AI and automation are linchpins for post-pandemic business success
An investment in AI not only has immediate impact, but also provides
longer-term opportunities to unlock new sources of value and drive growth.
Today, many uses of AI involve iterating on existing processes to improve
efficiency and productivity. In the future, organizations can use AI to
reimagine business processes and operational models altogether, finding new
ways to measure and deliver real-time value. For example, Land O' Lakes, the
American agricultural company best known for its butter, until recently relied
on a slow and disconnected legacy system that required multiple tools,
extensive infrastructure, and hard-to-find developer skill sets. The
challenges and changes presented by COVID-19 didn’t help. They turned to
automation and AI to bring together sales, marketing, and commerce to
streamline its supply chain management process, enabling a stronger flow of
work for both our customers and our employees. Land O’ Lakes built a new
system in less than 30 days, transforming its e-commerce and supply chain
management processes — increasing company productivity by 25%. The company now
uses AI and automation at scale to offer its 2,500 farmers, 1,000 retail
partners, and 10,000 employees real-time purchase information on their
e-commerce platform along with shipping and tracking data.
Shifting Modes: Creating a Program to Support Sustained Resilience
Incidents are a signal from the system that change is happening too quickly
and that there are mismatches between people’s models of the system versus the
actual system. Incidents are a buffer that stabilizes the pace of change.
Success is the reason that you will never be able to truly prevent incidents
according to the Law of Stretched Systems. Embracing this inevitability will
be the key to continued success in a climate of increasing complexity and
interconnectedness. What I'm witnessing in the software industry is that we're
getting stuck in a local maxima. We've plateaued in our approach to safety. I
predict that if we don't level up how we cope with increases in complexity and
scale soon, we'll be in big trouble. At Indeed, we’ve recognized that we
need to drive organizational change to maintain the success we’ve had and keep
pace with changing complexity and greater scales. Over the last 16 years,
Indeed has grown quickly and the pace of change has accelerated. Because we
recognize the importance of getting this right, we are implementing a shift to
a Learn & Adapt safety mode within our resilience engineering department.
Three tips for change management success in public sector transformation
Public sector organisations should include members of their leadership teams
in pilot groups to kick off digital transformation projects. These leaders
shape their organisation’s culture, so ensuring they are on board with change
means they will champion the benefits of new ways of working. Change
management success is then promoted from within and from above, rather than
something that is dictated by an outside force. Having this internal drive
from above is especially important in the public sector. With higher job
retention than the private sector, employees often work in their roles for
decades, so are likely to be used to a certain way of doing things. Change can
also be harder given that those on the frontline – from social and council
services, to police forces – often deal with stressed or vulnerable residents,
so using new tech will not be top of their list of concerns when trying to
solve a problem or helping a citizen. Having decision makers brought in to the
transformation can help address this challenge and encourage change in others
who may be hesitant or unsure of what it means for them.
When It Comes To Security Tools, More Isn't More
It's no secret that companies have been moving to the cloud in droves. In some
cases, the pandemic sparked this shift, but many were already on the path. And
COVID's impact hasn't been all negative; in many ways it let organizations hit
the "restart" button and take a close look at their security strategy.
Regardless of what prompts a company's move to the cloud, it's important to
not neglect the first requirement of any successful security program:
Visibility. Companies must be cognizant that their existing tools may not
provide as much (if any) value in the cloud. Visibility is the key to
determining whether old tools still provide value, and if not, what should be
replaced. Additionally, companies need to set a cadence of patching and
maintaining systems that are no longer on-premises. Even though an
organization is in the cloud, there are still infrastructure components that
must be patched, like software as a service (SaaS), infrastructure as a
service (IaaS), function as a service (FaaS), and containerization. When
it comes to data loss prevention (DLP), storage strategies used on-premises
won't fit the bill. There will be an onslaught of SaaS applications storing
data, so companies need a strategy for gaining the data control and protection
they need.
The art and science of SaaS pricing: True usage-based pricing
Usage-based pricing can be incredibly powerful, particularly in cases where
the SaaS solution handles the flow of money, and the transaction fees can be
imbedded — or sometimes buried — in the flow of money. Examples are obviously
B2B payments for goods and services, either on the buy side (e.g. expense
management, purchase-to-pay, supply chain finance, freight audit and payment)
or the sell side. In such cases the SaaS usage fees can be extracted from
(revenue) or tagged onto (expenses) the business’ flow of money and are thus
often seen as “cost of doing business,” as part of COGS. And that can be
incredibly lucrative for the SaaS vendor and usually allows a far higher share
of value than a simple subscription ever would. Subscriptions are seen as OpEx
spend, an IT budget line item that receives initial and often annual scrutiny,
particularly as the solution’s value proposition over time comes to be seen as
status quo. I have personally witnessed cases where large enterprise customers
balked at a six-figure annual subscription but happily allowed a very healthy
seven-figure usage fee to be embedded in the payments flow. As OpEx it was a
show-stopper. In COGS it was a rounding error.
How 5G is pushing the envelope on latency
Ericsson calculated that a latency of 50 ms would mean the difference of
almost 6 feet of additional travel for a drone flying at 80 mph. "Our radio
technology allows us to design complex, three-dimensional drone racing courses
that can stretch a mile-long and weave through concrete while enabling our
elite drone pilots to compete at the highest level," Ellefson explained. Thus,
it's no surprise that T-Mobile recently invested in DRL through its new
T-Mobile Ventures investment arm. The company didn't disclose the amount of
the investment, but one of the goals is to eventually get the DRL to add 5G
drones into its tournaments. "We're excited to partner with T-Mobile to
custom-build new racing drones powered by T-Mobile 5G in 2021. These drones
will enable high definition-video streaming to create new immersive
first-person viewing opportunities and experiences for the tens of millions of
DRL fans and T-Mobile customers," Ellefson wrote. "While we are still in the
early stages of development and have not announced plans around transitioning
our racing to a 5G network, our aim is to one day integrate 5G-powered racing
drones into our sport."
Jobs in fintech bounce back after brief lockdown lull
A chief technology officer at a large fintech firm can earn an annual salary
as high as €250,000, said the report. Meanwhile, a tech leader at a small to
medium-sized fintech can expect to earn between €120,000 and €150,000 a year.
It warned that businesses should consider talent acquisition possibilities
when deciding where to locate new operations during expansion. “Companies
planning tech expansion should make talent acquisition a top strategic
priority and should conduct a market mapping exercise prior to deciding on the
location for their technical hubs,” it said. Due to the high demand for
talent, many European fintechs and payment companies are looking to recruit in
Eastern Europe. Although nearshore locations in the region traditionally offer
skills at a lower cost, the Headcount report warned that competition was
driving salaries up. “In Europe, many employers have focused on tech team
growth within Eastern European countries, though frequently discover shallower
talent pools than were hoped for here, leading to bidding wars,” it said. But
fintechs must focus beyond just offering competitive salaries to attract staff
and should also adapt their plans to match talent availability.
Top Predictions For The Insurance Industry In 2021
Whilst technology will continue to be the general enabler, it has opened the
mind-set of insurers to adopt a data-led approach. Data is the key ingredients
towards successful transformation and a shift from protection to prevention.
With an explosion of digital technology, real-time data has become
increasingly available, whether it’s to analyse water pressure, personal
fitness, how we drive, the status of machine components and much more. Often
insurers sell a policy and a customer commits with the hope that it will never
be used – using it means there has been an accident or loss. When the
insurance model is traditional i.e. when it is a “repair and replace” model,
premiums are based on historical data. However, now that customers ask far
more questions related to a policy, with the majority related to Covid-19,
there’s a higher expectation for insurers to provide a satisfactory solution.
A common example has been eligibility for money back on car insurance. This
trend was confirmed when Admiral automatically gave customers a £25 car
insurance refund during the first national lockdown. Access to risk data is
essential in allowing insurers to establish trust with their customers and
help businesses themselves with long-term profitability.
How CDOs Can Solve the Top Data and Analytics Challenge
One of the big impediments implementing a data and analytics program that
delivers business value is a misalignment between the business organization
and the data organization. The data professionals spend time and money
building the infrastructure like a data warehouse, data lake, or moving the
infrastructure to the cloud. But that focus on the data and analytics
infrastructure doesn't satisfy the business use cases and therefore doesn't
satisfy the business users, Bean told InformationWeek. "Data organizations
that look at business use cases and let those drive investments tend to be the
most successful for a number of reasons," he said. "By doing that they
establish credibility within the business and within the organization. That
can lead to establishing a level of momentum that results in progress." While
appointing a chief data officer is not a silver bullet for achieving success
in being data driven, more organizations than ever are establishing that role.
The 2021 survey reveals that 65% of organizations have appointed a CDO, up
from just 12% in 2012. The NewVantage report notes that over half of leading
companies have established a CDO function and appointed a CDO for each of the
past 5 years.
Some ransomware gangs are going after top execs to pressure companies into paying
Ransomware groups hope that companies will be desperate to avoid having
proprietary data or financial numbers posted online and accessible to
competitors and would be more willing to pay a ransom demand instead of
restoring from backups. In other cases, some ransomware gangs have told
companies that the publishing of their data would also amount to a data breach,
which would in many cases also incur a fine from authorities, as well as
reputational damage, something that companies also want to avoid. However,
ransomware gangs aren't always able to get their hands on proprietary data or
sensitive information in all the intrusions they carry out. This reduces their
ability to negotiate and pressure victims. This is why, in recent intrusions, a
group that has often used the Clop ransomware strain has been specifically
searching for workstations inside a breached company that are used by its top
managers. The group sifts through a manager's files and emails, and exfiltrates
data that they think might be useful in threatening, embarrassing, or putting
pressure on a company's management — the same people who'd most likely be in
charge of approving their ransom demand days later.
Quote for the day:
"The role of leadership is to transform the complex situation into small pieces and prioritize them." -- Carlos Ghosn
No comments:
Post a Comment