YDUQS simplifies student access to higher education with Google Cloud's generative AI
About YDUQS
YDUQS is a Brazilian group that provides educational technology and services focusing on higher education. With a diverse portfolio of educational institutions, the company offers a wide range of courses and modalities and serves over 1.4 million students.
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Contact usAfter adopting the cloud, YDUQS has improved agility, assertiveness, scalability, and security for students' enrollment processes, while keeping a high level of service quality.
Google Cloud results
- +90% success rate with Vertex AI PaLM 2
- Average response time for tasks: 4 seconds
- Increased productivity enabling employees to spend more time and resources on strategic activities
- Support to drive creative and innovative ideas and to continuously improve services
Cost savings of nearly BRL 1.5M per year
YDUQS is one of Brazil's largest educational groups, encompassing institutions such as Estácio, Ibmec, IDOMED, Wyden, and Damásio. For over five decades, it has been focusing on innovation and inclusion in education.
Serving over 1.4 million students, the organization develops methodologies, content, and solutions that meet modern needs, offering top-quality higher education for all social groups throughout their entire adult life.
Having digital culture as one of its pillars, YDUQS is a multi-cloud company that has incorporated cutting-edge technologies to optimize enrollment processes and streamline the large volume of student data.
Considering these two challenges, the company identified the need to strengthen its database to meet business goals. Google Cloud emerged as the ideal data management solution, prioritizing privacy, speed, and security.
The company also wanted to keep its approach based on quality and scalability, leveraging the most of generative AI technologies.
"We're always looking to develop internal tools so that we can make data-driven decisions. With the development of generative AI in the market, we decided to bring this subject to the company and started a study to define a methodology that would guide us in that direction. That was when we began considering Google Cloud as our support," says Daniel Rocha, AI and Innovation Manager at YDUQS.
Once the decision had been made, Google Cloud was implemented seamlessly, with weekly meetings with experts and a quick time-to-results, providing outstanding user experience.
The close relationship with Google Cloud's team and the continuous exchange of ideas were highlighted by the company as essential elements to develop a frictionless journey.
Breaking onto a new stage: First interactions with Gen AI
After the rollout, the company hoped generative AI would accelerate students' enrollment experience by orchestrating collected data. Thanks to Vertex AI, YDUQS has achieved more speed, accuracy, and security throughout the process.
"Benefits were already perceived at the meetings with the IT team. And Vertex AI turned out to be the best choice for what we wanted to implement. We started using this solution in October 2023, and we were able to run PoCs in just a matter of weeks."
—Daniel Rocha, AI and Innovation Manager, YDUQSUsing Vertex AI PaLM 2, YDUQS developed a solution that screens cover letters used for student admission, with a simplified enrollment method.
"Previously, applicants' cover letters were assessed by a professional, involving more screening costs and time. Generative AI helped us speed up the process and make it more reliable. We integrated AI features into the website used for simplified enrollments, significantly accelerating internal processes."
—Bruno Rocha, Head of Digital Technology, YDUQSBut how? The PaLM 2 for Text foundation models are optimized for a variety of natural language tasks, such as sentiment analysis, entity extraction, and content creation. The types of content that the PaLM 2 for Text models can create include document summaries, answers to questions, and labels that classify content.
By automating this process, Vertex AI has freed up time and resources, enabling the company to focus on more strategic activities. "Our employees don't need to work on this on a full-time basis now, and they can concentrate on providing feedback and evolving the model," says Bruno Rocha.
The benefits brought by the tools are clear: the company's success rate now exceeds 90% when assessing cover letters (that is, the model has accurately accepted or rejected letters on at least 90% of occasions) and also a 4-second average response time. All these stats outperform other AI models, which offer success rates lower than 80% and longer response times (up to 11 seconds).
Data management enabled by Vertex AI has fostered new opportunities for YDUQS in supporting students. For example, the possibility of predicting future actions, such as filling student forms or resumés based on previously collected information.
Therefore, the solution has also revolutionized how applicants go about submission processes and how they deal with YDUQS after enrollment.
Tangible benefits and inclusion in higher education
Intending to simplify enrollment processes for students, YDUQS has managed to add convenience and performance to process quality. By introducing generative AI into employees' routines, productivity has risen by simplifying tasks, driving creative and innovative ideas, and continuously streamlining services.
But these are not the only benefits: the company has saved approximately BRL 1.5 million since adopting Google Cloud.
"We can now say that the AI-based approach is redefining the enrollment landscape, driving inclusion and bringing new opportunities for a more promising and brighter future in education. We'll continue investing in technologies that help us power and improve what we offer the community."
—Daniel Rocha, AI and Innovation Manager, YDUQSThe educational group has been planning other projects that leverage generative AI. The most recent relates to a query database system, and Gen AI will be used to classify and fine-tune these queries.
The results from testing this feature, based on 40,000 queries, were significant. And this is yet another benefit YDUQS has achieved by deciding to opt for cloud-based tools.
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About YDUQS
YDUQS is a Brazilian group that provides educational technology and services focusing on higher education. With a diverse portfolio of educational institutions, the company offers a wide range of courses and modalities and serves over 1.4 million students.