Creating Smart Enterprises Using Facial Recognition Technology

Facial Recognition Technology (FRT) is no longer just limited to ‘sci-fi movies’; it’s become a part of our daily lives! Wondering how? You’ll soon know.

One of the popular biometric tools, FRT, or the commonly known FaceTech, helps businesses improve user security and enhance the CX quotient. Although law enforcement agencies previously used it; today, this technology is being used by businesses ranging from marketing agencies to healthcare and from social media platforms to of course security groups. No wonder, it is one of most promising global technology trends.

As per a recent report, “…the global Facial Recognition Market is expected to grow from USD 4.05 Billion in 2017 to USD 7.76 Billion by 2022, at a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 13.9%...” No wonder, enterprises are fast grabbing this technology to make the digital spaces secure and easily accessible for users, and to also improve their systems and processes.

FRT is pretty broad in the general terms – in this write-up, I shall stick to just one aspect: facial recognition in mobile devices. With FRT in mobile apps, businesses are now able to resolve security issues in the marketing and healthcare sectors in real time.

Watch out this space for my up-coming discussions on the use of FRT concerning other sectors.

How does facial recognition work and what drives it?

For the starters, FaceTech is a secured biometric platform that uses facial recognition techniques to identify individuals for fetching (their) data. This is extremely useful in instances where users want to restrict/ grant access to defined areas, improve processes, and detect appropriate solutions for customers.

Every face is unique; be it the length of the jawline, the shape of the cheekbones, the distance between the eyes, and the pattern of the lips: every feature is distinctive, which is what the facial recognition technology uses. FRT creates face prints using measures from approximately 80 nodal points. These measured face prints are stored in secure databases and compared to the detected faces before matching results are returned.

Practically, face recognition technology involves a 4-step process including:

Capturing: The system – an app, a CCTV camera, etc., – collects physical or behavioral samples in predetermined conditions, and during a stated period of time.

Extracting: The gathered data is extracted from the samples to create templates based on the data.

Comparing: After extraction, the gathered data is compared with the existing templates.

Matching: FaceTech, based on Artificial Intelligence and pre-configured algorithms, matches the data available in the database with facial features. If a match is found, it sends a trigger.

Facial recognition previously used by law and enforcement agencies is now also expanding to other industries. The implementation can be found from celebrity face match apps to snap chat live face filters, and so on.

Corporates, such as KFC China is attempting to predict and remember their customers’ fast food choices based on facial recognition. Instead of using passcodes, mobile phones and other consumer electronics can now be accessed via the owners’ facial features. Apple and Samsung have already got FaceTech installed on their phones. Even ATMs are utilizing facial recognition for enhanced user security and experience.

For business owners, it’s crucial that they have a high-level understanding of this tech trend, so they aren’t caught by surprise when FRT starts to impact their industry/ sector. FRT is a vast domain and covering its impact across different sectors in a blog would mean not doing enough justice; for easy readability, we shall restrict this discussion to the three main sectors as highlighted below:

> Access and Security: Companies are utilizing deep learning algorithms to recognize fraud detection and thereby replacing traditional passwords with face recognition technology. A few leading names in this genre include Walmart for shoplifting prevention, MasterCard Identity Check Mobile app for account security, and so on.

> Marketing: Marketers can use customer demographics, combined with intelligent algorithms, to understand user persona that can further help in launching directed marketing strategies with improved success results. Utilizing Facebook’s Auto-Tagging feature improves social media exposure for events. Simple face recognition implementation can enable auto-check in, identify business prospects, and serve customized contents to identified user segments.

> Healthcare: Machine learning ensures secure e-record storage and on-demand access to the same. To accurately track a patient’s medical history, medication details, and other surgical/ non-surgical procedures, FRT comes in handy. Some of the early adopters of FRT in this sector include names such as AiCure (medication adherence), ePAT for pain management, amidst others.

Finally,

No technology has ever existed without its positives and negatives. FaceTech too has far-reaching benefits; however, businesses will need to consider that it does come in with a few drawbacks too

> High volume user data storage and security

> Associated costs for procuring high-speed data processing hardware

> Image size and quality

> A strong influence of camera angles in images

Conclusively, FaceTech, with its vast application, combined with ever-growing AI and machine learning algorithms, seems like the technology that will soon contribute to creating smart enterprises. I am restricting myself to an overall view of the FRT technology in this post. Stay tuned for the detailed application of the technology and how you, as a business owner, can adapt it for competitive advantage.