7 ways eCommerce businesses use alternative data in 2022
Staying competitive in the eCommerce landscape requires agility and flexibility to pivot business strategies and adjust to changing consumer preferences and economic conditions.
Alternative data from websites, desktop/mobile applications, and other online sources gives managers the critical information they need to make effective decisions. While once confined to investors, eCommerce businesses are also adopting alternative data to refine their marketing strategies, improve product offerings, obtain demographic insights, track brand mentions, and improve SEO rankings.
3 tips to get your c-suite on board with an improved supplier data platform
When things are going right in an organization, it’s easy to put supplier data on the back burner. When things go wrong in an organization, most people hesitate to invest in quality supplier data tools. In a world where most of the population has access to technology, it’s easy to assume that the large procurement technologies are working with accurate and up to date supplier information. However, this assumption is wrong, and when procurement technology fails to deliver promised results, supplier data is usually the point of breakdown. Companies of all sizes require better supplier data, and up until now, doing this has been a demanding endeavor without much success. Thankfully, there are tools on the market that can help take the burden of supplier data off the hands of employees and countless working hours working on manual tasks.
Once this conversation starts, those presenting should highlight how poor supplier data has held the company back. Oftentimes, the ROI for better supplier data is hidden within increased compliance on other modules. Adding specific examples of how insufficient supplier data affects the company and sharing how each of those situations could have been avoided can share a viewpoint that has possibly been looked over in the past. Here are three tips to get c -suite leaders on board with improving the company’s supplier data platform.
How much is your data worth?
The birth of the Internet in the 1990s and its subsequent expansion into every aspect of our lives began a digital revolution that has since refused to slow down. With it has come unimagined functionality, equipping us with instant access to information and communication. Those born before the Digital Enlightenment could never have imagined the power to cast aside unanswered questions with a mere "Google". Gazing across the digital expanse with our infantile stare, we failed to notice another set of eyes looking back at us. Those eyes belong to the world’s largest companies -- Big Tech giants like Facebook and Google -- who are continuously monitoring our movements across the Internet.
Every time we open a website or App, our journeys are tracked and hunted down by a pack of algorithms designed to determine our interests -- products, ideas, and brands that we may feel positively towards. This data is coveted by advertisers; it is the elixir that enhances their powers of persuasion and consumer targeting and, inevitably, sales. This insatiable demand has propelled Big Tech’s rampant profiteering and extraction of consumer data.
Brave new (virtual) world? cyber security considerations in the Metaverse
When the likes of Meta and Microsoft spend billions to kick-start what they see as the next big tech gold rush, it’s worth taking notice. We are, of course, talking about the Metaverse, a prospect so compelling that it prompted Facebook’s corporate rebrand alongside an investment in the region of $10 billion per year.
According to their launch content, the money is going towards the creation of a "hybrid of today’s online social experiences, sometimes expanded into three dimensions or projected into the physical world. It will let you share immersive experiences with other people even when you can’t be together."
Will new CISA guidelines help bolster cyber defenses?
Do you know what IT devices are in your business or on your network right now? If not, it’s not just cybercriminals that might be knocking on your door very soon, but the White House.
Binding Operational Directive 23-01, or BOD 23-01, is a new directive from the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency. CISA has issued a Binding Operational Directive (BOD) that orders federal agencies in the country to keep track of their IT assets and any vulnerabilities on their networks.
Top security advice on keeping cyber-scares at bay this Halloween
As suggested by historical data, October has, over the last few years, shown an 'exponential growth' in cyber-attacks, ironically it is also Cyber Security Awareness month, and Halloween. As we approach the end of this year's security awareness month, and head to Halloween, it’s important that close attention is paid to proactive insights and advice offered by industry leaders.
Here is some critical advice in terms of how organizations can maintain a resilient security infrastructure in today’s target-rich environment and potentially avoid a cyber horror.
Visualization of process, testing and orchestration data: Seeing helps with understanding
In the world of business process management and automation, you can cross business intelligence with process mining and you get something we can call process analytics. What does that mean?
Business managers have been clamoring for better ways to understand what is happening inside their critical business processes. Well, inside all business processes really -- because if you can mine process data you should be able to see patterns and find weak spots. And once you find them, you can fix them -- optimize processes, find better ways to avoid blockages, and so on. One way to help business managers is to give them a way to visualize process data - to see not just the workflows, but to see what is happening inside them.
Is the IT industry's skills gap problem solvable?
The tech sector, in common with many industries, is suffering from a pronounced and lengthy skills shortfall. There’s not just a lack of qualified candidates, but training new hires is costly and time-consuming, which leads to a squeeze on the available talent. To make things worse, we have also witnessed the phenomenon of the 'Great Resignation', when the Covid-19 pandemic prompted significant numbers of people to rethink their career path.
Whether people are seeking a new challenge, starting their own business, taking early retirement or simply looking to minimize burnout and stress, the consequences of tens of thousands of skilled, experienced workers moving on can be severe. When combined with the existing dearth of suitable candidates, it becomes particularly ominous.
Your personal data has become an AI training manual and you're not getting it back
Art imitates life, that we all know. But what if art imitates your personal life, your personal likeness and does it so well that the line between what is real and surreal blurs?
Unbeknownst to us, we are becoming models for state-of-the-art AI technology that trains on terabytes of poorly filtered data scraped from all over the web. This data can include our personal photos, medical images, and even copyrighted content -- basically, anything ever posted online.
Calling all CISOs: Budgeting season is upon us
Global businesses are hyper-aware of current economic conditions. With a looming recession, company leaders are now more cost-conscious than ever and have started to re-evaluate their spending and inventory. This means taking a closer look at technology expenditures like cybersecurity.
Over the next 6-12 months, decisions will be made about the future of many vendor relationships. Business leaders will group these relationships into two categories: the ones that deliver critical value to an organization and the ones that cost more than they are worth.
Accessible hiring practices: How businesses can cultivate a more diverse workforce
Never before has society been so acutely aware of inclusivity and, even more specifically, the efforts we must take to eliminate exclusion and discrimination against people and groups. This is especially true in the workplace, and not just within the framework established once an employee is onboarded. To bolster the hiring and retention of your workforce, businesses must not engage in hiring practices that exclude people with disabilities -- 26 percent of the U.S. adult population -- from finding its listing, applying, qualifying for the role, and sustaining employment.
It has been conclusively proven that artificial intelligence algorithms used in corporate employment processes are highly biased against individuals with disabilities. To weed out anomalies in the hiring process, AI systems "necessarily produce and reflect a normative vision of the world," as the AI Now Institute at NYU puts it. Nevertheless, AI's understanding of the "normal" invariably excludes those with disabilities.
Why remote care and connected devices are becoming more commonplace in healthcare
Today the healthcare industry faces significant challenges with long patient backlogs, a shortage of staff and resources, all of which has been exacerbated in recent years by the COVID-19 pandemic. As a result, there are literally millions of people in the queue awaiting treatment and many more that simply haven’t come forward for care or referrals, as patients put off engaging with healthcare systems.
Those with minor problems and early-stage symptoms subsequently develop more serious conditions, which are harder to treat and in turn increase the cost of healthcare provision.
Modern AIOps doesn't just fix outages -- it prevents them
Is your business one accidental click away from a major outage? We saw it happen with Atlassian earlier this year. You may already have an incident management strategy and monitoring, but is it adjusted for the ever-changing IT infrastructure and application architectures? Putting appropriate protocols in place ensures that one human code push can't shut down an entire system for three weeks.
Legacy monitoring tools for IT teams were helpful with older, monolithic infrastructures. When we had static infrastructures, finding a direct correlation between the incidents and applications was much easier. Eventually, signals needed even faster processing, but legacy tools couldn’t keep up.
How inclusive is STEM and how do we diversify the relevant fields?
A lack of workforce diversity in terms of education currently plagues STEM (science, technology, engineering, and maths) industries. The world cannot continue to thrive without the work produced under STEM and the geniuses behind it. So why does it struggle to encompass inclusivity, and why is this a problem? Let’s explore here.
It’s difficult to argue that STEM is inclusive when statistics show that more than half of scientific, technological, engineering, and math workforces are made up of white men. With this particular gender and race taking up a staggering 65 percent, that doesn’t leave much room for men of other races, and women generally.
The business continuity emergency
2021 marked a dramatic step change in global climate conditions, with a significant increase in the incidence and severity of extreme weather events resulting in flooding, hurricanes and heatwaves across the globe. The UK and Europe experienced the hottest summers on record during the past three years. This year’s extreme, record-breaking heatwave in July took the UK climate beyond 40 degrees Celsius, and posed serious threats to UK infrastructure.
This ongoing and accelerating trend is now sadly locked into the Earth’s system for decades to come. In Western Europe, heatwaves are increasing in frequency, at about three times faster, and in intensity, roughly four times faster, than in other midlatitude regions according to a recent study. This is having a knock-on impact for business, as evidenced by July’s West London data center outages for Google and Oracle Cloud and heatwave related IT issues for NHS Trusts. The need for C-suites to consider climate-related events as a serious risk to business continuity can no longer be seen as a problem of the future.
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