MaxAI Workbench in HCL Unica+: A No-Code Path to Custom AI Models

Enterprise marketing is evolving fast. Customer data is larger in volume, more sensitive and subject to stricter regulations than ever. Traditional automation isn’t enough. Custom AI models provide transparency, compliance, accuracy and flexibility for your business. They let you tailor both inputs and outputs—for example, in channel affinity, you can go beyond the limited pre-built options to include specific attributes and channels unique to your needs. 

With HCL Unica+ MaxAI Workbench, marketers can design, validate and deploy custom AI models aligned to business goals. These models are explainable, trustworthy and purpose-built to deliver measurable, context-driven results across the customer journey.

What is MaxAI Workbench in HCL Unica+?

MaxAI Workbench is the intelligence layer within our AI marketing automation platform - HCL Unica+, giving marketers control over how AI is applied—without opaque, black-box systems.

With Workbench, marketers can:

• Seamlessly connect to data in the customer data platform (CDP), including customer, transactional and behavioral data from multiple sources—providing a unified and comprehensive view.
• Select and prioritize the model features that drive meaningful outcomes
• Train and validate custom AI models in a governed environment
• Monitor models for fairness, drift and accuracy

Marketers gain transparency into how models make decisions and can demonstrate compliance at every stage.

For example, a retailer can build a recommendation engine tailored to individual customer buying patterns. At the same time, a bank can test next-best-experience (NXB) models to deliver the most relevant action, offer and message to customers in real-time while minimizing bias in decisions. MaxAI Workbench augments your data science team by enabling them to easily create and test new models on real-time data, tune parameters and monitor for model drift. Because MaxAI Workbench is embedded in HCL Unica+, these models integrate seamlessly into campaigns and journeys, thus turning insights into real-time, AI-powered marketing actions that deliver measurable business results.

MaxAI Workbench is designed to augment, not replace, human capabilities—your data science team remains essential.

Because MaxAI Workbench is embedded in HCL Unica+, models integrate seamlessly into campaigns, journeys and personalization. This ensures AI moves beyond reports—driving real-time, AI-powered marketing campaigns that deliver measurable business outcomes.

Why Do Marketers Need Custom AI Models?

Out-of-the-box AI models come pre-trained to a base level, making them effective for standard use cases. Self-learning then takes these models further by automatically improving them over time—adjusting parameter weights based on real-world data to capture customer behavior more effectively. Custom AI models take it a step further, allowing you to select the most critical parameters, add new ones, and manually adjust their weights—giving you complete control to align models with your business goals and compliance needs.

Custom AI models change that.

• Banking: Predicting who might accept a credit card offer is easy; identifying which card is the right fit for responsible usage is harder and requires both custom data and AI models.
• Telecom: Churn extends beyond “inactive customers.” It is driven by outages, usage spikes and competitive pricing–signals that generic tools often miss.
• Retail and e-commerce: Customers aren’t seeking what is merely “popular.” They expect relevant products that match the current season, their location and specific context.

Custom AI models enable this level of personalization. They bring accountability to AI decisions, ensure explainability and demonstrate that customer needs are understood.

Key Features of MaxAI Workbench

MaxAI Workbench has a clear purpose: give enterprises AI they can trust–models intuitive for marketers yet robust enough for compliance, scale, and ongoing scrutiny. 

Build and Train Custom AI Models

MaxAI Workbench automates the creation of predictive models—spanning data ingestion, exploration, feature selection, training and validation. When models are ready, export them as Python packages, Docker containers, or Machine Learning as a Code (MLaC) for portability and control.

Plug-and-play Integration with HCL Unica+ 

With MaxAI Workbench, models publish natively to HCL Unica+ modules, so intelligence moves from experiments to activation fast. 

Low-code and No-code Accessibility

AI shouldn’t be limited to data scientists. MaxAI Workbench provides marketers with simplified workflows and AutoML for rapid adoption, while technical teams can utilize MLaC for advanced customization. Both groups work in the same environment, on the same models.

Scalability and Monitoring

Models are dynamic: they can drift, lose accuracy or develop bias over time. MaxAI Workbench includes monitoring and explainability features to track deployed models, detect input drift, assess reliability and generate transparency reports. The monitoring is vital in banking, financial services and healthcare, where transparency, compliance and sustained accuracy are mission-critical.

Predictive and performance-ready, the models are explainable, compliant and plugged directly into relevant campaigns and journeys.

How To Build Custom AI Models with MaxAI Workbench

Traditionally, building AI models was slow and fragmented—requiring months of data preparation, lengthy experiments and repeated handoffs between marketing and data science teams. By the time models were production-ready, market dynamics had shifted.

MaxAI Workbench changes this with an end-to-end, governed environment where marketers create and operationalize intelligence. It turns AI from a peripheral “feature” into a core driver of modern marketing.

1. Data Ingestion and Preparation

Enterprise data is often fragmented: customer profiles in CRM systems and CDPs, transactions in core platforms and behavioral signals across digital channels. MaxAI Workbench consolidates these sources with built-in data ingestion, then prepares them for analysis through pre-processing and Exploratory Data Analysis (EDA). The result is a reliable foundation for meaningful insights.

2. Model Selection and Training

Model selection and training traditionally required extensive trial and error by data scientists. With MaxAI Workbench, Selector (for feature selection) and Learner (for model training and hyperparameter tuning) guide the process, while AutoML automates much of the complexity in the background. Marketers don’t manage algorithms or hyperparameters; instead, they focus on priorities such as reducing churn, increasing upsells and shaping personalization strategies.

3. Testing and Validation

Accuracy alone isn’t sufficient. Fairness, compliance and explainability are equally critical. MaxAI Workbench includes built-in checks such as drift detection, Trusted AI, and Xplain for explainability, and transparency reports, moving AI out of the black box and into a governed, transparent framework.

4. Deployment and Activation

The true measure of success is whether intelligence translates into action. MaxAI Workbench publishes containers or API endpoints that HCL Unica+ modules consume directly. For example, a churn model isn’t just a static report—it becomes a live engine powering retention offers in real-time journeys and campaigns. Observer (model monitor) then ensures that models continue to adapt to new data without compromising reliability.

Benefits of Using Custom AI Models for Marketers

Custom AI models provide marketers with clear advantages. Two of the most common are personalization and faster campaign execution. The following section discusses these and other benefits in detail.

HCL Unica+ MaxAI Workbench powers AI-driven marketing and personalized journeys.

Deliver Highly Personalized Customer Journeys

Personalized customer journeys deliver measurable impact for enterprises. Several enterprises leading in personalized experiences have achieved significant cumulative gains in key areas, including revenue, conversion rates, customer service effectiveness and overall operational efficiency. AI-powered personalization ensures that every customer journey feels relevant, while consistently driving measurable business value.

Enable Smarter Segmentation and Precision Targeting

Segmentation delivers greater business value when it moves beyond static demographic categories to incorporate behavior and intent. In 2025, McKinsey noted that AI and generative AI now enable marketers to craft context-sensitive promotions tailored to micro-communities, replacing one-size-fits-all messaging.

Accelerate Campaign Execution With Automation

Campaign execution becomes significantly faster with AI-driven workflows. In traditional processes, insights often arrive too late to be actionable. Forrester research shows that firms adopting journey-centric strategies achieve stronger growth by responding to customer intent while it is still fresh. The ability to move rapidly from data to action is what differentiates market leaders from laggards.

Drive Higher ROI From Marketing Automation Investments

The ROI of marketing automation increases significantly when personalization is embedded as a core capability. Enterprises that achieve maturity in this area consistently realize measurable gains in customer retention, brand loyalty and sales growth. The compounding effect across multiple customer touchpoints transforms custom AI models into an actual growth driver–far beyond a simple technology upgrade.

Real-world Use Cases for Custom AI Models

The benefits of custom AI models become tangible only when tied to real business challenges. The following examples illustrate how different industries can use HCL Unica+ MaxAI Workbench to turn customer data into measurable outcomes, helping readers see how these capabilities translate directly into practice.

Retail: Optimize Product Recommendations

Retailers face the constant challenge of product abundance–too many choices can overwhelm customers and reduce conversion. Generic recommendation engines often promote what is most popular, rather than what is most relevant to the customer. With HCL Unica+ MaxAI Workbench, retailers can build custom AI models that account for inventory levels, seasonality and regional buying patterns. 

A customer shopping during a rainy week might be shown weather-appropriate apparel, while a customer in another region could see local favorites. Every recommendation connects customer context directly to measurable business outcomes.

Telecom: Reduce Churn Through Predictive Modeling

For telecom providers, churn remains one of the most costly challenges—once a customer leaves, they rarely return. Out-of-the-box churn detection tools typically identify disengagement too late to take meaningful action. 

With HCL Unica+ MaxAI Workbench, custom AI models can detect early warning signals in billing cycles, complaint histories and even regional service disruptions. This enables providers to intervene proactively with targeted retention offers or service credits. 

The result: reduced churn and stronger customer loyalty—powered by AI-driven marketing automation.

E-commerce : Personalize Customer Journeys in Real Time

In e-commerce, success depends on keeping pace with rapidly shifting customer behavior. Static models cannot keep up with the speed at which customer intent shifts online. HCL Unica+ MaxAI Workbench enables AI-powered, personalized customer journeys that adapt in real time. 

If a shopper lingers over premium products, the system can present a tailored incentive or offer to encourage them to proceed. If another shopper hesitates at checkout, the system can respond by showcasing social proof such as customer reviews. These journeys adapt in real-time, demonstrating the value of custom AI models in marketing when applied at the speed of customer behavior.

How HCL Unica+ Stands Apart from Other Marketing AI Tools

HCL Unica+ MaxAI Workbench dashboard for real-time personalization and AI-powered marketing campaigns.

HCL Unica+ embeds AI at the core of the platform. AI is the foundation for orchestration and decision-making. This enables marketing teams to transform real-time customer intent into next-best actions across journeys, rather than limiting insights to analytics dashboards.

AI-first Orchestration With Autonomous Agents

Agentic AI in HCL Unica+ includes Insights, Segmentation and Content Optimizer agents that collaborate to ideate, target and optimize. They continuously test, adapt and surface opportunities—reducing manual rules and speeding time-to-value. For marketing teams, this means faster experimentation, more relevant engagement and reduced operational effort. 

Deep Customer Intelligence Through Governed CDP

HCL Unica+ connects real-time behavioral signals with historical context to create a unified customer view—inside a governed CDP. Marketers activate rich context while respecting governance, helping improve targeting and maintain trust. 

Real-time Personalization Across Digital and Physical Touchpoints

Unica Interact determines the next-best action in real time across web, mobile, call centers, kiosks, POS and more—serving offer decisions in milliseconds. Customers see hyper-relevant messages as intent changes, improving engagement and conversion. 

Composable Platform With Enterprise-grade Flexibility

HCL Unica+ is an AI-first, next-generation marketing suite with key capabilities you can adopt as you grow. Each capability is designed to work seamlessly so you can start with what you need today and expand over time—scaling your marketing stack without costly re-platforming.

Integrated Intelligence with MaxAI Workbench

MaxAI Workbench lets teams build, validate and deploy custom models with a low-/no-code pipeline—then publish them as Python packages, containers or via MLaC. Observer monitors drift, fairness and explainability (e.g., Xplain APIs), and models plug into Unica Campaign, Journey and Interact for activation. This delivers explainable, governed AI that powers real-time decisions—not reports.

Drive Hyper-personalized Marketing with MaxAI Workbench in HCL Unica+.

Marketing does not need more dashboards—it needs decisions that are faster, smarter and accountable.

HCL Unica+ MaxAI Workbench makes intelligence an integral part of execution. Custom models are designed, validated and deployed within the same environment where campaigns run. No delays waiting on external teams. No dependence on generic algorithms. Insights translate into real-time actions, with fairness and compliance built in.

For industries built on trust—such as banking, telecom, retail and healthcare—this shift redefines the operating model. Journeys evolve dynamically with customer intent. Risk is mitigated before it escalates. Personalization scales across millions of interactions without compromising integrity.

The strength of HCL Unica+ lies in unification. Data, orchestration and AI coexist on one composable platform. This balance provides enterprises with the flexibility to adapt to customer needs while maintaining control to ensure compliance.

The measure of future marketing will not be the number of campaigns sent—it will be the intelligence infused into every interaction. With MaxAI Workbench in HCL Unica+, that future is already here.

Ready to see it in action? Request a demo today.

FAQs

What is MaxAI Workbench in HCL Unica+?

MaxAI Workbench in HCL Unica+ is a built-in environment that allows marketers to build, test and deploy custom AI models to support real-time personalization, campaigns and journeys. It integrates AI directly into marketing operations, enabling automation and optimization at scale.

How does MaxAI Workbench help marketers build custom AI models?

MaxAI Workbench helps marketers build custom AI models by providing a structured workflow for data ingestion, training, validation and deployment. It includes AutoML and monitoring tools that enable non-technical users to create enterprise-grade models without coding expertise.

Do I need coding skills to use MaxAI Workbench?

No, you do not need coding skills to use MaxAI Workbench. It offers low-code and no-code interfaces for marketers and business users. Advanced users can optionally use Machine Learning as a Code (MLaC) to gain more control and flexibility.

What types of marketing use cases can MaxAI Workbench support?

MaxAI Workbench supports predictive marketing use cases, including churn detection, next-best-action recommendations, product personalization and real-time journey optimization. It applies across industries, including BFSI, retail, telecom and e-commerce.

How is MaxAI Workbench different from pre-built AI tools in marketing automation?

The main difference between MaxAI Workbench and pre-built AI tools in marketing automation is that MaxAI allows enterprises to train models on their own data. This ensures more accurate, explainable and compliant predictions tailored to specific industry and regulatory needs.

Can MaxAI Workbench integrate with existing customer data platforms (CDPs) or CRMs?

Yes, MaxAI Workbench integrates with existing CDPs using RESTful APIs. It also integrates with HCL Unica modules, enabling real-time insights to flow seamlessly across enterprise systems without requiring additional connectors.

How does MaxAI ensure data security and compliance for enterprises?

MaxAI ensures data security and compliance by using built-in governance frameworks and monitoring tools that enforce fairness, privacy and transparency. These safeguards help enterprises meet regulatory standards in industries like banking and healthcare.

What industries benefit the most from MaxAI Workbench?

Industries that benefit most from MaxAI Workbench include banking, insurance, telecom, retail, healthcare and e-commerce. These sectors handle complex data and compliance requirements, making them ideal for AI-driven personalization and governance at scale.

How long does it take to build and deploy a custom AI model in HCL Unica+?

Building and deploying a custom AI model in HCL Unica+ can take days instead of months using AutoPilot mode. Timelines vary depending on the data volume and complexity, but automation significantly accelerates the process.

Is MaxAI Workbench included in HCL Unica+, or is it an add-on module?

MaxAI Workbench is included in HCL Unica+ as a native component. It provides AI-first capabilities embedded directly into campaign orchestration and personalization workflows, eliminating the need for separate add-on modules.