Learn how UBA IALAB increased efficiency by 500% using automations

This is a contributed post from Puzzle Digital, an ActiveCampaign partner.

IALAB is the artificial intelligence laboratory at the University of Buenos Aires (UBA). The University, including the laboratory, stands among Latin America’s top universities, according to the QS ranking. The Lab has co-organized and coordinated artificial intelligence debate sessions at the MIT Media Lab in Boston. This lab leads LATAM’s AI ecosystem, and has incubated and developed artificial intelligence and the automated solutions most notably implemented in Hispanic America, some of them with multiple country implementations –particularly in the field of justice– and recognized by the UN, the Development Bank of Latin America (CAF), the UNESCO and the European Union.

The University has developed a multidisciplinary program that is unprecedented in LATAM and seeks to reduce the digital, data skills training access, programming, and artificial intelligence gaps. For that reason, it offers more than 700 free course hours through scholarships.

The University has entrusted this project to Puzzle Digital since their strategic diagnosis is based on automated, self-managed scalability. In addition, two key factors have also been considered: on the one hand, the quality of their faculty members, the audiovisual contents and an offering that combines synchronous tutoring as opposed to mostly asynchronous training; on the other hand, offering an automated, self-managed experience tailored to individual student needs was a must.  Regarding contents, a group of professors of high prestige in LATAM was recruited. They were responsible for AI projects on a global scale at universities such as Harvard, MIT, and other major companies and universities.

Regarding experience management, the university had extremely limited proprietary software which offered no customization possibilities, basic study flows and welcome emails, and no integration with other applications. This greatly limited the students’ experience, did not allow the execution of complex flows, and, consequently, prevented the deployment of a self-managed, intuitive and highly automated experience. Based on a university mapping, the student onboarding process would require hundreds of hours for students to be enrolled.

The Solution

The success of this program lies in the design of a customized, self-managed, intelligent end-to-end student experience.

Following implementation, UBA launched their free AI program, which has become LATAM’s most highly impacting totally free AI program, supporting over 5,000 students who are completing the program. UBA now has a 500% faster admission process as compared to the traditional one and has reduced labor costs by at least $100K USD annually.

This implementation has earned international recognition by the UN, the IDB, the CAF, and the European Union.

As Juan Gustavo Corvalán, UBA IALAB director has pointed out, “We would need a staff of 30 to manage 7,000 students, which translates to a cost of $150K USD annually. Thanks to ActiveCampaign automations, only 2 part-time employees are required at roughly $7K USD annually.”

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