We think GenAI can help us very significantly in fraud reduction and determining early signs of fraud through the volumes of data that the compute can digest and then feed information to our associates so that we can get a lot, we can early turn those fraud opportunities before they actually manifest. And so that’s the one payment area where our partnership with Microsoft is driving AI improvement.
Unidentified Analyst: Great. Thanks for all that detail. If I could just turn to one of the other partnerships you announced with Oracle, moving your tolling database to the cloud for reference to unit cost savings. Just to put some flesh on that, what percent savings did you achieve?
Clifford Skelton: It’s probably not a question I can answer with specificity or should answer with specificity. But let me – what the partnership with Oracle inside of Azure is doing for us is speeding up the process and reducing latency in the cloud by taking Oracle’s database in the cloud into Azure’s cloud and then allowing our processing speed to increase by a significant margin. I don’t – it’s probably not prudent for me to say exactly what that marginal improvement is or what the unit cost savings is. But, obviously if you can go faster, you can go cheaper. And so that’s the model we’re pursuing. But it’s incremental. There’s no breakthrough here. It’s all incremental. It’s a continuum.
Unidentified Analyst: Great. Well, thanks again and congratulations again.
Clifford Skelton: You bet. Thanks, Michael.
Operator: Thank you. The next question is coming from Marc Riddick of Sidoti & Company. Please go ahead.
Marc Riddick: Hey, good morning.
Clifford Skelton: Hey, Mark.
Marc Riddick: I wanted to sort of dig into a little bit around the commentary around the cost reduction efforts and the urgency that you’re seeing maybe from customers. I was wondering if you could spend a little time talking about that and maybe sort of how, that sort of plays into your expectation of driving sales.
Clifford Skelton: Well look, like every CEO and CFO that I’m familiar with is looking for efficiency. I mean, we wouldn’t be doing our job if we weren’t. But especially as the economy is forward thinking, people are starting to think, well, when this thing starts slowing down a little bit, I’m going to have to start reducing cost. And a lot of folks are thinking about outsourcing. We’re seeing a lot of that in the healthcare industry, for example, where pressure is increasing. And they’re starting to free up on ways to outsource. Countries they might not have imagined going to before, they’re starting to consider going to from an offshoring perspective. So we’re just — that feeds right into our sweet spot in terms of outsourcing.
But like everybody else, we’re in the same boat internally in terms of driving efficiencies and unit cost reduction. So the bottom line is we’re seeing our clients and potential clients think about how we can help them either consolidate outsource vendors, go to countries we’re not in today, and reduce their cost and improve their own unit cost so that they can drive even at least the improvement, if nothing else.
Marc Riddick: That’s very helpful. Thank you. And then switching gears, I was wondering on one of the comments was around behavior of certain industries as far as within commercial that you’re seeing. Were there any particular call-outs that were maybe performing better than others as far as industry verticals? Or how should we think about the different differentiation of activity?
Clifford Skelton: Well I mean, look, obviously technology continues to be growing as fast as you can imagine. We’re seeing some tightening in healthcare travel and in sort of the logistics areas where they’re a lot more focused on cost reductions. And as I said earlier, the appetite for offshoring, the appetite for outsourcing is increasing. So those are the three areas where we see opportunities for conduit because of the challenges we’re seeing in those three industries.
Marc Riddick: Okay, great. And then I guess the last one for me is sort of a big picture question around interest rates and expectations now relative to maybe six months ago. Are you getting a sense as far as how that is affecting client behavior as of yet? Or are you seeing any changes that are specifically tied to those changes of expectations?
Clifford Skelton: Well, look, I’ll let Steve fill in any gaps. But like I said, I think anticipation of interest rates and any kind of Fed moves, it seems to be on the margins affecting outsourcing appetite. But other than how interest rates affect our own P&L, which Steve touched on in his remarks, and the selling of our benefit wallet asset, we don’t see — there’s nothing monumental from a landscape perspective going on with interest rates that are affecting us. Steve, I don’t know if you’ve got any thoughts on that.
Stephen Wood: The only other thing I can think to add by way of comment there is I think this — I talked about this renewed urgency that we’re seeing to try and drive cost efficiency. And so at some level I think that that could be an indicator, as you suggested, that maybe thought processes have changed around the sort of forward look of the interest rate environment and maybe it being a bit higher for a bit longer and therefore the need to drive cost efficiency. And that urgency is good for us because we play into a lot of those opportunities in our BPaaS and our CX businesses. But without wanting to be the person that’s trying to predict where that’s going to go, I think maybe you can tie those two things together.
Marc Riddick: Great. Thank you so much.
Stephen Wood: Thanks, Marc.
Clifford Skelton: Thanks, Marc.
Operator: Thank you. At this time, I would like to turn the floor back over to Mr. Skelton for closing comments.
