Category Archives: Automation

If you are struggling to create or maintain momentum in your automation initiative, the answer may be simpler than you think. Organisations that are successfully managing automation and digital service and transaction delivery are those who are creating and following an incremental approach that maps out where to start and how to evolve over time a digital roadmap, effectively.

Getting started with automation

First, the good news you are not alone. Without a digital roadmap, many across the industry are failing to cross the Rubicon to deliver transformed, digital services. The fact is that its still not uncommon to feel bombarded by automation technologies, not knowing how or where to start.

Or, you may be in the same boat as other companies who have made the leap into automation by buying licenses to drive various pilots involving process automation and other BPM tools, yet still finding it difficult to measure the effectiveness of these initiatives or to build on their early successes.

A clear digital roadmap addresses both of these situations, helping insurance companies decide where to take the first bite of the automation elephant and then how to munch their way through the beast, from tail to trunk. It gives a foundation for transforming to a more digital future, regardless of the maturity of automation within a business or the RPA, AI or cognitive technologies in play.

And theres more good news you will make new friends, including the IT department! IT tends not to like automation initiatives, which are seen as grey IT and outside their control. Unsurprisingly, agreeing on a digital roadmap is likely to be music to their ears, as they can influence technology choices and ensure that they are ready to cope with any technology or architectural changes required over time.

So, what does a good roadmap look like?

The key is that it should be incremental and stage-based. Whether youre looking to automate processes surrounding claims processing, customer services requests, new account set ups, complaint acknowledgment or change of policy details, the focus is the same: each process should be evaluated for automation and proven, one process at a time.

This gradual, measured approach reduces project risk by minimising large scale commitments and means that you dont have to commit to long term technology decisions at the outset. It also makes it easier for the people on the ground to measure whats actually happening something thats very difficult when automation is adopted en masse.

The gradual approach also clears the way to assess whether individual processes are working correctly before they are assessed together as part of a longer chain involving other processes and people, designed to deliver end-to-end services.

Technologies such as Robotic Service Orchestration (RSO) manage end-to-end services, allocating tasks to either humans or software robots in order to fulfil a business process. This more sophisticated type of service delivery moves beyond addressing routine tasks where there is little variability, and into services that require a high degree of variability. Where RPA addresses how businesses can automate a particular process, RSO tells you what processes to automate and why. Imagine, for example, being able to deliver services from multiple locations to local standards, aligned to a detailed cost and productivity reporting capability.

Its about ensuring that automation extends beyond the pilot stage of a projects, and ensuring that organisations will be able to manage the entire automation process, not just the related pieces.

The simple fact is that the back office has grown big and unwieldy, and if we are to meet the expectations of the newly defined 21st century customer experience and employee experience, we need to shrink the back office and intelligently automate one step at a time, with humans and automation technologies working together to deliver better services.

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Struggling with Back Office Automation? The Answer Might be Simpler than You Think - Finextra (blog)

By 2060, all goods will be shipped safely to their destination in smart containers within minutes of an order being placed, according to Kalmars renewed Port 2060 vision for the future of cargo handling.

An industry frontrunner in terminal automation and energy-efficient container handling, Kalmar forecasts that world trade in 2060 will be driven by automation and smart containers that know their contents and destination.

Being fully automated, the working environments in port terminals will be significantly improved in terms of efficiency and safety goods will move around faster, with almost no incidents.

Mr Peter McLean, Kalmars Head of Asia Pacific, said that port terminals will be complete logistic ecosystems, acting as global interchange points for an on-demand society.

In 40 years, consumers will be able to order goods directly from local producers and have the goods shipped to them within minutes. Since everything will be connected, consumers will be able to track exactly when the goods will arrive.

With automation, every move made by the smart containers will be consistently managed, which means that there will be almost no damage to the containers and port equipment. This helps to create a safer working environment for port workers, he said.

Kalmars renewed Port 2060 vision emphasises that artificial intelligence, combined with human experience and knowledge, will help solve highly complex problems. Predictive maintenance will be continually performed on all smart equipment at port terminals to avoid downtime and ensure that every process throughout the trade journey runs smoothly.

This means that in the event of downtime, equipment parts can be 3D printed on-site and installed automatically, ensuring that goods can continue to move efficiently throughout the supply chain, according to Mr McLean.

He further noted that industry automation is well underway and has escalated in the past decade, especially in Asia-Pacific. Automation is becoming increasingly important in the Asia-Pacific region, especially with the establishment of the One Belt One Road (OBOR) initiative. We are already seeing investments being made in automation in countries like Singapore, China and Australia. Many of these countries have been upgrading their technological capabilities while also investing in developing the human expertise needed to operate new technologies.

Over the next 40 years, new generations will have more time and space to innovate, thereby further improving communication and interactions over the entire supply chain network. We believe that by 2060, the pace of automation in Asia-Pacific will be comparable to the level of automation in Europe and other parts of the world, said Mr McLean.

Kalmars aim is to anticipate the challenges and solutions that will be relevant to the industry in the upcoming years, and work with the different port authorities to close the gaps in automation, thereby boosting the reliability and efficiency of cargo handling services in the region.

Mr McLean said, In our Port2060 vision, goods are transported faster, more efficiently and most importantly, safely. Ports are likely to be fully automated across Asia-Pacific, and the working environment in port terminals will be very different from what it is now.

We want to make this vision a reality by leading the discussion on the future of cargo handling, and helping our customers and partners adopt new technologies and innovations that prepare them for the future. Source: Kalmar

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Automation will drive efficient, smooth and safe world trade by 2060: Kalmar - Hellenic Shipping News Worldwide

Blue cables connect computer server units. Photographer: Krisztian Bocsi/Bloomberg

A recent Gartner report observed that, by 2022, smart machines and robots may replace highly trained professionals in tasks within medicine, law and IT. The report goes on to conclude that the ability of automation techniques to substitute for a lawyer means that what the enterprise previously considered value-added practices will become a utility (Prepare for When AI Turns Skilled Practices Into Utilities, Gartner, March 8, 2017).

It is yet another voice in the debate over the impact of advanced technologies on BigLaw. In considering this issue, we tend to overlook the reality that BigLaw is no longer a monolithic industry. The most recent set of AmLaw data simply confirms the trend we have seen for a number of years the industry is becoming increasingly stratified into groups of firms with different brand values and positions in the marketplace. For example, the top 20 or so elite firms have clearly broken from the pack with respect to economic performance. Beneath that group it is likely that we will see clusters of firms begin to emerge at various levels of the marketplace.

This change in the structure of the industry is largely driven by economic/market factors. Clients want and need different things from their legal service providers. They need predictable cost structures, efficient service delivery, smart deployment of technology, process, and project management to name a few.

In the absence of an industry willing to meet these challenges, the buyers of legal services are speaking with their money. Elite firms (or elite practices within firms) continue to attract client business. And, while there continues to be work for other firms, increasingly clients are keeping work in-house or using alternative service providers. Thus, while the need for legal services is rising, the demand for services from traditional law firms remains flat.

Avoiding the Muddy Middle

We see this dynamic reflected in a variety of data spread over the industry. Of course, AmLaw data supports this conclusion. Similarly, in a recent Altman Weil survey, well over half of the firms responded that their partners were underproductive (Altman Weil 2017 Law Firms in Transition). Yes, there is still healthy money to be earned in the industry generally, but the struggle in the muddy middle of the industry to compete for scarce market share is quite clear. This is so because the nature of the business has changed. Mark Cohen captured this change perfectly by noting that legal delivery is now the business of delivering legal services, not simply the practice of law (Are Law Firms Becoming Obsolete, Forbes, June 12, 2017).

Now layer technology advances on this striated industry. The impact simply will not be felt equally. Technology whether through cognitive computing, machine learning or other tools usually lumped together under the term AI will shortly be in a position to handle the repetitive tasks generally associated with large swaths of the practice. The elite firms those firms or practices that handle legitimately bespoke work will stave off the impact. For smaller firms or alternative service providers, it provides an opportunity to use technology to punch above their weight. It is the firms in the middle that will be squeezed. In another context, McKinsey has referred to this as the barbell economy (McKinsey Global Institute, A Future that Works).

Can firms in the muddy middle adapt to this challenge? Some will. Most will not. The problem is that adaptation requires change. The Altman Weil survey produced some interesting results in this regard. The overwhelming majority of managing partners surveyed see the increased price pressure, the slide of practices into commodities and the impact of technology as permanent trends.

Despite this recognition, 61.5percent of the respondents said their firm was only moderately (or less) serious about change. Lest you think this is not a bad number: 81.5percent of corporate counsel gave the same response about their firms. On the technology front, only 7.5percent of firms have begun to use AI tools. Another 29percent are exploring. The remaining 64percent were either doing nothing or are unaware of the emerging opportunities.

The reason for this disconnect between belief and action is pretty obvious: 65percent of firm leaders say their partners resist change. Hardly shocking. And why? 60percent respond that they are not feeling enough economic pain to feel the need to change.

Indeed, the financial performance of the industry remains healthy. The speed of technological advances, however, is remarkable. Up until this point, the industry has had the ability to slowly adapt to market forces and emerge ever stronger.

That slow adaptation is unlikely to work this time. Existing market forces will only be amplified by the emergence of different technologies that will change the nature of the delivery of legal services. This is a tremendous opportunity for firms who embrace the challenge and change their delivery systems. For those who continue to believe they are special snowflakes that will escapewell, the odds are not in their favor.

For more essays from Stephen Poor (@stephen_poor) and Seyfarth on change in the legal industry, visitRethink the Practice.

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Automation to Squeeze the 'Muddy Middle' of Big Law (Perspective ... - Bloomberg Big Law Business

NEW DELHI: Automation is emerging as a big threat to jobs. The information technology (IT) sector seems to be the worst-hit by automation. But a survey by TeamLease reveals automation is affecting the manufacturing and engineering sector the most.

Jobs in factories are the most vulnerable to automation than those in the IT companies because it's easiest to automate manufacturing.

The trend of robots replacing workers is no more restricted to countries like Japan. It is accelerating across the globe in the field of manufacturing and production, taking away the livelihood of factory workers.

"Robots are taking over at large number of places. Robots don't want appraisal. They don't want work-life balance. They work 24 hours. In Delhi, metro is going to be automated. Automobile industry which employees 1 in 6 people in the world is going to be automated," said Mohandas Pai, IT industry veteran and Chairman of Manipal Global Education Services.

What is already happening in the US should be a grim reminder for India. The US lost about 5.6 million manufacturing jobs between 2000 and 2010. According to a study done at Ball State University, 85 per cent of these losses are attributable to technological change, mainly automation.

In India too, those who work in factories should worry about automation more than software engineers.

Early signs of jobs distress in factories are becoming visible. Textile major Raymond is planning to cut about 10,000 jobs in its manufacturing centres in the next three years, replacing them with robots and technology. The company employs nearly 30,000 staff in its 16 manufacturing plants in the country, which means it would offload a third of its workers in just three years.

According to Raymond CEO Sanjay Behl, the future could be even harsher. "One robot could replace around 100 workers. While it is happening in China at present, it will also happen in India," Raymond CEO Sanjay Behl told ET last year in September.

After manufacturing & engineering, other sectors affected the most by automation are e-commorce and tech start-ups, media, information technology, banking & financial services, education and BPO & ITeS.

Infrastructure is the least affected by automation. In developing countries, machines and robots are replacing humans in the cosntruction sector but in India the sector has yet to see automation at a level where it threatens to take away a siginificant number of jobs. Yet, it could only be a matter of time.

Fast-moving consumer goods and durables and travel & hospitality-which tend to have fewer process-based jobs which can be handled by machines-are other sectors shielded from the impact of automation.

Most affected by automation 1. Manufacturing & engineering 2. E-commerce & tech startups 3. Media 4. IT 5. BFSI, education 6. BPO & ITeS

Least affected by automation 1. FMCD & G 2. Travel & hospitality 3. Infrastructure

Economictimes.Com partnered with TeamLease to prepare a set of reports on the employment situation in the country. This story is part of the series based on data from the Employment Outlook Report of TeamLease. Part of ET Jobs Disruption Report, these stories scan various aspects of the employment situation at different levels of city, sector, profile, etc.

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Factory workers need to worry about automation more than techies - Economic Times

About six weeks ago I received an email from somebody called Amy Ingram. It was a friendly, professional email to schedule a meeting with the CEO of an exciting new start-up I was writing about for my Future Proof column in Inc.

Not Who I Thought She Was.

After a couple of email exchanges the meeting was confirmed and I thanked Amy for her time. When I got to meet with the CEO in person later that week, he looked at me with a glint in his eye and asked, in a rather curious tone, "What did you think of Amy Ingram?" A little confused, I replied that she was very professional and efficient at her job. The CEO smiled again, paused and said that he had a confession to make: Amy was not a human being. She was in fact A.I and the clue was in her initials (Amy Ingram). 'Will you forgive me?" he asked with a grin.

A New Age.

Of course I did, because everywhere around me I am seeing that science fiction is fast becoming science fact. The take-home message is that we've entered a new age of AI, automation and algorithms, where the speed and scale of change create tremendous risk but also tremendous opportunity. I call it 'exponential change' and it's happening now. It took 75 years for the telephone to reach 100 million users, WhatsApp 3 years and the game Pokmon Go just 3 weeks. This new age is the Fourth Industrial revolution, and it's one where data is the new oil and information is the new currency.

Fast Eats Slow.

In this new reality, it's no longer about big or small. It's about fast or slow. According to a recent McKinsey study, 80% of CEOs believe that in this new reality, their current business model is at risk and only 6% are satisfied with their innovation performance. Now more than ever, we need to use brains, guts and an action-oriented growth mindset to ensure our businesses don't become a footnote in corporate history. The twin forces of cloud computing and mobile connectivity are creating massive yet hard-to-predict opportunities, and as ever in business, there will be winners and losers.

Here are three shortcuts for how to not just survive but thrive in the age of AI, automation and algorithms.

1. Intelligent Failure.

Stop worrying about the rate of failure because as long as those failures are cheap, you can afford a lot of them. As the saying goes, "fail fast, fail cheap and move on". To fail intelligently, you need to focus on three simple rules. First, know what success looks like and doesn't look like. I'm always surprised at the lack of focus on a clear outcome. Deciding what not to focus on can also limit any uncertainty. Second, convert assumptions into knowledge and learning. This is a much smarter use of time than trying to prove how right you are. Finally, codify and share what's been learned via a process known as 'After Action Review' (AAR). Pioneered by the military to ensure continuous learning, the AAR process involves asking three key questions.

1. What did you intend to happen?

2. What actually happened?

3. What are the lessons learned?

2. Embrace "Ripple Intelligence".

Can you navigate the myriad different trends, changes, and contexts that can disrupt an industry or business, for better or worse? It may be, that in order to do this well, you need to develop something that entrepreneur Elon Musk possesses in abundance - a quality called ripple intelligence: the ability to see the interactions of business contexts play out like ripples moving across a pond. Musk has a vivid imagination, obsessive focus, and a deep curiosity about the world and business in particular. He is brave not just in his words but also in his actions, and he uses ripple intelligence in a systematic way for moving fast.

One of the best ways to develop this intelligence is to step outside your normal orbit and develop a point of view about not just the ideas, trends and issues that excite you, but also about the ones that that keep you awake at night. Done well, this can help you anticipate hidden opportunities and catch the next big wave before others do. Early adoption will ensure you stay agile and ahead of the pack.

3. Think 10[x], Not 10%.

When was the last time you set a challenge for yourself that pushed you to deliver more than you thought was humanly possible? Most people think about how they can grow by 10% or 20%, not by a factor of 10. 10[x] thinkers are hardwired to think bigger and bolder, whether it's wiping out malaria in the next ten years or making space tourism a reality. They have an eye on the future and can spot an unmet opportunity quickly before others.

You don't have to be a CEO or run a startup to think 10[x]. This is a mindset that involves taking control of your vision rather than having someone else hire you to do theirs. Get started, have a clear destination, fail fast, test ideas lightly and often, and know that those who think 10[x] hold two beliefs: 1. problems can't be solved with yesterday's thinking, and 2. you have the resources to achieve your goals.

The Last Word.

Next time you receive an email, don't assume it's from a human being. The future has already arrived. To lead in this brave new world, you will have to find the courage to upgrade your business model and your mindset multiple times in order to remain viable. The bad news is, you're probably not going to learn this at business school.

As a CEO said to me recently, "if it's not broke, break it."

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3 Smart Ways to Win In the Age of AI, Automation, and Algorithms - Inc.com

When organizations automate IT tasks, the ability to do one thing over and over again is a starting point -- not the finish line. This technology is getting smarter and more flexible.

This complimentary guide helps readers determine the pros, cons and key considerations of DevOps by offering up 5 important questions you should be asking in order to create a realistic DevOps assessment.

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Computers repeat a task with the same output every time, but it's a human who tells them what to do. This was shown in spectacularly negative light when Amazon Web Services suffered an outage in February 2017. A systems administrator accidently took down more servers than intended, starting a domino effect that then brought a large part of AWS' infrastructure offline.

The problem started when a human did something wrong, but a lack of intelligent IT automation technology exacerbated it. The platform did not recognize an issue and replicated it as programmed to. If it can happen to Amazon, it can happen to you. One of the biggest IT automation trends is technology with checks and balances in place to prevent bad decisions from spreading out of control.

IT teams can program a system to automate a single task for a single iteration -- but why would they? It starts with handcrafting the script or code to carry out the task anyway; automation accomplishes nothing more than what any sys admin pressing Go would. IT systems automation shows its strength where a task is carried out repeatedly, either at different times against a single system or against multiple ones.

Systems patches and updates provide a prime example of IT automation benefits. An OS patch is brought into a system for initial test. The sys admin puts the patch onto a test system manually, looking for any bad consequences before it rolls out across the live environment.

From the start, IT should use the same tools in test that will be used in operations. This helps prevent the sys admin and IT automation platform from diverging -- if the sys admin takes the same actions that then become a scripted flow, it prevents unforeseen problems.

In addition, this uniformity lets the admin proof any further actions that the IT automation platform will take. For example, the tool deploys a patch, and the patch does not work, which requires a corrective action that can be programmed in as well.

Intelligence tops IT automation trends now. Dumb automation, as used in many basic script systems, can bring everything down.

Remediation should be a capability in any IT automation platform. It can take the form of rollback, wherein the platform identifies a problem that it cannot deal with directly and therefore returns the whole system or any specific parts of it back to a working, known state. The rollback process then alerts people, who use logs and other data to identify what caused the problem and take actions to fix it.

Remediation can alternatively occur when the automation tool identifies why a system did not take the patch and changes it so that it can. This kind of remediation should be preemptive: An IT automation platform should examine all the target systems before attempting to roll out the patch and single out which ones cannot take it. The system must then take direct remediation or raise an alert. In some circumstances, the fix requires a hardware change or complete replacement that is outside of IT automation technology's capabilities.

Another IT automation trend is reusability as a platform feature. Whether a step or task can be reused depends on the path to automation that an organization chooses. For example, if a script provisions one certain workload on N number of virtual servers, it only saves manual work when the user wants that specific workload to spin up. However, if the tool creates a workload container, the script can say to provision workload A on N virtual servers. The same script also works with workload B, C, D and so on.

The organization can change the contents of workload A, B and others as needed and adjust the way in which the specified workload is provisioned. The abstraction layer between the provisioning and package automations creates an object hierarchy that gives the platform user greater flexibility. The sys admin selects script A from the workload creation side and wraps it in script B from the provisioning side to achieve a desired result.

Organizations can automate IT tasks beyond the OS level. The same approach applies to application stacks, containers, end-point devices and firmware -- any system that currently requires a highly paid, yet fallible person to administer.

IT automation has entered the realm of necessity. It's impossible to provide a steady and stable platform that combines physical, virtual and cloud resources across a range of public, private and hybrid models if you don't automate IT tasks.

IT teams must investigate which automation technologies make sense now -- before a lack of repeatability becomes a major concern about IT performance.

Automation is happening beyond the IT level, across the whole organization. Business process automation should also be a strong point for IT, which must provide the necessary technology for smooth and effective BPA use. As the internet of things weaves its way into the organization, many thousands of devices will require ongoing security and maintenance. Expect to invest in extra automation capabilities to serve them.

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IT automation trends point to smarter machines -- not just faster - TechTarget

Sometimes it's difficult to change the way you think about a stock. In the case of Rockwell Automation (NYSE:ROK) the company has always been seen as an all-purpose way to play trends in the industrial sector. However, given the importance of the company's sensors, controls, software architecture, and automation solutions to the Industrial Internet of Things (IIOT), it's time to start thinking about the company as a long-term way to play the growth of IIOT -- something that might encourage a positive rerating in the stock. Let's take a closer look.

In a world where moderate economic growth is restricting the ability of industrial companies to aggressively grow revenue, it's becoming increasingly important to make productivity improvements. It's also essential to wring every bit of growth that can be wrung out of existing customers, and offer new solutions to those existing customers.

This is where IIOT comes in. In a nutshell, embedding internet-enabled devices into hardware and then monitoring and analyzing the data that comes out of their actions -- think the functioning of a General Electric Company (NYSE:GE) gas turbine or aircraft engine -- helps the end user utilize that asset in a more productive way. In this way, industrial companies like GE and Honeywell International (NYSE:HON) can offer IIOT solutions to their hardware customers.

Image source: Getty Images.

Around half of Honeywell's engineering force is employed in developing software as its aerospace and building solutions (both industries that require constant monitoring and service),while Jeff Immelt has aggressively invested in order to ensure GE is the leading player in IIOT. In addition, the incorporation of GE's digital offerings is an integral part of the rationale for GE's acquisition of Alstom's energy assets and the Baker Hughes merger.

Both companies, and others, are urgently developing IIOT solutions and creating market awareness. In truth, it's somewhat of a symbiotic process. For example, the more GE promotes its Predix Cloud offering, a platform-as-a-service solution that helps companies capture and analyze data, the more developers will create applications for industrial customers to use on the platform. Ultimately, more and more companies will likely see the benefits of adopting IIOT solutions.

The potential for growth is significant. For example, Honeywell cites an Accenture survey stating that 84% of business leaders believe IIOT can benefit them, but only 7% have a working IIOT strategy.

Clearly, as market adoption of IIOT increases, it will be good news for Rockwell, although it's fair to say that the stock's 22% appreciation in 2017 to date isn't necessarily a consequence of investors recognizing the long-term potential of its IIOT-based solutions. It probably has more to do with the cyclical uptick in U.S. industrial production and its impact on the willingness of Rockwell's customers to make capital investments.

ROK data by YCharts.

The improvement in the macro-outlook is evident in Rockwell's revised full-year 2017 guidance. For reference, Rockwell's financial year finishes at the end of September. As you can see below, the increase in guidance has been significant -- the increase in the midpoint of EPS guidance is 7.3% higher.

Full-Year Guidance

April

January

Organic sales growth

4.5% to 7.5%

1% to 5%

Segment operating margin

20.5%

20%

Adjusted EPS

$6.45 to $6.75

$5.95 to $6.35

Free cash flow as a % of adjusted income

>105%

>100%

Data source: Rockwell Automation presentations.

If the argument holds that the stock price increase in 2017 is due to the near-term guidance hike, then it's good news, because it means there is an opportunity for investors to buy into Rockwell's long-term potential for IIOT-led growth. The best case for buying stock in Rockwell is based on the idea that growth prospects inherent in its IIOT-based solutions will mean its organic sales growth will be in excess of industry capital spending growth in the future.

Dara source: Rockwell Automation presentations.

Moreover, Rockwell is an asset-light business that tends to convert income to free-cash flow at a rate in excess of 100%. As such, on an enterprise value (market cap plus net debt) to free-cash-flow basis, the stock trades toward the bottom end of its peer group.

PH EV to Free Cash Flow (TTM) data by YCharts.

As mega-cap companies like General Electric and Honeywell continue to invest in order to create market awareness and adoption of IIOT solutions, it will increase investment in the kind of connected automation solutions offered by Rockwell. It's a compelling investment proposition and makes Rockwell attractive for long-term investors looking to catch a favorable industry trend.

Lee Samaha has no position in any stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool owns shares of General Electric. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.

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The Long-Term Trend That Makes Rockwell Automation an Awesome Buy - Motley Fool

Technological change has had more impact on earnings distribution than on demand for workers, study finds

June 27, 2017, 4:32 AM EDT

If your main worry over automation is losing your job, history suggests youll probably be just fine.

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After all, evena centuryof unprecedented technological advancement in transportation, production and communication hasnt caused labors share of national income to significantly budge.Economists David Autor and Anna Salomons reckon thats because the primary driver of employment has actually been population growth, despite all the emphasis placed in academic circles on howmachines augment human labor as well as why they will ultimately replace us anyway.

The bigger concern, they say, is how technological advances will affect earnings distribution.

Essentially, the argument that the duo puts forth is that as long as there have been humans, there have been jobs a topic Autor, who works at the MIT Department of Economics, previously exploredin a Ted Talk. Theysuggest that labor supply and final demand for goods and services are what actually determine the level of employment, as consuming workers have more and more needs.

Source: David Autor, Anna Salomons

Autors research together with Salomons, who works at Utrecht University in the Netherlands, will be presented Tuesday to central bankers from around the world atthe European Central Banks forum in Sintra, Portugal.

What has changed as a consequence of greater productivity throughtechnological advances is how jobs are remunerated.

Although the raw count of jobs availablein industrialized countries is roughly keeping pace with population growth, the economists write, many of the new jobs generated by an increasingly automated economy do not offer a stable, sustainable standard of living.

Simultaneously, many highly-paid occupations that are strongly complemented by advancing automation are out of reach to workers without a college education.

So if the problem isnt falling aggregate labor demand, but rather an increasingly skewed distribution of employment and ultimately earnings humans may need to re-direct the focus of what technology will mean for the future of work.

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Rising Inequality May Be the Real Risk of Automation - Bloomberg

The company had raised about $50 million from investors, including Venrock, Accel and Shasta Ventures, but it needed several hundred million dollars more to develop the market for its rear-facing camera, as well as a forward-facing camera that was in development. With about 75 employees, about 50 of whom had worked at Apple, the company was burning through cash at a rate that venture investors were unwilling to continue funding without a clear path to a hit product.

It was an ambitious and risky proposition from the beginning, with some great vision to try to revolutionize the automotive aftermarket, said David Pakman, a partner at Venrock who oversaw the Pearl investment. They are extraordinary product people, but none of us understood the market correctly.

Pearls failure was first reported by Axios.

Mr. Gardner said that Pearl held talks with several potential acquirers in the automotive industry but could not reach an agreement. It did find a company, American Road Products, to take over its RearVision backup camera so current customers will not be left in the lurch.

While the company has failed, its employees are already fielding job offers. Brian Latimer, a program manager at Pearl who had previously worked at Apple, said that the employees liked working as a team and that some of them were trying to sell themselves as a package to a new employer.

Were trying to keep the band together, he said. Were incredibly effective.

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Pearl Automation, Founded by Apple Veterans, Shuts Down - The ... - New York Times

The New South Wales government is looking into process automation for reducing response times in its datacentres, with director for GovDC Derek Paterson highlighting artificial intelligence (AI) as a way of delivering better services to its customers.

Speaking at the opening of enterprise cloud company ServiceNow's new Australian headquarters in Sydney last week, Paterson said he is looking for opportunities to automate processes that tend to take too long by removing the human element.

"How do I remove the human intervention there? There could have been something manual in regards to paper management, let's make that electronic, let's pack that into a form, let's just hook into another API," he explained.

"There is so much duplication when you do talk about organisations that have a long tenure. This gives you an opportunity to look at your end-to-end processes, inventories, and catalogues for example -- it gives you the opportunity to say, 'Well that's redundant, we don't need that anymore -- that's where the data comes from and that's where the opportunities come from," he added.

GovDC uses a ServiceNow-powered portal and service catalogue, hoping to boost public sector performance and efficiency. According to Paterson, such improvements come primarily through having less human intervention and more automation.

"Consider where the world is going to and the amount of data captured that can be processed and analysed using anything from AI to machine learning. Then imagine what you can do with that data," he said.

"To be able to pick trends around who is doing what and when they're doing it -- can we do it quicker? Can it make itself do it quicker? That's the world I want to be in."

Paterson also said exposing APIs between different technology vendors and products allows for that unification of end-to-end system implementations,

"Getting a tool like this that we've been using, gives us the opportunity to have a cohesive approach as a number of government departments that we work with are using something that an API can get hooked into," he added.

"It's not just on the platform point of view, it's actually on some of the technologies as well, so if you go into the public cloud there's an API for orchestration, if we want to move into a vendor world there's another API for that."

GovDC was officially launched in October 2013 to enable the consolidation of 130 government datacentres into two, with all state government agencies required to move into or migrate its IT into GovDC by August 2017.

The GovDC Marketplace launched in parallel to provide NSW agencies with a one-stop-shop for finding telecommunications, cloud, infrastructure, managed services, and software providers.

It was touted as a way of having IT services "readily available, on-tap, and as-a-service", rather than the traditional approach of buying hardware and software. The government also saw it as a way to give access to services some agencies previously could not afford.

The state government said previously the motivation behind shifting to the GovDC model was that at previous sites, back-up and disaster recovery systems were sometimes non-existent.

"Demand was growing at an unprecedented rate, chief information officers were entering contracts which included unused capacity to ensure continuity of expansion, contractual conditions were problematic, and risk allocation unfair, which resulted in hidden costs and risks to the state," the government said.

"No existing facility could meet projected government demand over the 15 years."

The state government said it experienced an overriding benefit by entering into a whole-of-government arrangement to minimise total costs, make contractual terms and costs more transparent, and guarantee reliability and service standards.

"Our priority is driving digital innovation to improve access to services for the citizens of NSW," Paterson said previously.

Originally posted here:

NSW GovDC eyes process automation in inter-government service delivery - ZDNet