SOUTHINGTON – A pair of local, Central Connecticut State University graduates have recently established a full service IT company, Cephry, which utilizes artificial intelligence and “machine learning” technology to assist with company analytics.
Cephry was founded four-and-a-half months ago by Usman Mumtaz, vice president of technology operations, and Andy Jamil, vice president of sales. They took a class together at CCSU before both pursued careers in finance, with Jamil specializing in lending and Mumtaz in the stock market.
The company currently employs 14 people, with six contract workers, all of whom work remotely. They have been providing their services to a wide range of businesses around the world.
“We both spend all day looking at numbers and we got together and saw that there was a need in the market which we can fill,” Jamil said.
Mumtaz said many businesses are unaware of their current data and underestimate the power of using existing data.
“In fact, data analytics are a crucial component that helps organizations and businesses gain insight into the enormous amount of knowledge they need for further production and growth,” he said.
Jamil said Cephry analyzes existing data using a “machine learning” system, based on artificial intelligence.
“We feed it information about what the business produces and it is able to make predictions based on data, which changes daily,” he said. “We then create a dashboard which updates every second and tracks information down to the penny. It can be used to analyze labor productivity and habits that you have with your business.”
The idea for this system, Jamil said, came about when he was developing a recommendation system for another company – similar to how Amazon allows customers to provide feedback and then its system provides recommendations based on what other customers have bought.
Jamil went on to explain business habits as, for example, that many businesses experience a slow-down during the winter when “snow birds” fly south to Florida and then pick back up again during the summer and during Christmas time. However, Cephry is able to provide more precise data that might otherwise go unnoticed. Utilizing Cephry’s system, Jamil said, business owners are able to streamline operations, reduce costs and increase profits.
Jamil said he recently worked with a textile company in Malaysia which produces 16 types of jeans using materials imported from China. Using Cephry’s system, the company was able to predict when a good time to replenish their stock would be.
“They were worried that there would be backups and our system could tell them exactly how much raw materials they needed to pre-order to replenish their stock,” he said.
Jamil said Cephry’s main focus is to create personalized programs for small to mid-size companies.
Some other examples of the company’s recent work includes an automatic monitoring system that uses analytics to measure the vaccination cycle for dairy animals, thus reducing testing costs for an agri-business by more than 60%.
The Cephry system was also used to design an application programming interface (API) that served as quality insurance for an online company, preventing videos containing adult content or obscenity from being uploaded onto a public platform.
Cephry also created a website for a financial technology client that needed to synchronize data from different vendors into a single platform.
“While our target markets are e-commerce, agri-tech, retail markets, digital marketing, financial technology and drone technologies, we are also looking for permanent partnerships with institutional clients for long-term agreements,” Jamil said. “Clearly, every business – no matter its size, industry or technical capability – would benefit from data analytics.”
For a full menu of options, visit cephry.com.
Brian M. Johnson can be reached at 860-973-1806 or [email protected].
Posted in The Bristol Press, Southington Herald on Thursday, 3 February 2022 10:28. Updated: Thursday, 3 February 2022 10:30.
