Nimble tech firms must adapt as promised self-driving revolution hits speed bumps

When Silicon Valley startup Phantom Auto was formed in 2017, it was one of many software suppliers hitching their fortunes to self-driving cars, confident that fleets of robotaxis would be using their technology within a few years.

But with delays in the mass deployment of autonomous vehicles, Phantom is now finding new customers off the road - on the sidewalk with delivery robots.

Phantom is not alone. Faced with the harsh reality that an autonomous future is further away than originally promised by global automakers and tech companies like General Motors Co, Uber Technologies Inc and many others, smaller companies in the self-driving ecosystem are now pivoting to alternate uses for their technology. Some are turning to delivery robots, while others are helping deploy autonomous vehicles for farms, construction sites or airports.

Robotaxis are still considered the industry's "humongous opportunity," in the words of Phantom co-founder Elliot Katz, but shifting to creative new ways to deploy the auxiliarytechnologies allows for immediate revenue during the long slog before autonomous vehicles hit the roads en masse.

The widescale deployment of robotaxis, once pegged by industry analysts to be a $2 trillion industry by 2030, is now seen as further away due to a variety of hurdles, among them cost, complexity and unresolved legal and regulatory concerns.

Meanwhile, more modest rollouts of self-driving vehicles are coming sooner in limited areas with defined borders.

The shift in expectations is driving players large and small to rethink strategies and re-evaluate financial risk. On Monday, automotive technology supplier Aptiv PLC said it has agreed to puts its self-driving vehicle unit in to a joint venture with South Korean automaker Hyundai Motor Co. Hyundai will contribute $2 billion to the venture. Rival automakers Ford Motor Co and Volkswagen AG in July agreed to combine autonomous vehicle operations.

In Phantom's case, its remote operations technology, which allows a human operator miles away from an autonomous car to take over control when the car is confused, can be used for less safety-critical tasks.

Postmates, a San Francisco-based goods delivery company, will use Phantom's technology inside fleets of over a hundred sidewalk robots as they navigate sidewalks and crosswalks to deliver lunches, snacks, or other goods to customers, beginning next year.

"We had to figure out where is autonomous technology deployable today," Katz told Reuters. "It's about handpicking the right opportunity for the immediate term, medium term and long term."

Egil Juliussen, research director for automotive technology at IHS Markit, said that using the same technology for non-automotive applications, like robots, is a simpler path to market that can still tap the startups' artificial intelligence technology.

French autonomous shuttle maker and operator Navya SA threw out its financial targets in July and unveiled a new strategy of selling its technology to others.

The catalyst was the continued uncertainty over regulation that jeopardized anticipated fleet orders by customers last year, Chief Operating Officer Jerome Rigaud told Reuters. That led to missed 2018 revenue projections and the removal of Navya's founder and CEO.

Navya still plans to test its self-driving shuttles without a safety driver by early next year, but it now sees new opportunities in areas where regulation is simpler: hauling goods at airports, industrial sites and construction areas at slow speeds in limited areas, and in agriculture, Rigaud said.

More Money, Please

Evangelos Simoudis, managing director of Silicon Valley venture capital firm Synapse Partners, which invests in autonomous technology startups, said VCs recognize that full self-driving will take much more money, as well as time, to recoup the 10x return on their investments of $5 million to $50 million (40.2 million pounds)- amounts that are typical in the sector.

In the interim, smaller companies are on the line.

"If they have flexibility they may pivot and go to something adjacent or radical in order to survive, but nonetheless there will be a period of significant change," Simoudis said. "There will be quite a high mortality rate."

The sweet spot for companies searching for alternative ways to use self-driving technology is software related to simulation, data annotation and data management, Simoudis said.

Companies making software are better positioned to pivot than those doing hardware, experts agree. There has already been some consolidation in the crowded field of lidar, a key hardware component using laser light pulses to help vehicles "see," after some companies have struggled to raise new funds. Digital mapping is another area ripe for consolidation, Simoudis said.

Automakers and others have snatched up these startups in recent years, including Strobe Lidar and Princeton Lightwave, which were acquired in 2017 by General Motors and Argo AI, respectively. Argo AI is majority-owned by Ford and VW. Earlier this year, self-driving startup Aurora bought Blackmore Lidar.

Last month, food delivery company DoorDash bought startup Scotty Labs, a competitor to Phantom also involved in the remote control of autonomous vehicles. The loss of Scotty's main customer, Voyage - which operates small fleets of self-driving vehicles in closed residential communities - and difficulties in raising funds led to its sale, two sources told Reuters.

Executives at Ouster, a startup whose lidar technology is also found inside Postmates' robots, said it was a conscious decision from the start to avoid focusing exclusively on automotive lidar.

Instead of diversifying, too many companies have focused on the "pot of gold at the end of the rainbow," said Raffi Mardirosian, Ouster's vice president of corporate development, making them vulnerable to setbacks in the broad deployment of autonomous vehicles.

"If you're in these investor meetings like I am, they're saying 'Show me the contracts. Show me the monthly revenue,'" said Mardirosian. "The fact that we can point to that is something that will help us stay in business."

Source: Alexandria Sage for Thomson Reuters

Why digital transformation alone is not going to save your business

In a world of constant change, organisations must focus on their wetware as much as their software, writes Sally Earnshaw, MD of Blue Sky, Brightwave and G2G3.

First, the bad news: relentless and rapid disruption is the new normal.

As we transition from an industrial economy to a digital one, every sector is in a state of unprecedented upheaval. Your customers’ expectations are changing, your competitors are evolving and your technology is exploding. From service via Snapchat to a sudden shift in regulations, every week seems to bring a new behaviour or tool that demands an organisation-wide overhaul. And this is the slowest it’s ever going to get.

Next, the worse news: simply “going digital” isn’t going to save you.

Of course, you’re investing heavily in new tech and automation – you’d be mad not to. But you’re probably struggling to achieve the ROI promised by your much-hyped digital transformation. After all, you can put the latest AI into your call centre, but unless your people are adapting what they do around it, it’s only so much expensive code.

Now, the agonising news: you still need to put the customer first.

Because although you’re under serious pressure to recoup that digital investment, fast, you still need to get everybody in your organisation prioritising the customer in everything they do. You know it’s the only way to ultimately cut costs, boost profits and secure your future. But although your product teams might be pretty good at thinking about the customer at all times, it’s likely you have a lot of people who aren’t. And it’s even harder to achieve when your new speech analytics system has come down with another bug.

Ready for the silver lining? You’ve already got exactly the technology you need, not just to survive but to thrive in this unpredictable landscape.

And what is that technology? Human brains. You see, homo sapiens are really good at coping with change – much better than computers. An ability to adapt is programmed deep into our DNA – it’s how we made it to pole position on the planet. Unfortunately, many leaders focus solely on the agility of their software, when they should be asking, how agile are our people?

Because doing sprints and stand-ups doesn’t make you agile. You can’t just graft new behaviours onto old organisational structures. You can’t run a two-day workshop about “becoming agile” and cross your fingers. You can’t introduce concepts such as sprints and MVPs and hope they’ll magically catch on.

What we need is small, empowered, persistent teams that get stuff done. Teams that work on what matters most right now? Teams that work in the right way, to deliver instant value for your customers? Teams that deliver quickly and regularly, improving as they go? Teams that remain aligned with the overall direction of your organisation – even as it evolves?

These are essential questions for any business looking to successfully ride our new pace of change. But unfortunately, rather than being answered by a quick-fix, out-of-the-box solution, they challenge some of the deepest assumptions about how an organisation operates. They demand that command-and-control hierarchies get swapped for distributed, networked micro-communities. They demand that decision making gets transferred to those closest to the work. They demand that leaders give permission on a daily basis. They demand new mindsets and behaviours that embrace technology while still putting the customer first.

Ultimately, they herald the emergence of a new type of business: one that thrives on change, rather than being threatened by it. And one that makes the most of all the exciting new digital developments available, without sacrificing or undermining those tools that make the biggest difference to the customer: human insight, intuition and expertise.

So: how agile are your people?

by Sally Earnshaw, MD of Blue Sky, Brightwave and G2G3

Blue Sky – G2G3 – Brightwave

We’re the people experts. We’re leading the next generation of agile with a practical, results-driven approach. We’re neither techies or theorists – we’re people experts. We’re using our understanding of how humans and organisations work on the ground to make agile a reality for every kind of business.

We’d love to help. Give us a call on 01483 739400 or drop us a line at hello@blue-sky.co.uk.

www.blue-sky.co.uk

www.g2g3.com

www.brightwavegroup.com

Why it is important now more than ever to supercharge our digital economy

Already this year we have seen groundbreaking developments in AI, the creation of exciting digital twins and 5G entering commercial deployment, unlocking the potential for innovative products and services. The technology sector is booming. In, 2018 it was growing 2.6 times faster than the UK economy overall [1].

And there is more to come. It is estimated that AI technologies could bring an additional £232 billion to the UK economy by 2035. Similarly, driverless cars are estimated to add £28 billion to the economy in the same timeframe [2], while IoT is estimated to save us in the region of £75 billion over the next five years. We are being seen around the world as a leader in data-driven growth and technologies such as AI, particularly in healthcare, 5G, smart transport and smart cities.

However, right now the UK tech sector and wider economy faces a number of challenges and uncertainty ahead. Yet, what remains clear is that it is digital tools, solutions and services that are driving economic growth, increasing productivity, creating jobs and helping entrepreneurs and SMEs to succeed and grow. The transformative power and potential of digital technologies including AI, IoT, augmented and virtual reality, and 5G are key to driving economic growth and unlocking the productivity of UK organisations, particularly in key sectors for the UK such as transport, logistics and manufacturing.

But now is not the time to slow down. Now is the time to supercharge the digital transformation of industries across the UK economy by increasing the adoption, deployment and use of digital technologies. So how do we make this happen? What are the key ingredients for success, and how do we get this right for companies across the whole of the UK?

Firstly, we must support increased digitisation across the whole of the economy, and drive productivity by introducing measures to support non-digital businesses to embrace new technologies with confidence. We must do more to encourage the take-up of digital services, software and tools such as cloud computing, supply-chain management software, IoT technologies and new AI-driven solutions.

Secondly, we need to ensure that innovative digital tools and solutions are available to UK companies. We need a comprehensive package of measures to support UK R&D in digital industries. This is not only key to ensuring increased digitisation but also to meet the government’s commitment to spending 2.4 per cent of GDP on R&D by 2027. To do this we must take steps now, for example by aligning the UK’s R&D tax credit systems with others around the world to enable one form of tax relief to both R&D programme expenditure and facilities.

We must do more to encourage the take-up of digital services, software and tools such as cloud computing, supply-chain management software, IoT technologies and new AI-driven solutions

Thirdly, but by no means finally, it is vital that we support businesses to ensure they have the skills and talent needed to meet the digital skills gap the UK is facing. Additional work is needed to enable the next generation to develop its digital skills and help businesses, and local authorities, to get the support they need to drive the design, adoption and implementation of digital services.

We will be looking at progress on these and other key issues that are vital to supercharging the digital economy at our flagship Supercharging the Digital Economy event on 6 November in Manchester. This event will bring leading experts together from this ecosystem and the private and public sector, where they will focus on the digital revolution, what it means for sectors and what it means for the North. Come and join us to help explore and find the answers to these questions so that we can take advantage of the opportunities that existing and emerging technologies can have for the whole of the UK economy.

by techUK

References:

[1] https://35z8e83m1ih83drye280o9d1-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/Tech-Nation-Report-2018-WEB-180514.pdf

[2] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-42040856

Business like clockwork: content services from KYOCERA

Every organisation has processes that will affect the experience of the customer. As technology advances, the needs of these customers progress with it, and there is an expectation of organisations to constantly evolve with the customer to satisfy these needs.

In short, content services is about removing manual processes, replacing them with a streamlined digitised workflow that integrates into other systems, such as CRM or enterprise resource planning (ERP). This saves both time and money, allowing for a more efficient allocation of resources and removing low-value tasks from business processes. Instead, employees can dedicate their efforts to more complex tasks, rather than performing tasks that could easily be automated.

Any organisation that offers a service should be considering its current process and how it can take this from being slow, manual and potentially paper-based to a centralised and streamlined service that benefits the customer’s experience and improves efficiency. It’s typically the fastest-moving organisations that are the ones that automate the processes offering little or no value internally or to the customer, and instead focus on putting that manual effort to innovation and/or service.

Understanding where your organisation is today and getting a clear view on your internal processes and information structure is key to determine what your problem areas are, and where you need to improve. But confronting the skeletons in your own closet can be tricky.

One of the most common barriers is not knowing where to begin. The quick answer to that is to start small and to start somewhere. It’s common to contain it to one department and then move onto the next. A good place to start is the accounts receivable function. A growing organisation will reach a point where it can no longer handle the volume of billing it’s servicing. Rather than hiring new employees to do low-value, admin-intensive tasks, today’s digital content services can easily scale up and remain agile by automating these processes, empowering employees to perform more valuable tasks such as customer service. Digitising paper inputs in this process enables faster payment processing and eliminates human error, so the customer gets a more accurate and consistent service.

Content services offer fast return on investment while providing effective long-term solutions to real business process problems. By fixing the most pressing process issues quickly, then taking the same approach across the rest of the business, organisations can be transformed into modern, paper-light and agile organisations that run like clockwork.

by Rod Tonna-Barthet, Chief Executive Officer, KYOCERA

Speak to an expert from KYOCERA on how you can transform your processes.

Becoming future ready with CX led digital transformation

To overcome customer experience (CX) challenges and be future-ready, brands must infuse intelligence throughout every part of their business to better understand their customers and remove experience frictions. According to Avanade’s recent survey, 89 per cent of organisations agree that becoming an intelligence-driven enterprise is a big part of the digital transformation journey.

Several changes are pushing CX to the forefront. From digital-native organisations disrupting traditional industries, to evolving customer expectations. Today, customers expect highly intuitive, personalised experiences and interactions, instead of being treated like an unknown person.

To get CX right, companies must digitally transform and connect the entire customer journey – from sales to marketing, customer service and beyond. This requires an innovation mindset enabled by company culture, plus a strong connection from strategy through to design, data science, and technology implementation.

Skills and talent, integration between new and existing systems, siloed and unusable data are among the major barriers to success.

Many organisations are on a digital transformation journey, but are facing challenges. 43 per cent are becoming fatigued with their digital transformation efforts, according to Avanade survey. Skills and talent, integration between new and existing systems, siloed and unusable data are among the major barriers to success.

Great customer experiences start with the employee experience. Organisations see employee and customer experiences as the biggest factor driving digital transformation initiatives, even over the technology and innovation agenda. Connecting employees and customers to intelligent technologies is dependent on integrated and accurate data, an area that most organisations recognise needs attention.

People are the most important part of digital transformation due to number of skills required throughout the journey. Organisations need alignment from the C-Suite, by implementing a change-enablement strategy that allows people to share ideas and establish collaboration frameworks between strategists, designers, technologists and data scientists to collectively work together and implement those plans successfully.

Great CX should be able to scale. Automation, machine learning and AI will help here. Offloading the resource-heavy parts of content production, personalisation and optimisation will help result in better employee experience and more relevant, high-impact CX, freeing up marketers and creatives to work on innovation and other high-value pursuits.

With an integrated customer experience management (CXM) platform and data that provide a complete view of their customers, brands can personalise customer experiences across every touchpoint at global scale. Removing friction points across the experience life-cycle helps maximise revenues and customer loyalty.

Avanade believes people, creativity and technology play an important role in CX, but great customer experiences start with a vision and a plan. Our unique approach combines human-centred design with the latest engineering principles and technologies.

Leveraging more than 700 UX professionals, 38 LUMA human-centred design practitioners, 4,200 business excellence and automation experts, and 3,500 analytics professionals, Avanade is ready to help you deliver great customer experiences. We offer CX and digital marketing solutions across strategy, design, analytics and AI, and technology services. We can help you get started with an immersive CX workshop to meet you where you are, and discover your path for successful transformation to a future-ready business.

by Amir Dehnad, Senior Director, Digital Marketing Offering Lead – Europe, Avanade

Deliver future-ready experiences now. Join Avanade for an immersive CX workshop.

Shifts in cyber-security in a digitally transforming world

The cyber-security landscape has undergone a massive shift in recent years, with data privacy and protection grabbing the spotlight. Hackers have shifted focus onto either stealing data or making it inaccessible to its owners. According to a Symantec report, 5.4 billion attacks by the WannaCry virus were blocked in 2017.

The explosion of the internet of things has been a silent contributor toward many cyber-attacks. Companies are transforming too, to enhance their security and compliance postures by investing in analytics and automated cyber-defence technologies such as user behaviour analytics, threat analytics, privileged identity management and threat detection and response.

Nobody is immune to cyber-attacks. Even some of the most trusted brands have been victims of expensive and dangerous data breaches. These days, cyber-attacks are more far-reaching than ever before. Cybersecurity Ventures predicts that cyber-crime damages will cost the world $6 trillion annually by 2021. Data protection mandates and guidelines, through more comprehensive legislation, are promoting a shift, helping curtail such threats. The European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which holds companies accountable for how they handle customer data and underscores consumer data privacy rights, has been a major influencer in this shift, with other countries following suit and enacting data protection frameworks modelled along similar lines.

While these changes take place and enterprises continue to embark on the digital transformation path, there are quite a few challenges along the way. Enterprises cannot compromise on customer experience – that has to be seamless – and to facilitate this, they have to take a holistic approach towards security. Governance, compliance, risk and security have to be embedded within the organisation, and again, application, infrastructure and Cloud security can no longer be considered separate functions. Integrating security and constantly refreshing it by keeping up with market trends allows enterprises to derive appropriate returns from their investments in the cyber-security space.

Governance, compliance, risk and security have to be embedded within the organisation, and again, application, infrastructure and Cloud security can no longer be considered separate functions.

Traditional, perimeter-centric cyber-defence is a thing of the past. The trusted perimeter is dead, and enterprises need to employ a zero-trust security approach. The current era of digital IT demands 24/7/365 monitoring and discovery of cyber-threats to prevent attacks from all vectors, including newer ones.

Is that a possibility? Analytics-driven cyber-protection offers just that by detecting anomalies, unusual user behaviour and any outliers in an enterprise and flagging them. Happiest Minds’ Cyber Risk Prevention and Protection (CRPP) platform is an example. Inbuilt algorithms monitor an enterprise’s behaviour over a period of time and are capable of flagging any deviation from the ordinary, in real time. Interestingly, the algorithms have self-learning capabilities, can measure the magnitude of potential incidents, and can also suggest immediate corrective action.

So, while hackers follow more sophisticated approaches, enterprises need to leverage the latest cyber-defence technologies for incident identification and resolution. Seamless customer experience, a single orchestration layer and a holistic enterprise-wide approach toward cyber-security is the way forward!

by Isaac George, SVP, Head of UK Sales and Priya Kanduri, VP, Head of Innovations and Security Services, Happiest Minds Technologies

Get in touch with Happiest Minds Technologies for your IT security needs.

Bringing continuous database operations into DevOps

Masterclass with Quest Software

Session 1 - Market Dynamics - click here to watch the video.

Session 2 - Database development and continuous integration - click here to watch the video.

Session 3 - Monitoring the DevOps pipeline - click here to watch the video.

Session 4 - Efficient data movement - click here to watch the video.

Session 5 - Recap and conclusion - click here to watch the video.

“If agile has been around since the 1990s and DevOps tools since the late 2000s, then why can’t our database development catch up with our application development?”

Are people in your organisation asking that question? Are you one of them?

Indeed, what’s taking the database so long? Why has database development been slow to adopt agile, DevOps, continuous delivery tools and continuous integration? How can an organisation move its database change management into a DevOps pipeline and efficiently bring about continuous database operations?

And why is database development different from application development? The short answer has to do with database state and the rapid rate with which data changes.

Businesses rely on databases and can tolerate little risk to them. Suppose a change to some application code that goes out in a code release, then must be rolled back to last week’s version due to a code defect. IT can do that without losing any data. But a change to stored procedure or a SQL statement is deployed in the database, so will likely impact the data. Restoring to last week’s database version from a backup could mean losing a week’s worth of transactions.

With all this complexity and risk, you might argue the case for keeping things as they are. But there are many consequences of not changing the status quo, including the fact you may not be able to release application changes faster than your database release process allows. This can lead to the inability of business to react to market changes or competitive threats fast enough, subsequent loss of revenue and market share, and potential loss of customers.

Toad DevOps Toolkit - image provided by Quest

But what if it were possible to develop and deploy high-quality database changes faster, together with application changes, in a converged pipeline, without having to make compromises?

What if it were possible to monitor and identify performance issues throughout the DevOps pipeline before going into production, so that database releases are reliable and under control?

What if it were possible, once schema changes are deployed in production, to automatically replicate them to other database environments in near real time?

That would remove your database change management bottleneck, improve the quality and performance of your database code and synchronise your application and database releases.

When organisations become serious about integrating database development and change management into their DevOps pipeline, the result is continuous database operations.

With database DevOps tools from Quest, you can accelerate the process of developing, testing and releasing database changes. You can also monitor the effects of those changes on performance and replicate them to offload databases. Quest provides an easy path to bring the pace of database change management in line with that of application development.

by John Pocknell, Database Solutions Evangelist, Information Management, Quest Software

For more information, please click here.

Uniting technology and talent

Technology is transforming the way we live and do business at a faster rate than ever before. We have now reached the point where every business in every industry must become a technology company, with customers expecting a fast and efficient digital experience for almost all the services they use. In recent research conducted by Salesforce, 70 per cent of customers said that seamless, connected processes were very important to winning their business and 56 per cent actively seek to buy from the most innovative companies.

It has therefore become essential for business leaders to stay up to date on emerging technologies such as AI and blockchain and the way these could be applied across every industry. Many once great businesses are now cautionary tales thanks to their failures to anticipate the effects of technological disruption and new, agile market players on their business models.

To compete, companies must have not only the right technology but the right talent, working practices and connections to implement the technology effectively and ethically. That’s why digital transformation has given way to a highly collaborative tech ecosystem across the globe.

London Tech Week 2019 will unite technology and talent in a world-class hub of innovation. A key part of the week’s agenda is TechXLR8, the headline expo event exploring technologies such as artificial intelligence, the internet of things, blockchain, augmented and virtual reality and much more. It is the perfect place to explore the latest tech, forge connections and grow your business.

But with so much happening in tech development, the skills that businesses need and the key issues for industry, there’s always a lot to learn. The London Tech Week and TechXLR8 Digital Series (March – May 2019) will bring you all the resources you need to prepare yourself for the hot topics and key debates we’re expecting to see at Tech Week this year. Covering everything from AI and AR to the future of work and tech skills, The London Tech Week & TechXLR8 Digital Series puts you in front of the leaders and innovators transforming the way we live and work.

This webinar agenda runs from 16 March to 21 March and will cover specific, practical use cases for emerging technologies – topics include Virtual & Augmented Reality for Future First-Responders, Blockchain in Action: Use Cases Driving Business Value Now and IoT & Subscription Business Models. We will also delve into the people driving digital transformation with other sessions, such as Creating Digital Leaders: Skills for the Next Generation and Driving the Future of Work.

by TechXLR8

The London Tech Week & TechXLR8 Digital Series 2019 is completely free to attend, so register now for access to nine original and thought-provoking webinars, plus valuable digital reports, whitepapers, infographics and videos.

Why last-mile delivery can set retailers apart

Retailers have taken a hit this year, with sales falling, and even giants such as Apple recording a slowdown in sales. The challenges that they are faced with – such as e-commerce competition – means the high street has to innovate quicker than ever. While websites have evolved to compete with the likes of Amazon, with beautifully designed UX and UI and seamless customer journeys, it is the checkout experience which still has room for innovation. Studies have shown that 62 per cent of online shoppers would pay a premium for same-day delivery from their favourite retailer, 72 per cent would buy more from their favourite high-street retailer if they offered same-day delivery, and – most importantly perhaps – 79 per cent of shoppers (and 82 per cent of Londoners) would switch from their favourite high-street retailer if they didn’t offer their preferred delivery method. This means that offering delivery options that customers desire and expect is a key necessity in every retailer’s last-mile strategy.

Returns are also a core part of this issue, with their cost estimated at £60billion every year for UK retailers. By innovating the offering here, retailers could allow their customers to book same-day or next-day collection slots, meaning the items are back on the shelf within a short time frame, the customers are satisfied with the service, and the overall experience is beneficial to both parties. Flexibility and speed are thus two of the differentiators within this fast-evolving space, allowing retailers to set themselves apart from the competition.

Delivery has without a doubt become a consumer priority. Customers want faster, more convenient and more flexible delivery; retailers want to make their end-customers happy and want to come to terms with the new regulations around sustainability and urban logistics. With players such as Amazon and Deliveroo, the prospect of competing with these may seem daunting, but by outsourcing logistics to delivery specialists, retailers large and small can compete in the on-demand, next-day delivery space.

Hey, you just created a text paragraph! Somebody once said that the pen is mightier than the sword — and that was in 1839. Just imagine, with the power of digital publications and the ability to distribute your content around the world in mere seconds, writing this paragraph could be one of the most influential things you ever do! Click on the gear icon to change the styling of this paragraph, or click and drag the title bar to move it around.

by David Saenz, Chief Operating Officer, Stuart Delivery

Get in touch to optimise and innovate your delivery offering with Stuart.

Stuart is now live across 35 UK cities. Get in touch to start delivering with us!

Read our eBook here!

Embracing IoT for digital transformation with Advantech

With six billion devices now connected to the internet, businesses across many sectors are starting to consider implementing IoT, if they haven’t already begun. However, many C-suites are turning their back on digital transformation opportunities, with over-promises from experts leading to results never materialising. So what are the misconceptions that lead to C-suite concerns, and what solutions are available to tackle this head on?

Many organisations are already seeing huge advantages of IoT, so if businesses don’t follow suit they will soon find themselves at a disadvantage against their competitors.

At Advantech, we often find that proof of concept (POC) is proof of technology, rather than proof of value. Therefore, when we face a number of stakeholders, from engineers to C-suite members, it can be hard to define a POC and justify the investment to meet the different requirements of the board. To remedy this, Advantech engage C-suite members from day one, ensuring that the POC produces tangible results.

With complex and varied resources needed to make IoT deliverable and usable within a company, it’s vital to put the “why” at the forefront of the conversation, followed by the “how”, in order to tackle implementation.

Advantech ensures that the delivery of its solutions is as smooth and fast as possible by pulling together pre-integrated and pre-validated solutions, tailored to specific verticals or applications. We use these use-cases and partnerships as building blocks, using the same fundamental pieces in different ways, to create a unique end-solution each time. This means that our customers can see the ROI and results of our solutions even before implementation.

Similarly, we engage in partnerships with various organisations to expand our capabilities, domain knowledge and expertise, allowing us to co-create solutions that are ready to be deployed quickly. This collaboration element means we can easily show our capabilities to C-suites and has led to Advantech being an industry leader in this space.

Overall, successful deployment of IoT hinges on three factors: developing the “why” before embarking on digital transformation, engaging with best-in-breed solution providers, and defining an implementation roadmap consisting of concise stages to follow.

by Bob Vale, IoT Business Development Manager and Orchestrator, Advantech

Learn more about Advantech’s IoT solutions here.

Augment your workforce, now!

The “augmented workforce” is a term we hear increasingly often these days, but the concept is hardly new. Think, for example, of the cotton mills of the Industrial Revolution. Scores of looms were driven not by the millworkers, who had other tasks, but by a series of steam-powered belts, resulting in a larger production output, higher quality, and new ways of working combining humans and machines.

However, as the cotton mill example shows us, it’s important not just that technology delivers benefits such as these, but that it does so together with the human workforce. That’s where AI can really take off – when you combine it with people, you create an outcome that is greater than the sum of its parts.

Capgemini has been developing a methodology that orchestrates tasks between people and machines. It comprises three steps:

• Identifying tasks that can be performed better and/or faster with AI

• Measuring the value that AI can add

• Designing human-in-the-loop solutions when the expected efficiency is not reached by machines alone.

The term “orchestration” is a good one, because implicit in it is a sense of fluidity – areas and occasions when, as it were, either people or technology will be playing solo, and other times and places when they will be playing together.

The algorithms we use gauge possible outcomes and use formulae to create human-in-the-loop solutions in which the process efficiency is better than a machine-only approach, but is achieved at a cost that is much lower than a person-only one. This truly is augmentation in action.

We’re working with clients to build an augmented workforce approach in functions including finance, the supply chain, human resources and contact centres, to name just a few. We help them identify their need and shape their response, we create a model for them, and we help them execute it, to achieve the outcome they seek.

As this new approach to tasks consolidates itself, we’re seeing the workforce change. People are acquiring and using skillsets that didn’t even exist a few years ago. Why? Partly because the technology requires an understanding of the new world of intelligent automation, and partly because people are now freed from the repetitive tasks of yesterday and are able to focus on the increased value they can bring to the business requirements of today and tomorrow.

Intelligent automation is streamlining processes and weaving itself into the fabric of the modern enterprise, thereby benefiting the organisation, the workforce and the customer alike. In a way, perhaps, we’re not so far from those 18th century cotton mills after all.

by Adam Bujak, Global Head of Intelligent Automation, Capgemini

To enhance your business operations with an augmented workforce at scale, click here.

Digital priorities: how Britannia can still rule the waves

A change of course in terms of priority will help keep Britain on the map as a global leader in the digital economy.

Believe it or not, Britain is in a good place. It could be in a great one. More investment in digital infrastructure now is the key to keeping Britain great, and growing a world-beating economy.

Now is the perfect time to stop and seriously consider what really constitutes the UK economy. Border control matters are front and centre of the biggest potential economic change the country is seeing in decades. We have long been in a service-driven economy, so we’re not talking about herding cattle across boundaries anymore, we are talking about moving bytes – globally. The World Economic Forum estimates that technology will create £2.5 trillion in value worldwide between now and 2025. So how can Britain successfully get a bite of this action?

Without a doubt, it is technology that will help British businesses to be high performers. Research by the Bank of England shows that only 1 per cent of firms in the UK economy are classified as being high performers, but encouragingly the same research also shows that businesses using technology to their advantage are growing productivity annually by 6 per cent, compared to an average productivity growth of 0.2 per cent (ONS).

So what do we need to do? One significant current hurdle for many UK businesses is accessing productivity-improving technologies such as the cloud, simply because lack of infrastructure means they can’t connect to it properly. With the global marketplace increasingly moving into the cloud, we need to connect in order to play. It’s that simple.

Digital infrastructure costs less, creates a similar number of jobs and connects the UK to world markets

Until recently, the UK has been reluctant to link high-speed connectivity to productivity, in spite of research from the US showing that poor connectivity decreases productivity by 36 per cent. The Office for National Statistics (ONS) has said that UK productivity has been lower over the past decade than at any time in the 20th century. London is the world’s most connected city and a darling of fintech, but cities such as Birmingham, Bristol, Hull, Glasgow, Liverpool and Edinburgh are in the internet slow lane, with rural broadband access being on the figurative hard shoulder. The Northern Powerhouse Partnership suggests that fibre connectivity would boost this region’s economy by £47 billion. So evidently, our priority here is to upgrade our outdated infrastructure to avoid creating gaping digital divides.

Nevertheless, there is good news: the UK is a hotbed of tech talent and has created one tech unicorn a month for the last year. The UK leads the world in fintech and employs 5 per cent of all high-growth tech workers, globally.

To capitalise now on all the opportunities open to us, we need to review our investment priorities and give precedence to financing digital over physical infrastructure. Experts believe that nationwide full-fibre connectivity will cost £30 billion and create 30,000 jobs. The government’s new spending review could divert funds from projects such as HS2 to rolling out full-fibre. Digital infrastructure costs less, creates a similar number of jobs and connects the UK to world markets. It’s a no-brainer.

Here at DCS, our experience indicates that a full-fibre UK would improve the country’s productivity and enable it to secure more of that £2.5 trillion. Our customers use high-speed cloud connectivity to enable advanced data analytics to provide actionable insights into productivity improvements. The technology they really need the most is cloud, cyber-security, worker mobility and big data, all of which require solid reliable infrastructure.

by Andy Dunn, Commercial Sales Director, Daisy Corporate Services

Discover how Daisy Corporate Services is helping UK businesses work smarter through technology at dcs.tech

Customer insights are fuelling the digital economy

Data is the lifeblood of the digital economy. New data-driven technologies are already empowering organisations to optimise their supply chains, design more efficient business processes, create new products or services and more besides.

But for the majority of business leaders who want to maximise the value of their data assets, it’s customer data that has the greatest potential to drive ROI in the coming months and years.

“Our vision is to make our customers’ days a little easier,” says Olof Granberg, Director of Big Data and Advanced Analytics Technology at retail giant ICA Gruppen. “What we then use machine learning and AI for is to help simplify that.”

“Data is giving us insights in all aspects,” agrees Girish Agarwal, Director AI Lab at power tool manufacturer Husqvarna Group. “But my personal feeling is that in order to reap the benefits faster and to the maximum, we should use these technologies to get closer to our customers.”

These views are widely held in the global business community. Data storage company Seagate reports that two-thirds of CEOs will be focusing on digital strategies to improve the customer experience (CX) by the end of 2019.

Forrester research shows that insight-driven businesses are already setting the pace for global economic growth. These “customer obsessed” organisations are growing at an annual rate of more than 30 per cent on average.

What’s more, Gartner predicts that more than 40 per cent of data and analytics projects will relate to CX by 2020.

How customer data is driving enterprise ROI

Of course, you don’t have to look to the future to see the impact data-driven initiatives can have on the company bottom line. Data and analytics leaders at the world’s most forward-thinking companies are already using data to transform how their brands interact with customers.

“Since the advent of these interlinked business models and ecosystems, only those initiatives which are integrated with each other are really giving value back to the customer,” says Agarwal.

“We are going to focus on customer engagement and customer delivery,” he continues. “We’re also looking into something we call marketing customisation, where we give personalised offers to our customers based on exactly their needs.”

Juwel Rana, Head of Analytics at Scandinavian fashion retailer Varner, agrees: “You need to be focusing on your customers’ perspectives. We always serve our customers first.”

While every business is different, most follow a similar template when it comes to optimising experiences for their customers. Customer experience optimisation starts with mapping out the various interactions a customer typically has with a brand when they need to achieve a specific goal. Examples of these customer journeys include making a purchase, using a product, renewing a contract or troubleshooting a problem.

The company must then gather and analyse data about each of the key touchpoints on these journeys to identify where there are opportunities to improve the overall experience.

“If you’re doing things right, you’ll have much happier customers,” says Jose A Murillo, CAO at Mexican financial institution Banorte. “You’ll have lengthier relationships with those customers, which means you’ll be able to create customer equity and good, sustainable profits in the long-term.”

Customer insights top the 2020 data agenda

Direct-to-consumer brand Publishers Clearing House is the perfect example of a business with a customer-centric data strategy.

The company has developed more than 500 algorithms which it uses to personalise and enhance the customer experience. Ash Dhupar, the company’s CAO, says just one of his team’s recommendation algorithms generates 43 per cent of the brand’s e-commerce sales.

“We know a lot about our customers and giving them the most relevant and personalised experience is what we’re after,” he says. “We’re doing a lot of stuff in that area, from using personas to one-to-one marketing.”

He believes that developing more accurate personas for key customer groups will enable Publishers Clearing House to refine the targeting of its digital ad campaigns over the next 12 months.

“For our digital acquisition, we will go and find these people on the site,” he explains. “So, when they come in they will find the most relevant products and we can give them the most relevant experience related to what their lifestyle persona is about.”

This is a top priority for many businesses. Forrester reports that 89 per cent of digital businesses are investing in personalisation – including Coca-Cola, Netflix, USAA, and Wells Fargo.

Other data leaders will focus their efforts on identifying and improving points in key customer journeys where poor experiences are currently damaging customer perceptions of their brand.

Some will even develop completely new data-driven tools, products or services designed to make their customers’ lives easier.

But no matter what approach an organisation decides to take, its success will hinge on how effectively it can harness the power of data to develop better experiences for their customers.

by Solomon Radley, Global Content Strategist, Corinium Intelligence

To discover which strategies the UK’s top data and analytics leaders are using to deliver superior customer experiences, join Corinium Intelligence this February at our flagship UK conference, Chief Data & Analytics Officers UK 2020.

Taking place at an exclusive location in the heart of London, CDAO UK 2020 is the perfect place to network and learn with hundreds of your peers and hear from more than 60 of the country’s most innovative data leaders.

Better digital products for satisfied users thanks to crowdtesting

A masterclass with Testbirds

Session 1 - Introduction - to watch the video click here.

Session 2 - QA Testing – The What & Why - to watch the video click here.

Session 3 - QA Testing – The Dos & Don’ts - to watch the video click here.

Session 4 - UX Testing – Looking Through the Eyes of Your Users - to watch the video click here.

Session 5 - UX Testing – Best Practices - to watch the video click here.

Session 6 - Crowdtesting – Testing in Real-World Conditions - to watch the video click here.

With the motto ‘Testing Reality – Real Users. Real Devices. Real Impact.’, the Munich-based company Testbirds offers different types of tests to optimise the usability and functionality of digital products. Testbirds counts on a network of professional testers and real end-users to provide their collective expertise.

Testbirds is a young, successful company: in 2011, the three founders and today’s managers, Philipp Benkler, Georg Hansbauer, and Markus Steinhauser, came together to help companies enhance their digital products. From the very beginning, the company trusted the power of the crowd and combined crowdsourcing – the internet community’s swarm intelligence – with software tests. The ‘crowdtesting’ approach has convinced clients and investors alike with its reliability. Today, Testbirds has grown to more than 100 employees and, next to its main office in Munich, now has branches in Amsterdam, London and Stockholm.

Certified experts and real end-users – an unbeatable test combination

The main focus lies on quality assurance and the usability of digital products – whether they are apps, websites, or Internet-of-Things applications (IoT). Crowdtesting relies on unbiased real users, who are chosen according to target and user groups. This way, companies get feedback from those they actually want to reach and do not have to rely on laboratory experiments alone. Using their own devices, test-users search for bugs and usability problems, and companies get detailed descriptions of problems, as well as clear recommendations for actions.

While the first testers originated from the DACH-region (Germany, Austria, and Switzerland), today, the test community includes more than 400,000 registered users in 193 countries. That makes Testbirds one of the world’s leading crowdtesting companies. Thanks to crowdtesting, more than 900,000 different devices are available for tests – from desktop computers to mobile or IoT devices. This wide range of different operating systems and browsers ensures that companies gain a comprehensive picture of functionalities and user-friendliness. It doesn’t matter whether this involves apps, wearables, classic software or an intelligent hoover: all data collected can be utilised.

Demographic criteria to match your users

Within the crowd of testers, Testbirds can filter out specific types of users with specific demographic and behavioural characteristics. So, for example, if you want to test your app with Spanish-speaking Android users in Sweden who exercise twice a week, the Testbirds crowd is available and ready. Through the power of their crowd, Testbirds will help you improve your digital product during any stage of development and make it the best that it can be, proven in real-world conditions and with a quick turn-around.

Philipp Benkler, CEO and Founder, Testbirds

Article written by Tobias Brunner, Head of Marketing Communications, Testbirds

Always be one step ahead – Testbirds helps you deliver digital products people love

What it takes for a business to be completely customer obsessed

In today’s digital economy, customer experience (CX) is everything. Research from Salesforce shows that 57 per cent of customers switched to a competitor to get a better experience. And Bain & Co reports that “companies with superior CX grew revenue five times faster on average than their competitors with inferior CX.”

To adapt to these market trends, forward-thinking companies – whether business-to-business (B2B) or business-to-consumer (B2C) – are making the decision to become completely customer obsessed, taking customer experience and digital engagements to new heights. With customer retention as the ultimate goal, they are dedicating their businesses to giving customers what they want: less friction and digital frustration, more immediacy and personalisation, fewer hassles and more options for self-help to take control of their own buying journey.

This new buying journey no longer fits the mould of a traditional sales funnel – it’s not enough to simply fill the funnel and move onto the next customer. In order to be successful, companies must be present throughout the entire post-purchase lifecycle. In the new era of CX, the customer journey looks a lot more like an infinity loop because a company’s interaction with the customer should have no end.

Cisco’s approach to CX provides insight into the changing market. To fully support its customers in choosing, using and loving both Cisco and its solutions, the company has transformed its entire business beyond being aware of customers’ needs to anticipating them and taking the next-best action. It continues to listen to its customers and partners to gain an ongoing, 360-degree view of their needs and expectations, using interviews and surveys to find out how to serve them better.

And, with artificial intelligence and machine learning, the company is harnessing data to work in real time to proactively detect customer vulnerabilities, provide prescriptive solutions, identify roadblocks to successful adoption of its products and services, and eliminate barriers to software and subscription renewals. Working together with its reseller partners in the UK and around the world, Cisco is doing everything it its power to retain customers for life.

The bottom line is that businesses today must modernise and simplify the way they approach and interact with customers, enabling them to enjoy a fully connected experience from the moment they buy all the way to the time they renew. To do this, they must reach each customer using both digital and human-led touches – with the right content, at the right time – owning each moment through highly personalised customer journeys.

by Zarina Pasalic, Head of Digital Customer Experience – EMEAR, Cisco

For a deeper look at why and how Cisco has become completely customer obsessed, see here.

Digital Economy and Transformation

October 2019

Nimble tech firms must adapt as promised self-driving revolution hits speed bumps

Identity and access management are the foundations of cyber security

Philipp Benkler, CEO and Founder, Testbirds

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Digital Economy and Transformation

October 2019

Nimble tech firms must adapt as promised self-driving revolution hits speed bumps

More Money, Please

Identity and access management are the foundations of cyber security

The impact of the digital economy on business strategies

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Measuring the impact of the digital economy

General Impact on companies’ business strategy

Impact on companies’ business processes

Roadmap for business leaders

Why digital transformation alone is not going to save your business

Why it is important now more than ever to supercharge our digital economy

The power of SMEs

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What about Libra?

Who's using it?

How has the market responded?

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Masterclass with Quest Software

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Embracing IoT for digital transformation with Advantech

Augment your workforce, now!

Digital priorities: how Britannia can still rule the waves

Customer insights are fuelling the digital economy

How customer data is driving enterprise ROI

Customer insights top the 2020 data agenda

Ask not what your smart home can do for your smart city…

Safety

Convenience

Information sharing

Bringing it home

Better digital products for satisfied users thanks to crowdtesting

A masterclass with Testbirds

Certified experts and real end-users – an unbeatable test combination

Demographic criteria to match your users

Philipp Benkler, CEO and Founder, Testbirds

What it takes for a business to be completely customer obsessed

Uber faces UK tax challenge

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