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Kaushik Mehta is the Chief Technology Officer at Journal Technologies.
Q: Not all customers attended our User Conference in November, and there were some themes and technology reveals during the opening session worthy of a recap.
KM: Yes, it was an information- and demo-packed ninety minutes on the first day. We spoke about some features that will improve how our customers handle existing tasks, and revealed some technology that provides entirely new capabilities.
Q: We heard the line that software should “fade into the background” several times in the opening session. What does that mean in practice?
KM: Well-engineered technology should just work for an end-user so they can focus on their tasks, not the software. That means systems that are straightforward, intuitive, and suit their workflows. For us, that includes investing in fundamentals like performance, reliability, usability, and accessibility.
Q: The plenary highlighted how we’re using new technology to eliminate old inefficiencies to make work easier. Did anything stand out to you?
KM: What excites me most is that these efforts improve existing workflows and unlock entirely new capabilities. As we continue to integrate artificial intelligence carefully and intentionally, we believe we can reduce friction while improving accuracy of data. It’s all about automating time-consuming tasks (with oversight) so humans can focus on the real work and making decisions.
Q: Race Blind Charging specifically discussed. Why?
KM: Race Blind Charging is a great example of our repeatable, product-driven approach, and is also significant because it was made possible by leveraging AI capabilities. New legislation in California requires prosecutors to remove potential indicators of race during the charging process.
Rather than building one-off solutions for individual customers, we engineered a modular, standalone service that can be easily updated. We showcased how it works and how our productization approach made it easier for California customers to implement.
Q: And this segued to a reveal of Journal’s new AI Services Manager architecture, correct?
KM: Indeed. With AI evolving rapidly, uncontrolled integrations create real operational and reputational risk. Our AI Services Manager is a centralized architecture that governs, audits, and secures AI usage, enabling customers to safely embed approved AI capabilities into workflows while maintaining control, compliance, and organizational security without exposing data or bypassing governance controls.
Q: You also discussed four high-level principles that guide our approach as we build technology for customers.
KM: Yes. First, we want to ensure that any major new capabilities are built as modular, standalone services that easily integrate with your existing system. The second key principle is making choices that emphasize repeatability and upgradeability as we work to accelerate the time it takes to deploy and upgrade.
Third is that cloud-based software is the future. We understand certain customer types will opt to remain on premises, and we will support that; but as cloud-based software continues to build momentum, we believe older patterns will eventually come with trade-offs. Our fourth principle is to leverage AI prudently to increase human velocity. These are not exhaustive: emphasis on performance, security, and agile practices of course remain central to our work.
Q: You spent time assuring customers that though exciting new work is happening, we’re not forgetting the importance of getting fundamentals right, like improved support. Why?
KM: Revealing new, cutting-edge technology is exciting, but we wanted to make clear to everyone that we’re also allocating significant resources to strengthen our foundational existing technology. This effort is focused in five major areas: reliability and quality, documentation, user interface modernization, increasing efficiency of development and updates, and adapting to regulatory change. Without these improvements, any cool, shiny new features could actually be a source of annoyance – as in, we don’t “get it”.
Q: To close things out, let’s step back for a second. What’s the main message you hope customers took away from the plenary session?
KM: That we’re modernizing thoughtfully, not chasing hype. On behalf of customers, we’re looking at long-time horizons across a landscape of change, whereby we help ensure they experience their eSeries-based technology as an appreciating asset and not a liability.