Daily Archives: July 23, 2021

The term "digital transformation" has become synonymous with a companys endeavor to modernize. It allows organizations to transform their operating models to improve customer experience, increase successful outcomes, and gain a competitive advantage in the marketplace. While many technologies, processes, and cultural adjustments are needed to drive digital transformation successfully, "automation" is a critical aspect of the entire process.

Robotic Process Automation (RPA), with its capability to digitalize several operations and processes, has a great potential to accelerate digital transformation for an enterprise.

How RPA supports Digital Transformation

The most straightforward manner in which RPA accelerates digital transformation is by taking off unproductive, redundant, time-consuming, and repeatable manual tasks from a team and allowing the team to focus on the core tasks that assure business growth. By introducing RPA at different stages and functions, an enterprise can save time and resources and ensure better responsiveness at nearly all touchpoints of their value chain. By helping an organization save time, money, resource bandwidth while improving customer experience, RPA can act as a game-changer in improving business performance and outcomes. However, one must understand that "RPA" or "any other kind of automation" only enables an enterprise to accelerate digital transformation, not fully attain it.

RPA enables enterprise to achieve the following capabilities thereby helping with digital transformation initiatives:

How to Leverage RPA for Digital Transformation

The first important step in this direction is to ensure that the RPA program goals align with the organization's overall digital transformation strategy. The other critical aspects to consider for leveraging RPA for digital transformation are:

Digital Transformation: The end goal

Customers and employees are the foundations of any business. As a result, all firms need to keep them engaged and satisfied. RPA programs aid in data retrieval and the adoption of relevant procedures to boost staff engagement and customer satisfaction which is a critical step towards scalability and transformation. The efficiency and adaptability brought in the ecosystem by RPA also let the focus shift from monotonous back-office jobs to those involving providing business value and customer engagement, enabling further process transformation and improvement. When RPA is combined with other digital technologies like Artificial Intelligence (AI), machine learning, intelligent workflow tools, and digital assistants, enterprises can achieve end-to-end digital transformation.

Image credit: airdone/ Shutterstock

Bhavin Sankhat is project manager, workforce collaboration atSynoptek. He has over 10 years of experience in driving several workforce automation projects, especially related to Microsoft technologies. He works closely with Synoptek customers to help them with planning, documentation, and governance for their workforce productivity assignments and creating solutions that streamline their business processes.

Read this article:

Unlocking digital transformation with Robotic Process Automation (RPA) - BetaNews

Theres an interesting paradox at play in the logistics and fulfilment industry right now. On the one hand, theres been a huge rise in the demand for new facilities for the industry, with many companies that build and manage warehouse spaces able to sell new buildings before their construction is even complete. On the other hand, logistics and distribution companies are keen to bring in new digital initiatives, but only if the new tech sits alongside and plays nice with legacy infrastructure. Similarly, while new construction cant happen fast enough, many companies are cautious as new technologies are gradually integrated into operations.

Visit the Resource Centre

The 3PL, logistics, supply chain, and fulfilment sectors are not more conservative than any other for new technologies and digitization. Few companies in any vertical have the luxury of a tear down and start again approach to a digital transformation. Existing infrastructure legacy stack represents a significant investment, and careful integration of the new offers new possibilities and extends ROI on older systems.

Financial pressures on the logistics sector come from many sources; the sellers market for square footage and the high cost of container shipments are dogging the sector at present, despite the huge increase in demand for online retail fulfilment thats taken place over the last five years (the last 20 months especially, of course). Recent changes have only proven that the markets for supply chain, logistics and distribution companies are highly volatile. Investments in new technology have to provide immediate operational efficiencies and be introduced gradually and with assured backward integration with legacy platforms.

The headline technologies that are making the pages of the industry news sites are robotics, automation, and the general field of IIoT (industrial IoT). Although these areas come along with adjectives like seismic and revolutionary, the truth is that embarking on a mass robotic transformation seems to require a specialist knowledge of robots, hardware, control systems, and a whole phalanx of esoteric technologies that are perceived to be difficult and expensive to source.

We at Tech HQ have come across one company thats fully cognizant of the pressures the industry is under currently: OW Robotics. Rather than comprising fresh-faced IT graduates, the companys roots are fully industry-based, with years of experience in the detail of running a logistical business. The ways it deploys technology are designed to bring immediate operational benefit, with results manifest in immediate savings and gains in efficiency.

Its platforms are carefully integrated into the tech that companies already operate, extending the capabilities of a clients investments and ensuring that whatever it introduces thats new has a defined goal.

Return on investment in robotics is surprisingly quick, with the extensive gains made from day one compounding from the improvements made to efficiency and lowered costs. Here, the adjective seismic is perhaps appropriate few other changes to operational methods have such a significant positive impact.

Nevertheless, there are understandable concerns about investment. Here, the truth is that all over the globe, the market leaders in supply chain, logistics and online retail are blazing the trail with their forward-looking deployments of robots and other automated systems. With options such as RaaS (robotics-as-a-service) as well as more traditional leasing models, means all the positive effects can be gained at a much lower than expected costs in much the same way that companies like AWS and Google Cloud Platform provide facilities as-a-service that otherwise would require vast, upfront investment.

The secret sauce of the OW Robotics offering is that its devices work in different ways from expensive, fixed automated systems. Its hardware fits into existing facilities without need for remodelling space, installation of dedicated power lines or re-equipping entire facilities.

From day one, the dedicated team behind OW Robotics helps its clients refine how it works with advanced technology, perfecting operational processes to take full advantage of this proven tech.

Adjectives like revolutionary may be true (game-changing perhaps being a better fit); the results of autonomous systems and robotics in the industry can be immense. OW Robotics concentrates on the detail, on short-term gains being replicated many times over, and medium- to long-term change for its clients. The technology is used as a pivot to better operations, greater capacity and capability, lower costs, and overall better efficiency in the long term.

The arrival of any new technology platform (revolutionary or otherwise) needs acclimatization. That process need not be rushed, especially in an industry thats expected to serve more customers faster, with fewer mistakes, and with an ever-rising standard of customer care. However, as the previous article in this series showed, the gains are there to be made. The manageable investment model, artfully integrated and deployed in step with the companys existing strategies, can yield immediately noticeable positives.

To learn more about the different ways your own companys automation and robotics journey can take you, start a conversation today with OW Robotics. In a market thats increasingly driven by levels of accuracy, customer experience and sudden rises in demand, it pays to start planning early.

Visit the Resource Centre

Continued here:

Warehouse Automation That's Business-Focused First, with OW Robotics - TechHQ

Its time for your Farm of the Future Report. Im Tim Hammerich.

If automation is going to make its way onto the farm, its going to have to show an immediate up front return on investment. Thats why Charlie Andersen and his team at Burro have targeted a niche with very high labor costs with their autonomous rover.

Andersen Our vehicles today are used largely to haul fruit around and haul produce around in hand harvested crops, so think things like table grapes, blueberries, blackberries, raspberries, nursery crops, those types of things. And in a lot of those crops, north of 50% of revenue flows to labor. And that number is rising.

Andersen says the economics of the Burro can stand on its own for the labor savings, but it can also be used for many other autonomous functions down the road.

Andersen You can make an investment with a very rapid ROI into a material handling robot that is built in such a way that over time it will modularly be expanded to do harvesting and yield mapping and some of the other autonomous tasks as well. We have very strong partnerships with Western Growers Association and then the California Table Grape Commission. And this year we actually just shipped 70 last week, so we should have a 90 or so running in the next week or two as the table grape harvest begins.

Learn more about Burro at burro.ai.

See the original post here:

Automation that Pays for Itself - AG INFORMATION NETWORK OF THE WEST - AGInfo Ag Information Network Of The West

Wind River, the edge software firm that is among the initial partners for Nvidias AI-on-5G platform, unveiled the latest release of its Wind River Studio cloud-native software platform for the development, deployment, operations, and servicing of intelligent systems from edge devices all the way to the cloud.

The software also addresses the need for seamless technology integration between far edge cloud computing, data analytics, security, 5G adoption, automation and AI and machine learning as companies in a variety of industries--automotive, aerospace and defense, telecommunications, medical--work with these technologies as part of broader IoT strategies and efforts to implement more intelligent and automated operations.

New features in the latest release include a customizable automation engine that integrates with commonly used automation tools, and helps teams building intelligent devices like airborne delivery drones, autonomous vehicles, and factory robots.

The release also supports digital feedback loop, which helps unlock the value of data from the operating system, application, infrastructure, system or device to increase the ability to make improvements and rapidly address problems, the company said. Digital feedback loop in turn enables real-time analysis, reporting and alerting of infrastructure and application performance, as well as integration with back-end Big Data systems.

The new release also provides enhanced security and DevSecOps pipeline capabilities enabling modern software development deployable on Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure.

The next generation of cloud-connected intelligent systems requires the right software infrastructure to securely capture and process real-time machine data with digital feedback from a multitude of edge systems, enabling advanced automated and autonomous scenarios, said Kevin Dallas, president and CEO, Wind River, in a statement.

A company spokesman added via email, Wind River Studio is especially relevant for companies building mission-critical intelligent systems where security, safety, and reliability are paramount. Wind River can help a variety of companies on different stages of their transformational journey (including those just starting the journey, and need help to flesh out their strategy or approach).

Notable recent customers for the companys software platform have included telecom and 5G operators Verizon and Vodafone. The new version of Wind River Studio is available now.

RELATED: Nvidia, Google Cloud to open AI-on-5G test lab

Read the original:

Wind River targets automation amid AI, 5G, edge evolutions - FierceElectronics

The program management office of the Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program has automated parts of the process through which agencies may reuse FedRAMP-approved cloud products, Fedscoop reported Tuesday.

The program, which aims to standardize the security of cloud products used in the federal government, and the National Institute of Standards and Technology are using the Open Security Controls Assessment Language to automate the process where FedRAMP reuses are reviewed.

OSCAL-formatted files can deliver machine-readable assessment plans, system security plans and control baselines.

The move comes as the need for FedRAMP authorization reuse rises, with a 60 percent growth in demand for cloud products and an 85 percent growth in the reuse of security authorizations, compared to the demands during the first six months of fiscal 2020.

Cloud service providers may use machine-readable authorization packages to accelerate the development of system security plans. The FedRAMP PMO is creating tools designed to help organizations adopt OSCAL and speed up reviews.

The rest is here:

FedRAMP, NIST Apply Automation to Support Authorization Reuses - ExecutiveBiz

The pandemic is accelerating automation and threatening jobs, according to Massachusetts state officials. In response, the state is making plans to expand workforce training to keep up with the shift.

But that's not officials' only concern. In September, supplemental federal unemployment benefits will cease in Massachusetts and another 26 states that decided not to end the federal benefit early.

"We've got over 330,000 people falling off unemployment on September 4," said Rosalin Acosta, secretary of Labor and Workforce Development for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. "And if you ask me what keeps me up at night, it's that."

More than half of those receiving state unemployment only have a high school degree or less, she said, adding that some recipients are English language learners. State officials said they would work to help them get new skills and jobs.

"We need those folks engaged in the workforce immediately," Acosta said. Her comments were made at a press conference this week detailing the state's workforce training needs as outlined in a new report titled "Preparing for the Future of Work in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts."

The need to reskill the workforce will only become more critical. Over the next decade, Massachusetts officials warned that automation will have a major impact on employment and create new demand for workforce training.

Acosta said that in the next 10 years, "300,000 to 400,000 current jobs in the Commonwealth will disappear." She said this is "a result of accelerated adoption, automation and AI due to the pandemic."

The Massachusetts report is just a snapshot of a national problem around automation that's getting recognized at the federal level. The $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan, approved earlier this year, included funds for states to deal with the economic fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic. Massachusetts received $2.9 billion as its share. About $240 million will go toward workforce training.

Automation's impact "isn't some distant academic question that will need to be solved by future generations," Acosta said. Automation will affect workers in customer service, food services, office support, production work and other occupations, according to the state's report.

Automation's impact isn't some distant academic question that will need to be solved by future generations. Rosalin AcostaSecretary of Labor and Workforce Development, Commonwealth of Massachusetts

Keeping up with the increasing reliance on automation will mean workforce training for 30,000 to 40,000 people in the state annually, she said.

More immediately is the end of federal supplemental workforce benefits of $300 a week. About 4 million people nationally will be affected by the ending of these benefits, said Andrew Stettner, a senior fellow at The Century Foundation, an independent policy research group in New York. Stettner has researched the unemployment insurance program.

"It's going to be a cliff, because there will still be probably several hundred thousand workers in Massachusetts who have not found a job by then," he said.

More than two dozen states chose to end the supplemental benefits early, describing it as an incentive for residents to find and take jobs.

But the labor market recovery in those states that cut the federal benefits early "seems to be generally about the same pace as states such as Massachusetts that haven't cut off the benefits," Stettner said. "It didn't seem to be the thing that turned the economy around."

Some workers will continue to get state unemployment benefits past the September cutoff date, "but probably not for too much longer" because of the limits on state assistance, Stettner said.

The growing push to reskill workers may be a good thing for HR employees. The state's study forecasted growth for recruiters, HR analysts, coordinators and generalists, and many business roles in finance and operations.

Patrick Thibodeau covers HCM and ERP technologies. He's worked for more than two decades as an enterprise IT reporter.

See more here:

Automation, job loss fears speed workforce training in Mass. - TechTarget

echo shifts the focus to actions that impact business outcomes, while the focused, smart bots continue to work for you

Access Healthcare's proprietary robotic process automation (RPA) platform, echo, is a purpose-built suite of automation solutions that can automate processes across the revenue cycle continuum. By leveraging machine learning and artificial intelligence capabilities, echo, offers multiple use cases for automating eligibility verification, data entry, medical coding, payment posting, accounts receivable management, denial management, and appeals.

Says Vardhman Jain, Vice Chairman of Access Healthcare, "As much as 17% of US healthcare costs are on administrative processes. The time is right for us to launch echo, which we have tested in a scaled-up operation environment like ours and with some of our enterprise customers. echo shifts the focus to actions that impact business outcomes, while the unrelenting, focused, and smart bots continue to work for you."

echoutilizes future-proof microservices-based architecture, which infuses improved ability to utilize new automation frameworks as they evolve. Further, the modular architecture allows rapid configuration capability to customize bots for new use cases and manage process change. These features prevent bot obsolescence and improve the effectiveness of automation solution deployments.

Shaji Ravi, President and Managing Director of Access Healthcare states, "Times are changing in the US healthcare industry. With more integrated data flows and API-based information exchanges, our growing library of healthcare workflows focused automation tools, and services will enable us to grow our partner ecosystem."

The components of the echo suite are:

Arvind Perumbala, VP of Business Development, says "echo is now available to system integrators and automation services providers. If you have a client that needs process automation, whether, in the healthcare revenue cycle or other industries, we believe that we can solve the problems at a fraction of the cost of most of the commercially available automation solutions."

To learn more about echo, visit accesshealthcare.com.

SOURCE Access Healthcare

http://www.accesshealthcare.co

See original here:

Introducing echo - An Artificial Intelligence and Robotic Process Automation Platform - PRNewswire

Customers rate Stonebranch with the highest net promoter score (NPS) among all Leaders in the report.

ALPHARETTA, Ga., July 21, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Stonebranch, a provider of service orchestration and automation solutions, announced that G2 has recognized the Stonebranch Universal Automation Center platform as a Leader in the G2 Grid Workload Automation Report, Summer 2021.

The G2 Grid ranks products from the Workload Automation category algorithmically based on data sourced from product reviews shared by G2 users and data aggregated from online sources and social networks. Products in the Leader quadrant are rated highly by G2 users and have substantial Market Presence scores. The four possible categories in the G2 Grid are Leader, High Performer, Contender, and Niche.

"We are honored to receive G2's highest rating as a Leader in Workload Automation," said Giuseppe Damiani, Stonebranch CEO. "This recognition is a direct reflection of our exceptional customer satisfaction scores. Within the report, our NPS is at least 15 points higher than the other Leaders in the category."

According to the report, end-users ranked Stonebranch above average in likelihood to recommend (94%), ease of doing business with (93%), and quality of support (93%).

The Stonebranch Universal Automation Center's highest-rated features include job scheduling, workload processing, and the platform's workload automation console, which centralizes automation across an entire hybrid IT environment from a single browser-based control center.

"Stonebranch's third-party integration approach makes it possible for customers to go beyond traditional on-prem automation. End-users are empowered to centrally orchestrate automation for cloud infrastructure, DevOps toolchains, and complex data pipelines," said Damiani. "Best of all, our platform is designed to easily scale across enterprise environments that run on-premises, in the cloud, and within containerized microservices, or a mix of all three."

The latest grid report is available now on the G2 website. G2 is the world's largest tech marketplace where businesses can discover, review, and manage the technology they need to reach their potential.

About StonebranchStonebranch builds IT orchestration and automation solutions that transform business IT environments from simple IT task automation into sophisticated, real-time business service automation. No matter the degree of automation, the Stonebranch platform is simple, modern and secure. Using the Stonebranch Universal Automation Platform, enterprises can seamlessly orchestrate workloads and data across technology ecosystems and silos. Headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia, with points of contact and support throughout the Americas, Europe and Asia, Stonebranch serves some of the world's largest financial, manufacturing, healthcare, travel, transportation, energy and technology institutions.

Media contact:Scott Davis[emailprotected]

Logo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1089016/Stonebranch_Logo.jpg

stonebranch.com

SOURCE Stonebranch

See original here:

Stonebranch Named Leader in the G2 Grid Workload Automation Report, Summer 2021 - PRNewswire

Image courtesy of Innovative Technology.

The Caf Royal in Annan, Scotland is finding success with a cash automation solution called CashGenic from Innovative Technology that allows customers to pay with cash safely and hygienically, according to a press release.

Caf Royal installed the system in its in-house and take-away premises in March and has seen a rise in cash payments, a reduction in cash floats and its staff free to interact more with customers.

The solution is available from partners as an all-in-one countertop device ensuring customer access, with pay-in and pay-out managed by staff via a mobile tablet device.

"Overall, it's been a tremendous success," John Pagani, Caf Royal owner and National Federation of Fish Friers member, said in the release. "We have been looking for something like this for a long time, but suitable systems seemed only available at a very high price. The Xchekka system is affordable, so much so, we ordered two, one for our indoor caf and the other for our take-away.

"Staff love it; they no longer have to count change and the hygiene aspect has been exceptional, especially during these COVID times. They can concentrate on serving the customer to provide excellent customer service rather than worrying about change and having to wash their hands after touching the money and sanitizing again.

"Customers who install Xchekka are seeing some excellent time and cost savings efficiencies and even more importantly an uptake in cash payments," he said. "Plus, their customers are reacting positively too. At The Caf Royal customers are even bringing cash specifically to have a go at using the new machine."

For an update on how the coronavirus pandemic has affected convenience services, click here.

Read this article:

Cash automation solution finds success in Scotland| Coping with COVID-19 - Kiosk Marketplace

Senate President Vicente Tito Sotto 3rd. TMT file photo

SENATE President Vicente "Tito" Sotto 3rd said the Department of Information and Communications Technology (DICT) has assured him of the integrity of the automated elections in 2022.

Sotto on Wednesday confirmed he and Sen. Panfilo "Ping" Lacson will run in next year's polls.

"We just have to rely on the integrity of [the] Comelec (Commission on Elections) and do watch out as far as the automation is concerned," Sotto said.

The Senate chief added they will have to rely on the DICT considering that the chairman of automation is former senator now Information and Communications Technology Secretary Gregorio "Gringo" Honasan 2nd.

"He is assuring us that the DICT will be on top of whatever automation. So, we have to rely on that," Sotto stressed.

Meanwhile, Sen. Ana Theresia "Risa" Hontiveros on Tuesday said China's cyberwarfare and disinformation campaigns will be one of the biggest threats to Philippine national security and democracy.

The senator, in a statement, warned that China may heavily influence the 2022 national elections through cyberespionage campaigns against the Philippines.

"Hindi na ako magugulat kung mangingialam sa ating eleksyon ang Tsina (I will no longer be surprised should China meddle in our election [next year]," Hontiveros said.

"It is quite clear that they would do everything to eventually grab our seas and territory in the West Philippine Sea," she said. "At kasama na dito ang pagtatalaga ng lider na hindi kokontra sa utos nila (And this includes installing a leader who will not contradict their instructions)."

She issued the warning after cybersecurity firm Kaspersky unveiled there is a "rare, wide-scale advanced persistent threat" by Chinese "actors" that gather geopolitical and economic intelligence in Asia and Africa.

The firm added some 1,400 users in the Philippines, including government entities, have fallen victim to spear-phishing emails that contain malicious documents.

Hontiveros then urged the Department of National Defense (DND) and the Information Technology department to look into Kaspersky's reports immediately.

The senator said the DND and the DICT should also issue protocols that all Filipinos can follow to protect themselves from China's cyberintrusions.

"The DND and DICT should strengthen our cyberdefense framework, and at the same time, Filipino users should be made aware of how we can protect ourselves from cyberattacks," she said.

Hontiveros said one of the groups' modus operandi was to mimic meeting apps like Zoom, which was usually used in office meetings, webinars and online classes.

The user was not aware that his or her personal information was already being stolen, the senator said.

"This was not the first time that cyberespionage attacks from China were reported against the Philippines," she said in Filipino.

More here:

DICT on top of poll automation - Sotto - The Manila Times