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In the coming years, mobility solutionsor how we get from point A to point Bwill bridge the gap between ground and air transportationyes, that means flying cars. Technological advancements are transforming mobility for people and, leading to unprecedented change. Nand Kochhar, vice president of automotive and transportation for Siemens Software says this transformation extends beyond transportation to society in general.

The future of mobility is going to be multimodal to meet consumer demands, to offer a holistic experience in a frictionless way, which offers comfort, convenience, and safety to the end consumer. Thinking about transportation differently is part of a bigger trend, Kochhar notes: Look at few other trends like sustainability and emissions, which are not just a challenge for the automotive industry but to society as a whole.

The advances in technology will have benefits beyond shipping and commute improvementsthese technological advancements, Kochhar argues, are poised to drive an infrastructure paradigm shift that will bring newfound autonomy to those who, today, arent able to get around by themselves.

Kochhar explains, Just imagine people in our own families who are in that stage where they're not able to drive today. Now, you're able to provide them freedom.

Laurel Ruma: From Technology Review, I'm Laurel Ruma, and this is Business Lab, the show that helps business leaders make sense of new technologies coming out of the lab and into the marketplace. Our topic today is the future of mobility.

In 2011, Marc Andreessen famously said, "Software is eating the world." Now, 10 years later, we're examining how software is eating the car.

Consider this: today's cars have more software in them than mechanical parts. Autonomous vehicles are just one part of the story; the other is the rapid progression of artificial intelligence and how vehicles are being built. Two words for you: engineering, innovation.

My guest is Nand Kochhar, vice president of automotive and transportation for Siemens Software. He joined Siemens in 2020, after almost 30 years at Ford Motor Company, where he held a number of positions, including Global Safety Systems chief engineer and executive technical leader. This episode of Business Lab is produced in association with Siemens.

Welcome, Nand.

Nand Kochhar: Thank you, Laurel. It's good to join you.

Laurel: What does the future of mobility look like to you?

Nand: When you look at the automotive industry, it's going through an unprecedented transformation. It feels like it's setting itself for the next 100 years because the industry has been fairly stable in terms of technology innovations and has been progressing in a continuous improvement mode. Today it is going through a major shift. When we look at trends like the growth of the world population, that drives trends like urbanization, mega city concepts. With those trends, cities are getting crowded, and that poses a huge challenge for mobility solutions for people living in cities all over the globe.

The future of mobility is going to be multimodal to meet consumer demands, to offer a holistic experience in a frictionless way, which offers comfort, convenience, and safety to the end consumer. Look at few other trends like sustainability and emissions, which are not just a challenge for the automotive industry but to society as a whole. To support sustainability and the consumer trends we just touched on, the future of mobility looks to be connected, autonomous, have a shared mobility, and be electrifiedin other words, CASE as an acronym.

Future mobility solutions are crossing the boundaries of ground and air transportation with solutions like flying cars, vertical take-off and landing units (VTOLs), and drones for transporting goods. You can see how the future of mobility of both people and goods is transforming, and that's what I meant by the unprecedented change we are going through. Now we can talk about all aspects of CASE, which we just definedlet's start with electrification.

You see in the news that some governments around the world are banning the sale of internal combustion engine (ICE) vehicles by 2030. Then, you see huge investments by public and private sectors on electrified production systems. It is projected that 50% of automotive production will be electrified by 2030. It implies that while internal combustion engines will be around, there's going to be a mix of hybrid, plug-in hybrids, and pure battery electric vehicles coming into the market. You can see how the trends are transforming and how the mobility space is changing as a result of these trends.

Now, when we look at electrification, battery technologies continue to mature, and innovation is at the forefront. In fact, you could say innovation is at the highest level in my 30-plus years working in the automotive world. When you consider battery electric vehicles, obviously we started from lead acid batteries. In the Gen1 electric vehicles, we moved to lithium iron-based batteries, and were now moving into solid-state batteries and some other new innovations, which we are not even talking about.

As these innovations in battery technologies mature, some of the concerns of the early days of electric vehiclesfor example, the range anxiety, the long battery charging times those types of concerns are slowly going away. Now with investments in charging infrastructures and the ability to charge in less than 15 minutes, that is raising consumer acceptance at a heightened level. So, one of the trends on electrification is not even a trend: it's becoming more real. We can pick any country around the globe. There's huge investment. In the west part of the US, the infrastructure is already built in place from a charging standpoint. People are driving from city to city, let's say LA to San Francisco, and are getting more comfortable every year driving electrified vehicles.

Looking at another trendeveryone wants to be connected. They want to continue from home into their next home, which is their vehicle, or any transportation system. What they want is to make sure that whatever they're watching, if they're watching a Netflix movie in the house, they want to continue watching while they sit in the car. That is the level of connectivity demand from a consumer standpoint, because everyone is carrying an edge device. It could be a phone, or a computer, and everything is connectedeven in the vehicleas well as it is in the house. So, you can see a major trend from a connected standpoint.

Laurel: I think that's particularly helpful to set the stage that we're not just talking about what we think of as the traditional car. And just for our listeners, CASE is an acronym: connected cars, autonomous or automated driving, shared, and electric.

When we think about the auto industry, even though we are thinking about all the aspects of mobility, that shared aspect plays a big role, doesn't it? Because, as you mentioned, it could be an electric car, it could be a drone, or it could be a different vehicleespecially when we're thinking about industrial applications like delivery vehicles, for example. So, when we think about the mobility of the future, are you also deconstructing what a vehicle means?

Nand: Laurel, you touched on the point. When we talk about mobility, it's not just about about cars or trucks or SUVs anymore everything is well-connected. And what I said in the opening, one of the trends is multimodal mobility. So, when going from point A to point B, there are several modes of transportation, and consumers over the next decade or so are going to be using more and more of those multimodal modes. It could be taking a train up to a certain point, and then using an electric bicycle. It could be sharing a taxi after that point to get to the ultimate destination. All these things are driving a major shift in transportation, and also a major shift in the business models getting generated. It's redefining the entire industry and its ecosystem.

When we talk about ecosystem, it covers not only the cars and trucks and the traditional way of looking at things, it is also redefining the Uber and Lyft business models, for examplethose are the shared mobility operations all over the globe.

Laurel: When we do think about cars or vehicles, specifically, it's easy to center our orientation of what the future looks like with the autonomous car. We're not quite there yet. The fifth level of autonomous driving is total viability and full automation. What stage are we at now, and what can we look forward to the next year or two?

Nand: If you look at the Society of Automotive Engineers, (SAE) definitions of levels, Level 1 and Level 2 are partial automation. We are already there with a majority of the large-scale original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) providing their products. That is, you have automation in terms of the steering, or in the braking. Good examples could be advanced driver-assistance systems (ADAS) features like adaptive cruise control or autonomous emergency braking. Those things are happening, and they have been maturing over the last few years. The next level is Level 3that's where it gets a little murky. Some OEMs are claiming they're already at Level 3. Others are cautious about that from a safety standard standpoint. At Level 3, the system will warn you, and then the user has to take over in case of an emergency or if the system is not responding well.

Some companies are claiming we are already at Level 3, and that's in that stage of migration where it depends on what country and what company youre talking about. But you could say from a technology standpoint, we are at Level. Then we come to Level 4. Level 4 is where you have to define a design domain, but everything else is working autonomouslyso you add some constraints. We have several pilots projects around the world at Level 4. From a technology standpoint, you could say we have Level 4 running on public roads. I'll use examples in the U.S. In Phoenix, Waymo has pilot programs for shared rides, and recently they announced they're going to be doing similar things in San Francisco. In another example, the Siemens Mobility group has been working with Bahn Hamburg in Germany, and there's been a lot of collaborations for shared ride pilots that would be considered at Level 4.

So, from a technology standpoint, you could say we are at Level 4 running in the environment as well. Now, of course, the reason it's not a mass deployment is because you have to take into consideration all the other things like public policies and safety standards. For example, in the US, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) declares what is safe and what those standards are. As things mature, you'll see that Level 4 will become more and more dominant. Level 4 autonomy has been achieved not only in cars and trucks on public roads, but also in the trucking industry. Level 5, as you said, is a bit further away. That's where you need even more fail-safe technologies. Again, companies are continuing to make progress on that, but that's where we are in the levels of autonomy today.

Laurel: Could you share some examples of how autonomous vehiclesnot just carswill be integrated into our lives in the next few years? What does that look like as you leave your house to go to work?

Nand: That's a very good question. Were starting to see with the two examples in Phoenix and San Francisco how these vehicles are getting integrated into our lives, as well as with the Siemens Mobility, the shuttle I mentioned in Hamburg. So, you can already imagine in a given city, the shuttle is being run autonomously. I think there's a pilot program at the University of Colorado. So, within using the school system as a boundary, there are autonomous shuttles running. If you take that a little further, when these things mature, well be running robo-taxis. In other words, you don't have a driver, a human driver or a safety driver, behind these cars they are being operated as a fleet. So, the business models for companies like Uber and Lyft, or whoever else they collaborate with, that's going to change and redefine itself. So, that's a huge shift.

On personal front, I would say people will become comfortable dropping their kids at a soccer game or at school using robo-taxis, so it's going to become integrated in our lives. What I really get excited about is, as the aging population gets restrictions on driving, or driving conditions or driving late at night, or people who are not able to drive today, this level of autonomy offers a total freedom. On the human side, that gets me excited and keeps me going on working on technologies, because it's freedom to travel for all.

In a way, I could say it redefines Henry Ford's original vision of providing affordable transportation to everyone, which the company advertised back in 1925to open the highways to mankind. Level 4 autonomy will open the highways to mankind in a totally different wayit will offer total freedom, and that's a huge change and a mega shift from where we are today.

Laurel: I love that idea, the autonomous vehicle providing autonomy to folks who don't have it currently. That is really a massive societal shift.

Nand: Just imagine people in our own families who are in that stage where they're not able to drive today. Now, you're able to provide them freedom. It takes the burden off you to go pick up someone or drop them off, because you're confident these technologies are going to work. So, that's the societal trend we are talking about.

Laurel: Isn't that interesting, because here we are innovating with how vehicles are being developed, and decades ago, Toyota developed the Toyota Way philosophy, which is the iterative process that became crucial to the industry and allowed for rethinking and remodeling at different times during the development of the vehicle. How do you think about product development now in 2021?

Nand: One of the things you touched on in the opening was about how software is eating the world. We have a similar saying: software is eating the car. So, when you talk about software, one word comes to mind from a product development prospective: agile product development. So, agile methodologies have been used in the software world quite extensively for past few years. The same methodologies are now migrating into agile requirement's management, into agile product development requirements and changing the concepts of design into generative design, as an example. So, it's not just the software. Software on its own can't deliver the promises we are talking about, autonomous, and electrification, and shared mobility, etc. It has to work hand-in-hand with the corresponding hardware, and that hardware is becoming more electronicin the vehicle itself and outside of the vehicle.

Let's go even further into hardware and software working together. You have a lot of embedded software in the vehicle, and that embedded software is also connected to the rest of the infrastructure. So, that's what we mean when we talk about vehicle-to-vehicle infrastructure, or vehicle to infrastructure of the city traffic system or the lighting system, as an example. So, cars are becoming computers on wheels. And now, one thing comes to mind when you're going through a major shift like that: you need a new electrical architecture, you need a new vehicle architecture, and these things have to work hand-in-hand with the software. So, what happens as a result is that complexity goes through the roof. The automotive business is complex to begin with, but now with this shift happening, complexity is raised to an enormous level. And that's where I think we come into play from a digitalization perspective, that we want to convert complexity into a competitive advantage by offering solutions for digitalization for the automotive industry and its ecosystem.

Laurel: How is product development accelerated with simulation? Because that is something you need to have when you talk about that added complexity, especially when you're starting to integrate artificial intelligence, right?

Nand: I'm glad you brought up simulation, its one of the areas I've been really passionate about for the last 30-plus years. Simulation has become the only way, in my mind, to solve the problems of today and to get the industry ready for tomorrow. The reason I say that is, in the example of autonomous vehicles, if you have to prove an autonomous vehicle works safely, you'll have to drive billions of miles in a physical test environment. Obviously, that's not possible. That will take an enormous number of years.

So, simulation becomes critical in solving what we call edge cases, what the autonomous vehicles are going to go through, so that you minimize the number of physical tests you will have to run. The majority of the development of autonomous vehicles and the sign off you can do in a simulation environment. That's an extreme example of how simulation is becoming the heart of future product development, not only in the product development, but also in manufacturing and in the service piece of it.

Then you go even further. Within product development design simulation, and the testing aspects of it, simulation again becomes very important. The test and the simulation have to correlate so the engineers can build their confidence in ultimately signing off on their vehicles, or any product for that matter. So, you see simulation and software becoming a central piece of product developmentand, in my mind, maybe a strong statement, but the only way to go forward. Any company that is not into simulations will be left behind, in my perspective.

Laurel: How does artificial intelligence play into the simulation part of it as well as the entire product life cycle? Because now there's no literal drawing board to go back to. If you need to make a change, you tweak it within the simulation and the generative design then follows, correct? Or vice versa. But you're constantly making those slight adjustments, and then you can just test it again in real time?

Nand: That's right. Artificial intelligence, others also call it machine learning, plays an important role in our accelerated product development way of doing things. Industry always has challenges to deliver, at the end of the day, quality, cost and timing. You need to deliver these things to sustain business today and in the future while you're continuing to innovate, while you bring in new technologies, new vehicle types, etc.

When you look at the end-to-end processwhat we call a digital thread, a closed-loop process from end-to-end, from concept, to design, to manufacturing, to service in a closed-loop mannerI think artificial intelligence plays a big role to improve the quality on an ongoing basis and to provide real-time feedback to improve either on the performance or on the quality aspects, or to optimize for cost.

We can chunk this out into several pieces because AI and machine learning, and in some places even IoT, go hand in hand. Let's use a manufacturing example. In today's modern factory, the factory is equipped with many sensors which are generating data, even at a machine level or at an assembly level. That data needs to be sent somewhere. In our case, we feed it to the cloud, where the information is processed and results are sent back to inform decisions for the next part coming off the line or next car coming off the line as a quality improvement, in this example.

So, you see AI or machine learning is playing an important role in all three aspects: design, manufacturing and service.

Laurel: How can AI or machine learning be used with the data that's collected from autonomous vehicles to create safer vehicles? Now that we're out of the lab and into the streets, what kind of real-time feedback do you think is going to be possible?

Nand: Some of this is already being done today. For pioneers in the technologies, in companies like Tesla, for example, they're running what's called the ghost modethat is, vehicles are running on the road to collect data. Obviously, they've got vision systems or perception through the cameras, radar, and they've also got many sensors on the vehicle itself. That data is being collected in normal driving conditions. And in case there is an incident, that data gives you an entire picture of what was going on, what speed things were running, what were the surrounding vehicles, what were the weather conditions, and so forth.

So, that data is being fed live, or sent back to the design communities, and that's how you can learn what algorithms need to be tweaked, how we need to modify those based on that information. So, there's a continuous improvement in the algorithms and the decision-making through those algorithms, which is all based on AI.

Laurel: What lessons can industries outside automotive learn from innovations in vehicles and mobility?

Nand: There are a lot of lessons. Across industries, theres a lot in common, especially in the manufacturing arena, whether you take an aerospace, an automotive or even a space industryyou can even look at industrial machinery, heavy equipment, or consumer product companies. The first common fundamental is around the technology. A lot of times, we end up using the same or similar technologies, and they form the basis. Tto be honest, even for automotive, we take learnings from farm equipment, as an example, or heavy equipment industries, because some of those are in a constrained environment, and autonomy and electrification is in those industries equally prevalent.

There are other areas of basics, let's say materials engineering. That is common. So lightweighting is always a huge pressure on the automotive industry because in electric vehicles, you want to increase the range; in internal combustion engines, you want to increase the fuel economy. And for that, lightweighting is one of the big factors, whether it's composite materials or whether it's any other exotic material. Aerospace has the same challengethey want to make the planes lighter.

We talked about the software. Again, software in the electronics and semiconductor industry, it is predominant. Theyve been using it for years, and they are in leadership positions from a technology perspective. Today's modern car, and the future car, is heavily dependent on semiconductors and chips, and you can see the learnings can come from that industry into automotiveone of the unique things about automotive is that it's the most complex from a mass production standpoint. It's a very complex business, managing the entire supply chain.

Our supply chains have been global for many years, and they're going to continue to be global. Lesson from managing all those supply chains can be applied across other industries. There's a lot of applications from basic materials research that can be applied to electronics and semiconductors, from software, mass production techniques, supply chainsall these lessons learned can go back and forth across industries.

Laurel: Yeah, that is really interesting, especially when we think about this major shift in the automotive industry, and the vehicle and mobility industry, and how that will trickle down through everyone else as well.

Nand: I touched on the technology itself. When it comes to processes, whether it's digitalization or what we call model-based systems engineering, that approach is, again, applicable across industries. It's not just for automotive. It can apply to many industries.

Laurel: What do you see for the future of the mobility industry in five to 15 years down the line? What do you think we can expect in the consumer market and within the industry itself?

Nand: Thats a very good question. I'll touch on the acronym CASE that you expanded on: connected, autonomous, shared mobility, and electrification. Those trends are no longer going to be trends in 15 years. We going to be living through those. Those are going to be realities in my mind, in five to 15 years. We can chunk this out even further, let's say in a shorter timeframe; in five years, the electrification we touched on is going to be very mature. By 2030, as I said, 50% of the automotive production is going to be electrified. For 2030, to hit that number of 50%, that means products need to be out there.

We already see that. Every major OEM has billions of dollars now invested, and have made announcements about how many electrified products they're bringing on the road. Every year, that number continues to grow, especially when you take a look at that globally. It's not a trend just in the developed nations, in the Western part of the world or in Europe. In countries like China, that trend is at an even faster pace on electrification, as an example.

The consumer today demands to be connected. They are connected through their devices. They're going to expect the same not only in their home, in their hands, in the cell phones, but also in the cars. Autonomous, because it's connected, it is going to offer a level of autonomy because vehicles will be connected to the infrastructure. Vehicles will be connected to the other vehicles on the road. So, the connectedness trend is going to continue to grow.

Autonomy is an interesting one. As I said, we are already at a Level 2 for sure, by a majority of the industry providers, Level 3 by some, and you're going to see in five to 10 years, the Level 4 maturing to a shape that some of the things we touched on in terms of robo-taxis are going to be real. In a 15-year timeframe, you could be looking at the ability to drive under even a Level 5 type of condition.

So, I clearly see all of those trends coming into fruition, and they create new business models. They allow a lot of technology companies to enter the traditional OEMs and guess what: the traditional OEMs then have to continue to innovate because they not only have to compete and offer products in the electrified and autonomous range, but they also have to continue to have their current business, which is the internal combustion engines. They'll be going hand in hand. So, current OEMs have an even a bigger challenge than startup companies or the companies that are working only on electrified or only on autonomous. They don't have the legacy stuff coming with that. Well see all these things, and we'll have policies, and we'll have government standards. All those, hopefully, will be shaping to a point that these things will become real in a five to 15-year timeframe.

Laurel: So many possibilities. I can't wait to take a robo-taxi. Thank you very much, Nand, for this fantastic conversation on the Business Lab.

Nand: Thank you, Laurel. I really appreciate it. It's an honor to be talking to you.

Laurel: That was Nand Kochhar, vice president of Automotive and Transportation for Siemens Software, whom I spoke with from Cambridge, Massachusetts, the home of MIT and MIT Technology Review, overlooking the Charles River. That's it for this episode of Business Lab. I'm your host, Laurel Ruma. I'm the director of Insights, the custom publishing division of MIT Technology Review. We were founded in 1899, at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and you can find us in print, on the web, and at events each year around the world. For more information about us and the show, please check out our website, at technologyreview.com. This show is available wherever you get your podcasts. If you enjoyed this episode, we hope you'll take a moment to rate and review us. Business Lab is a production of MIT Technology Review. This episode was produced by Collective Next. Thanks for listening.

This podcast was produced by Insights, the custom content arm of MIT Technology Review. It was not written by MIT Technology Reviews editorial staff.

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Robo-taxis are headed for a street near you - MIT Technology Review

Ryan Coyne, vice president of New York-based solution provider Overview Technology Solutions, makes it very clear to his customers that its important he be proactive, not reactive. And that applies to not just the products the company installs, but the conversations he has concerning IT.

Coyne and Marc Menzies, president and CTO of Overview Technology Solutions, spoke at CRN parent The Channel Companys NexGen+ conference in Anaheim, Calif., about how having quarterly business reviews (QBRs) can unearth hidden revenue opportunities.

A QBR is not a sales pitch, even though it also is, Coyne said. It is not a social gathering, even though it also is. Its really about wins, challenges and opportunities, identifying those, highlighting them and addressing them together. This is a community approach.

You have to have conversations when nothing is the matter, he added. You cant have those difficult conversations during an emergency. Its supposed to be on a good day when nothing is the matter that youre really talking about and dissecting the business relationship with technology and how to get there.

Its also important, he said, to have multiple department heads at the meeting, not just the technicians or CEOs.

Coyne said a phrase he uses frequently is, And thats exactly why. He said when used correctly, it can grab someones attention, get somebody to attend a meeting or ease their frustrations.

Theyre prepared to have the conversation, meaning they have a solution and all of us are very quick on our feet, but saying that disarms them, Menzies said.

To encourage those to join a business review meeting, the executives said to include an agenda in the calendar invite that teases new information and bullet points the topics that will be discussed.

The agenda and its objectives are important because they lay out what you are looking to get out of the call that is in service of the customer. Menzies said its also important to educate the customer on new products and solutions.

The QBR for me became my method of control over both the organization and the client relationship, Menzies said. If I did not do that, I would not be where we are now because we like visibility.

Statistics and data points can be helpful during the call, according to the executives.

So much of IT is the iceberg below the water, Coyne said. [Customers] have no idea what goes into so much of IT, and they shouldnt have to. Theyre paying to be not burdened with what happens below the water.

Be engaging with the customer during these quarterly or monthly review meetings, Coyne said. Ask open-ended questions, let them tell you stories about their business, ask if they feel fully supported, ask about their pain points, preview new products and have an action plan if they come to you with a concern or issue.

My favorite quote from Henry Ford is, If I had asked people what they want, they would have said faster horses, Coyne said.

Rexx Igunbor, owner of PC Lan Services, a Milwaukee-based solution provider, said his biggest takeaway from the talk was about having those conversations with his customers.

Even though he doesnt see customers face to face, he enjoys regular meetings to understand their challenges and needs.

If you dont have the conversation, you dont know anything about the business, he said. You know about providing technology but how relevant are you if you dont know anything about their business and the challenges that theyre going through?

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Overview Technology Solutions: Have Meetings With Customers 'When Nothing Is The Matter' - CRN

BOSTON, Oct. 28, 2021 /PRNewswire/ --Thought Industries, the world's #1 platform for customer learning management (CLM), today announced the completion of a successful third quarter of 2021, which included more than 50 percent sales growth over last year. Other notable milestones included the unveiling of Thought Industries' next-generation software platform, the Customer Learning Cloud, along with an industry-first on-demand center of excellence and the expansion of the executive leadership team. These advancements and growth reflect the increasing recognition that software-driven customer learning programs are critical to retaining customers and driving additional revenue.

Thought Industries also added several new customers, including General Assembly, a leading source for learning programs that span a variety of formats, from fully instructor-led classes to asynchronous, self-paced courses. The company also provides training, staffing and career transition support, and partners with employers to help companies assess, source and transform talent.

"We were looking for a platform that could drive best-in-class learning experiences for a wide spectrum of blended learning needs, andfuel our competitive advantage in global skills-based, personalized learning, assessment and certification," said Danielle Chircop, Chief Product Officer, General Assembly. "The Thought Industries platform offers the ideal blend of features to support personalized and customized learning, from multi language and translation capabilities to support for international data privacy and security standards. These featurescombined with the platform's scalability and Thought Industries' deep bench of expertisewill be especially key as we accelerate our international expansion and chart our future as the industry leader in skills-based learning."

Notable Q3 highlights for Thought Industries include:

"The year 2021 isshaping up to be a pivotal point in the evolution of the customer learning management category, and we're proud to be leading the way," said Barry Kelly, CEO, Thought Industries. "Our Q3 milestones exemplify our commitment to continuing to push the boundaries of what's possible for customer learning programs."

About Thought IndustriesThought Industriesprovides the world's #1 software platform for customer learning management (CLM). Industry leaders use CLM to grow revenue, increase customer loyalty, and ensure customer success across technology, manufacturing, healthcare and other industries with complex products and training requirements. Thought Industries was founded in 2014 around the core belief that online learning experiences should be modern, intuitive, engaging and scalable. Headquartered in Boston, Thought Industries has offices across North America and Europe.

SOURCE Thought Industries

http://www.thoughtindustries.com

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Thought Industries Third Quarter Marks Debut of Advanced Customer Education Technology, Successful Industry Conference and Record Business Growth -...

BURLINGTON, Mass.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Qstream, the global leader in microlearning technology, has been honored with the silver Chief Learning Officers (CLO) Learning in Practice Award for Excellence in Technology Innovation. Qstream was recognized for its pioneering microlearning platform, which takes a modern, scientific approach to how knowledge is delivered to a distributed workforce, and for its customer Providences demonstrated results using the platform.

Since 2003, the CLO Learning in Practice Awards have recognized learning leaders who demonstrate excellence in the design and delivery of employee development programs through a combination of qualities such as leadership, vision, business acumen, and strategic alignment. In addition, the Excellence in Technology Innovation award category recognizes providers that have rolled out an innovative learning technology for a client.

Learning is a critical component of professional development, employee experience, and the success of any organization. Qstreams microlearning platform, which delivers knowledge through scenario-based testing and spaced repetition, increases engagement, knowledge retention, and proficiency compared to traditional learning models. It also empowers business managers with powerful real-time analytics on employees learning needs and skill levels to know where additional coaching may be needed.

Providence is one of many organizations that has adopted Qstream to deliver engaging learning and training programs to its distributed workforce and has seen drastic improvements in how that learning is retained and how skills and behaviors are applied appropriately on the job.

My vision of learning and development for Providence is to engage, empower, and inspire our caregivers so that they can grow into their purpose and calling, said Darci Hall, VP and Chief Learning Officer, Providence. Our check-the-box approach to learning was clearly not meeting this vision, which is why we started with Qstream two years ago. Qstream enables us to personalize learningincluding very complex healthcare compliance trainingfor our distributed workforce, so each caregiver can learn anytime, anywhere, and deliver better patient outcomes. After completing even our first enterprise launch of Qstream, we increased learner engagement and satisfaction, confirmed proficiency increases through real-time analytics, and slashed implementation costs by over $6 million in our first course alone.

Were honored to be recognized for our microlearning technology innovation and work with Providence in this years CLO Learning in Practice Award, said Jason Mundy, Vice President, Marketing, Qstream. We couldnt do it without the hard work and cutting-edge ideas from our team here at Qstream or our customers across a variety of industries who are equally committed to making learning more effective for all.

Winners were announced at the 2021 CLO Learning in Practice Awards Ceremony on Oct. 13. For more information about Qstream, visit here.

About Qstream

Qstream is a microlearning solution proven by science and in practice to boost learner performance through knowledge reinforcement, engagement, and analytics. 600+ organizations rely on Qstream to build high-performance teams by delivering a microlearning experience that reinforces job-critical knowledge in minutes a day, exposing a real-time view of performance readiness.

Link:

Qstream Wins Chief Learning Officer's Learning in Practice Award for Technology Innovation - Business Wire

Immersive technology remains an unfamiliar term to many, however, it should certainly not be considered of value only to the IT department. I like to think of immersive technology as magic unicorn dust when it comes to empowering better decision-making, bringing people together more effectively and improving business efficiencies.

So, what is it and how can it be used to transform your business?

In short, Virtual Reality (VR), Augmented Reality (AR) or Extended Reality (XR) are technologies for experiencing data and information in the same ways we do the real world; they engage more of our senses, let us use our innate spatial and situational awareness, and activate the visual processing centers of our brains.

They explode information beyond the flat 2-dimensional bounds of the screen, and wrap it around us, immersing us in it and allowing us to understand it in new ways.

Immersive technologies powerfully unlock the value of data by enabling us to contextually visualize information from multiple data feeds in relation to their environment: transforming information into insight. They allow businesses to digitally represent spaces, assets and products in order to explore relationships, pioneer new concepts, optimize processes, and develop a competitive edge like never before.

With these new capabilities, businesses can enhance operations, meet environmental targets and drive higher efficiencies. You might be saying all this sounds great, but how does it work?

By looking to data-rich digital twins that provide a detailed and accessible visual recreation of a facility - for instance, a building, office, road, train platform or mine - organizations gain accurate and volumetric versions of real-world counterparts. These twins are combined with data from multiple sources that allow businesses to access, understand, and share information using immersive technologies.

These digital twins can be used to optimize business operations and improve efficiencies - allowing leaders to enable better collaboration, automate and test existing processes, and realize insights. Users can explore and interact with actionable data to test operations and run different scenarios in a way that anyone in a business is able to understand.

When data is accessible in an intuitive three-dimensional medium, users can comprehend the information more easily, be more engaged, and make better-informed decisions.

Digital twins are particularly effective in the built environment where buildings can be replicated virtually and analyzed for faults and discrepancies through the collection of both historical and real-time data. These twins are a valuable tool in troubleshooting, and help organizations make better-informed decisions based on accurate high-quality data.

And by using immersive technology, businesses have high-fidelity remote access to virtualized sites from anywhere in the world; saving time, resources and funds, while reducing the safety risks of site visits and the environmental impact of travel.

Speaking of environmental impacts, sustainability and ESG remain at the forefront of the corporate agenda. In fact, as of 2019, it is actually a legal requirement for businesses to report and provide full disclosure of the impact their business has on the environment. The UNs recent dire climate report has created an even greater sense of urgency.

Organizations setting targets to advance ESG goals without a data-driven understanding of their status quo, are setting themselves up for failure. Its wonderful that so many businesses have publicly stated their aims to cut their carbon impact by say 2030, but to actually realize this, corporations must know their starting point.

Fortunately, technology can provide organizations with a clear data baseline, and accurate knowledge of their spaces, which can then be used to track and monitor all future activity. Importantly, a reliable baseline offers a holistic snapshot against which pollutant levels and other environmental impacts can be measured, and used to set achievable sustainability targets and effectively report on them.

By implementing an environmental emissions data capture device, a multi-sensor unit called Tracer'', businesses gain an accurate picture of carbon emissions, pollutants and particulate matter in the environment. Tracer captures not only the baseline status, but ongoing data over time, so a company can quantify their progress towards net zero, and track the impact of remediation processes and technologies.

Once an accurate baseline is established, it can then be integrated into a digital twin which will project a realistic representation of the past and present state of space - allowing businesses to forecast or predict future potential scenarios.

During the pandemic, remote access and management of spaces became paramount to many businesses. With the help of immersive technology, organizations have been able to adapt to a suddenly transformed business world.

A digital twin is a key element of a remote-first strategy - it allows you to communicate, manage and automate your processes. Companies can maintain a sense of physical presence even in the face of mandated isolation and are still able to share and explore their space with anyone - from internal stakeholders to suppliers to end customers and users.

Weve seen lockdown measures significantly accelerate the roll-out of immersive technology, forcing businesses to re-examine outdated approaches to work, sales and services.

Weve also seen much greater trend toward virtualization, remote work, and reliance on digital tools as businesses change tactics and look to immersive technology to provide solutions. From facilitating remote collaboration to aiding visualization of data, the use of AR, XR and VR has accelerated among a multitude of industries during the pandemic.

Over the past 18 months many businesses have been forced to rapidly overhaul their legacy processes, particularly as sustainability and flexible working have become such dominant forces. Now in 2021, immersive technologies are at the forefront of innovation and companies looking to remain competitive must recognize the need to invest in it. From retail to manufacturing, communication to infrastructure, the extent to which immersive technology is pioneering a new business landscape is simply outstanding.

The combination of immersive technology and volumetric data provides businesses with powerful new tools to navigate these challenging times; allowing them to better understand where their businesses are, where theyre going, and how best to get there.

Greg Roach, Chief Technology Officer, Spinview

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Immersive technology: Could it be the secret weapon to transforming business efficiencies? - ITProPortal

A new study warns that if net zero emission targets are to be met, industry must considerably speed up investments in green technology that would allow the manufacturing of materials using renewable energy. National strategies for replacing fossil fuels with renewable energy sources will need an integrated approach to material production and energy use.

In order to achieve net zero greenhouse gas emissions by mid-21st century, it is essential to ensure that no electricity will be produced from fossil fuels. Currently, in industrial countries, steel manufacturing accounts for a tenth of CO2 emissions, and aluminium production three percent of all CO2 emissions.

Delays in replacing existing steel and aluminium manufacturing capacity represent a crucial lock in constraint on achieving net zero, explained study lead author Dr. Alan Grainger, a senior lecturer in Global Change and Policy at the University of Leeds

Humanitys overwhelming dependence on steel, which accounts for 94 percent of all metal production, and the size of new aluminium manufacturing capacity in China and the Persian Gulf, are a huge blockage that cannot be ignored. The UK Net Zero Strategy, published last week, recognizes this problem, but lacks detail on how to tackle it.

According to the researchers, governments should strengthen international carbon reporting standards for energy-intensive industries, so that levels of CO2 emissions can be measured in a more transparent way in order to asses progress towards national net zero targets. Furthermore, the carbon prices should increase to make alternative sources more economically viable and attractive.

However, cutting CO2 emissions is only half of the challenge. To achieve net zero we need to remove as much as CO2 as we put into the atmosphere. Its like those old greengrocers scales with carbon emissions on the one side and carbon removals on the other. We can take emissions out of the atmosphere by planting new forests and deploying carbon capture and storage technology.

If global forest expansions are delayed and new green technology with low CO2 emissions are not urgently introduced, the net zero emission targets set for the middle of the century will not be achieved, thus pushing the Earth one more step towards a climate-related catastrophe.

The study is published in the journal Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability.

By Andrei Ionescu, Earth.com Staff Writer

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Green technology is urgently needed to save the climate - Earth.com

NEW YORK, Oct. 28, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Nym Health, a leader in autonomous medical coding, today announced the appointment of Michael Finke to its Board of Directors. Finke has more than 25 years of experience in developing and bringing machine learning, natural language and speech understanding technologies to the healthcare market, with a focus on reducing the clinical documentation burden for clinicians while automating revenue cycle processes.

Finke co-founded M*Modal in 2001, a provider of cloud-based, conversational AI-powered clinical documentation and clinical improvement solutions. Under his leadership, more than 5,000 hospitals adopted M*Modal's clinical intelligence technology and services portfolio, supporting close to 400,000 physicians. Following 3M's acquisition of M*Modal in 2019, Finke served as Vice President of 3M Health Information Systems and led the company's Clinician Solutions division.

"We're honored to welcome Michael to Nym's Board of Directors as we prepare for this pivotal next stage of growth," said Amihai Neiderman, Nym's CEO and Co-Founder. "Michael brings deep domain expertise, which will be invaluable to our team as we continue expanding and enriching our platform's capabilities to meaningfully reduce the administrative burden on clinicians and other healthcare stakeholders, and, in turn, enable them to spend more time with patients, providing quality, personalized care."

Powered by its cutting-edge clinical language understanding (CLU) engine and explainable AI capabilities, Nym's platform improves the speed and precision of medical billing, reducing coding-related costs for healthcare providers. The Company's solution for revenue cycle management (RCM) transforms provider narratives in the free text within patient charts, turning them into accurate and compliant ICD-10-CM and CPT reimbursement codes in a matter of seconds, without any human intervention.

"What drew me to Nym is their relentless focus on enabling a better, deeper understanding of the patient's story and their overall momentum in the market," said Finke. "The unique approach Nym has taken in building truly explainable AI capabilities is key to overcoming industry challenges related to confidence in the consistent accuracy and quality of AI, which have previously prevented healthcare providers from implementing the technology at scale."

Earlier in his career, Finke served as Co-Founder and CTO of Interactive Systems (later acquired by Lernout and Hauspie) and held positions at IBM Research, the University of Karlsruhe in Germany and Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh. He earned his bachelor's and master's degrees in computer science from the University of Karlsruhe and has authored over 100 academic papers. Additionally, Finke holds more than 20 patents in speech recognition, natural language understanding, clinical documentation and coding.

About Nym HealthNym Health is a leader in autonomous medical coding. Combining computational linguistics and clinical intelligence, Nym's innovative approach to revenue cycle management (RCM)is reducing costs and improving payment cycles for healthcare providers across the United States. Along with over 96 percent accuracy, Nym's technology delivers comprehensive, audit-ready, traceable codes for full transparency. The Nym platform processes over three million charts annually in more than 90 emergency department and urgent care settings.Nym has offices in New York and Tel Aviv, Israel, and is backed by Addition, GV, Bessemer Venture Partners, Dynamic Loop Capital, Lightspeed and Tiger Global, as well as angel investors, including Zach Weinberg and Nat Turner. To learn more about Nym, visit nym.health.

Media ContactNicole PariserNym Health[emailprotected]

SOURCE Nym Health

nymhealth.com

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Healthcare Technology and Revenue Cycle Management Thought Leader Michael Finke Joins Nym Health's Board of Directors - PRNewswire

Smart technologies can be found in more homes across America. In fact, around two-thirds of households have some type of smart home product such as a virtual assistant or a digital doorbell.

Despite the widespread popularity of these life-changing technological tools, homeowners are missing out on some of the most important smart home tools of all, according to a new survey conducted by Nationwide.

Here's the technology that American homeowners are missing -- which could save them thousands if they'd embrace it.

While smart home technology is incredibly popular, only 7% of homeowners who have these types of products have devices in their homes that are designed to predict and prevent water leaks, according to Nationwide's research. This technology includes smart sensors that are able to monitor the flow of water and detect leaks.

Not using this type of technology is a major missed opportunity because water leaks are both a common source of damage and a leading cause of expensive repairs due to the destruction that can result from a leak.

Because homeowners don't have these devices installed, they are at greater risk of being forced to make a home insurance claim, which would likely raise their future premiums. Not to mention they may also be left dealing with the hassle of repairs as well as out-of-pocket costs such as their insurance deductible.

"The No. 1 cause of avoidable claims for Nationwide homeowners insurance policyholders is non-weather related water loss, with most of those claims coming from pipe, fixture, or water heater leaks," said Beth Riczko, president of personal lines at Nationwide. "With the Insurance Information Institute reporting the average water damage and freezing event causes more than $11,000 in damage, homeowners should consider these types of sensors to provide an extra layer of protection."

Many homeowners don't have these devices installed because they are unaware of them. Just 27% of survey respondents said they were familiar with this type of new smart sensor. Cost and privacy concerns are also possible explanations for not having these sensors installed, but the upfront cost may be well worth paying, as installing this kind of smart technology could potentially help homeowners save significantly on their insurance premiums over time.

"Participating in Nationwides smart home program saves policyholders about 4% on their homeowners insurance premiums, but the savings are even greater when you consider the additional benefits of having a smart home device," said Riczko. "Alleviating the stress of having to get major damage fixed, reducing repair times, easing the anxiety you feel every time you leave the house -- that kind of peace of mind is priceless."

The good news is, Nationwide's survey found most homeowners would be willing to install the devices if they were aware of this opportunity to save, with 64% indicating they'd use insurance-based smart home technology if doing so reduced their insurance costs. Homeowners may also be able to qualify for both rebates and discounts on this type of smart home device, which could eliminate cost as a concern, too.

Anyone who owns a home should have a conversation with their insurance agent about whether a smart home device could save them money -- and if there are opportunities to qualify for a rebate to buy one. Installing this technology is simple, and the benefits could be well worth the cost and effort.

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Only 7% of Homeowners Use This Technology That Could Save Them Thousands - Motley Fool

Robotic process automation, or RPA, is a technology with an identity problem. The name is both dry enough to make the eyes glaze over and confusing enough to obscure precisely what it is or might do.

As a result, very few people outside of the IT industry are familiar with the concept. Yet this is a technology expected to have a colossal impact on the working lives of pretty much all office-based employees, and at least an indirect impact on everyone else.

According to the latest projections from analyst house Gartner, the RPA market is set to be worth almost $2 billion this year - and many times more than that by the middle of the decade. And by the end of 2022, 90% of large companies will have deployed the technology in some way or form.

The sell is very simple: RPA is supposed to help businesses reduce the amount of time and money spent on repetitive manual tasks and, in turn, liberate employees from tedious administration. So, whats the catch?

Although RPA has been around for two decades now, the industry has experienced a major surge over the last few years, catalyzed by the need to drive efficiencies during the pandemic. The largest pure-play vendor right now is UiPath, with a revenue of $607 million in fiscal 2021, followed by Automation Anywhere and Blue Prism, but other IT firms are building RPA functionality into their products too.

In the simplest terms, RPA is about programming software to complete tasks by following a set of instructions. These units of software are referred to variously as digital workers, software robots and automation assistants.

A software bot is a configurable software designed to perform a task by learning, mimicking, and then executing rules-based business processes. It interacts with other applications and software systems to complete these business processes, just like a human would, explained Prince Kohli, CTO at Automation Anywhere.

In theory, RPA allows employees to spend less time punching data into Excel spreadsheets, processing documents and pulling information from CRM systems, and more time fulfilling the aspects of their roles that computers are (currently) unequipped to handle. These bots enable employees to take the robotic out of their work, Kohli added.

Although its easy to imagine how all businesses could benefit from the ability to automate tasks in this way, the earliest adopters have typically been large enterprises hailing from sectors required to perform the most repetitive administration, such as insurance, utilities, financial services and healthcare.

More recently, however, with the addition of artificial intelligence (AI) and low-code solutions to the mix, RPA deployments have become easier to configure and smart enough to handle more difficult assignments. Paul Maguire, Senior VP EMEA & APAC at software firm Appian, says these kinds of supporting technologies will create new use cases and bring RPA to a wider audience.

While RPA is great for task automation, its not appropriate for everything, he told us. This is where hyperautomation has a role to play, by combining technologies with people in a single workflow.

Implemented alone, RPA bots can be fast and relatively inexpensive, but they cannot handle exceptions or change. AI is a powerful tool to help collect and analyse information. It can also turn unstructured content into structured data to sort, prioritize, and make suggestions on best next-step actions for better decisions.

Nonetheless, however, RPA companies are to some extent struggling to communicate the benefits of their services to workers and businesses, who have learned to be suitably suspicious of grandiose promises.

The most common fear is that RPA will make a proportion of the workforce redundant, by automating functions currently fulfilled by human workers. Unsurprisingly, RPA vendors say this is a misconception, a product of pop culture representations of robots and AI, but it could be argued that the vendors themselves are equally to blame. Automation is almost always pitched as a way to free up staff to deliver value in new and creative ways, but the message is rarely more specific than that.

It is widely accepted that the rise of automation will change the configuration of the workforce and the day-to-day activities of employees, but there is some debate as to the extent of this change.

The picture painted by the vendors is that RPA will play a supporting role. Instead of eliminating jobs, RPA will shoulder all the loathsome manual tasks and reduce error rates by removing human fallibility from the equation, they say.

When we hear talk of employees being replaced by robots, it is often about unattended robots. The purpose of an unattended robot is to take a process and execute it by themselves, and no human is needed, explained Oded Karev of NICE, which deploys RPA in a call center context.

Attended robots, however, rely on man working with machine. The robot is installed on the employee desktop and becomes something akin to a virtual assistant to help boost performance.

Asked for specific examples that illustrate how RPA will change the lives of employees, the companies we spoke to explained the technology can be applied in any situation in which information is siloed or employees are burdened with data-handling tasks.

For example, Gavin Mee, MD Northern Europe at UiPath, says RPA allows accounting professionals to spend less time on bookkeeping and data gathering, and more time on deep analytics and advisory activities. And in a human resources context, software bots can handle tasks such as approving annual leave and logging sick days, while staff focus on relationship building and critical problem solving.

The customer services sector is also considered well-primed to benefit from RPA. The main role of agents is to engage with customers, but too much time is currently wasted seeking out and inputting information across multiple disparate systems, something a software bot can handle with relative ease.

While its plausible that increased efficiency will allow businesses to operate with leaner teams, leading to job cuts, all of these types of roles will still be held by human workers. The most significant change will be that their range of responsibilities will be quite drastically different.

Its also true that RPA will create a need for a number of brand new jobs. Namely, more IT staff will be needed to handle the configuration and maintenance of RPA systems, because its not quite as simple as setting up a software robot and letting it run free.

Although low-code solutions are making it easier for non-technical employees to deploy software robots, additional programming expertise will be required to configure bots for more complex workloads, monitor the performance of deployments and manage any errors and anomalies.

A recent survey conducted by UiPath suggests the majority (77%) of RPA professionals expect their organizations to hire more developers within the next year. A research report from the World Economic Forum (WEF) came to a similar conclusion, that automation will result in a net increase in 58 million jobs, albeit jobs with a higher average skill requirement.

In spite of their vested interests, the vendors we consulted all concede that businesses will encounter friction on multiple levels when it comes time to deploy RPA at scale. And the problem is as much cultural as technological.

One of the greatest barriers to widespread RPA adoption is the misunderstanding or even fear of the technology, explained Mee. Thanks to Hollywood blockbusters, the word robot often conjures up negative imagery, and when this is compounded with fears of redundancy, businesses can face resistance when embarking on an RPA journey.

Its a natural response; we tend to fear what we dont know, and a technology that promises to revolutionise the way we work forever is almost inevitably going to cause confusion and apprehension at first.

Mee and others say solving this problem is about approaching deployment in as transparent a way as possible; clearly communicating the intentions and ambitions behind the introduction of RPA, as well as the business benefits.

The angle from which organizations approach RPA is also important. Many large firms find it difficult to know where to begin, while others come looking for quick wins to help meet short-term productivity objectives, which can become a problem when scaling up deployments later on. The intermingling of RPA with other automation technologies, like AI and business process management (BPM), only adds further complexity.

As pointed out by Optiv Security, there are also cybersecurity risks associated with rushed or superficial RPA rollouts. Ultimately, RPA expands the attack surface, introducing many ways in and many ways out, says Optiv, which means implementation needs to be careful and considered.

In the end, however, the decision to lean into RPA or not may be taken out of the hands of business leaders, made practically compulsory by market conditions and the changing expectations of employees.

If there is a leader that is hesitant, I would ask them to consider what their knowledge workers would invent or improve if they had more time, and the business value that would immediately provide. And whether they face an existential risk if they do not provide that kind of support and experience to their customers and employees, said Kohli of Automation Anywhere.

In this scenario, the question is no longer whether it is right to forgo RPA in order to preserve jobs that can feasibly be automated, but whether businesses can afford to.

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RPA: Why you need to care about this totally unsexy technology - TechRadar

The outcry for a better way to spot footballs and determine if a ball has crossed the goal line intensified in Week 7, after there were several instances of tricky goal-line decisions in the Cowboys game at New England, with players and the ball being lost in the pile. But, there is no immediate solution on the horizon.

The NFL has been studying different mechanisms to attempt to be more precise with such matters for years, and spent a considerable amount of time determining if the laser technology used in professional tennis spotting might apply, but to this point there is no quick solution on the horizon. There is certainly support within the Competition Committee and the league in general to implement more calculated means of tracking the ball and determining first downs and other critical decisions, but much work remains to be done.

"As with all changes related to game administration, there is a process," Troy Vincent, the NFL's head of football operations, told me. "Ball-placement technology, along with other considerations for the sideline of the future, is under study, and will be tested, analyzed and discussed as to the impact of the game. At this time there is no definitive date for implementation."

At some point a change of this magnitude would likely begin with the NFL working in conjunction with another football entity (CFL, NCAA conference, perhaps even high school) to study the results in real time and hash out which technology works best, but even that doesn't seem to be particularly close.

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NFL still not close to introducing ball-placement technology, following another week of controversial calls - CBS Sports