The Professor: smarter AI analytics for your business

Most analytics tools show you data. The Professor on EPD Commerce answers questions about it, suggests what to ask next, and can act on what it finds.

What The Professor does

The Professor is the AI analytics assistant inside EPD Commerce. You type a question in plain English, or speak it aloud, and it returns an answer grounded in your actual transaction data. No SQL. No exports. No guessing at what a chart means.

This update is a significant rebuild of what was previously called the AI Analytics Assistant. The changes affect the interface, the conversation model, the safety architecture, and the feature’s capabilities. Here is what changed:

Interface and navigation:

• The assistant is now named The Professor throughout the platform.
• Chat History is now called The Archive, accessible from the main panel.
• Pre-built prompts are tighter, more useful, and take up less screen space.
• A back button replaces the previous ”+” button, so navigating between a prompt result and the main panel is one tap.

Conversational intelligence:

• After returning a result, The Professor suggests logical next questions: for example, “Would you like to see this for the last six months?” rather than leaving you to figure out what to ask next.
• Error recovery is improved. When a query cannot be completed, the assistant explains why and offers an alternative path, rather than returning a blank state.
• Conversations longer than 15 messages now maintain context correctly.

Voice input:

The text input field now supports on-device speech recognition via the Web Speech API. You can ask questions out loud. The audio is processed on your device, not sent to a third-party service.

Subscription template creation:

The Professor can now create subscription plans directly from a conversation. You describe what you want in plain English:

• “I want to sell a $200 product with a $5 fee, and each month bill the customer $100.”
• The assistant proposes the subscription template, shows you exactly what it will create, and waits for your explicit approval before writing anything.

This is the first place inside EPD Commerce where an AI can modify data, not just read it. That distinction drove the security architecture behind this release.

How the data access is structured

The Professor runs on a dedicated database user, epd_llm, with deliberately limited permissions:

• Read access is restricted. Payment method columns are not visible to the model.
• Write access is limited to product, plan, and subscription template tables, and only through the confirmation step described above.
• Every record created through The Professor carries a creationSource flag set to AI, so you can always distinguish AI-generated records from manual ones in reporting and audits.

This architecture matters if you are evaluating EPD Commerce as a platform. AI-assisted record creation is a new surface area with real security implications. The permission model was built before the feature shipped, not retrofitted afterward.

What this means for merchants

If you are running subscriptions, you have historically needed to navigate product setup, plan configuration, and billing rules as separate steps across separate screens. The Professor collapses that into a conversation. Describe the pricing structure, confirm the output, and the plan exists.

If you are trying to understand your business, you no longer need to build a report to answer a specific question. Ask it. If the answer raises another question, the assistant surfaces it for you.

EPD Commerce has served 100,000+ businesses and processed $12B+. EPD Commerce analytics exist because operators with that volume of data need answers, not dashboards to interpret.

FAQ

What is The Professor on EPD Commerce? The Professor is the AI analytics assistant in EPD Commerce. It answers plain-English questions about your transaction data, suggests follow-up queries based on your results, and can create subscription templates through a confirmed, conversational workflow.

Can The Professor see my customers’ payment details? No. The database user that powers The Professor has no read access to payment method columns. Its data access is scoped specifically to business metrics, product records, and subscription plan structures.

How does the subscription creation feature work? You describe the subscription structure in plain English, for example the product price, any fees, and the billing interval. The Professor shows you exactly what it will create and requires your explicit approval before any record is written. Every AI-created record is flagged with a creationSource: AI marker so you can identify it later.

Does the voice input send my audio to a third-party service? No. Voice input uses the Web Speech API with on-device speech recognition. Your audio is not sent to an external server for processing.

Is The Professor available now? The Professor is live in the EPD Commerce Beta. The platform’s public launch is scheduled for October. Request Beta access at epd.com to use it before the public release.

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Get Access at epd.com to use The Professor in Beta.