Tag: artificial intelligence

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: 3/16/2016

sn_rocketx_SpaceX

  • Two-Thirds Of Americans Think Robots Will Take Our Jobs By 2065
    sn_automationcomp_pew
    http://www.fastcompany.com/3057695/the-future-of-work/two-thirds-of-americans-think-robots-will-take-our-jobs-by-2065
  • Procurement Managers See Pressure to Reduce Costs Ramping Up

    “One clear differentiator we saw in the research this year was the recognition of the value of improved market intelligence,” says Sawchuk. “Procurement leaders are realizing that higher-quality information can help them drive greater business value. Big data has been a game changer when it comes to customer analytics, offering an unprecedented ability to quickly model massive volumes of structured and unstructured data from multiple sources. But procurement’s lack of maturity in market intelligence is a significant obstacle that must be overcome.”

    http://www.scmr.com/article/procurement_managers_see_pressure_to_reduce_costs_ramping_up#When:16:45:59Z

  • Why Do Half of Millennials Still Live With Mommy and Daddy?
    sn_1457476157_Women
    http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/272152
  • Why Millennial Women Are Burning Out

    A study from the University of Kansas found that women are burning out faster than men after looking at attrition rates of journalists. According to the research, women reported higher levels of overload and intention to leave the field.

    The author of the study “examined the numbers through gender socialization theory, which claims that society puts certain expectations on people based on their gender from a very young age. Where women are more often expected to provide the majority of family care and raise children, men are expected to be the breadwinners and put work obligations before family. That was supported by the findings showing that women experience significantly higher rates of role overload, or feel that they are unable to complete their assigned duties in the work time allowed,” notes the University of Kansas study.

    http://www.fastcompany.com/3057545/the-future-of-work/why-millennial-women-are-burning-out

  • In pursuit of HIPAA, a new compliance gap arises

    The operations team was leaning toward encrypting the hard drives, because options that are fairly easy to deploy are available. I agreed that it would be easy to do, but I objected that the method wouldn’t really be effective from a security perspective (and encryption is one thing that should be all about security). When you encrypt a hard drive, you are ensuring that anyone who comes into possession of that drive can’t access the data. In other words, the only way such encryption would protect the company would be if the hard drive were stolen. Now, the likelihood is infinitesimally small that a bad guy is going to determine where our highly secure data center is located; get past the security guards, man traps and biometrics; and then figure out which of the hundreds of drives to pull out.

    http://www.cio.com/article/3041649/security/in-pursuit-of-hipaa-a-new-compliance-gap-arises.html#tk.rss_all

  • eWorld: technology and talent trends that will shake-up procurement

    Technology and talent are increasingly part of the same sphere and this hit home over the course of the day. Artificial intelligence (AI) may reduce procurement specialists’ need for cognitive capabilities in analysing what the procurement outsourcing & consulting company, Optimum Procurement Group, call ‘hard trends’ – for example demographic data suggest the aging ‘baby boomers’ will increase the public spending in public health facilities. This would modify the capability requirements of procurement professionals.

    Certain roles and skills could be redundant in the future, yet, AI are not sophisticated enough in dealing with soft trends – i.e. something that may happen depending on several interdependencies – which requires more complex and agile analysis. Qualitative and soft skills are increasingly important capabilities in the procurement professionals.

    http://www.procurementleaders.com/blog/my-blog–aaron-mo/eworld-technology-and-talent-trends-that-will-shake-up-procurement-604735

  • HR Analytics: How Should Big Data Be Used in the Workplace?

    When employers use predictive models to decide not to train people who, for instance, are on the verge of being either fired or awarded promotions, they’re basing their decisions on what an algorithm says may or may not happen, rather than what employees are actually doing. People are unpredictable, and unknown factors can influence outcomes. Decisions that affect people should be informed by data, but made by people.

    http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/271753

  • Metrics that count

    In 2015, Gartner conducted a survey in conjunction with Supply Chain Management Review (SCMR) to address that question and to gain a better understanding of how manufacturing metrics are characterized, developed, and used to link manufacturing and supply chain performance.

    http://www.scmr.com/article/metrics_that_count#When:20:26:46Z

Photo: Space X

Posted on

News You Can Use: 9/23/2015

sn_arc_BogdanDum

  • Slack’s Workplace Revolution

    “We’re really conscious of solving problems in a way that doesn’t fetishize the purity of UI design at the expense of the user,” says Slack’s design director, Brandon Velestuk, who has worked closely with Butterfield since joining Slack in 2014. “There was always an understanding that this was a tool people were going to spend their entire day in, so we sought to bring an empathy to the design.”

    http://www.fastcodesign.com/3050294/innovation-by-design/slacks-workplace-revolution

  • The AI productivity opportunity

    I expect AI to start to play a part in most industries over the next five years, it will start in data intensive areas such as customer profiling, but before long we will have AI customer service desks and call centres. Other areas that will be revolutionised will be planning and forecasting, where computers will soon outperform humans, and security where a CCTV images can be monitored by a machine. The CCTV pictures might be coming from a drone that has decided to the factory perimeter fence.

    http://www.procurementleaders.com/blog/my-blog–thomas-seal/the-ai-productivity-opportunity-567152

  • Healthcare leads all industries in data breaches

    The key finding is perhaps that the healthcare industry had 34 percent of its total records breached, amounting to 84 million data records compromised, the highest rate of any industry. Government accounted for the second highest rate of breaches at 77.2 million records lost, or 31.4 percent.

    http://www.govhealthit.com/news/healthcare-leads-all-industries-data-breaches

  • 6 Ways to Demonstrate Kindness in Business and the Rest of Your Life

    Most often, your best clients come to you by referral. Look for ways to help others succeed by referring potential business or influencers to those you know and like. If someone is struggling with an aspect of their business and asks for your advice, jump in and offer your expertise. You’ll build a deeper relationship and a trust that will provide mutual rewards for years to come.

    http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/250738

  • Hadoop, in trouble? Only in Gartner-land

    Most companies don’t have “big data” — only many new unstructured or semistructured data sources — and they’d like to gain insight by aggregating them and hooking up a visualization tool. In fact, according to the study, most want to gain insight using Tableau or Excel. If they’re already using Hadoop, they are probably also working with Tableau (51 percent). If they aren’t, they’d like to use Excel (60 percent).

    http://www.cio.com/article/2984609/data-management/hadoop-in-trouble-only-in-gartner-land.html#tk.rss_all

  • 4 Warning Signs Your Team Is Working in Silos, and How to Destroy Them

    The best way to avoid groupthink is to model disagreement at the leadership level. This doesn’t mean hosting debates or shouting matches, but it does mean letting your teams into the room when hard decisions need to be hashed out. It also means rewarding disagreement, celebrating differences and making it clear that you, as a leader, don’t have all the answers.

    http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/250477

Photo: Bogdan Dum

Posted on

News You Can Use: 6/15/2015

sn_productive_woman

  • Generation Y: A New Challenge For Travel Procurement

    When it comes to business travel, these digitally-savvy employees expect a sleek, consumer-like experience from corporate booking tools: when they don’t get it they turn to the consumer applications they already have to hand, and book outside the corporate environment. Not only can this lead to irresponsible spending, and weaker negotiated rates in the future, but it poses significant risks to a company’s “duty of care” responsibility towards its employees. If you don’t know where they are, you can’t help them in an emergency. So how can procurement help to bring Generation Y back into the fold?

    http://www.procurementleaders.com/blog/my-blog–guest-blog/generation-y-a-new-challenge-for-travel-procurement-542624

  • IBM and Procurement Transformation: By the Numbers, Risk Management and More
    [While this is interesting, I really want to know more about the AI/Watson solutions that IBM just started talking about]

    From a numbers perspective, IBM’s procurement performance KPIs and performance improvement metrics are more than impressive. Michael noted IBM saved $6.9B in approved and measured savings targets in 2014 compared to before the program was put into place. Payment terms now stand at close to 60 days rather than 30 days. Spend and contract compliance has increased from 50% to over 90%. Sourcing experts now look at 100% of spend compared to less than 10%. Electronic invoicing has increased from 20% to 90%. And 83% of POs never touch a buyer.

    http://spendmatters.com/2015/06/04/ibm-and-procurement-transformation-by-the-numbers-risk-management-and-more/

  • The Basics of making small talk:
  • This Calculator Will Tell You If A Robot Is Coming For Your Job

    For now, those with the highest-skill, highest-paid jobs are probably safe, and low-skill workers are not. “Inequality is probably the foremost challenge,” says Osborne. “It’s not going to be a problem of there not being enough wealth. We’re fairly confident that all of these technologies will continue to generate vast amounts of wealth—we’ll be generating a cornucopia of increasingly cheap and wonderful goods that will be able to be produced for next to zero marginal cost. But those benefits we’ll see as consumers might not necessarily be realized by workers.”

    http://www.fastcoexist.com/3047269/this-calculator-will-tell-you-if-a-robot-is-coming-for-your-job?partner=rss

  • 3 Reasons ‘Casual Flex’ at Work Doesn’t Work

    What’s more, one-third of workers worldwide feel stressed about work-life issues, according to a study by Ernst & Young about work-life challenges. And flexible-work policies that are merely informal may cause other systemic problems: A Boston University study found employees at a Boston consulting firm faking their 80-hour work weeks over fears that asking to use flexible-work options would cause negative reactions from management. These fears were well founded, it turns out. Employees who faked 80-hour workweeks were given excellent performance reviews, while those who openly asked for flexibility were negatively reviewed, even though they worked the same number of hours as their faking colleagues. That sort of scenario undermines trust and confidence in working relationships, to say the least.

    http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/246802?ctp=BizDev&src=Syndication&msc=Feedly