Tag: Automation

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News You Can Use: 2/28/2018

  • Report: Messenger Kids advocates were Facebook-funded

    Messenger Kids, Facebook said, had been designed to serve as a “fun, safer solution” for family communications. It would be available for children as young as 6, the company said. To forestall criticism, Facebook asserted that the app had been developed alongside thousands of parents and a dozen expert advisors.

    But it looks like many of those outside experts were funded with Facebook dollars. According to Wired, “At least seven members of Facebook 13-person advisory board have some kind of financial tie to the company.” Those advisors include the National PTA, Blue Star Families, Connect Safely, and the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence.

    https://www.fastcompany.com/40530927/report-messenger-kids-advocates-were-facebook-funded

  • Fake news is an existential crisis for social media

    Elections don’t take place in a vacuum. And if people are angry and divided in their daily lives then that will naturally be reflected in the choices made at the ballot box, whenever there’s an election.

    Russia knows this. And that’s why the Kremlin has been playing such a long propaganda game. Why it’s not just targeting elections. Its targets are fault lines in the fabric of society — be it gun control vs gun owners or conservatives vs liberals or people of color vs white supremacists — whatever issues it can seize on to stir up trouble and rip away at the social fabric.

    That’s what makes digitally amplified disinformation an existential threat to democracy and to civilized societies. Nothing on this scale has been possible before.

    https://techcrunch.com/2018/02/18/fake-news-is-an-existential-crisis-for-social-media/?ncid=rss

  • Why Iceland is Perfect for Crypto Mining
  • Engineering against all odds, or how NYC’s subway will get wireless in the tunnels

    The company faced a number of challenges in building out the system. The first challenge was that the installation could not disrupt transit customers. Bayne said, “We had to figure out how to deploy network and equipment while minimizing disruption of the transit system itself.” That meant working overnight when labor costs are higher, and also placed the company at the mercy of the MTA’s maintenance windows to install network equipment.

    Even more challenging was securing the right equipment. The NYC subway “is a 110-year-old system with low ceilings and lots of water, and it wasn’t designed to embrace a lot of electronics,” Bayne said. Wireless equipment “had to withstand all of these changes in environmental conditions: cold, heat, water, brake dust. Everything had to be passively cooled and fully-enclosed so it didn’t ingest any of the environment into the equipment.” That specialized, “mil-spec” equipment doesn’t come cheap.

    As with the story of any infrastructure, particularly in New York, rolling out wireless connectivity to 282 active underground stations was anything but cheap. The final cost of the rollout was north of $300 million for Transit Wireless, a dramatic increase from early estimates which said that the project would cost “up to $200 million.” As a private entity spending private dollars, the company obviously had enormous incentives to hold down costs.

    https://techcrunch.com/2018/02/17/engineering-against-all-odds/?ncid=rss

  • How Should Your Company Prepare For Robot Coworkers?

    A December 2017 survey by insurance and risk management advisory firm Willis Towers Watson in Arlington, Virginia, found that U.S. companies will nearly double the amount of work done by automation (to 17%) within the next three years. Ninety-four percent of companies that are already using robotics and AI will expand their use of automation by 2020.

    But are companies ready for those changes? Maybe not, the survey found. Less than 5% of respondents say their HR functions are fully prepared for the changing requirements of these new ways of working.

    “So we’re getting beyond the hyperbole of, ‘Robots are going to replace humans,’ and thinking about this in a more nuanced and practical way,” says Renee Smith, who leads the Future of Work consulting activities at Willis Towers Watson. Instead, employees will need to integrate the work that’s done through automation or algorithmic technologies and learn how these tools can enhance performance. Organizations need to start thinking about how the workplace changes when people work side by side with technology, and how to get them ready to do so successfully, she says.

    https://www.fastcompany.com/40528265/how-should-your-company-prepare-for-robot-co-workers

Photo: Sean Thomas

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News You Can Use: 4/19/2017

  • Want to be Successful? Learn to Like Other People

    One of the biggest opportunities for growth at work comes from the way you solicit feedback and what you do with it afterward. Research demonstrates that while employees who speak up tend to improve how well teams function, many tend to be afraid to do so, worrying that their input won’t be well-received. Simply assuming the best in others can lay the foundation for managers and their team members alike to learn and improve without wounding egos.

    https://www.fastcompany.com/40401630/want-to-be-happier-and-more-successful-learn-to-like-other-people

  • Why So Many Americans Are Saying Goodbye to Cities

    America’s largest cities have so much going for them. They are rich, productive, and pulsating with culture and life. So what happened to the great urban revival? “America’s cities have domestic net out-migration because they’re not affordable,” said E. J. McMahon, the founder of the Empire Center for Public Policy. “For many, New York City is a temporary portal. The Baby Boomers retire to Florida. The middle-class Millennials move to Long Island for a house. The woman from Slovakia comes to Queens, lives in her second-cousin’s basement, gets her feet on the ground, and gets a better apartment in West Orange, New Jersey.”

    https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2017/04/why-is-everyone-leaving-the-city/521844/?utm_source=feed

  • With robots on the job, it won’t be IT as usual

    “It’s very much a different mindset than traditional IT,” said Mike Gennert, a professor and director of the Robotics Engineering Program at Worcester Polytechnic Institute, in Worcester, Mass. “IT managers worry about how they manage information, how it’s used, how it’s stored and secured. But none of that has the ability to directly affect the physical world. Robots affect the real world. That brings issues IT managers have not had to confront.”

    For instance, It’s bad enough if a company computer is hacked and it becomes part of a zombie botnet. But what if someone hijacks a company robot and makes it do things, harmful things, in the real world?

    http://www.computerworld.com/article/3188889/robotics/with-robots-on-the-job-its-not-going-to-be-it-as-usual.html

  • Does Silicon Valley Have a Contract-Worker Problem?

    But increasingly, critics argue that the freelance model is being abused, with workers being treated as if they were on payroll without getting any of the benefits afforded to payrolled employees. Some Silicon Valley insiders are beginning to worry that start-ups’ overreliance on contract workers could come back to haunt them if they run afoul of longstanding labor rules. If that happens, these high-flying disruptors could be facing serious disruption themselves.

    http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2014/09/silicon-valleys-contract-worker-problem.html
    Also:

    Then, there is the problem of massive labor oversupply. Unlike for Uber or TaskRabbit, which operate in a given city with a constrained supply of workers, the pool of labor for such digital work is for all intents and purposes infinite. One contingent-work platform reported having nine times as many workers as necessary. A Filipino virtual assistant described the inevitable result: “I first set [my hourly rate] at $8, because that’s what my previous client was paying me,” the assistant told the researchers. “But I found it quite difficult to find jobs. So I set it at $4. And I think I even set it at $3.50 currently. So, I mean, if you don’t get a lot of invitations, you don’t have any other choice but to lower down your expectations, I guess.”

    https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2017/04/gig-economy-global/522954/?utm_source=feed

  • What “Personal Space” Means to the Rest of World

    Countries that greatly value their personal space include Romania, Hungary, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Uganda. Participants from all five of those places would prefer it if you stood more than 120 cm away, or roughly four feet. But participants from Argentina, Peru, Bulgaria, Ukraine, and Austria don’t mind if you chill about 90 cm away, or less than three feet. The U.S. isn’t too far off from that, expecting strangers to keep a cool 95 cm distance between them.

    That said, nobody likes any stranger standing two and half feet or less away. So stop it. Unless you’re on a cramped metro train or something and can’t help it. It’s also important to note that women and elderly participants of all cultures required more space.

    http://lifehacker.com/what-personal-space-means-to-the-rest-of-world-1794130182
    Certainly not the first time a reporter has addressed this topic, but always good to have a refresher.

Photo: Nina Strehl

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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

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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

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The future of sourcing automation

Strategic sourcing and its cousin procurement have always been welcoming of innovation and automation.

Anybody with a business degree knows the basics about warehouse procurement and the 40-year-old ability to have a computer system automatically purchase more of a “widget” when inventory is too low.

Then the ability for a system to search against multiple suppliers for the best price of said “widget” was introduced.  We are cooking with gas!

Customers seem to think that this level of computer intelligence and automation is limited to commodities.  It is becoming clear that is not the case.

Contracting

The physical act of papering a deal can be tedious and time consuming.  Evolved sourcing departments have developed templates to ease the process.  As the work becomes more repetitive and less strategic, departments look to have that work performed by third parties or entry level positions.

Those jobs will not be transferred or go offshore in the coming years, they will be completely automated via computer systems.

Don’t believe me?

Did you know that several articles being released by the associated press are written by bots?

A company called Automated Insights created a program called WordSmith that generates simple news stories based on things like sporting events and financial news. The stories are published on Yahoo! and via the Associated Press, among other outlets.

It is only a matter of time before this technology is turned to repeatable contracting events eliminating simple transactions.  Solutions from Seal software are already close to making this happen.

Market Intelligence

Senior level sourcing professionals might take comfort in the higher functions they are performing such as category management and supplier performance. In the coming years this job will become easier.  Bad news is there will be less jobs.

Frequent readers of this blog will notice a reporting trend on IBM’s Watson technology.

Right now Watson is focused on mining health information, social media, and big data.  There will inevitably be a focus on supply chain market conditions.  It has the potential to become a living, breathing Gartner report that changes daily focusing on software, services,  labor pricing, and even cloud pricing (and thus a hybrid of commodity and service).  And if Watson doesn’t do it, somebody else will eventually.

Having a system that is monitoring which suppliers are getting into certain service markets and who is doing well and who isn’t (via formal reports and customer feedback via social media) is very powerful.  There may be well-meaning sourcing professionals who are doing this by hand right now (hello), but it takes days or sometimes weeks (trust me) – with AI, it can be done in minutes.

Will your job go away?  No.  But a company will be able to do so much more with less bodies.

Moving Forward

Even with automation reducing certain kinds of jobs, the good news if you are a sourcing professional is that there is a looming talent crisis.  The key is to have the right skill set…

sn_sourcing_sweetspot

Be thankful it wasn’t a pie chart

Sourcing departments are essentially responsible for risk avoidance and cost reduction/savings. The better teams also provide strategic focus and trending for their customers.

The days of martini lunches with the big box sellers are over.  They are being replaced by analytic dashboards and reverse auctions (maybe we can make serving mint juleps at the auctions a thing). Take a look at the capabilities companies are focusing on:

sn_sourcing_deloitte_figure2

Change is coming (I was going to make a terrible Game of Thrones reference and say “winter is coming” but that sounds so ominous and I am already going with a terminator theme).  Automation, bots, and other AI technology are going to impact the procurement and sourcing industries… for the better.

As platforms become more transferable via Openstack and other open source initiatives (and as software itself becomes a platform),  the view will shift from an intangible/incomparable concept of service into a familiar commodity-like view that can be evaluated and presented like a rising or declining stock asset (with the same dashboards and buying intelligence ).  Sourcing professionals and their customers will finally have the right mix of information to make better decisions and develop true supplier strategies.