HONG KONG, Oct. 24, 2023 /PRNewswire/ — B2B Global Trade Financial Technology Platform, XTransfer, is dedicated to providing foreign trade SMEs with secure, compliant, fast, convenient and low-cost global trade payments & fund collection solutions in the past 6 years. Today, XTransfer is thrilled to announce the introduction of the groundbreaking “AI Employee” service, marking a significant milestone for the foreign trade industry.

Following the successful launch of the “AI Letter Writer” feature in May this year, XTransfer’s cutting-edge foreign trade customer relationship management system, “XTransfer CRM,” is now introducing the “AI Employee”, leveraging advanced AI technology to revolutionise the foreign trade industry. “AI Employee” will focus on enhancing the intelligent experience of foreign trade enterprises. It aims to optimise customer acquisition and management, empowering businesses to win in the era of artificial intelligence.

AI Employee: An around-the-clock “Intelligent Foreign Trade Employee”

Customer acquisition serves as the cornerstone of any foreign trade business. In the current industry landscape, the majority of foreign trade professionals dedicate more than 80% of their time solely towards seeking out prospective clients, with automation playing a minor role at less than 10%. This entails an abundance of repetitive tasks, such as searching through Google, Linkedin, and other tools to find potential customer email addresses, followed by screenings and crafting compelling marketing emails while juggling the complexities of time zone differences. This approach proves to be both time-consuming and imprecise for foreign trade professionals. Additionally, as highlighted in the “2021 Foreign Trade Talent Trend Research Report”, foreign trade professionals exhibit high mobility owing to their sales-oriented roles, with an average length of employment of fewer than 30 months. Consequently, a committed, long-term foreign trade salesperson equipped with exceptional customer acquisition skillsets becomes the most valuable asset for foreign trade enterprises. The introduction of an “AI Employee” holds tremendous promise in effectively addressing this challenge faced by foreign trade companies.

“AI Employee” can be seen as the “Intelligent Foreign Trade Practitioner” working around the clock for foreign trade enterprises. In everyday foreign trade scenarios, “AI Employee” aids these enterprises in accomplishing their tasks with remarkable efficiency. A typical foreign trade enterprise encompasses various roles, such as acquiring new customers, marketing new products to existing customers, managing orders, and managing payment collections etc. Each role entails distinct objectives and skill requirements. The “AI Employee” can cover the roles of customer acquisition and marketing. When the boss of a foreign trade enterprise outlines objectives for the “AI Employee”, it can analyse the tasks, devise strategies, and autonomously access the customer relationship management tool, “XTransfer CRM”, to execute the objectives. Moreover, as an AI-powered digital intelligence tool integrated into the “XTransfer CRM”, the “AI Employee” generates comprehensive summary reports upon completing target tasks, while recording all daily work activities within the system. This enables foreign trade managers to retrieve and review these records at any time. Consequently, the efficiency of expanding business for foreign trade enterprises is significantly enhanced, allowing foreign trade sales staff or individuals running SOHO (small office or home office) foreign trade companies to focus more on converting potential customers.

Combine AI with foreign trade to realise value in the depth of the industry

According to Mr Lee Wai Tung, Technical Director of XTransfer, the “AI Employee” core capability lies in its ability to autonomously make decisions based on the “Emergence” of large language model with more than 10 billion parameters, which was incapable in previous AI models. “Emergence” is a concept derived from complexity science which describes how a system as a whole possesses capabilities that its individual components do not possess. For example, an ant colony exhibits vastly different characteristics in shape and mobility compared to a single ant, and a snowflake exhibits significantly different properties compared to a single molecule of water. In the context of large language models, such as ChatGPT, they excel in microscopic abilities such as “Next Token Prediction”, which makes this generation of AI referred to as AIGC (AI Generated Content). However, as the number of parameters of large language models and pre-training data increase, it becomes evident that through “In Context Learning” and “Chain of Thought”, we can stimulate the language model’s deep logical thinking circuit. This enables the model to surpass simple AIGC and make deductive decisions, which represents a potential path towards AGI (Artificial General Intelligence). “AI Employee” is the realisation of AGI, an advanced academic concept, in the foreign trade industry. XTransfer has been deeply integrating AI into the foreign trade industry, launching targeted AI products and services such as the “AI Letter Writer” in May and the recent introduction of the “AI Employee”, with the aim of serving millions of foreign trade enterprises.

The transition from a general large model to an industry-specific large model has gained momentum in the realm of AI development. The large model is applied to deeper of the industry to unlock its true value. By undergoing meticulous training in the operational concepts and methodologies of the foreign trade industry, and leveraging its own AGI capabilities, the large model can genuinely align with the unique circumstances and business needs of each foreign trade enterprise to generate an “AI Employee” that aligns with the customer’s desires and fulfils their specific needs, thereby assisting them in overcoming real-world business challenges. This endeavour encompasses not only the foundational capabilities of the large model but also extensive observation, immersion, and summarisation of the foreign trade industry.

During the pre-training phase of “AI Employee”, the general large language model is equipped with the industry skillsets by incorporating the selected marketing and operational knowledge from the foreign trade industry. Advanced fine-tuning techniques such as “Instruction-Tuning” and “LoRA” (Low-Rank Adaptation of Large Language Models) are employed to identify the most effective fine-tuning methods in practical scenarios, enabling the model to understand the foreign trade landscape comprehensively. Furthermore, when an enterprise hires an “AI Employee”, a mere 30 seconds of new employee training is required for the “AI Employee” to gather company information and swiftly adapt to the role. The classic approach to this training involves minimising the collection of company background, business operations, product knowledge, and objectives through a Q&A format. It is then reassembled into a complete context for subsequent “In Context Learning” decision-making in the large model.

AI’s utilisation enhances the value of foreign trade SaaS

The market offers plenty of SaaS services catering to the foreign trade industry. However, as traditional foreign trade SaaS solutions become increasingly feature-rich, users face the challenge of rising operating costs, particularly for SMEs with limited manpower and time to navigate complex foreign trade software. In such circumstances, having an “AI Employee” with ample learning and decision-making capabilities can help enterprises fully harness the value of foreign trade SaaS.

The “AI employee” is equipped with AI decision-making capabilities, while “XTransfer CRM” has restructured the fundamental tools within foreign trade SaaS into “plug-ins” that can be readily identified and accessed by the AI large model. As more tools within foreign trade SaaS are utilised, various combinations of tools emerge in different business scenarios. The fusion of “plug-ins” and AI decision-making capabilities enables the identification of the most suitable tool combinations for each scenario, leading to direct and effective business outcomes.

For instance, clients can set specific work goals for the “AI Employee”, such as achieving 10 meaningful responses from potential customers within a month. Upon receiving this goal, the “AI Employee” will break it down into weekly objectives and further into a daily work plan using the CoT reasoning process of the large model. In the daily work plan, the “AI Employee” organises the tools to be employed on a particular day, such as social media platforms, independent websites, and EDM (Electronic Direct Mail), along with their respective exposure strategies, then following the plan to execute the tasks systematically.

To fulfil the set work plan, the “AI Employee” promptly accesses all the AI-powered digital intelligence tools within “XTransfer CRM” as standardised large model plug-ins, completing daily tasks and providing progress reports to the user. Based on the day’s accomplishments, the “AI Employee” will adjust the following day’s work plan accordingly, continually pushing towards the achievement of work objectives.

Mr. Lee Wai Tung, the Technical Director of XTransfer, remarked, “In the past, excelling in the foreign trade industry was quite challenging, and the industry professionals were scarce. However, the launch of “AI Employee” presents a remarkable opportunity for foreign trade to transition from a “high entry barrier” to a “zero entry barrier” industry. Particularly in customer acquisition, the “AI Employee” can efficiently and accurately carry out preliminary tasks, subsequently relaying in-depth communications from interested customers to our clients, making the “AI Employee” a dependable aide in expanding foreign trade operations. Moreover, as the “AI Employee” undergoes continuous optimisation and iteration, it can complete a greater workload for users and tackle increasingly complex assignments, thus genuinely assisting enterprises in securing more business prospects.”

About XTransfer 

B2B Global Trade Financial Technology Platform, XTransfer, a leading trade payment & collection enterprise in China, is dedicated to providing SMEs with secure, compliant, fast, convenient and low-cost global trade payments & fund collection solutions, significantly reducing the cost of global expansion and enhancing global competitiveness. Founded in 2017, the company is headquartered in Shanghai and has branches in China’s major foreign trade cities such as Hong Kong, Shenzhen and the United Kingdom, the United States, Canada, Japan, Australia, and Singapore. XTransfer has obtained local payment licenses in Hong Kong, the United Kingdom, the United States, Canada, and Australia. With more than 400,000 enterprise clients, XTransfer has become the industry’s leading company in China.

By cooperating with well-known multinational banks and financial institutions, XTransfer has built a unified global multi-currency clearing network and built a data-based, automated, Internet-based and intelligent anti-money laundering risk control infrastructure centred on small and medium enterprises. XTransfer uses technology as a bridge to link large financial institutions and small and medium enterprises around the world, allowing small and medium enterprises to enjoy the same level of cross-border financial services as large multinational corporations.

XTransfer completed its Series D financing in September 2021, and the company’s current valuation exceeds USD$1.3 billion, making it a unicorn. The lead investor is China Merchants Venture, and other global leading strategic investors include eWTP Capital, Yunqi Capital, Gaorong Capital, 01VC, Telstra Ventures, MindWorks, Lavender Hill Capital Partners, and D1 Capital Partners LP.

For more information: https://hk.xtransfer.com/