On working almost for free

Someone I did some freelance work for a few years back contacted me to inquire about writing for his current company. The exchange on LinkedIn messaging went like this:

Hi Ariella, Not sure if you remember me from my ___ days but I am looking for a freelancer to help out with blog posts across two products here at ____. I don't remember what your pricing was but I do remember that you made my life a whole lot easier. Can you send me what you were asking?

 I assured him that I did remember him and asked what kind of articles he had in mind. His response:

• product focused
• and a bit of thought leadership
• Just so I can make sure, does $50 for an 800 word article work?

I wrote back:

I'm assuming you dropped a zero there.

Surprisingly enough, he said:

I did not. Our content director informed me that is what we normally pay for an 800 word article. Understood if that is way too cheap. 

That was far below my rate even when I first started freelancing (and he knows it's a tiny fraction of what was paid by his previous company, which is why I had assumed he dropped a zero).  But I am not one to throw away opportunities in a snit. I said my daughter may do it for that rate. After all, she is willing to work for free for college internships. So I'll let her take a crack at it. At least, it will be a learning experience and resume builder for her.

Related posts http://writewaypro.blogspot.com/2016/05/writing-for-free-is-not-deductible.html

 http://writewaypro.blogspot.com/2016/05/an-idiots-guide-for-writers.html
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/college-internships-real-story-ariella-brown-phd-1

AI for customer service

AI is changing our everyday interactions. What once required a human rep can now be handled by a

(Image: panuwat phimpha/Shutterstock)

virtual assistant whose programming allows customer problems to be solved more quickly.

A recent Venturebeat article declared, "AI chatbots are the next big shift in customer service." Those of us of a certain generation expect to wait on a line or on the phone for a person to take care of our customer service issues. But the generation that favors texts to calls has come to have different expectations.

Read more in  Why Machine Learning Can Improve Customer Service

The eyes have it with AI

The camera is already starting to replace the keyboard,” asserts Netra CEO, Richard Lee. The content that will dominate digital information flow will be visual, and for that reason image recognition is becoming a key component of marketing.

His company derives insight from visual data, fostering understanding of how consumers engage with brands through engagement with images. Netra  is a leader in visual intelligence and search that uses machine learning to help marketers make sense of imagery on social media.

Some brands are already using image recognition to connect with and effectively market to their customers. They include Neiman Marcus. The upscale retailer offers its customers the Snap. Find. Shop  app that enables them to use their phones to snap pictures of styles they like and find similar styles carried by the store.  The app is demonstrated here:

The app allows customers to bypass typing in description of the clothing and rely on the image alone to convey what they seek. That kind of search is what we will be seeing more of in future, according to Lee. 

Read more in AI Makes Visual Intelligence Possible

Renewables take to the waves

For major electronics OEMs, transitioning to renewable energy entails not only using it in their own factories but calling on those that supply components to do the same. Apple has done just that. As a result, many of its suppliers are turning to solar and wind power, and some are even reaching out to sea to get it. 

As Bloomberg recently reported, for its own operations, Apple can boast of using tapping into renewables for 96% of its own energy use. That includes not only the corporate offices Lisa Jackson, Apple's vice president in charge of sustainability and government affairs, says, but also “our data centers, our stores, even our distribution centers.” However, as she told Bloomberg Television, the company is resolved to do even better by “moving onto our supply chain.” 

As Apple posted in March, together with its suppliers, the company anticipates that by the end of next year, it “will be generating over 2.5 billion kilowatt hours per year of clean energy.” To put that in perspective, that is tantamount “to taking over 400,000 cars off the road for a year,”  the company said.

Apple’s goal of reaching 100% renewable energy for its production entails getting its suppliers to commit making the necessary changes for their energy sources. Apple now has seven supplier companies committed to renewable energy. Among them is Ibiden. It has the distinction of being the first company in Japan to commit to use only renewable energy in producing components for Apple.

Ibiden is set for renewable energy production that is anticipated to “produce over 12 MW of solar power — more than the energy they need for Apple manufacturing — and support Japan’s nationwide efforts to limit its carbon emissions.” In addition to standard facilities, Ibiden’s energy will come from “one of the largest floating solar photovoltaic systems in the country.” By floating the solar panels, energy can be harvested from the sun without taking up limited land space in Japan.

This trend of moving out to the water to harness renewable energy is also being applied to wind power.

Read more in 

Innovation in Renewable Energy Greens Supply Chain

Mother's Day Marketing

Public domain pic at http://www.publicdomainpictures.net/pictures/170000/velka/muttertag-14609069654cp.jpg

Motherhood may be priceless, but there actually is a price tag associated with Mother's Day. Given that the market for this particular holiday is expected to hit a record-high this year, savvy marketers have already put their brands in the game.

On the second Sunday in May, Americans take time out to show appreciation to their mothers, typically with cards, flowers, dinners out, and other assorted gifts. All that adds up to $23.6 billion, according to NRF's forecast.

In anticipation of this substantial spending occasion, you'd expect to see massive marketing campaigns. But it seems that brands are not doing quite as much as they could. I popped into Target and saw only minimal signs of the imminent holiday represented by a few Mother-themed mugs in the front section, as well as the usual cards.

I shared what I've seen with Mike McMaster, VP of Lead Generation at JumpCrew. He said he noticed the same at a mall he visited over the weekend. With the exception of Macy's, he observed very little Mother's Day marketing.

The stores who fail to address the upcoming holiday in their setups are missing out on “the two Ps in marketing,” McMaster says. That refers to “placement and promotion” with targeted positioning of merchandise that ties into the promotional theme of Mother's Day.

Read more in Mother's Day: Price Tags and Hashtags

AI Transforms Business Data Models

(Image: pixone/iStockphoto)

As big data continues to grow, extracting value from it calls for new tools.

Increasingly, businesses that rely on data to drive decisions are applying AI to surface actionable insight quickly and accurately.

Finding innovative solutions to the problems raised in data analytics, particularly with respect to adapting machine learning to credit scores, is what they've been working on for the past six years at Experian's DataLabs. The EVP and Global Head of the labs, Eric Haller, spoke to All Analytics about the new direction for predictive modeling.

Read more in

AI, Machine Learning Power Transformation

Google browser to block unacceptable ads

pic https://static.pexels.com/photos/48123/google-www-online-search-search-48123.png

How offensive or annoying is that? That's a real question for those in the business of assessing what types of ads viewers might consider beyond the pale: Especially now, when ads that don't make the cut may be blocked before any human sees them.

Ad blocking software is what many people rely on to stop annoying popups and noisy videos that play online when they want to watch or read something. However, those extensions required downloads and sometimes fail. They could prove far more effective if they are integral to the browser. Google has plans to do just that in Chrome, according to a Wall Street Journal report.

The standards Google would apply would be based on the research of the Coalition for Better Ads. Its Initial Better Ads Standards drew on over 25,000 consumer ratings of digital ad experiences in North America and Europe, this past March. 

Marketers who ignore the standards, thinking that it will only affect some of their ads, may suffer unanticipated consequences. According to the Journal, Chrome may keep out “all advertising that appears on sites with offending ads, instead of the individual offending ads themselves." Like the one bad apple, one bad ad can spoil the entire marketing barrel, which is a very high price to pay for poor judgement.

Read more in Google Chrome to Ride Shotgun on Unacceptable Ads

AR gets real and social

“We're making the camera the first augmented reality platform,” declared Mark Zuckerberg at Facebook's F8 developer conference. That's where he showed off some of the AR effects the social media giant is making accessible to anyone on a mobile device. Whether you want to break the boredom of breakfast by setting some virtual sharks to swim around your bowl, see people's faces replaced by emojis, or turn a tabletop into the site of a video game, you'll be able to do it with just your smart phone. You can hear him and see the effect in this Cnet clip:

Read more in

AR Takes Off on Facebook

Analytics for the Anderson Center for Autism

Concerns about retaining the staff prompted the Anderson Center for Autism to seek a tech

pic from http://www.happygreenbee.com/autism-spectrum-disorder-asd-facts-myths/

solution that was compatible with the center's people-first philosophy.

The Anderson Center for Autism is a nonprofit organization based in Staatsburg, N.Y. that operates a school and 100-acre residential campus comprising 20 buildings, as well as 25 adult houses across three counties. The center uses more than 400 desktops and data centers connected by fiber optics. The entire IT infrastructure has been in the cloud since 2012.

The picture for this organization was very different in 2001, when it was suffering from a lack of funding and inefficient processes, as well as high turnover. Then a new CEO took the helm and brought about a major transformation. Over the next decade, the center set up a cloud-based IT infrastructure and predictive analytics, which streamlined processes, cut down paperwork by 95 percent and reduced turnover significantly.

In 2003, Gregg Paulk was hired as the first IT manager for the center and was tasked with building out the infrastructure. He recalls, "We were in the dark ages."

- See more at: http://www.baselinemag.com/cloud-computing/cloud-mobile-and-analytics-help-retain-employees.html#sthash.LGb5pYyb.dpuf

AR for Logistics

According to Digi-Capital’s latest forecast, augmented reality (AR) will constitute an $83 billion market by 2021.  While a good chunk of that may go to popular games in the mode of Pokémon GO, AR also can also serve wholly practical purposes and improve logistics.

Among the items covered in the Tech Trends 2017: The Kinetic Enterprise from Deloitte University Press was a look the benefits of mixed reality (MR) offer industry.  It enables access to “actionable information to any location where work is done—on site, on the shop floor, or in the field,” and that can take logistical operations to a whole new level of efficiency.

DHL’s report Augmented Reality in Logistics details four areas in which the technology can effectively be applied:

• Warehousing operations
• Transportation optimization
• Last-mile delivery
• Enhanced value-added services

Read more in 

Augmented Reality Gets Beyond Games to Help Logistics

Car analytics and AI

(Image: chombosan/Shutterstock)

Today's cars are all about mobility -- not just the kind that transports people and things, but also data mobility. Today's cars are more connected, and they are generating a lot more data that car manufacturers are working to collect, process, and apply to AI developments.

When the average person thinks about the connected car -- whether it is fully automated or packed with sensors that alert the driver to possible dangers -- what comes to mind is the experience for the person in that driver's seat. In fact, the information the driver sees represents only a tiny fraction of all the data collected through the sensor system. The amount of data collected is indeed vast, and car makers are now working on ways to ingest and process it effectively.

Read more in 

Car Makers Drive Hard Towards AI Advances

Marketing to patients out of patience

“Sure, I love waiting to be seen by a doctor who doesn't even bother to learn my name” said no one ever. Long waits in boring waiting rooms is one reason for patient discontent, but so is feeling like their time isn't valued and that no one cares about the lack of customer service for patients.

Any one of us who has had the experience of being in a hospital, or even of caring for a family member who was, can identify with the experiences depicted in these videos.

It doesn't have to be that way. That's the message that North Memorial Health, a healthcare system that operates two hospitals and 25 clinics in the Minneapolis area, is adopting for its new branding campaign created by BrandFire. The approach is to acknowledge that, while healthcare may be broken, it is working to fix it, and to humanize the healthcare experience.

Read more in Treating Patients Like Valued Customers

Supply Chain Recycling Needs More Transparency

With an appreciation of the dangers inherent in unmonitored recycling, HP is committing to greater transparency in the recycling supply chain and calls on other companies to do the same.

Reduce, reuse, recycle. That’s the mantra of sustainability, and some of us commit to it by bringing in our waste for recycling. Unfortunately, what gets dropped off in those receptacles doesn’t always end up being dismantled and reassembled the way we imagined.

Some companies involved are not strictly playing by the rules of recycling in an environmentally responsible way. That’s the finding of the environmental health and justice organization, Basel Action Network (BAN).

As part of its e-Trash Transparency Project, in September BAN published a report called “Scam Recycling: e-Dumping on Asia by US Recyclers.” The organization placed GPS trackers in 205 monitors and printers that contained components identified as “hazardous waste under international law.”

BAN partnered with MIT's Senseable City Labs to produce an online map to show the pathways of the 205 trackers. You can see their routes and how far they traveled here.

Read more in 

HP Supply Chain Leads the Call for Recycling Transparency

AR: Marketing’s Next Big Thing?

“That's really cool!” or “Wow!”  is the type of thing that people tend to say when they see augmented reality. But for marketers, the question is if it's something they should be using. For most, the answer has been “not yet.” But perhaps they should be reconsidering now.

According to one report, only 25% of marketers are interested in using augmented reality, and only 7% say they do use it. That's probably because, despite its impressive effects, it is somewhat limited at present.

But that should change when Apple comes out with an AR empowered device, something it is reportedly working on right now: “Hundreds of engineers are now devoted to the cause, including some on the iPhone camera team who are working on AR-related features for the iPhone."

Though people have achieve AR effects on an iPhone since the 2009 iPhone 3Gs, that was limited to a novelty feature that Yelp snuck in. In this video,  Jennifer Grove demonstrates how she launched Yelp's Monocle, which she characterizes as “kind of the coolest things I've ever seen on my iPhone.” 

Read more in

What Apple's AR Venture Means for Marketers

Seeing stars

As the text below says, this is the second time the writer is contacting me asking me to do him the favor of posting an Amazon review of his book. Notice, he never asks me to read it, and he certainly doesn't offer to send me a copy to make sure I have access to it in order to read it and review it. On the contrary, he says, the favor he requires would take a mere 30 seconds. Now, I'm a fast reader, but not that fast. It would take me at least an hour to read even a very short book, and I believe I have no business reviewing a book I have not read.

Lest you think that I'm misrepresenting the request, I've copied the email in full. In light of this unwitting disclosure, one should add more than the usual number of grains of salt in assessing how accurate the starred reviews are. It's also interesting to see how the author plays into all the persuasive tactics to get someone to feel good about bestowing a favor while in effect playing into a lie.

I could really do with your help Recently I emailed about my attempt to get some reviews for The End of Certainty, on Amazon. The response was incredible and I now have 48 reviews. I really was humbled by the response and can't thank you enough. I do however have one last request. If you weren't able to give me a quick review last time, just pressing the 5 star button would be enough, then please please help out now and do it. Amazon has a rule that it starts promoting books that get at least 50 reviews. As a result I'm tantalizingly close to getting on their list. Just a few more reviews is all I need. Below is the email I sent before, to help jog your memory on all this. The End of Certainty has been doing quite nicely since I published it, and many of the people who've read it have said extremely nice things about it. Over 25,000 people have copies. The success of it has amazed me. However I have a problem and I could really do with your help. It seems the Millennials are all fantastically good at the social media world and as a result they like and review lots of materials. However my audience is people like you. You're older than your average millennial, and as a result don't feel so obliged to get involved in the whole scoring and reviewing stuff. I understand, because frankly, I think the same way. However it's causing me a problem, which I hope you can help me with. To get the Amazon AI  to notice the book, and therefore get it to a wider audience I need to get over 100 reviews. These don't need to be in depth reviews, something as simple as, it was interesting, or simply giving it a star rating is enough. You'd be doing me a huge favor by getting involved. I just need 30 seconds of your time. Because of the odd way Amazon works, US reviews show up in the UK Amazon store, but NOT the other way around. As a result putting the review, or giving it a star rating on the US Amazon Store would make a huge difference to me. Thanks again for your support, it really does help. Please click here to go to the correct page on Amazon

Not your grandfather's video

Given the dramatic increase of video content on social channels, marketers are working out strategies to capitalize on the medium. To stand out in such a sea of video content, they key is to not just attract viewers but to keep them engaged. The key ingredient for engagement is interaction, according to Wyzowl, a video explainer company that boast of having created videos for over a thousand companies.

Read more in

Video Gets Interactive

IoT security guidelines

Hello Barbie, one of the connected toys that raises secuirty concerns

The IoT Security Foundation is a "vendor-neutral, international initiative aspiring to be the expert resource for sharing knowledge, best practices and advice." Those resources include the best practice guides, one of which is "IoT Security Compliance Framework." The first version of the framework covers consumer products and markets, but future iterations will cover several other categories, such as medical, automotive and critical infrastructure.

"The IoT is the next evolutionary wave of the internet and, with dwindling costs of technology and low barriers to entry, new products are flooding the market," declared John Moor, managing director of the IoT Security Foundation. The internet of things extends to all kinds of new wearables, as well as connected appliances and smart toys.

The toy category has already raised data privacy concerns, but all types of businesses have to think about privacy issues when designing anything that connects to the internet. What is first hailed as "the 'internet of treats,'" Moor explains, can easily develop into "the 'internet of threats' if these new products do not have sufficient security capabilities."

The question is, What is sufficient security? That's a question the framework seeks to answer with a checklist for users.

- See more at: http://www.baselinemag.com/innovation/internet-of-things/building-a-framework-for-iot-security-compliance.html#sthash.WPkYNvNz.dpuf

A virtual assistant you can bank on

In early 2016, SEB, one of Sweden's largest banks with a presence in 20 countries around the globe, started integrating Amelia, an artificial intelligence (AI) platform from IPsoft, into its help desk. Amelia is represented by a blond female avatar and is always referred to as "she" rather than "it."

The artificial intelligence platform is built on semantic understanding, which enables Amelia to interact with users through natural language to determine what actions to take in order to answer a question, fulfill a request or solve a problem. She is also designed to learn through observation.

At SEB, Amelia serves as a customer interface with automated interactions that can scale up to meet expanded support needs. "The driver is to find a way to improve the experience for our customers," explains Mikael Andersson, the bank's IT strategy transformation lead.

- See more at: http://www.baselinemag.com/innovation/banking-on-ai-to-offer-better-customer-service.html#sthash.Mk05GLW5.dpuf

Voice powered shopping

Like the captain of the Starship Enterprise, we too can now ask a computer for information by talking to it. We can even order tea, Earl Grey, though maybe not at the preferred temperature just yet. As voice activation is being directed toward shopping, there are new opportunities for marketers to explore.

With Siri, Cortana, Alexa, or the Google Assistant available, voice activation and queries have become an integral part of smartphones and smart home technology. According to Thrive Analytics, voice search among smartphone user hit 65 percent in 2015 in the US. That's more than double what it was just two years before, which indicates a very rapid rate of growth. The voice control option is also growing  among users of smart home products. 

Taking note of this trend, Google is now nudging its Google Home customers to start using their voices for shopping. It recently announced that Google Assistant could not be used by people with Google Home to order a variety of products from over 50 participating Google Express retailers. 

Read more in OK Google Goes Shopping

Shining light on the dark side of big data

Does the shift toward more data and algorithmic direction for our business decisions assure us that organizations and businesses are operating to everyone's advantage? There are a number of issues involved that some people feel need to be addressed going forward.

Numbers don't lie, or do they? Perhaps the fact that they are perceived to be absolutely objective is what makes us accept the determinations of algorithms without questioning what factors could have shaped the outcome.

That's the argument Cathy O'Neil makes in Weapons of Math Destruction: How Big Data Increases Inequality and Threatens Democracy. While we tend to think of big data as a counterforce to biased, just decisions, O'Neil finds that in practice, they can reinforce biases even while claiming unassailable objectivity.

 “The models being used today are opaque, unregulated, and uncontestable, even when they’re wrong.”   The math destruction posed by algorithms is the result of models that reinforces barriers, keeping particular demographic populations disadvantaged by identifying them as less worthy of credit, education, job opportunities, parole, etc. 

Now the organizations and businesses that make those decisions can point to the authority of the algorithm and so shut down any possible discussion that question the decision. In that way, big data can be misused to increase inequality. As algorithms are not created in a vacuum but are born of minds operating in a human context that already has some set assumptions, they actually can extend the reach of human biases rather than counteract them.  

“Even algorithms have parents, and those parents are computer programmers, with their values and assumptions, “Alberto Ibargüenhttps://www.knightfoundation.org/articles/ethics-and-governance-of-artificial-intelligence-fund,  president and  CEO and of the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation wrote.  “As computers learn and adapt from new data, those initial algorithms can shape what information we see, how much money we can borrow, what health care we receive, and more.”

I spoke with the foundation’s VP of Technology Innovation, John Bracken about its partnership with the MIT Media Lab and the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society as well as other individuals and organizations to create a $27 million fund for research in this area. 

The idea is to open the way to “bridging” together “people across fields and nations” to pull together a range of experiences and perspectives on the “social impact” of the development of artificial intelligence. As AI is on the road “to impact every aspect of human life,” it is important to think about sharping policies  for the “tools to be built” and how they are to be implemented.

Read more in 

Algorithms' Dark Side: Embedding Bias into Code

V is Video Marketing for Valentine's Day

The National Retail Federation estimates that consumers in the U.S.  will spend $18.2 billion this Valentine's Day. Large though the figure may appear, it's actually down from last year's record high of $19.7 billion. It works out to an average of $136.57 per person. The bulk of it, $85.21, is earmarked for one's romantic partner, and the rest is divided among parents and children, teachers or classmates, friends, pets, and coworkers.

Though gifts of jewelry, flowers, chocolates, and dinners out, still make up the bulk of anticipated spending, there are also other options considered, particularly in light of the expanded categories for recipients of gifts on this holiday. And that means expanded opportunities for marketing around the holiday. The medium of choice for many marketers is video, because of its reach, its engagement, and the metrics on both.

photo from https://www.goodfreephotos.com/albums/vector-images/arrow-with-heart-vector-clipart.png

read more in Why Marketers Heart Video for Valentine's Day

The Digital Advance of a Venerable Medical Journal

Since 1840, the British Medical Journal (BMJ) has been associated with health care expertise. Now the brand includes 60 specialist medical and allied science journals with millions of readers around the world.

As a global brand, the BMJ relies on a digital platform to reach its worldwide audience. To keep up with the demands of this growth, it needed a partner to help it meet its needs.

The printed copies of the venerable journal are still mailed out, but the journal also embraces digital technology and expanded reach. It was the first medical journal in the world to go online 21 years ago, says Sharon Cooper, chief digital officer at the BMJ.

- See more at: http://www.baselinemag.com/cloud-computing/virtualizing-a-venerable-medical-journal.html?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=BL_NL_BB_20170202_STR2L1&dni=393649804&rni=25396992#sthash.qU3lEl7D.dpuf

Billboards are getting smarter

Ariella Brown, Freelance Contributor

January 26, 2017

The Future of Smart Billboards

Share this content:

• facebook
• twitter
• linkedin
• google
• Email
• Print

Want to get a smoker's attention? Try a smart billboard that coughs. That's what a responsive billboard designed to promote smoking-cessation products from a Swedish pharmacy did.  As the video of the billboard in actions shows, it looks like a static picture of a man until a smoker gets close enough to trigger the digital screen to shift to showing the same man coughing. That's followed by a picture of the promoted products.Picture a billboard, and likely you think of a static picture with a slogan or some other words on it, or maybe a sort of revolving picture in a more dynamic version. That's old school billboards. Today's technology allows billboards to pick up on essential cues that enable them to tailor responses to the people in front of them. These are smart billboards equipped with responsive  abilities. And there are more developments ahead.

Read more in 

The Future of Smart Billboards

Is Apple going American?

f there’s any lesson we should have learned from our presidential election, it’s that we should not jump to conclusions based on our own possibly faulty assumptions. So I’ll stick to facts and avoid speculation about the report that Foxconn, a major supplier to Apple, is considering a $7 billion factory in the United States.

Though the timing of this news indicates a deference to Trump’s push for manufacturing American products to take place on American soil, in reality, choice for factory sites are not made simply to agree with or defy a presidential preference. In fact, the reports of Foxconn’s exploration of American possibilities predates the present administration.

Back in December 2012, several reports like the one in PC Magazine quoted what Louis Woo, a Foxconn spokesman, told Bloomberg Businessweek in a phone interview: "We are looking at doing more manufacturing in the U.S. because, in general, customers want more to be done there."  

This was a month after the reports about the company’s looking into the possibilities of some American cities as a site for its factory. Of course, nothing has come to fruition, but it is very likely that the seed of possibility emerging at present was already planted over four years ago. This is something to remember when we see headlines that reference Trump.

Read more in 

Foxconn Factory Potentially U.S. Bound

Live Video Streaming for Marketing

photo at https://www.jisc.ac.uk/sites/default/files/periscope.jpg

“Real time feedback rocks!” wrote one of the participants in the audience to a Periscope presentations by Scott Adams. That observation was prompted not just by the flurry of comments, but by Adams' responses to some of them on the air.

The beauty of live streaming lies the feeling of immediacy and active engagement that is absent in prerecorded programs. That's why live video is gaining popularity in social media. Marketers are taking note and we can expect to see a lot more of it used for brands aspiring to deliver authentic experiences in 2017.

Read more in Marketing Goes Live

It takes more than snow to work out a ski vacation

Vail Resorts, a leading global mountain resort operator, manages nine mountain resorts and three urban ski areas through its subsidiaries. Given the seasonal nature of the business—during ski season, the staff grows from about 8,800 to 25,000 individuals—managers got overwhelmed by the need to explain the calculations behind the payouts to workers.

Vail Resorts was using the PeopleSoft Human Capital Management (HCM) system. The problems were that data was distributed across multiple systems, and the compensation processes entailed manual inputs with Excel spreadsheets. As a result, there was no easy way to track compensation, which left workers unsure about what their salary and bonus amounts should be.

Tammy Mollhoff, Vail Resorts' HRIS director, explains that this process caused some frustration for employees, and even more for managers, who were asked to provide explanations to workers about what went into the numbers when they didn't fully understand it themselves. To solve that problem, the company wanted to centralize the process in way that would allow the managers to review the figures and then show workers the statements on base wages, discretionary bonuses, long-term incentives and other adjustments.

- See more at: http://www.baselinemag.com/cloud-computing/resort-integrates-on-premise-and-cloud-systems.html#sthash.srQB3T9c.dpuf

Warehousing innovations take off

We’ve arrived at 2017.  Though I don’t recall seeing any technological predictions anchored on this particular year, we can look at what we’re supposed to be working toward with respect to the predictions for 2020 and what has come to light last year.  From that perspective, you can see that warehousing tech is a really hot area right now....

Though clouds refer to the computer kind, there now is the possibility of moving warehousing to actual cloud in the sky. That’s a possibility that Amazon seems to be considering based on the patent for an “airborne fulfilment center utilizing unmanned aerial vehicles for item delivery”  that  that came to light this past December. The airborne fulfillment center (AFC) based on an unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) is no mere drone. It is something much larger like the LCA60T flying whale airship discussed here, though with a variety of options.

Image courtesy: Flying Whales

Read more in 

Sky’s the Limit for Tech Innovations in Warehousing

Related post: http://writewaypro.blogspot.com/2016/08/up-up-and-away-way-its-done-today.html

BI when and where it's needed

That was a critical factor in adopting WebFOCUS, Thiery says, because so many people rely on their phones more than on their desktop units. Consequently, reports that are not designed to be mobile-friendly are not as useful.

Generally, the visualizations are reviewed on a weekly basis at leadership meetings. Thiery explains that these meetings are where management "wants to see where we're at and where we're going." The meetings are also where managers make decisions about how many people they would hire.

As a result of the growth AudioNet has been experiencing, it's been adding on a large number of support people to keep up with the workload. "As our volume increases, so does our revenue," Thiery says.

The firm also uses WebFOCUS to analyze financial data. That includes revenue dollars, accounts and claims counts that factor into identifying an upward trend.

- See more at: http://www.baselinemag.com/business-intelligence/getting-business-intelligence-when-where-needed.html#sthash.BMoWyczs.dpuf

The perks of personalized marketing: Starbucks' use of AI

photo from https://c6.staticflickr.com/4/3133/2873861973_995e8a7902_b.jpg

“Would you like fries with that?” That one-size-fits-all recommendation was about as far as upselling at the point of sale used to go.  Starbucks has come a long way from that with marketing powered by data — and AI.  It's marketing that is uniquely tailored to the behaviors, preferences, and context of each customer.

Matt Ryan, Starbucks EVP and global CSO, and Gerri Martin-Flickinger, EVP and global CTO discussed the strategy at the company's Investor Day.  He explained the impact of digital on Starbucks sales, while she explained what their algorithms do, in The Digital Flywheel: Strategy and impact.

Ryan began by saying that for Starbucks digital represents the “core customer experience.”  He sees it as what distinguishes their business approach from “the rest of the retail world,” and what “gives us the advantage we have.” As proof he showed how the "digital flywheel" contributed to Starbucks' growth in the past three years, and the increase in its rewards program from five million to 12 million customers.

The incentives in the rewards program is one of the ways Starbucks personalizes its marketing.   Martin-Flickinger demonstrated the evolution of the personalization by showing how it has progressed in just a single year. Its baseline is the form of marketing that many businesses still use today, rooted in historical data that they view in spreadsheets, which in turn powers algorithms to fit their general customer base.

In January 2016, Starbucks' marketing messages were limited to 30 variants of weekly email messages that were based on data that was already two weeks old. In June last year, Starbucks moved to a to a real-time personalization engine capable of producing of 400,000 variants of hyper-personalized emails each week. The company continued to tweak its AI engine so that in October, it was able to launch real-time 1:1  personalized offers that are uniquely generated based on each individual customer's behaviors and marked preferences.

Read more in A.I. Informs Personalization for Starbucks

Making attractions more attractive: digitizing the CN Tower

photo: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b7/CN-Tower_Skypod.jpg

To celebrate its 40th anniversary, Canada's CN Tower deployed new wireless infrastructure, a mobile app and 150 beacons with location services capabilities.

One of the top tourist attractions in Canada is the CN Tower, which is 553.33 meters (1, 815 ft., 5 in.) tall. It opened in 1976 as a communications towers, and to reflect that role in today's digital age, it planned on celebrating its 40th anniversary with a new wireless infrastructure and the CN Tower app.

Read more in Digital Tech Enhances the CN Tower Experience