multiple lines of business often face similar challenges. The big takeaway here is that color can provide cohesiveness, but in a situation where everything else is consistent, it can be a differentiator that helps the user—in this case a patient—quickly understand that they are in the right place.

Design Thinking: Empathy Builds Trust

Patient care begins at the digital front door. It’s a healthcare system’s first opportunity to build trust and demonstrate the level of care people can expect throughout their healthcare journey, from routine family care to urgent help in an emergency. A digital front door built on a solid foundation of design thinking and that prioritizes the user journey, can make a real difference in moments that matter, perhaps even saving lives.

JumpStart Your Technology Project—and Stay on Track—with Kopius!

At Kopius, we harness the power of people, data and emerging technologies to build innovative solutions that help our customers navigate continual change and solve formidable challenges. To accelerate our customers’ success, we’ve designed a JumpStart program to prioritize digital transformation together.

Let’s connect!

Introducing Kopius Labs—Innovate and Scale Quickly and Cost Effectively with Our Blended Talent Teams

Posted on November 5, 2024 by Diego Anfossi, Vice President of Delivery, and Matias Mazzucchelli, Managing Director

Everywhere you go, emerging technology like generative AI (GenAI) is top of mind. Organizations are wisely racing to incorporate it into their workflows to gain insights and efficiencies that will drive customer value and give them a competitive edge. But many of the fundamental challenges that faced IT and development teams prior to the advent of GenAI remain, and chief among them are simply bandwidth and budget. In fact, in the Skillsoft 2023-2024 IT Skills and Salary Report, more than 5,700 respondents identified resource and budget constraints as the number one challenge their organizations face. 

At Kopius, we hear this from our clients every day. Your senior team members are so bogged down with day-to-day responsibilities, they don’t have the time to address emergent business needs, much less innovate. But adding headcount is both time-consuming and costly. It takes time and effort to find the right people with the right skills. You don’t always have the budget for full-time staff, or you may only need extra help for a short period of time.

At Kopius, we are excited to introduce Kopius Labs, a new resourcing solution designed to meet you where you are, so you can quickly and cost effectively stand up a team for a pressing, usually short-term project.

Your Team, Your Way—Flexible and Cost-Effective Blended Talent Teams

If you’ve worked with Kopius before, you know our team of inspired realists is our superpower. What you might not realize is how much work we put in behind the scenes to identify the best talent. And we don’t stop there—we also provide continuing education to make sure they’re always at the top of their game. Our near shore, LatAm-based teams are a blend of experts in a broad range of technologies and principles, people with solid, mid-level experience, emerging talent fresh out of Kopius Academy, our certification program, and everything in between.

If you have a small project or short-term need, we can quickly and cost effectively stand-up a Kopius Lab—a team of people with blended levels of expertise, some who are between longer term projects, to close the gap.

Kopius Labs is a win-win for both you and our team members. You benefit from rapidly advancing design thinking, accelerated feature development, and groundbreaking R&D work, and our teams gain rewarding opportunities and valuable experience working on cutting edge projects. All of this is delivered through a cost-effective, blended team structure, ensuring high-impact results without the expense of high-priced resources.

Just tell us what problem you’re trying to solve, and we’ll spin up a custom Kopius Lab to resource it.

Kopius Labs—A Right-Sized Resource Solution

At Kopius, we’re still focused on digital leadership: developing digital products and custom applications powered by technology, data, and IoT. And we still deliver services through all our usual resourcing approaches: future-state workshops, end-to-end project delivery, managed services, and with embedded team members. Now, with the addition of Kopius Labs, we can help our customers quickly fill technical gaps between those larger scale and longer-term projects.

Here are just a few ways Kopius Labs can help:

Managing Daily Operations
Every company has operational upkeep—tasks you must do to keep things running smoothly. But it shouldn’t keep your senior team members from contributing where you need them most. Kopius can spin up a Lab to handle the everyday so you can use your team more effectively.
Addressing Emergent Needs
No matter how well you plan, something unexpected always comes up. Need to quickly ramp up your technical resources to handle an ad hoc project or augment your team during busy season?
Kopius can spin up a Lab so you can scale your team quickly.
Experimenting and Innovating
Sometimes, you just need to understand if something is the right approach for your company. Looking to explore a new idea, test something quickly, or whip up a quick proof of concept? Kopius, can spin up a Lab to make sure you’re headed in the right direction.

Kopius Labs is all about scale, flexibility, and speed—at a competitive price, of course.

Innovate and Scale—Quickly and Cost Effectively—with Kopius Labs!

At Kopius, we harness the power of people, data and emerging technologies to build innovative solutions that help our customers navigate continual change and solve formidable challenges. To accelerate our customers’ success, we’ve designed Kopius Labs so you can innovate and scale quickly and cost effectively

Let’s connect!

Introducing AI-fueled CodeOps, Your Development Velocity Accelerator Solution

Posted on November 5, 2024 by Rob Carek, Vice President, Client Solutions

There is so much intellectual consideration given to the application development lifecycle. 

Methodologies like Agile, DevOps, and DevSecOps, which are designed to drive more value by getting new features and enhancements to market faster, with fewer issues, are evidence of this. But very few people think about managing the code lifecycle, at least not beyond a single product. We often just accept the limitations and inefficiencies around code development.

AI-fueled CodeOps is here to change that.

CodeOps is designed to relieve developers of repetitive coding so they can focus on higher level work and accelerate the velocity at which they can get new features and enhancements to market.

Repetitive Coding—and Testing—Is Inefficient

Companies typically align development teams to a single product, and those teams rarely branch outside their own area of focus. The approach has both advantages and disadvantages. On the upside, developers have greater context for their work. They know their products and can build on code they created. The downside, especially for companies with multiple products, is that developers waste large amounts of time writing code that does things that already exist within other products. They’re writing code to do the same thing again and again.

It’s wildly inefficient.

And it’s just not developing code—it’s testing it, too. You develop the code, you develop the test code, you identify and address issues, you release, you fix bugs. The inefficiencies grow exponentially, especially across multiple products. You can see how this might open the company to greater exposure from a security standpoint, as well.

But what if you could find similarities between requirements, develop code to address them, and use it everywhere those requirements exist? What impact would it have on your company, customers, and development teams?

CodeOps Accelerates Velocity—and Value—at Scale

Enter CodeOps.

CodeOps is a methodology that prioritizes reuse of existing code wherever possible. Organizations can use it to reduce development time and get new products, features, and enhancements faster and more securely by reusing, repurposing, or building on code they already have. It entails adopting new ways of thinking, putting new practices and processes in place, and using technology like GenAI to match requirements with reusable, modular pieces of code stored in a code library, so new code is written only when it’s not in the library and/or is truly unique to a single product.

The obvious gains are consistency, efficiency, and security. Products are more structurally similar, and developers aren’t spending hours recoding the same thing dozens of times—or testing it. You already know it works. If your organization uses DevSecOps practices, you know security was a primary consideration in its development. And if there is an issue, once a patch is deployed, it is fixed everywhere it is in use.

But CodeOps is more than just an efficiency play. By using code from the library, even as a starting point, developers can put more time and effort into coding things that are going to have a big impact on your products—things that drive value to your customers and create value for your company. And from a developer’s perspective, that is more interesting, rewarding, and desirable work.

As with agile, DevOps, and DevSecOps, CodeOps requires cultural and process changes. Developers must adopt new ways of working, but they also must be willing to trust the code.

Ignite CodeOps Adoption with an External Catalyst

All the major code platforms—Jira, GitHub, Azure DevOps, Slack—are actively exploring how to integrate CodeOps into their solutions, and third-party tools are emerging, as well. They are all nascent, with some working better than others, which makes it difficult to determine which one will best serve you in the long run. In addition, adopting CodeOps is more than just bolting on a technology solution. Like Agile and DevOps before it, CodeOps requires a cultural shift. Developers must adopt a new mindset and new ways of working. And they must learn to trust the existing code modules enough to incorporate and build on them.

These technical, organizational, and cultural barriers make it challenging to figure out how to get started, especially when your teams have so much to do. Sometimes, it takes an external catalyst to make CodeOps real. At Kopius, we’ve developed a solution to help organizations adopt CodeOps without having to tackle the organization and cultural transformation or make a long-term commitment to a platform that is still figuring out its approach.

First, we use GenAI to intelligently review your backlog and identify commonalities in new requests. Next, we aggregate those requests and develop requirements to address them. Then, we develop code to cover the bulk of those commonalities and validate it with your developers to get their feedback and buy in. The code is stored in the code library and pushed to the right code repositories. Then, when you’re ready to tackle one of those new requests in a sprint, your developers simply pull the relevant code from the repository and use it as-is or as a starting point. As additional new requests come in, the process is repeated.

Companies gain the advantages that come with looking at code across their entire portfolio and maintaining it by feature and functionality, without disrupting existing development processes.

It’s a smart point of entry for any organization wanting to get started with CodeOps today.

CodeOps: A GenAI Approach to Working Smarter, Not Harder

Ultimately, CodeOps solves a fundamental problem that many organizations have—writing the same requirements and code for multiple products. It’s a hard challenge to overcome because the organizational constructs inherent in development teams lend themselves to a product-by-product approach.

But with a little help from GenAI and an external catalyst like Kopius developers can work smarter, not harder and accelerate the velocity at which they can deliver value.

JumpStart Your Technology Project—and Stay on Track—with Kopius!

At Kopius, we harness the power of people, data and emerging technologies to build innovative solutions that help our customers navigate continual change and solve formidable challenges. To accelerate our customers’ success, we’ve designed a JumpStart program to prioritize digital transformation together.

Let’s connect!

Related Services:

GenAI Is Coming for Coding in the Best Possible Way

Posted on October 28, 2024 by Kopius Editorial Board with Rob Carek

Rob Carek Explains Why CodeOps is a Win for Businesses, Customers, and Developers

Across the enterprise, in every industry vertical and every operational and functional area, organizations are racing to take advantage of Generative AI (GenAI). It’s already in use in 65% of organizations, according to a McKinsey Global Survey. For software companies, much of the focus has been on using GenAI to generate code. But the approach has challenges. Depending on the tool developers use, the code accuracy rate is only between 31% and 65%, according to a Bilkent University study. The general consensus is it’s buggy and poses hidden security risks.

But software companies and developers now have another meaningful approach to GenAI at their disposal—CodeOps. GenAI fueled CodeOps is an approach that now enables developers to reuse internally owned, fully approved, modular coding building blocks—systematically. And it’s driving a transformational shift that creates business and customer value, unburdens developers of mundane and repetitive coding, and enables them to innovate.

We sat down with Rob Carek, Vice President of Client Solutions at Kopius, to introduce you to CodeOps.

Tell me about CodeOps. What is it and what problem does it solve?

Modern software development processes are wildly inefficient. A fundamental challenge, at least for companies with more than one product or application, is that there’s no practical way to reuse code. So, if you have a suite of 20 products, and every single one of them has a similar feature, your development teams have built that feature 20 different times—and they do it differently, every single time. In theory, a human could pour over requirements and search code repositories to find commonalities and reuse existing code, but that’s just not practical—it would be far more work than just rebuilding it.

But with the advent of GenAI, code reuse is NOW an addressable problem.

CodeOps is a code reuse strategy, and GenAI is not only the enabler, but also the accelerator. The idea is that companies can now develop reusable, modular code and store it in a library or repository. Then, GenAI can be used to search for existing code to use or build on instead of developing everything from scratch.

What are the big benefits of CodeOps?

There are four big benefits that I see: efficiency, innovation, faster time to market, and security. From an efficiency standpoint, since existing code is being repurposed, companies can save a ton of development and testing time. And when you think about how that is amplified across a whole suite of products—well, the gains are almost exponential. And all the time they save, they can spend innovating—building new features and enhancements that are unique to a given product and require original code. It’s the more challenging and interesting part of a developer’s job and where they really want to spend their time, so there’s a human benefit. It also means that things that really move the needle get to market and in customers’ hands sooner.

From a security standpoint, anything in the library is proven code—you know it meets organizational security and compliance standards. But, again, the impact really comes at scale. If you push a patch, everything updates, every vulnerability is closed wherever the code is in use.

Is CodeOps compatible with DevOps and DevSecOps?

Absolutely. The goal of DevOps is to break down silos between development and operations so new products, features, and enhancements get to market faster, more efficiently, and with fewer issues. DevSecOps prioritizes security at every step of the process. But both practices are focused on code development at the product or team level. CodeOps addresses a need at the organizational level, across multiple products. By reusing code wherever possible, CodeOps amplifies DevOps and DevSecOps outcomes—new things get to market even faster, even more efficiently, and with even fewer issues.

How can organizations get started with CodeOps?

Many of the major code platforms are starting to explore CodeOps and looking for ways to integrate it into their solutions, but it’s still very early days. I anticipate the first place they will start is using LLMs to identify commonalities in requirements. That doesn’t account for developing code that fulfills those requirements, and it’s going to be a long while before we see integrated, searchable code libraries. But that doesn’t mean you have to wait until they figure it out to get started.

At Kopius, we’ve developed a solution companies can use to adopt CodeOps today. We use GenAI to look at your backlog and identify commonalities in new requests and aggregate them. Then, we develop requirements and develop code to address them and validate it. The code is pushed to your code repository so when you’re ready to work those requests into a sprint, your developers can access it. It’s a more organic way to build a library of existing, pre-approved code that doesn’t require your teams to operate any differently than they do now.

What will it take to get developers to adopt CodeOps?

Modern development practices are simply not designed for content reuse at scale—there’s no precedent for it. And culturally, developers will look at someone else’s code and think, “I wouldn’t have done it that way.” So, like DevOps, getting developers to adopt CodeOps is going to take cultural change. Kopius’ solution takes that into consideration. It’s a hybrid human / technology approach that builds trust and buy-in by actively engaging developers in reviewing requirements and code and providing feedback. That way, they’ve contributed to it and have more confidence in it.

And as I mentioned earlier, CodeOps frees developers from the repetitive and mundane—things that are table stakes, so they have more time for developing things that are truly innovative. It’s a win-win.

What’s the single, most important thing companies should know about GenAI-fueled CodeOps?

GenAI-fueled CodeOps isn’t just an incremental improvement. It’s a truly transformational shift that will enable organizations to develop code at speed and scale, drive value into customers’ hands at speed, and free developers from the burden of repetitive, mundane work so they can focus on innovating.

Ultimately, GenAI-fueled CodeOps makes the most of what both technology and humans bring to the table—and rapidly scales it.

JumpStart Your Technology Project—and Stay on Track—with Kopius!

At Kopius, we harness the power of people, data and emerging technologies to build innovative solutions that help our customers navigate continual change and solve formidable challenges. To accelerate our customers’ success, we’ve designed a JumpStart program to prioritize digital transformation together.

Related Services: