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The electricity supply in Australia, New Zealand and Singapore is very reliable, much more so than in many countries in East Asia, but outages do occur, and the shift to renewables is increasing the risk, as are more extreme weather events.

Also, there can be other problems about which the average user would be unaware: brownouts (sudden voltage drops) spikes (sudden voltage surges) and noise (high frequency signals on the supply line).

Loss of power can bring a business to an immediate halt. The other problems can temporarily or permanently disable vital and costly equipment.

An uninterruptible power supply (UPS) can ensure continued business operation and protect business-critical equipment against failure or irregularity of mains electricity supply, but a smart, remotely managed UPS can do much more to protect vital IT equipment. And it can reduce, or eliminate, the need for on-site IT expertise.

This brandpost will provide an overview of these functions and detail a new offering from Schneider Electric that makes them more accessible than ever.

Smart, Remotely Managed UPS: More than just Backup Power

At its most basic a UPS will ensure clean power to connected equipment and a seamless transition to battery power when mains power fails, until its battery becomes discharged. For many organisations and applications these basic capabilities are insufficient. A smart UPS can provide a number of other important functions.

If the length of a power outage exceeds the capacity of the UPS battery all connected equipment can be properly shutdown before power is lost, and equipment can be correctly rebooted when power is restored. As the battery becomes depleted non-critical equipment can be shutdown first to enable vital equipment to be powered for longer.

When IT equipment malfunctions powering off and rebooting can often restore normal operation: this can be done by a smart UPS.

Large organisations have many facilities, some large some small. Many might me so small as to make the presence of on-site IT expertise prohibitively expensive. In addition to providing power supply security, a smart, remotely managed, UPS can enable an offsite technician to perform many critical functions that would normally require them to be on site. These include.

Rebooting IT equipment remotely (this can solve many IT problems).

Viewing and downloading equipment log data to identify issues before they result in failure.

Scheduling shutdown and rebooting of connected equipment to save power and increase security.

Providing immediate notification of critical issues to a remote operator.

Providing data to an oversight expert monitoring system that integrates other information sources such as surveillance video and creates a unified view of a complex IT environment that is accessible from anywhere.

Schneider Electric Smart UPS Products and Monitoring Software/Services

Schneider Electric offers a range of Smart UPS products that support remote management and monitoring of the UPS and connected equipment. They deliver all the benefits described above, and more. They are multiple models with the features and capacities to suit a wide range of requirements.

Schneider Electric’s Smart-UPS On-Line products are available to support loads from 1kVA to 20kVA and can be rack or tower mounted. They can be configured with multiple battery packs to provide backup power for mission-critical systems during long power outages.

And when backup batteries are depleted their inbuilt PowerChute™ Network Shutdown management software will gracefully shutdown the operating systems of supported equipment.

They can be programmed to shutdown non-critical equipment to conserve battery power for critical systems in the event of a prolonged power outage.

The Schneider Electric EcoStruxure™ IT SmartConnect cloud service provides remote power monitoring, customisable email notifications, remote diagnostics, and UPS firmware updates – all via a web portal.

Get Remote Systems Monitoring via SE Smart UPS

Schneider Electric’s Smart-UPS for loads greater than 5kVA come equipped with a network management card to support all these features for remote monitoring and control of the UPS and connected equipment but require a licence to the EcoStruxure IT Expert software to enable all the features described above.

However, as a special offer for a limited time only, Schneider Electric is offering a bundle comprising the UPS, a network management card and a one-year licence to the EcoStruxure IT Expert software, for every model in the range, including sub 5kVA products.

Contact Schneider Electric today to learn how you can get power protection and monitoring and control of critical IT systems – all from a remote location.

Remote Access

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Today’s consumers are accustomed to smooth, frictionless online shopping – and they increasingly expect the same kind of digital experiences from their banks. Insider Intelligence found that 89% of U.S. consumers use mobile banking channels, and 70% said mobile banking is now their primary way of accessing their accounts.  

“Most people do not want to go into a bank to do banking. They want to be able to do everything on a mobile phone or a smart portal,” says Nilendu Pattanaik, Global Head of Business Applications Practice, Microsoft Business Unit, at Tata Consultancy Services (TCS).  

Once they open an app, customers expect an intuitive UI rendering smooth capabilities, an interactive, immersive experience that understands their preferences, and seamless connectivity between services, whether they’re checking a balance or applying for a new mortgage or a credit line/card. One of the key priorities of the modern payment sector is to build an e-payments society with seamless interoperability among e-wallets. 

Creating a first-rate, secure digital customer experience is a top goal for leaders across the financial services spectrum, from retail banking to commercial lending, investment banking, and wealth management. But achieving success isn’t easy in a highly regulated industry saddled with legacy technology and applications. 

“Most banks have very old infrastructure that doesn’t produce the data they need, to effectively engage with customers,” Nilendu says. In addition, banks struggle to maintain customer data privacy, security, and compliance amid changing regulatory requirements.  

By moving services to the digital platform and offering the whole nine yards of end-to-end fabric of data, process, AI, apps, and industry solutions on Microsoft Cloud with native persistency and interoperability, financial organizations can analyze customer data in one place and quickly develop the responsive capabilities their clients are looking for. 

At the same time, financial institutions must maintain secure and compliant environments while preventing fraud, giving bankers more time to focus on customer needs. According to a recent Microsoft blog, organizations can use identity, security, and compliance solutions in Microsoft 365 to have visibility into their threat landscape and leverage built-in AI and machine learning in Microsoft Sentinel and Microsoft Defender for Cloud to proactively manage threats and reduce alert fatigue.  

Modernization priorities 

Since legacy technology is often spread throughout the organization, bank leaders need to prioritize their goals and develop a rollout schedule for digital services. One quick win, Nilendu says, is digitizing as many paper processes as possible. Another priority involves improving services for retail customers, whose churn rate is often high. Delivering differentiated and customized services to customers is a key need for financial services institutions; AI enables this capability effectively with proactive analysis and feeds of behavioral trends monitored through machine learning algorithms. Banks can give customers a hyper-personalized experience by embedding AI into consumer applications. For example, Microsoft Dynamics 365 Copilot, the world’s first copilot in both CRM and ERP, brings next-generation AI to every line of business.

“As they analyze customer data, chatbots are becoming more intelligent and capable. AI-enabled Microsoft Dynamics 365 can help financial services institutions enable faster and accurate processing of large volumes of data powered with predictability for market sentiments and better investment options or portfolio rationalization for investors,” Nilendu says.   

In addition to responding to questions with information geared to customer preferences, today’s AI-enabled apps can initiate processes, such as opening or closing an account, credit card applications, etc., during online interactions. They can also assist bankers on phone calls, analyzing customer conversational data in real-time and recommending appropriate products and services. Some banks have added an app feature that allows clients to videochat with a live relationship advisor with the press of a button. Services like these can reduce churn, decrease human error, and provide real-time guidance for the lines of businesses. 

With the help of TCS and Microsoft Cloud, financial services organizations can develop these and other digital capabilities with low-code tools, quickly rolling them out across services. 

“Microsoft Cloud for Financial Services and AI-enabled apps of Microsoft Dynamics 365 powered with Microsoft Power Apps, Microsoft Azure OpenAI, Microsoft Azure Machine Learning, Microsoft Fraud Protection allow financial services organizations to efficiently build new applications and AI services and scale them across their customer relationship management and sales platforms,” Nilendu says. “AI-enabled smart banking services are revolutionizing fraud detection and risk assessment in financial services institutions by checking financial status, document verification, and risk-related activities of the borrower, and significantly reduce the non-performing assets by enabling early detection of possible non-payment of loans.” 

Microsoft Cloud also provides robust security controls and helps financial organizations manage compliance in an industry where local rules are proliferating and frequently evolving. 

“For regional regulations, such as the California Consumer Privacy Act or the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), the platform’s applications are intelligent enough to understand which specific documents and contracts are impacted and recommend actions proactively” Nilendu says.  

By securely developing the right digital capabilities, financial services organizations can provide better service to more customers, enhancing their reputation and gaining a competitive edge. Working together, TCS and Microsoft can help CIOs select and implement the technologies their organizations need for success. 

“TCS is partnering with Microsoft to create secure and compliant next-generation solutions on Microsoft Cloud catering to the needs of financial services institutions across all segments of businesses globally,” Nilendu says. 

Learn how FSIs benefit from digital transformation on Microsoft Cloud led by TCS. 

Cloud Computing, Digital Transformation, Financial Services Industry

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Theo Blackwell MBE, Chief Digital Officer at the London Mayor’s Office, sits down with CIO UK editor Doug Drinkwater on CIO UK Leadership Live to give a whistle-stop tour on CDO misconceptions, smart city futures, fostering local government collaboration and balancing technological innovation with digital inclusion.

Watch the episode:

Listen to the episode:

CIO Leadership Live

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This article was co-authored by Katherine Kennedy, an Associate at Metis Strategy.

For years, ESG has been little more than a sub-bullet or appendix slide in most CIOs’ strategy decks. But changing consumer sensibilities and heightened investor scrutiny have swept ESG, and technology’s role in it, to the top of the agenda. Corporate strategies hinge on it.

ESG is new territory for many technology leaders and getting up to speed quickly is essential. In a recent survey conducted by Lenovo, 45% of respondents said the CIO should play a critical role in executing the enterprise’s ESG mission. While the scope of ESG is of course much broader than environmental sustainability, the need for speed here is particularly heightened as the SEC moves to enact rules that will require publicly traded companies to disclose their emissions data as early as 2024. For many CIOs today, the first question often is: Where do I start?

Nick Colisto, SVP & CIO, Avery Dennison

Avery Dennison

Nick Colisto, SVP & CIO of Avery Dennison Corporation, has some ideas. ESG has been a priority for him since he joined the company, which designs and manufactures a variety of labeling and functional materials, like tapes and bonding solutions. Over the past several years alone, his team launched a web application that powers AD Circular, a program for recycling used paper and filmic label liners. The team also developed an enterprise-wide system for tracking ESG metrics, like Scope 1 and 2 GHG emissions. Insights from that system are highlighted regularly in the company’s sustainability reports.

Below, Nick suggests a few areas CIOs can start on the journey to creating a proactive ESG agenda that anticipates compliance requirements:

Dedicate a sustainability leader to the CIO organization

A dedicated sustainability expert focused on how data can drive the enterprise agenda while satisfying relevant ESG policies and guidelines is essential, Nick says. “Data is essential to a modern ESG strategy, and you won’t make strides of any respectable length if you’re constantly fighting for the time of the company’s shared ESG resource.”

If your search comes down to hiring someone with ESG policy knowledge versus technical expertise, prioritize the former, Nick says. That way, the person can narrow the scope of ESG use cases to those that will drive the most meaningful results before involving the technical talent responsible for delivery.

Of course, finding the right person is only half the battle. CIOs must set sustainability leads up for success. That means giving them visibility and access. Nick’s leader sits on Avery Dennison’s sustainability council, where he has visibility into the enterprise ESG agenda. He also has a mandate to engage business leaders to collect requirements for any initiative the council pursues, which he then translates into technical specifications and tracks from start to finish.

Focus on data governance

Data governance is vital to ESG initiatives. At minimum, it will form the backbone of your ESG reports, which will command much of your focus at the start of your ESG journey. In addition to ensuring compliance, data will also inform which goals your organization pursues and how it tracks them. Thus, the quality of your data must be exemplary.

Securing that high-quality data, Nick says, starts with establishing a single source of truth. This has been on many a CIO’s docket for a while, but the work often is not prioritized because the value of the data was relatively low, used mostly for historical reporting to support brand positioning and annual sustainability reports. “As investors demand increasingly detailed data to assess climate-related risk, data quality is critical,” Nick says.  “Disparate data will not work for ESG as it’s too difficult to analyze and report on. Also, consolidated ESG data has increased operational and strategic value.”

Once a single source of truth has been established, it must be maintained with robust data governance and management policies. These policies will become especially critical once the scope of regulatory reporting expands to include Scope 3 emissions, those a company generates indirectly, through its supply chain, products, and partners, which are particularly hard to track, says Nick.

Drive accessibility and transparency

Once a lead has been established and a clear governance process put in place, the next step is to make your data accessible and transparent. That means making sure anyone who needs the data can get their hands on it and, once they do, easily understand it. That task is harder than it sounds, but it’s worth your while. ESG programs are unlikely to gain momentum if every routine compliance report requires employees to endure a scavenger hunt for the necessary data. More importantly, people are less likely to invest themselves in a cause that is opaque or poorly understood. Knowing your ESG goals, who they involve, what data they rely on, and what activities will move the needle will make your employees feel they are part of the process. Our team sees four key ways to do this:

Publish a dashboard of the ESG metrics your organization values most: It might include metrics such as carbon offset, DEI ratings, or aggregate scores published by a third-party ESG rating provider. To drive adoption, involve leaders from various departments early in the dashboard design process.Contextualize ESG data and share it with the enterprise: ESG metrics are frequently affected by operational decisions. Yet, the people making those decisions often lack the skills to analyze and interpret ESG data effectively. Provide employees access to low/no-code analytics tools such as PowerBI and Tableau to help them understand their impact on each metric.Incentivize teams to make ESG-smart decisions: Moving the needle on ESG goals requires leaders and their teams to change the way they work. To do that, they need a reason. Give leaders incentives to get smart on the company’s ESG vision, the core metrics, and the role each team plays in realizing the future. For instance, Bank of America’s My Environment® employee program offers, among many incentives, to reimburse a portion of the cost of an employee’s electric vehicle or charger.

The principles above, when applied in earnest, can do much more for companies than simply earn them a sticker for compliance. Nick’s focus on ESG at Avery Dennison demonstrates the central role CIOs can play in asserting IT’s role not only as a service provider, but also an active contributor to an organization’s ESG mission and, ultimately, its growth.

CIO, Green IT, IT Strategy

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The world has become increasingly urbanised. The UN reports that since 2007 more than half the world’s population has been living in cities. That number is projected to rise to 60% by 2030. 

Increased urbanisation brings with it increased responsibility for cities, especially regarding the environment. Cities account for roughly 70% of global carbon emissions and over 60% of resource use.

Put simply, the world is on a collision course with an ecological reckoning and cities are the leading contributors. Therefore, it follows they must also be the leading drivers of change if we are to make good on our currently faltering climate pledges. If cities are to successfully take climate action, artificial intelligence (AI) has a vital role to play.

What is AI?

AI is hard to define, both because it covers a wide range of offerings and because it is essentially a moving target — constantly learning and evolving is intrinsic to its purpose. At the most basic level, AI leverages computers and machines to mimic the problem-solving and decision-making capabilities of the human mind. Essentially, it turns human-defined goals into mathematical ones.

AI has long been touted as the technological tool that possesses both the greatest potential for advancement and the greatest level of risk. The leading risk regards data privacy. Smart cities rely on data provided by citizens to function, but if that data were to be accessed by a party with sinister intentions, problems would arise. The state, too, can potentially misuse AI, harvesting and exploiting data in ways that infringe on citizens’ privacy. More overtly, if a hacker were to gain access to smart traffic control systems, they could cause mayhem.

So how can smart cities be sure they’re using AI correctly, advancing the sustainability agenda in a responsible and equitable way?

AI in cities

AI has the potential to impact nearly every aspect of the smart city. It bolsters security with incident detection and intelligent CCTV. It increases efficiency with traffic and parking management on roads, as well as automated updates and tracking options on public transportation. It monitors air quality, manages waste, analyses energy usage — and that barely scratches the surface.

To do all this, AI relies on data. Processing data, recognizing patterns, and devising solutions based on those patterns — even predicting potential future difficulties that can be mitigated — are AI’s fundamental pillars. As such, any city that recognises and wants to capitalise on AI’s potential must ensure that its urban services are collecting data as effectively as possible. That’s where connected lighting can play an important part.

Sustainable partners: AI and connected lighting

Connected city street lighting can serve as a valuable platform for a secure, distributed sensor network that can collect the necessary data AI requires, even on a citywide scale. Systems like Interact provide the best lighting experiences while also acting as the framework for enabling a whole host of smart city applications.

Sensors in streetlights can monitor air quality and temperature. They can also detect sounds — such as gunshots or smashed windows — and then alert first responders in real time, reducing crime and helping citizens feel more secure. Additionally, they can be used to streamline traffic management by offering real-time traffic information and smart parking. This information can be shared with city traffic managers or directly with drivers via an app.

Connected lighting is pivotal from a sustainability standpoint too. If every business and city around the world converted all their conventional light points to connected LED, it would reduce annual carbon emissions by more than 553 million tons of CO2. That’s equivalent to the amount of carbon that 25 billion trees could sequester in a year.

Smart cities that are serious about sustainability need to consider the benefits of connected lighting both as an enabler of AI capabilities and a sustainable solution in its own right.

Potential pitfalls

AI will be key to addressing social, economic, and ecological challenges at a global scale. However, its limitations must also be acknowledged.

AI & Cities: Risks, Applications and Governance, a report published by the United Nations Human Settlements Programme (UN-Habitat) in collaboration with the Mila-Quebec Artificial Intelligence Institute, points to some of these risks. “In order for an algorithm to reason, it must gain an understanding of its environment,” the authors write. “This understanding is provided by the data. Whatever assumptions and biases are represented in the dataset will be reproduced in how the algorithm reasons and what output it produces.”

As noted earlier, AI turns human-defined goals into mathematical ones. But if the human-defined goals are based on existing preconceptions, then the data will end up reinforcing those assumptions.

AI also falls short in evaluating its own performance. As the UN-Habitat report notes, “While it may be tempting to see algorithms as neutral ’thinkers,’ they are neither neutral nor thinkers.” AI has no grasp of wider context, and so can only produce results based on its pre-defined optimisation goals, which may be at odds with wider considerations — or worse, serve a misleading agenda.

AI systems are mathematical and cannot integrate nuance. This means AI can sometimes end up excluding or underrepresenting subjective, qualitative information from its findings.

Minimise risk with governance and accountability

There are ways to mitigate the risks associated with artificial intelligence’s shortcomings. Key among them are governance and accountability.

Accountability ensures that some entity is always held responsible — and more importantly, always feels responsible — for AI’s impact. Algorithmic systems evolve, often unpredictably. A change in purpose will change their effects. Proper accountability can help negate mission creep, where technologies are intentionally repurposed for surveillance and other extraneous purposes. It can also help ensure that bad faith actors aren’t able to willfully mishandle AI’s goals, or to repurpose them over time.

AI governance refers to the sum of AI regulations, ethics, norms, administrative procedures, and social processes. Governance helps ensure AI is used in an inclusive and equitable way, and that preconceptions or lack of awareness in the early stages don’t allow AI findings to widen the digital divide or exacerbate existing inequalities. Governance lets local authorities evaluate the opportunities and risks afforded by AI, so they can then apply it in accordance with local context.

Consulting citizens and communities is vital, too. The public is every city’s primary stakeholder; they need to have a voice in how a tool as powerful as AI is being used in their community. This helps ensure AI is fixing local problems, not aggravating them.

Responsible AI

AI’s capacity for generating and expanding the possibilities of smart cities is considerable, especially in advancing sustainable causes. There are risks, but also ways around them. Conscientious decision-making that factors in local communities and consults local authorities will help ensure cities get the best from AI.

To find out more about Interact click here.

Artificial Intelligence, Banking, Education Industry, Financial Services Industry

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Where are you right now, as you read this? Our educated guess would be a city. According to current figures from World Bank, around half of the world’s population — 56% to be precise — call cities their home. However, if we were to ask you the same question in 2050, those odds will have increased significantly.

Estimates from the same report suggest that in less than 30 years, 70% of the population will live in cities. In countries like the US, this figure is set to exceed 80%. It’s clear that urbanization is growing at a rapid rate. Cities are devouring a greater proportion of rural spaces — and an increasing number of people see them as providing the best opportunity for work and quality of life.

This growth places cities at the forefront of economic, social, and global concerns about energy and water use, traffic management, sanitation, and sustainability. To address those concerns, municipalities are increasingly turning to smart solutions that promise to improve infrastructure and governance. But how does a city know which vendors to trust? Which partners are most capable of bringing a city’s smart ambitions to fruition?

As with every high-growth market, regulation and certification often has to play catch-up. There are hundreds of companies promising the latest smart technology, the brightest and best innovations. Only relatively recently have organisations begun to evaluate and make efforts to agree upon the criteria for what qualifies a city as smart.

The AWS Smart City Competency partnership 

A smart city requires the proper mix of data, technology, infrastructure, and services to deliver sustainable and citizen-centric solutions. It’s important for city authorities to work with the right partners, ones that enable smart cities and help them thrive.

Amazon — more specifically Amazon Web Services (AWS) — has emerged as a leader in smart city certification with its Smart City Competency partnership. The initiative is designed to “support public sector customers’ innovations to quickly deliver smarter and more efficient citizen services.” As a trusted presence in the digital space, AWS is well positioned to deliver world-class recommendations to customers looking to build and deploy innovative smart city solutions.

The premise is fairly straightforward. The AWS Smart City Competency “will differentiate highly specialised AWS Partners with a demonstrated deep technical expertise and proven track record of customer success within the Smart City use cases.” The idea is that, through the AWS Smart City Competency, customers will be able to quickly and confidently identify approved partners to help them address smart city challenges.

The benefits are clear. When working with a certified AWS partner like Interact, you can feel secure knowing that the system has met and exceeded a high competence threshold. The partnership offers a host of additional benefits, including partner opportunity acceleration funding, discounted AWS training, and ongoing support and networking opportunities.

Opportunities from the World Bank, the UN, and elsewhere

The AWS Smart City Competency is just one example of an initiative designed to define smart city standards. World Bank, a voice of authority in the smart city space, has launched the Global Smart City Partnership Program (GSCP).

The Global Smart City Partnership Program was established in 2018 to help the World Bank Group teams and clients make the best use of data, technologies, and available resources. It is built on the understanding that technology – and data-driven innovations can improve city planning, management, and service delivery, better engage citizens, and enhance governmental accountability. Like the AWS program, the goal of the World Bank is to work closely with prominent smart city experts from all around the world and match them with certified partners they can trust.

The United Nations Development Program (UNDP) for Smart Cities shares a similar desire for aligning smart city customers and dependable vendors. The UNDP cites a number of factors by which smart city projects fail, including organisational culture, difficulties in achieving behaviour change, lack of technical expertise and leadership, and a singular focus on technology. Too often, the actual needs and realities of customers are overlooked; only by matching those customers with genuine smart city experts can a greater level of success be achieved.

Emerging smart city standards

For a city to truly become a smart city, it needs to integrate data-driven solutions across numerous application areas, from transportation and mobility to utility planning, waste management, and emergency response. This means it’s likely that decision makers will turn to numerous vendors to carry out individual projects.

But cities are not silos. They’re living, breathing entities — ecosystems in which each element impacts and interacts with the next. This makes the issue of interoperability a pertinent one.

According to Smart Cities World, “Public tenders for various smart city applications globally more and more include the requests for compliance to international standards . . . [V]endors want to make sure that their systems are future-proof and allow interoperability with other market players.”

Not only does this highlight the benefits of being recognised and certified by the programs we’ve discussed, but it places a greater onus on providers to ensure that their products adopt an open systems approach.

Emerging standards, best practices, and coordinated initiatives, along with a general increase in experience and expertise, has made it easier to recognise what a smart city is—and, crucially, what it is not. For cities with smart aspirations, choosing the right partner is integral to success. Certification programs like the ones mentioned here make it far easier to judge who those partners are. To find out more about Interact click here.

Artificial Intelligence, Banking, Education Industry, Financial Services Industry

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If 2020 was the year of remote work, and 2021 was the year of hybrid work, then 2022 is the year to really make hybrid work, work. In fact, Microsoft’s second Annual Work Trend Index “Great Expectations: Making Hybrid Work Work” reveals that employees are calling for a ‘Free Dimensional’ Workplace. 

The survey explores changes from the collective experience of the last two years that business decision-makers should pay attention to as we are introduced to ‘Free Dimensional’ work, and what was a temporary fix during the pandemic. These include redefining personal productivity, balancing diversity of thought and equity of experience, and re-evaluating networks and their effect on social capital. 

Truly hybrid work is new, it’s unknown, and constantly evolving. We all have a unique hybrid work/life balance that works for each of us. According to the Work Trend Index, employees’ preference for work flexibility is clear – 53% of workers in Singapore are considering switching to remote or hybrid work.

Embracing the ‘Free Dimensional World’ will challenge our fixed mindsets. Now, more than ever, it is every business leader’s responsibility to balance employee interests with organizational success to do more with less.

Shifting expectations about work

While hybrid work remains a hot topic for many organizations, we know this it is more than just changing the location of the workplace. It’s about changing fundamental routines that have become familiar and ingrained.

At the heart of this is the realization that who we are today and what we deem important are no longer the same as back in 2020. Priorities have shifted, with 52% of employees in Singapore now prioritizing health and well-being over work. Employees have a new “worth it” equation – what they want from work and what they are willing to give is not what it was before the pandemic.

Building social capital

With 43% of leaders in Asia reporting that the greatest challenge of hybrid or remote wok is relationship-building, we can no longer rely solely on the office to recoup the social capital lost, as this journey is not one about moving completely from home back to the office.

It is about combining the best of both worlds to create a new dimension of work that is truly hybrid. To rediscover and, for many, discover the joy of in-person human connections, while maintaining the flexibility and freedom of where, when, and how you work. Work is no longer two-dimensional behind screens, nor is it only three-dimensional in person; it is now free dimensional.

A truly Free Dimensional World offers a unique work/life balance that is suitable for each of us. Here’s our view on how to make the Free Dimension work for you:

1. Reimagine your work ‘space’ 

Take the best of both worlds and combine them to create a new dimension of work that is truly hybrid and flexible and introduce new devices that allow you to seamlessly switch between work and life. Today’s hybrid workspaces put remote and in-person employees on equal footing, whether at the office or at home, thanks to new features in Microsoft 365, Microsoft Teams, and Microsoft Viva.

As more people and businesses recognize the value of digital capabilities in amplifying what an organization can achieve, Singapore’s digital needs have grown. Moving to the cloud is one way for organizations to do more with less today. With Microsoft Cloud, employees can thrive in a modern, productive workplace that empowers them to work with less friction and more choice, driving better business outcomes.

Sembcorp Industries, one of Singapore’s largest energy players, for example, has adopted Microsoft Cloud to help its employees improve productivity and well-being, as they work to build an energy operating system at scale for a green, sustainable future.

2. Finding the balance between work and life 

Hybrid working can blur work and personal life even more, and that makes it difficult for organizations and employees alike to strike the right balance. Embrace new ways of working that empower you to be in more control over how you’re working to find the right balance to be happier, healthier, and more energized and connected than ever.

By using tools like Microsoft Viva, employees can access personalized recommendations that help improve well-being and increase productivity. Leveraging these actionable insights daily creates a healthy environment for employees to build better work habits and find the right balance between work and life.

3. Stay safe with trusted technology 

As we move toward a Free Dimensional World and embrace a hybrid way of life, it is more important than ever to protect your entire digital life, whether at home or work because threats don’t stop when you leave the office or close your work laptop for the day. We need solutions that help everyone feel safe while working, playing, and living. 

With security features of Microsoft 365 like the Microsoft Defender for Office and Cloud Apps, employees can collaborate securely anytime, anywhere. By strengthening security postures and accelerating workload protection against modern threats across hybrid and multi-cloud environments, Microsoft 365’s security features gives people and businesses peace of mind to work productively in a complex risk landscape.

Sunningdale Tech Ltd, a Singapore-based precision plastics engineering firm is accelerating digital transformation across the organization while enabling its employees to collaborate securely and seamlessly in the cloud. With the Microsoft Cloud, Sunningdale is gearing up security and threat protection capabilities in the future of hybrid work while optimizing resources and saving money.

Creating a free dimensional world that works for everyone

The term ‘hybrid work’ has gone through several evolutions over the past few years. At this point, work is no longer two-dimensional behind screens or only three-dimensional in person.

Different people have different styles and different needs. The hybrid-paradox – people wanting the flexibility to work from everywhere but simultaneously craving more in-person connection – creates the ideal opportunity for a ‘Free Dimensional’ workplace that works for everyone.

Learn how you can do more with less with Microsoft 365 here.

Microsoft 365

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Just hear those phone lines jingling, ring ting tingle-ing too. 

After the last slice of Thanksgiving pie has been served, millions of people will rush out the door to score the best deals of the year. Then they’ll call: about shipping delays, return policies, order details, discount codes, you name it – on top of all the other inquiries your contact center normally handles.

Unless you put more tushes in cushions, you’ll only have so many people manning your phones. Here’s how to best manage the call spikes coming your way.

AI and automation for the win, right? Yes and no. Here’s my two cents…

Just because you can do something doesn’t mean you should.

People tell me that when they call a customer service number and hear an automated assistant, they go on the defense. I can relate. Am I going to have to fight this thing to get the outcome I want, and how long will it take? If you’re not confident enough that your customers would choose your automated assistant without being forced to use it, don’t invest in it. 

There are plenty other ways you can use AI and automation to manage demand (see below). If you’re set on an automated assistant, just know you can’t force customers to do things your way. Let them try your assistant if they choose, make sure it’s truly intelligent and intuitive to their needs, and always provide an out.  

Use AI to optimize the performance of the staff you have. 

You’ll be like a kid on Christmas morning when you see the magic of AI for task automation. Your agents will be freed from time-consuming, queue-clogging tasks nearly overnight. Consider customer authentication: you must verify the identity of each person who contacts your organization, right? This could be through knowledge-based authentication (ex: “What’s the city you were born in?”) or by verifying personally identifiable information like a customer’s address or SSN. Sometimes it’s all the above. 

What if you could use a customer’s hold time to handle this via an automated assistant so they can get right down to business when they’re connected to an agent? What if you used AI and automation to offer an even more effective form of customer authentication like a 3D photo scan? Calls would be processed faster and the agents you do have would work more efficiently. This is completely possible and not nearly as difficult as it seems. Consider how else you can use AI and automation internally to address the challenge of demand exceeding staff. 

There’s no place like (work from) home for the holidays

What’s great about remote work for contact center managers is the ability to source agents from anywhere in a tight labor market. If you must hire to scale for seasonal demand, you can look far and wide based on needs around skills and labor costs. What’s not so great about remote work is the lack of visibility for quality assurance and team monitoring. 

My opinion: adopt the remote work strategy of 2020 with technology that meets current Quality Assurance (QA) needs.  

It’s 2022: why can’t you remotely monitor calls in real-time as if you were walking the contact center floor? What’s stopping you from ensuring high Quality of Service (QoS) regardless of where your agents work or what their setup looks like?

Again, this is the beauty of AI:

AI-powered noise removal ensures crystal clear audio regardless of what’s happening behind the scenes.Agents can’t predict when their dog will bark or when their neighbor will be doing yard work. This is a game-changing AI feature that filters out distracting background noises – even an agent’s keyboard strokes – to ensure QoS from anywhere. 

Closed captioning automatically shows on an agent’s screen what a customer is saying in real-time to keep quality high and call processing fast. Even with background noise removed, you could easily miss a word or a key piece of information that you’d hate to ask the customer to repeat. 

Real-time translation is yet another way AI helps manage demand without needing to hire. Imagine all your agents essentially becoming bi-lingual. It’s a huge value-add! 

AI speech analytics monitors conversations in real-time and alerts managers when in-the-moment intervention may be necessary. Will this help improve CSAT and keep calls flowing? You bet.   

Follow these tips and from now on your troubles will be miles away. If you want to learn more about AI for the contact center, give me a shout or contact an Avaya expert here. Happy managing! 

IT Leadership

Posted on Posted in Digital transformation, General topics Tagged with , , , , , ,

Cybercrime is nothing new. The threats that accompany society’s increased digitalization have been explored in alarmist articles, science fiction movies, and everything in between for decades. But that doesn’t mean the need for robust cybersecurity isn’t real. Digital enhancement brings increasing digital risk. Stringent provisions are more necessary than ever. 

Cybercrime’s prevalence and costs are significant. The UN reported that cybercrime skyrocketed by 600% during the pandemic, a result of an almost overnight reliance on digital working, shopping, and communication. There was a 10% increase in the average total cost per security breach from 2020 to 2021, while a McAfee report estimates that the global cost of cybercrime has now reached over US$1 trillion. 

Easy targets: smart retail and smart cities 

The need for vigilant cybersecurity measures is paramount. The retail sector has proven especially vulnerable. Trustwave reports that retail is on the receiving end of 24% of all cyberattacks, more than any other industry. 

Retail’s reliance on mixed technology, pairing old point-of-sale systems like cash registers and in-store purchases with cloud-based e-commerce and administrative systems, makes it an ideal target for hackers. On top of that, retail’s customer data tends to be high value, often consisting of credit card details, phone numbers, and security questions and answers. The industry’s high staff turnover rate also makes it vulnerable. Some 64% of retailers report attempted attacks each month, with the cost of a hack to an e-commerce site currently averaging $4 million. In 2020, cyberattacks cost online retailers a remarkable £5.9 billion  in the UK alone. 

But the problem is not limited to e-commerce. Brick-and-mortar retail stores are at enormous risk too. In fact, part of the reason physical stores have become an easy target for cybercriminals is that in-store management is often inattentive, presuming that such attacks only take place online.  

That may have been true at one time, but many physical stores today are increasingly reliant on Internet of Things (IoT) devices. IoT solutions offer extraordinary benefits in-store: indoor navigation, presence detection, and preventive maintenance, to name a few. But if not properly secured, increased digitalization can leave retailers exposed. 

Smart cities and the Multi-Stakeholder Manifesto 

Equally vulnerable are smart cities. To thrive as intended, smart cities rely on a complex and interdependent network of devices, platforms, systems, and users, all contributing vital information that helps keep the engine running. But to be reliant on so many moving parts can leave gaps—exposing areas that bad faith actors know how to exploit.  

A key challenge for smart cities is integration and coordination. Cities are often made up of multiple municipalities, each of which typically has a different set of capabilities, different priorities, and different approaches to technology management. Increased communication among smart city stakeholders is vital for confronting cybersecurity threats. 

Some steps have already been taken to address such concerns. Over fifty civil society and industry representatives support the Multi-Stakeholder Manifesto, launched in 2021. The manifesto warns that cybercrime “poses new risks to human security, dignity, and equity” and that “no single actor can adequately counter them on their own.” It proposes a multi-stakeholder approach that puts protecting victims at the top of its agenda.  

“Governments around the world have long abused cybercrime measures and used cybercrime legislation to expand state control and criminalise the publication and dissemination of unwelcome content, to impose mass surveillance and curb privacy in the name of fighting terrorism,” the authors note. 

To effectively battle cybercrime, cooperation is required on a regional, national, and international level. Fractious regional and transnational relationships and opaque data management practices only fuel cybercrime’s rise. 

Problems and solutions 

The emergence of intelligent networks made up of billions of connected devices across a range of sectors has created a whole new world of vulnerabilities for cybercriminals to exploit. Some of the most common cybercrimes are phishing scams, ransomware, data breaches, distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks, and supply chain disruptions. Cybersecurity must continually innovate and adapt to confront a diverse and ever-evolving range of threats.  

As such, many new solutions have presented themselves. WISeKey has emerged as a vital authentication and identification partner, while Darktrace employs AI as a tool of defense—preventing, detecting, responding, and recovering from cyberattacks at the very same time.  

Meanwhile, Li-Fi adoption grows every year. Because it’s line-of-sight, Li-Fi is more secure than Wi-Fi—it won’t leak through walls or even windows with the blinds closed. Additionally, it can be paired with high-quality lighting within the same luminaire. 

What next? 

Some 57% of large and midsize businesses cite security concerns as the top barrier to further IoT adoption. But the real issue is not the IoT or the systems that use it: it’s companies and systems that use the IoT without making sure robust cybersecurity measures are implemented and managed properly. 

The top tech companies in the world have pledged billions of dollars to strengthen cybersecurity and train skilled cybersecurity workers, an action that speaks to how seriously they are taking the threat.  

But cybersecurity is an issue that covers the whole spectrum of society. As Google’s global affairs chief, Kent Walker, said upon announcing the measures, “Robust cybersecurity ultimately depends on having the people to implement it.” So it makes sense to partner with a reliable expert in the field that is always keeping an eye on the latest threats and the evolving solutions that exist to counteract them. 

Just as one would feel responsible for the security of a guest in their home, so companies should feel responsible for those navigating their website, store, or purchasing their products. Investing in the best in cybersecurity is the only way to keep people — and their data — safe. 

Click here to find out more about how Signify’s LiFi systems provide high-speed connectivity and unique physical security.  

Security