Month: December 2018

AI in Retail

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Where everything is about technology and industries, the air has a lot about Artificial Intelligence(AI) I just mean the trend. Every sector is adapting AI a different approach towards intelligence. Even Retail industries have brought themselves into many things and so if it is computer vision, less human work, facial recognition, etc. Hence there is much more which is can be the turning point for them. End to end process automation again has comes with a different picture so retail industry have much more to go with AI.

Does your retail industry faces process gaps or manual routing and according to source 40% reports that they do face these things. Here is the key AI, it can help to bridge the gap and make more efficient results. Process gaps are a kind of matter that affects the customer which takes them to transparency issues so now you don’t need to bother AI has got your back.

So here are a few points which retail industries should consider and make the real impact with AI.

Developing software more quickly

Every industry focuses on their customer’s requirement and tries best to keep them happy but what if the journey of your customer is been disturbed. Now automation requires more software that many times organizations couldn’t come up with due less time or lack of resources. New tools like low-code development platforms can speed up the software development that would help retailers to fill the gap and cure their pain points. Predictive AI features are helping as well.

Automating process

Automation means automatic and I’m sure how industries life has become easier from moving towards automation rather than manual. Even for customers, manual processes are really a hurdle but there are new tools which are willing to help. So automating customer’s journey is great for retailers. AI solutions like enhanced analytics or intelligent solutions are going to improve the online shopping experience.

AI to back-end processes.

AI has always been powerful for back-end activities. They have made various use cases for back-end activities. Retailers have to analyze or look at how they can amplify current human-centric processes. Let’s talk about the digital business pros as of how natural language processing is helping with decisions and applying analytics to automate. I mean this would help their individuals to focus on more complex issues.

Using robotic process automation (RPA).

RPA helps client-side automation and integration which helps businesses to automate the tasks which are been handled by humans. This is a straight approach as well as end-to-end transparency.

AI world has a lot to deliver we have to look at what measures or approach we can take also focusing on back-end processes. Focus on customer’s journey and how best we can support them. Adapt technologies like RPA and low-code that could also be a start towards end-to-end automation. These tools are the real power AI has got which is going to change the picture of customer experience. Hence a greater picture for the retail industry.

The Super Power

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Machine Learning and Blockchain are the technologies which are the new revolution for the world. They are bringing the greatest impact and are the future for industries. I remember how Blockchain has introduced years ago with cryptocurrencies invention and trading but slowly and gradually has got the new place and picture in technology. Data are being identified easily with different patterns giving great insights. These two technologies are the superpower for the future.

Imagining both together would again be a superpower. Both have different potential to explore data with best of analytics and security as well. Distributed Blockchain is great and proven input for ML which needs data sets to make quality predictions.

Machine Learning and Blockchain are revolutionizing the industries in terms of business models, user experiences and behaviors. This how they are bringing major impact on these industries.

Also Read: A Guide to ADSO Functions in SAP BW4HANA

Manufacturing

Every manufacturing industries have the key values of transparency, security, compliance and so on which can be framed with the help of blockchain as industries are dependent on bitcoin and blockchain based processes with smart contracts to enable better production resulting into great results. Maintenance is now no more headache as they do not need to be fixed planning for machine maintenance schedule as predictive algorithms have made them easy by giving flexible plans and how precisely they can be maintained. With the help of adaptive and computer vision algorithms, it’s been easy to detect the defected goods which easily identifies the defected and separates from other goods. Product testing and Quality control are more to be automated.

Blockchain technology taking care of your security by transferring the industries data more securely and quickly. Machine learning enhancing more to automation by predictive analysis.

Energy and Utilities

Blockchain technology is also playing a major role in the energy and utility sector by helping them with production and consumption in a peer to peer method, more ways of creating sustainable energy resources. For sure transactions plays the major role even for these sectors.

The best example is GE Digital as how they are facilitating of tracking renewable energy in electrical grids and by using blockchain technology for energy sources certificate assurances.

Healthcare

Here blockchain technology is supporting these industries by security or interoperability needs of the connected lives. Blockchain here is the part where it holds connected health(digital) and security of wearables.

Still, there is a great milestone to achieve which is sure would be covered by both Blockchain and Machine Learning for Healthcare industries as these digital transformations has got a lot for them.

Food and Logistics

Blockchain and Machine Learning have benefited these industries as well. From last few years, the picture for supply chain has reduced at least end to end supply chain challenges are been more accurate and transparent. Blockchain-based microfinancing strategy for food vendors has been a great change for the food industries. There are various Machine Learning algorithm giving better insights to them. Giant ventures like Nestle and Unilever are adopting these innovations to deal with wastage and contamination.

Both of these technologies are the future and industries consideration reflects how are they going to chain the business models by the next coming years.

Operational Loss can be handled with Automation

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Technologies are the benchmark for any businesses. The power of IoT and Analytics are redefining the process and the combat is successful at the trial. Machine Learning, Natural language processing, and Robert automation process these are something best industries can have. You go with any of them with the specification to your business and the results are beyond imagination. These technologies can automate operational loss with better efficiency and accuracy. Banks can enable and avoid such operational loss through automation rather than manually.

Banks have a various process to manage their internal and external data. Let’s talk about this, data coming from various sources and now handling them manually with business lines, event types, risks, and so on, it’s really complicated. Handling manually may increase the chances of human errors. At least automation would decrease that with less loss of data.

This where Machine learning can help them by automating these processes this would make humans the really smart and focusing more on something productive. We have to train the system for all these processes and then look out at the benefits.

Also Read: Next-Generation SAP Managed Services: What All Your Enterprise Can Avail?

Get Data prepared

We have to take care of the data by keeping sure it should not be less, I mean there should be various scenarios or incidents on data processes where we can train the machine to exactly understand what is required. Loss database would lead us to poor results and data preparation will help in proper data mapping.

Creation of Model

During this stage, the number of times a word appears in the incident description is been checked. This could be an English word which is either be removed or included while mapping activity. This identification can help us to identify which one can be used for mapping an incident risk, business line, event type, and etc. So, we have to train the machine in such a way that it should identify which word to include or which to exclude for mapping purposes. So, based on this frequency of appearing words, a word cloud is generated to set them accordingly.

Validation and Deployment

Now once the machine has gained the level of accuracy and efficiency it is fully validated against the dataset for different parameters of the model. Though the level of accuracy depends from bank to bank but once achieved it is fully validated.

Hence Machine learning can help us from operational loss, there is a lot of daily activities that industries have to deal with. Things like quality reports, limited resources, stakeholder’s management, investors, etc. This is the time industries need to focus on the automation and reduce the pain they are bearing somewhere in the process. This will help them to defend the common issues faced and overcome them with new business capabilities and models.

Thus, operational loss taking place wouldn’t be a crunch so more and this would lead us to human profitability with more production values and results. These are just a few points we can start considering with the ocean of innovation and technology has much more.

IOT Services with DevOps

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Internet of Things (IoT) is now universal and for every industry, let’s say from transportation, travel and hospitality to manufacturing and so on. We live in a space where everything is changing with IoT. We can say that IoT is the new influencer in technology with aspects of our lives, digital transformation, industries adopting the innovation for better business models and customer value.

The business is not only about your product or service, but the time is asking for something out of the box. In this case, any IoT projects begin with personalization, optimization and quality experience. Every complexity of the industries like frequent updates, safety concern, delivery and more is been efficiently handled by IoT. IoT’s development experience is always been simple and resources efficient.

DevOps helping in the software companies with better software development life cycle (SDLC) by agile processes in the workflow. IoT DevOps is the new approach that would take a different methodology in industries for driven results and increase the revenue stream. DevOps itself is an approach providing framework and tools for process automation to take up the infrastructure. IoT DevOps would be a great approach for startups to give them a new horizon.

Let’s look at some reasons DevOps can manage IoT services efficiently

To be proactively secure and proper management

Security has always been a concern when it comes to any projects even with IoT projects it is necessary to secure the data or information coming from sensors and appliances to prevent them from getting changed or breached. The IoT systems must have some solution to fix software vulnerability in some time. They should quickly scale up numbers of devices in a week, so we should design some systems that can take off this load.

It is going to help with providing the great user experience. IoT DevOps will also help developers, QA and the IoT team by automating release, error detection and solve the patches without any disturbance.

Development without any disruption

For any IoT project, continuous development and delivery with adding intelligence is the most important factor. Here is how DevOps will be playing a major role for IoT businesses by ensuring a continues development with the addition of intelligence to devices having right framework, tools and processes.

IoT solutions are meant to be delivered and operated in a proper manner as they are going to deliver the value to the business. Thus, by adopting DevOps methodologies the continuous process can be achieved with more creation to value.

Manage Complexity

As in IoT project lifecycle, devices get connects to a variety of layers and protocols, also supporting configurations that are complex in nature. It is a real challenge to build IoT application and come up with new product features in real-time. People working in IoT face various difficulties such as small processors, low memory, network bandwidth and sometimes prototyping issues.

Thus, improvements can be ensured by IoT DevOps. As it becomes really critical to keep this discipline among developers, QA and IoT infrastructure for monitoring and the alerts.

Thus IoT methodologies with IoT DevOps is going to improve the scalability and value to the business.

Innovation is the survival

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Innovation is the oxygen for technologies and we can’t deny that we breathe the same air. Enterprises merging themselves into digital transformation, but I think just merging is not the requirement but keeping updated with what’s new is the necessity.

This business world has become the battleground and the race is with innovation, the question now is not what are the industries adapting digital transformation, but the concern is how they are. How faster is everything changing, IT reflects automation so how is this automation going to effect and are we with them, are we ready or aware of the changes, and yes the questions go on.

As now CEOs are looking more to their CIOs to think differently, before adapting understand and unlock the growth avenue. CIOs approaching their IT departments about what best we can do, how more can we focus on self-managing and self-secure, autonomously.

Consideration for the digitalization is not the question but how sooner we are going to. About 75% of IT Managers considers new Digital age setup is the key to successful transformation. While 60% of managers are expecting their IT Department to come up with new ideas and explore most of the chances to grow the business with digital business models.

Automation is the key

To all the questions, the answer is automation.

According to source automation is going to be the revolution, the business trend is completely going to change with the automation. The analyst firm predicts this would be the uptake for next coming years that is going to increase the insights and result in more productive.

The new autonomous systems and software they can be used with databases, systems and security by making them managed by themselves. IT department can focus more into an administrative task which would result better in a day to day operations and maintenance. By automating these tasks can be achieved faster and this would help the business grow more with better insights.

This could be the most significant impact also on security by authorizing updates and patches. I mean necessary updates and patches can take place even at the time of business operations. Let’s talk about cyber-attack, I mean they really destroy our data the only reason they aren’t deployed at the time. We can really save it by deploying them at a proper time. Adding to the point it is going to consume less time, human efforts and less of administrative tasks, so automation has really a lot to answer.

Skip being passive and be active

Talking about more security concerns something which is the revolution in technologies is Machine learning.

To fight with these unwanted cyber attacks we need to change the approach against them. Instead of passive monitoring, we should have something active which monitors what’s coming and save the data from destruction or damaged. Machine learning can make us learn about this unwanted event.

This can really help me identifying the fraud if someone wants to access my data from somewhere away from my office or trying to breach it. By identifying the unidentified resource, it can aware us about data breaching and hence we can save it.

Automation is the mirage of Innovation and as the world is moving ahead, we can say Innovation is the survival for all the businesses.

SAP Leonardo and the Intelligent Enterprise

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In today’s world, integration is the way forward. SAP is heavily focusing its R&D investments on Leonardo and S4/HANA and the future looks exciting!

In the evolution, optimization of tasks had been a primary focus. It was “Industrial Automation” to begin with, then came “Business Process Automation”, and then “Digital Transformation”. SAP has articulated “Intelligent Enterprise” as the next block in the evolution chain.

Intelligent Enterprise consists of “Intelligent Suite” – consisting of the Digital Core (S/4HANA), CRM, SAP and the suite of SAP products, “Digital Platform” – consisting of Data Management and Cloud Platform, and finally “Intelligent Technologies” – consisting of Machine Learning, IoT and the likes. Leonardo represents this third component – “Intelligent Technologies”.

Also Read: All that you need to Know about Oracle ASCP (Advanced Supply Chain Planning)!

Below are the six reasons why Leonardo is the future of Intelligent Enterprises:

Future of Modern Technology

SAP Leonardo is a digital innovation system. It is an umbrella term that enables customers to access various SAP products and components across emerging technologies like Machine Learning, Big Data, Internet of Things and Block Chain. It covers anything that fits into modern technologies; including the predictive capabilities of S/4HANA.

It’s not just a Technology

Leonardo is focused on design thinking. It packages technologies and defines methodologies to address business challenges. Design Thinking is a methodology which focuses around creative ideas and solutions to resolve use cases. The fact is that customers don’t just need a good technology; they need an approach to find out what and how much the technology can do for them.

A Leading Brand

It’s just not SAP involved in their design thinking methodologies. It is a crowded market place with the likes of IBM, Microsoft and leading research universities such as Stanford offering their own innovations. Though is that their products often operate in silo – and this is where SAP comes in the picture. The challenge for SAP is that companies do not often think of SAP as a vendor for IoT, Blockchain and so on – when you think of SAP you mainly think of ERPs. But the strength of SAP’s brand lies across the SAP portfolio. SAP Leonardo has the capability and is designed to be integrated, so if you already have SAP ERP, S/4HANA or other SAP solutions.

Integrated Approach with Emerging Technologies

The best part or I would say a major benefit of SAP Leonardo is that it allows you to integrate multiple SAP products with emerging technologies. Let’s take an example, in the SAP Cloud Platform you can create Fiori apps that use IoT services. Now when integrated into your business processes as an end user you won’t necessarily know there is Machine Learning behind the scenes and you won’t see any different, but you will experience automatic decision-making or recommendations.

Machine Learning Technology at Different Levels

SAP was never limited, italso provides Machine Learning technology models at different levels which you can learn on yourself without too much expertise. These standard models are so well described that it covers around 80% of your needs. It’s possible to train your own models but you’ll need an expertise and the help of data scientist – in other words you need to know what you’re doing. Applications in SAP S/4HANA, such as cash reconciliation and invoicing, already include Machine Learning as part of SAP Leonardo and the number of these Machine Learning scenarios will soon become a part of S/4HANA is also growing more. By the end of 2018, there will be around 40 different use cases covering the main application areas within S/4HANA.

Embracing Internet of Things

Digital transformation is really growing more as services and technologies are been brought together by SAP Leonardo. For example, In supply chain and logistics, IoT processes across SAP S/4HANA, ECC and Hybris permit you to monitor goods as well as assets in-transit and survey the lifecycle of mass-market products, maximizing the value of your fleet and IoT-enabled business assets. IoT enabled processes in SAP solutions enable you to increase the value of products, including raw materials, semi-finished or finished products, combine real-time sensor data with business data from SAP and non-SAP systems and provide better insight into areas such as product inventory and replenishment, product consumption and utilization and consumer interactions.

Connection is the new Trend in Manufacturing

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Leonardo Da Vinci said- “Everything is connected to Everything” and this is so true, our world is full of connections. Not only people but from giant machines to smaller devices everything is connected. In this connected world, businesses are growing more, and the prediction says it will grow more within the coming years. The connection has become the communication, I mean the new language machine to machine is really helping industries growing their business with more precise data. More businesses are turning with these technologies, with more accurate data, workflows and production processes.

This is the smart manufacturing

‘Internet of Things’ is a big word and more than a word it’s a huge impact. We can say machine to machine communication is the new smart manufacturing that are intelligently connected to each other. They work with real-time data and give the best output in the workflow. Industries should switch themselves to Machine to Machine, it would be a cost-effective affair, optimize the process and get better insights for their manufacturing industries.

Let’s take an example, there are 10 machines assigned for the task to be completed within a fixed variable of time. What if one of the machine goes down and because of this it would also affect the scheduled task. If we can imply machine to machine technology, it would notify the supervisor as soon the machine goes down and suggest how now to manage the task accordingly with some protocol.

Machine to Machine, is already helping different manufacturing industries to transform their process. Let me show you some points as of how they are leveraging the benefit.

Also Read: All that you need to Know about Oracle ASCP (Advanced Supply Chain Planning)!

Machine Learning and Human Learning

This would be the perfect combination where machine to machine technology would play well. With enhancement in Artificial Intelligence, we are also exploring more in neuroscience. It can complete the gap between the machine’s output and human’s queries.

This combination would help the new technicians to learn more diving down into technical aspects making them learn through a real experience with these virtual devices such as AR/VR. The whole process would result in the machine data supplemented more through human experience.

Security and Data Consistency

For every other organization, data consistency is a major concern and that always leads to various questions about security. Is my data secure when transferred from one machine to other, how can I be sure that my data has been transformed without any changes from servers and so on the question arises?

Assuring about consistency the data goes through numerous check. Amount of data been sent, and exactly that is what we have received without a single minor change is been taken care of. Even the security concerns are taken much specifically that ensure of less risk.

The strategic approach to data

Analytics always plays a major role with data, so we must figure out the right analysis for our data. There are two analytics that comes in picture here, one is edge and the other is enterprise analytics. Edge analytics deals with Machine to machine and IoT output, whereas the enterprise deals with ERP, CRM, PLM and Supply management. The next part that comes is who will use the analytics and what level of analytics is required.

These are some magnifying points which make us understand the benefits of machine to machine technology. Not to miss the machine to machine technology also serves the best user experience along with customer experience as well. So be the part of this connected world and make your business get directly connected to growth.

Mutual Funds Industry and Technology

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This is really fascinating to know, and we are aware that how technology is covering every segment of industries, like the rays are spreading over everywhere. When we say the word ‘smart’, technology truly means it.

Even the financial industry is not left with the significance of technology. Not limited to banking but if we talk about Mutual funds they are also the part of this digitalization. The miracle of digitalization has also benefited the mutual funds industry for all its process so if it is fund management, executing transactions, and customer servicing, they have got the back.

The payment spectrum has taken a drastic change in the industrial part, the growth metrics has touched another level of achievement in it yes, the influencer is digitalization. The assets have increased, or I would say got tripled, as per source considering in 2013 from 7 trillion has got the hike of around 25 trillion by 2018.

Also Read: JDE Worldsoft to JDE Enterprise One 9.2 – The Benefits of Migration and Step-by-Step Process to Migration

If we just look at around 2 years back to till date digital payments via mobile has increased about 100% annually. Payments through Immediate payment service (IMPS) is about 106%, mobile banking, wallets are hitting by 120%, this growth is a real hike and the graphs are still on high. Now the mature payment systems that is from credit and debit cards have also taken a good growth.

Even for the mutual industry, the digital spectrum has taken a jump from 0.6% to 10% until now, isn’t the digitalization era for everything we look at.

This digital process is still looking for more. The adaptation for the digital payments is still going to be much more in the top cities with acceleration to other major areas. The withstanding of digital processing is going to continuously rise.

The huge population is yet to reach for this industry, so the technology has got the pace and within the time it is going to expand the reach and make the part more helpful for the investors. Expanding their reach would not only help the individual investors but the firms as well related to mutual funds. With this, it’s also going to help to reduce the investment avenue.

Digitalization is an inclination towards the financial sector. Even the government bodies are taking the move more towards the cause, we have the information and the awareness as well so why not use it wisely. This adoption of technology in the mutual funds would give a new dimension to industries associated along with the investors and intermediates. A broad prospect to investment which is the need of tomorrow.

Technology has always shown the bigger picture and with that comes the bigger benefits. It is going to excavate the industries penetration by providing a better efficiency and reducing the costs and ultimately beneficial to the investor. The days are not too far for the mutual funds where every investment would just not be a smart investment but the smartest one and technology is going to change the game.

Are you choosing the right tool to Automate your Project?

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When it comes to testing you really need to be very specific because in the end, success factor of your software depends on it. So, do you figure it out about which tool is been essential or required for your software. I remember basic software testing types such as functional testing, unit testing, regression testing, etc., these testing types are being replaced with systematic testing programs using automation tools. In today’s scenario, Test Automation is considered the most effective way for any software application. It’s the redefinition to perform testing operations. For the project, you need to decide whether test automation is required or not and if yes then what tools and procedures can be used.

Automation tools are covering the IT Market and there are a lot of tools, but not every tool is for our project. We really need to understand and identify the appropriate tool for our project. This identification is also a big challenge to accept.

You may come across many specific projects and the challenge becomes toughest to choose among them. We had a contemplative look over this challenge and came up with some strategic approach to find the right automation tool for the software.

Also Read: Next-Generation SAP Managed Services: What All Your Enterprise Can Avail?

Understand your project requirements

Quality is the first thing you wish from your product and so the same implies on your App and software as well, we can’t compromise with the quality so delivering an error-free app becomes important for all of us. Here is where automated testing can help us in improving the quality and depth of the tests. So to take this benefit we need to understand the project requirement, as what is the project type, scope of the project, strength, process, and language before you go with the flow. You need to think precisely what you need to automate and what amount of test cases needs automation. In some case, you would also require both manual and automation testing for web, mobile and desktop app.

Identify the key points that are suitable for your projects

Maintenance and development of the test scripts should be very simple as to decrease human efforts and considering the time factor. When it comes for all the three platforms it becomes the real complication to handle so it’s better to select a tool that supports all the three platforms. The test execution should be easy so that any individual can run it whenever required.

The reports which are generated should be simple so that it can easily be understood by the management. When it comes to multiple end-users cross-browser testing is a must. If the project becomes a complex test framework is been required.

You have to see whether your tools require to write the code as not every test case can be recorded. So, it should support different languages. With all these technicities pricing is also a factor, so you have to consider difference and evaluate among the automation tools.

Every tool has its own importance and performs accordingly, it’s just not about the right tool but also the facts of its requirement and necessity for the project.

Managed Infrastructure is Transforming IT

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We know that how the cloud services are helping enterprises and moving to the cloud also does increases efficiency and saves your money. If the changeovers are handled properly then you can transform your IT Support center to the path of innovation driving business.

The IT Saddle

This could really be horrible without the cloud as managing devices throughout an organization is heavy and for sure a costly affair. It becomes difficult for IT staff to take care of all the new devices and worst if they lack behind in it. For all the new workspaces you are setting up and again you must take them to setup it for you consuming their time in this setup rather than other important tasks

Again, you must deal with those devices separately and look after whether any new update. With all these things including updates, moving to higher versions, etc can make the organization take a different turn of involvement rather than focusing on technology. Not only the staff can be a problem, but according to the source, 30% of the IT organization’s budget is on infrastructure, including data centers and data networks. Moving work to cloud returns up to 20% of annual budget saving your capital expenses.

Also Read: Managed Infrastructure is Transforming IT

Managed Service Is the Key

The best or ultimate solution you can achieve by managed services. This not only will save your IT budget but would also make your staff free to develop something towards innovation and more inclination towards technology.

And for Windows users, Azure is the best solution. Azure provides the organization with a virtual desktop infrastructure, a subscription service that reduces on-premises IT cost and time. The Apps are also very simplified. Organizations can go with hundreds or thousands of Windows Enterprise desktops on Azure.

Migration is just a beginning process and then IT manages both desktops and apps centrally. Users can access MS office and other enterprise apps efficiently on any device, anywhere, anytime, refining competency and productivity. If the uses come across any problem with an app or desktop, it can be managed from any location, which supports in reducing costs.

Azure makes it simple for developers to create new apps and services. You don’t need to purchase and install any services such as SSL and database software. It also allows developers to integrate Windows active director, increasing security and reduces the risk of data explosion.

Digital innovations or technical novelties have led to 30% of organizations to revenue growth over the past months. Organizations are deep diving more into the latest technologies such as the Internet of Things (IoT), Artificial Intelligence, Machine learning, Augmented and virtual reality, and Digital twin.

This age is all about cloud and the time is beneficial for IT departments who are moving with them. A lot of time and money is going to reduce by moving to the cloud. By this, properly managed services organizations are free to explore new technologies which will be beneficial in development and the brighter tomorrow.