Although we don't deny some of the benefits of licensed solutions, we can't help being the evangelists of open-source technology. We believe that hundreds of thousands of euros that companies spend on licenses can be invested more efficiently.

At Knoyd we are constantly trying to help our clients leverage data, predict the future or, put simply, be smart. This year, two of our important customers came from the banking sector so we have decided to share our experience and explain how their businesses have become smarter.

Working as Data Scientists, we have to solve various problems on a daily basis. Some of them are tasks we've completed many times before and some of them are completely new to us and we have to understand the business logic behind them before starting building models. The latter was the case when our client, a bank, approached us a couple of months ago with a problem they were tackling – whether to provide or deny loans to gamblers.

It always gives us great pleasure to see, when one of our clients gets recognition for the great work they are doing. It is even better, if they are enabling people from developing countries to do things, which were not possible only a little while ago. This is exactly what FinAccel is doing.

One of the exciting applications we got to work on recently is inspiration in travel. There are various kinds of travel people enjoy; travel for art, travel for nature, travel for history or travel for clubs. We all have our favourite kind. One of the very interesting problems for inspiration in travel is to determine what is an interesting thing to see in a particular place.