WHY IS TECHNOLOGY IMPORTANT IN BUSINESS?

Technology helps businesses in a number of ways that generally center on doing things bigger, better or faster than you could without technology. Different industries and companies rely on technology in different ways, but widespread uses include business communication, optimized production, inventory management and financial record-keeping.

Business Communication

Technology expands the reach and efficiency of many forms of internal and external business communication. Field sales representatives and technicians, for instance, no longer have to return to an office to receive assignments. Instead, they take calls or mobile messages while in the field, alerting them to the next scheduled appointment. Business reps traveling for work can stay connected to the office and colleagues. E-mail enables mass distribution of messages to people across geographical boundaries.

Externally, technology enhances opportunities for marketing communication. Social media, e-mail and mobile phones allow companies swifter and more interactive communication platforms relative to traditional, one-way media options.

Optimized Production

No matter what your industry, business size or primary activities, technology allows opportunities to optimize production beyond what you could produce without it. Small companies can often compete with larger firms in operational efficiency, thanks to access to high-tech equipment and tools. Manufacturers constantly look to upgrade equipment to compete with industry leaders on production efficiency.

In a retail business, technology makes the process of selling to and servicing customers much more efficient as well. Scanning barcodes at a checkout is faster than finger-punching numbers in a cash register. Also, as items get scanned, companies capture important data for precise marketing.

Inventory Management

Raw materials suppliers, manufacturers, wholesalers, retails and B2B providers all have inventory management processes. Technology is used to organize items systematicallyin a warehouse or storage room. Matching computer information to inventory storage spaces helps associates pull stock as quickly as possible. Companies can quickly compare inventory when it comes in the door to order sizes on the computer screen. Many inventory processes are automated. Retailers, for instance, often use vendor managed inventory approaches where suppliers automatically send replenishment when alerted that stock is low at a store. Organized, efficient inventory control helps minimize inventory costs while meeting customer demand.

Financial Record-Keeping

Companies’ small and large use advanced software programs to manage accounting and finance tasks, according to the U.S. Small Business Administration. In fact, companies often use programs that sync accounting with point-of-sale terminals and bookkeeping programs, such that each purchase or sale transaction is automatically captured in an accounting platform. Using technology to manage financial record-keeping minimizes manual processes, reduces costs and helps protect against human error.

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How smart is Artificial Intelligence?

Artificial Intelligence is beginning to have transformative effects on consumers, enterprises, and governments around the world. The impacts are contributing by automating repetitive task, creating efficiencies, ubiquitously improving user experience, and creating ways for humans to improve our cognition.

Furthermore, by 2020, the AI market is projected to reach $70 billion, driven by increasing computational power and improving approaches/applications with machine, deep learning, natural language processing and robotics and many a number of other technologies.

To gain a better understanding of the perception of AI in the US, PwC surveyed 2,500 consumers and business decision makers. The objective is to better understand their attitudes towards artificial intelligence, and the future implications on business and society. I found the findings to be insightful and a few that are surprising!

While the world has concerns and there are certainly obstacles to overcome, consumers in the survey believe that AI has the potential to assist in medical breakthroughs, democratize costly services, elevate poor customer service, and even free up an overburdened workforce.

From a business perspective, enterprise executives are most optimistic about the potential of AI technologies to increase efficiencies via automated communications and alerts to enable more proactive approaches (70%) business challenges.

Today’s proactive solutions will mature to include predictive capabilities thanks to a direct correlation with improving big data and data analytics (59%), fueling this advancement. Additionally, our surveyed execs believe virtual personal assistants and automated data analysts are the AI solutions they see most impacting their businesses.

The more tech-savvy executives see a world where AI will further aid human abilities that are amplified as machines help mankind process, analyze, and evaluate the abundance of data that creates today’s world, allowing humans to spend more time engaged in high-level thinking, creativity, and decision-making.

In their own roles, business execs see huge potential for AI to alleviate repetitive, menial tasks such as paperwork (82%), scheduling (79%), and time sheets (78%). In fact, 78% agree it will free all employees from such tasks at all levels across their organizations.

Already, 34% of business execs say that the extra time freed up from using digital assistants allows them to focus on deep thinking and creating.

While 69% of business execs believe an artificial intelligence adviser would be as fair, or even more-fair, than a human manager when it comes to promotions and raises, only 46% would consider having AI involved in decisions regarding their own personal promotions.

Business execs also see potential for AI managers to improve life for employees. The majority believe employees wouldn’t mind working with an AI manager if it meant more flexibility and freedom to work from home (71%) and if it meant a more balanced workload (64%).

67% of business execs believe leveraging AI will help humans and machines work together and combine both digital and human intelligences in the best ways possible and even augment the c-suite and board.

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Your quick guide to using LinkedIn to distribute content

What type of stories go viral on LinkedIn, and how does the algorithm impact the visibility of certain posts? We take a closer look at the content process on the business professionals’ network. For some business-focused sites such as Forbes and Inc.com, LinkedIn engagement is beginning to rival, or even surpass, their shares on Facebook.

Earlier this month, we looked at how LinkedIn has been investing in video capabilities. But video isn’t the only area of content that has been succeeding on LinkedIn. Earlier this year, Digiday reported on how business publishers were seeing growth in referrals from the platform.

Here’s how engagement, measured as shares of links on LinkedIn, looked for English language publishers on the platform from January to September:

According to Executive Editor Dan Roth, the platform had three million writers and around 160,000 posts per week as of the end of 2016. Those articles either get distributed by LinkedIn’s in-house editorial team, made up of around 25 editors based around the world, or algorithms. LinkedIn claims that 87 percent of users trust the platform as a source of information, making it an attractive location for gaining people’s attention.

But what sort of messaging works on LinkedIn, and how does it get distributed? Unlike Facebook, there isn’t a whole lot of discussion about the influence of LinkedIn’s algorithm on what their users see when they log on.

As with most algorithm-based news feeds, we can divide the question of why certain stories go viral into two sections. First, we need to analyze the actual substance, tone and presentation of the stories themselves. Second, we need to consider the distribution particulars of LinkedIn, the role of its algorithm and the influence that a writer or publisher can have on that process.

The content: aim for high quality

Let’s consider the types of stories that are seeing high engagement on LinkedIn. LinkedIn is actually quite explicit about the types of stories that it sees as being likely to go viral on the platform. In a guide, they note that articles should “share professional expertise,” and suggest titles such as “What will (or should) your industry look like in 5, 10, or 15 years and how will it get there?” and “What advice do you have for career advancement?”

Looking at the most popular stories of the last few weeks on LinkedIn in NewsWhip’s Spike tool, we can see that these type of stories also resonate when they come from publishers. Career advice and professional development insights are extremely popular.

In presentation however, LinkedIn makes an effort to distinguish its content from more mass-appeal platforms. The platform discourages the use of listicles and obvious clickbait and recommends that writers “keep articles appropriate for the LinkedIn audience. Don’t post anything obscene, shocking, hateful, intimidating or otherwise unprofessional.”

Being able to maintain these editorial standards is something that LinkedIn takes very seriously and to reasonably good effect. You won’t have noticed LinkedIn mentioned very often in ongoing discussion about the spread of “fake news,” and the platform is not known as a place where viral publishers go to thrive.

It’s also important that articles aren’t seen as overly promotional; it’s fine to mention where you work, or the product you’re building, but going overboard results in risking spam status and a visibility downgrade. LinkedIn isn’t trying to compete with Twitter for the breaking news audience, or Facebook for mass appeal. Its strengths lie in allowing users to develop thought leadership and sharing content relevant to their careers. Developing a genuine persona on LinkedIn with expertise around a specific topic is a surefire way to build an audience base on the platform. LinkedIn also recommends that articles are at least three paragraphs long.

Distribution: The algorithm at work

Distribution of content on LinkedIn is an algorithmic process, and that algorithm is theoretically designed for engaging, interesting stories to go viral. In this sense, the algorithm isn’t all that different from the type that bigger platforms employ, but it’s aimed at a more niche user base. LinkedIn is open about the effect its algorithms have on content visibility in the news feed, using a “man+machine” approach to classifying content in real time based on signifiers such as early engagement, previous reaction to content from the page and more.

LinkedIn uses a feature called “FollowFeed” to help determine what gets prominence in users’ feeds. FollowFeed aims to provide high precision and recall, or relevance. For a technical explanation of how FollowFeed works, see this great detailed explanation from LinkedIn engineer Ankit Gupta.

LinkedIn has a three-stage process for identifying and dealing with low-quality content. As the post is being created, a classifier buckets posts as “spam,” “low-quality” or “clear” in near real time. Next, the system looks at statistical models based on how fast the post is spreading and the networks engaging with the post, in order to spot low-quality posts. Finally, human evaluators review posts flagged by users as being “suspicious.”

There are some factors that help determine how much preference articles secure for algorithmic distribution based on factors related to the personal details attached to the author’s LinkedIn profile.

Here’s what LinkedIn recommends regarding article distribution factors from individual writers:

(Stories are) shared with a subset of your connections and followers. This is determined by connection strength, your connection’s notification settings, and notification state (i.e. number of unread notifications). Members who aren’t in your network can choose to follow you and by doing so they will receive your articles and posts in their feed.

1.      Followers may receive notifications when you publish an article. Your articles may be available in their LinkedIn homepage feeds and can be included in news digest emails.

2.      In an effort to simplify the notifications experience, we often aggregate notifications to your connections.

So as with any news feed, there’s quite a bit at play behind the scenes in determining how many people will see and share your posts. Analyzing other success stories and changing techniques learned on other platforms can help in boosting your own signal.

Ultimately, LinkedIn’s editorial mission statement is to provide timely and professional content to users. Those users can be divided into different cohorts – engineers, salespeople, executives and countless other – but timely relevance remains the key consideration.

Source: ijnet.org

Indian Scientists Develop New Technology To Make Bio-diesel- A Clean Fuel More Cleaner

It is possible to convert waste from agriculture, homes, and industries into bio-diesel. Since it is waste that is put to good use, it is considered a clean source of energy. However, the process of making bio-diesel also generates waste in the form of crude glycerol.  

A group of scientists have found a way to convert this waste into hydrogen, which is a green fuel. This way biodiesel – already a clean fuel – can be made even cleaner. 

Manufacturing of biodiesel has increased significantly, leading to higher production of crude glycerol. Disposal of this waste is a costly affair. Therefore, industries need cheaper ways for managing this waste. Scientists at the Institute of Genomics and Integrative Biology (IGIB) in New Delhi have developed a cost-effective strategy to convert crude glycerol into hydrogen gas, which is a zero emission and high-energy fuel.  

Nearly 14 million tons of biodiesel is produced every year globally which generates around 1.4 million tons of crude glycerol. “We have to find ways of dealing with that humongous amount of waste,” scientists have said in their study published in journal Applied Biochemistry and Biotechnology.

Researchers treated crude glycerol with a bacterium called Bacillus amyloliquefaciens CD16 and were able to produce 3.2 liters of hydrogen gas fuel from a liter of crude glycerol waste mix in a single day. Burning this amount hydrogen generates nearly 37 kilo watt hour energy, which is sufficient to run 4 ceiling fans for 8 hours.

“These bacteria have a special property – they form a biofilm, which enhances their ability to produce hydrogen”, the authors note in their paper. To make a biofilm, many bacterial cells attach to each other and release a sticky coating around them, which encapsulates them. “This provides a protective environment to the cells making them more stable and robust in the equipment during the glycerol treatment process”, say authors.

The research team included Jyotsana Prakash, Rahul Kumar Gupta, Priyanka, and Vipin Chandra Kalia.

 Source: Outlook India

How to use technology to cultivate efficiency in the workplace

Using tech is an effective way of bringing a workforce together. And employers can use different platforms to cultivate this efficient working environment

The traditional office environment is vastly changing with freelancing and flexible working becoming more prominent in many companies. To ensure the smooth running of a diverse and possibly international team, it is important to use the many communication and technology platforms available to cultivate efficiency in the workplace.

For businesses which have employees and freelancers all over the world, it can be beneficial to adopt a primary communication platform such as Slack, which not only allows colleagues to communicate in an informal conversational manner, it also allows them to submit work/queries seamlessly in one centralized platform.

Whether employees are in the same location or the other side of the world, there are a plethora of tools available to allow a team to work collaboratively and cohesively without stepping on each other toes or overwriting each other changes.

For coding, Github is an amazing tool for collaboration as it allows the team to communicate while coding in real time, meaning team members can cohesively work together to review code and share their input simultaneously while working on a particular project. Furthermore, the team can also search and reuse previous codes written by colleagues – perfect for when working on a tight schedule.

Project management has also gone digital with many platforms such a Trello offering an online space to keep track of all projects. From employee on-boarding to sales leads, employees across different company departments can easily track the progress of projects within their team through the visual boards.

With a large percentage of communication being non-verbal, conference calls can often lead to missed messages to what colleagues mean due to not being able to spot these non-verbal cues. Google hangout video conference calls allow colleagues to visually communicate with each other allowing for more effective communication, and avoid ‘stepping on each other toes’ by talking over each other.

The overarching benefit for adopting these types of technologies is to provide employees with a centralized platform to communicate and show progress seamlessly which ultimately allows teams to work in a more time efficient manner.

Creating and fostering an efficient workplace is no easy feat, but these technology platforms can lead to phenomenal results making the workplace albeit a virtual one, a much happier place to be.

Source: information age