Category: Industry News

Posted on

News You Can Use: 6/29/2016

sn_cowboy_Priscilla Westra

  • Automation, not cheap labor, is reshaping outsourcing

    One process that has taken off is called “Robotic Process Automation (RPA),” a term given to a virtual machine that takes over some of the applications and workflows managed by workers. These systems don’t directly replace humans, but take structured tasks and automate them, with users saving as much as much as 15%, said Karamouzis.

    http://www.computerworld.com/article/3083264/it-careers/automation-not-cheap-labor-is-reshaping-outsourcing.html
    What’s Next for Artificial Intelligence

    We need to update the New Deal for the 21st century and establish a trainee program for the new jobs artificial intelligence will create. We need to retrain truck drivers and office assistants to create data analysts, trip optimizers and other professionals we don’t yet know we need. It would have been impossible for an antebellum farmer to imagine his son becoming an electrician, and it’s impossible to say what new jobs AI will create. But it’s clear that drastic measures are necessary if we want to transition from an industrial society to an age of intelligent machines.

    http://www.wsj.com/articles/whats-next-for-artificial-intelligence-1465827619

  • John Oliver on Retirement Plans (warning: bad language):
  • Ignoring People for Phones Is the New Normal

    The most interesting thing this study found was that people who reported phubbing more often were also more likely to be phubbed themselves. The authors, from the University of Kent, suggest several possible reasons for this. One is a simple retaliation—if you’re trying to talk to someone, and they’re on their phone, well, two can play at that game.

    http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2016/06/ignoring-people-for-phones-is-the-new-normal-phubbing-study/486845/
    Note: “phubbing”—a portmanteau of “phone” and “snubbing.”

  • Why Leadership Development Needs to Be Updated

    As it is, 61 percent of North American employees surveyed by Achievers in 2015 said they don’t know their company’s mission. When coaches are in control, leaders receive inconsistent training that doesn’t align with company practices and values, and they can’t reinforce the mission to employees.

    Employers need to take back the control and launch leadership development programs consistent with the company mission, values and goals. This way, development and training aligns with the ROI and metrics companies want — not what the coaches want.

    https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/276229

  • Building A High-Performance Sourcing Department: Hire High-Performance Sourcers

    Before you can hire high-performance sourcers you need to know what the definition of a good sourcer. Great sourcers are individuals who possess two skills sets that might appear to be polar opposites. They possess strong analytical research skills and outstanding verbal and written communication skills. According to sourcing pioneer Harry Ensley, Director of Global Talent Acquisition at Sun Life Financial, a great sourcer is often a strong recruiter, but a good recruiter is not necessarily a good sourcer.

    http://www.eremedia.com/sourcecon/how-to-build-a-high-performance-sourcing-department-part-1-hire-high-performance-sourcers/

Photo: Priscilla Westra

Posted on

News You Can Use: 6/22/2016

sn_horses_Isabella Jusková

  • Cable and telecom companies just lost a huge court battle on net neutrality

    The court verdict puts to rest — for now — a key question: Whether the Internet represents a vital communications platform that deserves to be regulated with the same scrutiny as the common networks of the past, such as the telephone system. Writing for the court, Judges David Tatel and Sri Srinivasan held that despite advances in technology, the underlying importance of the Internet to everyday communications and commerce makes it more similar to the phone system than not. Today, for example, consumers are accustomed to using not just the email accounts that their broadband provider gave them, but also using third-party services such as Gmail as well as Netflix, Amazon and Uber.

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2016/06/14/the-fcc-just-won-a-sweeping-victory-on-net-neutrality-in-federal-court/

  • What’s going on with IT hiring?

    CompTIA, an industry group, said about 96,000 IT jobs were lost last month across all industries, not just the technology sector. That figure includes the impact of the approximately 37,000 telecommunications jobs sidelined by the Verizon strike, which was settled this month. But it was a rough month, by some estimates.

    Analysts have been generally cautious this year about IT hiring trends. Although the unemployment rate for IT professionals is about half the national average of 4.7%, said CompTIA, some analysts use terms ranging from “modest” to “pre-recession” to describe IT hiring.

    http://www.computerworld.com/article/3080825/it-careers/what-s-going-on-with-it-hiring.html?nsdr=true

  • The Psychology of Solitude: Being Alone Can Maximize Productivity, with Scott Barry Kaufman
  • 4 Steps to Avoid ‘Death by Meeting’

    Whether your meetings are derailed by the shiny object syndrome, or you get stuck in the weeds, the only person who can save you is you! That’s why, when I’m facilitating team events, I make sure that our agendas include business items as well as elements relevant to the team. That way, we weave in learning with business needs, giving team members an opportunity to practice and apply the skills they are learning.

    What often happens, when a team gets stuck in the weeds or off track, is that team members start making eye contact with me: raising an eyebrow, in effect begging me to, “Get us out of here — we are stuck!” It always strikes me that it’s me, the guest facilitator, who is asked to save the day.

    https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/275194

  • Doth thou protest too much?

    Many will applaud this effort to reign in what is seen as an out of control protest process. After all, the protest rate has grown some 45 percent during a period of time that total federal spending has dropped 25 percent. In 2001 there were about 700 individual protests filed with the GAO; in 2015 that number was over 2,500. Interestingly, of those protests on which GAO ultimately ruled, its “sustain rate” had dropped to 12 percent—from 18 percent just a few years earlier and 22 percent in 2001.

    https://washingtontechnology.com/articles/2016/06/03/insights-soloway-bid-protests.aspx

  • How Google killed Nest and why acquisitions fail

    I think the real problem is that when most companies do an acquisition they treat it almost like you and I would buy a car. They focus on the price and closing the deal after becoming interested in the firm’s products and/or services. But you don’t buy people, and a firm without the employees who made it a success is a failure in the making and worth a fraction of its assessed value. Part of the real cost of the acquisition is critical employee retention, and retention packages do a poor job of making people want to stay.

    http://www.cio.com/article/3082033/mergers-acquisitions/how-google-killed-nest-and-why-acquisitions-fail.html

  • Verizon to bid $3B for Yahoo’s core Internet business
    First Verizon buys AOL, and now they are looking into buying Yahoo. Verizon is where all of your old embarrasing email addresses like (mustang_guy_1972_xx@yahoo.com) go to die. 
    http://www.cio.com/article/3080025/verizon-to-bid-3b-for-yahoo-s-core-internet-business.html

Photo: Isabella Jusková

Posted on

News You Can Use: 6/15/2016

sn_sparkle_Jamie Street

  • Can Vendor Scorecards Cut Down on IT Project Failures?

    Besides providing performance feedback during a large project, the scorecards also are expected to be a way for the state to take into account previous performance in future procurements, something that has been difficult to do in the past because evaluations were based on requirements built into the procurement vehicles. “We had no systemic way of measuring performance and taking it into account,” Ramos said. “We saw that as a gap.”

    http://www.govtech.com/state/Can-Vendor-Scorecards-Cut-Down-on-IT-Project-Failures.html

  • AI Will not Save Procurement … It Will Only Hasten its Demise

    An AI can detect the presence of risk indicators that you have defined against known risks, it cannot identify risk indicators for unknown risks. If the algorithm doesn’t understand that a tsunami is a risk because it can damage harbours and destroy coastal plants, the risk will not be identified until it discovers a news story about how the supplier plant had to shut down. And if it does not understand that legal proceedings can bankrupt a small company, it could overlook a filing with the potential to bankrupt the supplier. If the supplier was strategic, that is something the organization would want to know about immediately.

    http://sourcinginnovation.com/wordpress/2016/06/03/ai-will-not-save-procurement-it-will-only-hasten-its-demise/

  • DAO: A Sandbox For ‘Smart Contracts’

    Smart contracts are the digital equivalent of the pen-and-paper kind which, even today, are the gatekeepers to major business relationships. Smart contracts work by executing themselves automatically under a given set of conditions, which are pre-programmed into the software that supports them. In the case of DAO, funds will be transferred based on a majority vote, which itself is executed by digital signatures. Slock.it is the company behind DAO’s smart contract infrastructure.

    Also:

    The issue is one of control. There is potential for smart contracts to put buyer-supplier relationships under significant strain if, for instance, a dispute occurs and adequate consideration has not been given to the process for dealing with this in the digital setting. In computer-to-computer purchasing, for example, with which party does the burden of proof sit? The recent and public SWIFT-Bangladesh Bank saga has already showcased the extent of the tensions caused by disagreements over who’s system is at fault.

    http://www.procurementleaders.com/blog/my-blog–harry-john/dao-a-sandbox-for-smart-contracts-620229

  • How to Keep Millennials in Procurement

    Another differentiating characteristic about millennials is that they are not as interested as previous generations in climbing the traditional career ladder, going from a junior buyer to a senior buyer, to a manager and on to procurement director, Peck said. They can be happy with lateral career moves that spark change in their daily routine or challenge them in a new way.

    Career training, too, is highly valued among millennials — something Peck pointed out was a huge positive for procurement and supply chain organizations. In her experience, Peck said it can be “like pulling teeth” to encourage other generations of employees to take training courses or continue their education. With millennials, however, this isn’t a problem.

    http://spendmatters.com/2016/06/02/how-to-keep-millennials-in-procurement/

  • The Purchase Order Is In … Now What?

    At ROYCE, we’ve been burned in the past because we were so starstruck that a luxury department store actually chose us that it blinded us from the far-reaching implications of that order. No one was asking the important questions — What’s their credit history? What are the logistics chargebacks? What the hell is a “loyalty discount?” (Side note: I will never forget the time that a prestigious UK retailer gave us a significant PO, only to subtly mention in the fine print that there were 21 percent off worth of discounts and co-op advertising costs, after already succumbing to aggressively discounted landed costs!) There’s nothing more anticlimactic than landing a career deal, only to meekly utter “thanks, but no thanks.”

    https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/276640

  • ‘Vendor overload’ adds to CISO burnout

    “The new CISO is more the CIRO (chief information risk officer) tasked with managing risk to data and technology,” said Dawn-Marie Hutchinson, executive director in the Office of the CISO at Optiv.

    “Five years ago, the role was buried many layers down in the organization, if it existed at all,” she said. “Today, the CISO is a business leader.”

    Diedre Diamond, founder and CEO of CyberSN, speaking at the recent SOURCE Boston conference, offered three other reasons: Lack of understanding of the role, lack of advancement potential and unhappiness with leadership or company culture.

    http://www.csoonline.com/article/3077243/it-careers/vendor-overload-adds-to-ciso-burnout.html

Posted on

News You Can Use: 6/8/2016

sn_thecliff_Will van Wingerden

  • 3 Unrealistic Career Goals You Need To Abandon

    Creating career deadlines is all about balance. Planning ahead is a solid way to visualize what you want to achieve, but it can lose value if you only see those deadlines in black and white. Often times, new opportunities and unique ideas come from the gray areas, and strict schedules don’t always encourage that creativity. If you have a milestone you keep missing, remind yourself that it may not really exist and consider taking it off the list.

    http://www.fastcompany.com/3060096/how-to-be-a-success-at-everything/3-unrealistic-career-goals-you-need-to-abandon

  • IT career roadmap: Technology evangelist

    “You’re drawing on aspects of a bunch of different fields, technology, sales, marketing, psychology, even acting. You not only have to have technical depth and credibility, but also polished sales and marketing skills so that you can handle objections, you can promote messaging in a non-threatening way. And you have to know a lot about the business climate you’re operating in — what’s the market like? What are the circumstances that have brought a company to where it is?” Sage says.

    http://www.cio.com/article/3075440/it-skills-training/it-career-roadmap-technology-evangelist.html

  • Operating with Empathy: How to Build Organizations for Real People
  • Is Workplace Culture Overrated? (Infographic)

    Culture often influences an employee’s decision to join a company, and small perks go a long way. Two-thirds of employees with access to free food say they’re very happy at their current jobs, and workers who have strong relationships with their colleagues feel 50 percent more satisfied than those who don’t.

    Check out the infographic in the link to learn more about the benefits of fostering a healthy company culture.

    https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/276152

  • U.S. CIO aims to cut legacy spending, proposes IT modernization

    The administration’s proposed solution is an IT modernization fund (ITMF) that would be subject to oversight of an independent panel that would help prioritize the most pressing technology projects while also evaluating the business case that the agency makes in pitching a project. And, crucially, agencies that dip into the $3.1 billion fund would be expected to repay the initial outlay for the IT project back into the fund over time, as operating savings materialize.

    http://www.cio.com/article/3075842/government-use-of-it/u-s-cio-aims-to-cut-legacy-spending-proposes-it-modernization.html

  • When This Boss Walks 10 Miles a Day, She Leads a Much Healthier Team

    A study by the University of Minnesota showed treadmill desks boost job performance, and we who work and walk are a testament to that fact. We not only feel great, we’re knocking it out of the park, with creative and innovative design ideas that come to us while walking/working. Leading by example is important for every business owner looking to improve his or her team’s health. Being fit and happy is contagious.

    https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/275036

Photo: Will van Wingerden