Monthly Archives: July 2021

Infographic: The Rise of AI in the Call Center Industry

Artificial intelligence will soon break into the call center industry even more to complement the work of human agents, and its wide potential applications are promising. The infographic below courtesy of our friends over at Executive Boutique will show you some statistics about artificial intelligence and how call centers can integrate AI into their existing business processes.



ITOps and Big Data Come of Age

In this contributed article, Bhanu Singh, SVP of Engineering and DevOps at OpsRamp, discusses how there are new demands on IT operations to deliver more inclusive data intelligence that can support decision-making at large across IT and the business. ITOps teams have a growing mandate to positively influence business and customer-related outcomes; their ability to collect, analyze and use data to support many types of decision-making is now top-of-mind.



“Above the Trend Line” – Your Industry Rumor Central for 7/29/2021

Above the Trend Line: your industry rumor central is a recurring feature of insideBIGDATA. In this column, we present a variety of short time-critical news items grouped by category such as M&A activity, people movements, funding news, financial results, industry alignments, customer wins, rumors and general scuttlebutt floating around the big data, data science and machine learning industries including behind-the-scenes anecdotes and curious buzz.



Turning Big Data into better data with MLOps

In this special guest feature, Chida Sadayappan, Lead Specialist for Data Cloud and Machine Learning at Deloitte Consulting, discusses Machine Learning Operations (MLOps). This emerging discipline uses automation to accelerate ingestion of data and to more quickly develop, test, deploy, and monitor cloud machine learning (ML) models that use Big Data. Taken together, these steps comprise governance practices that help ensure the integrity of data throughout its life cycle.



insideBIGDATA Guide for Higher Education – Part 2

[Sponsored Post] This insideBIGDATA technology guide co-sponsored by Dell Technologies and AMD, insideBIGDATA Guide for Higher Education, discusses how higher education leaders today want to improve student and institutional success through digital transformation. Dell Technologies is uniquely positioned to help at every step of the way, leveraging a robust portfolio of solutions for data analytics, AI and HPC and coupled with a deep understanding of the missions, visions, and strategies of higher education institutions.



MLOps: Bringing AI to the Tactical Edge—and Making It Work

In this contributed article, Joel Dillon and Eric Syphard of Booz Allen, feel strongly that in order for machine learning to have a profound impact on data sharing for defense and the intelligence community, it’s imperative that data get communicated to warfighters at the tactical edge, where fast decisions are at a premium and compute power and connectivity are often scarce. It is critical that these edge use cases characterize and shape planning for AI and ML-driven investment as digitization continues to accelerate the pace of war.



Supply chain planning in an xP&A world

The evolution of Financial Planning and Analytics (FP&A) is well underway. Today’s best planning solutions are more accurately described by Gartner’s new terminology “Extended Planning and Analytics (xP&A),” where business planning and forecasting is streamlined and integrated across every part of the organization. At IBM, we’ve embraced this mentality for years and are taking it further with the continuous integrated planning approach to business planning, which is currently being applied across all business units, from finance, to sales to supply chain and beyond.

Supply chain leaders know that true collaboration across business units is a baseline requirement for building accurate demand forecasts. To achieve this goal, they’ll need an upgrade from legacy planning tools and manual, spreadsheet-based processes. Gaining real-time visibility into disparate data is key to driving operational efficiency and actionable insights. But in today’s world, it’s not only about having internal data, or even historical data, at your disposal. To plan with greater certainty, especially during volatile times, organizations need to incorporate external data, such as weather data and employment trends, as well as scenario planning, into their planning process. Predictive analytics and scenario modeling are no longer nice-to-haves in planning but are necessary to provide the foresight organizations need to make critical business decisions. Nowhere has this requirement been more evident than in supply chain planning within the last 16 months.

With demand volatility on the rise and customer expectations continually evolving due to globalization, the risks of fragmented business processes and legacy operation management systems are too great to ignore. The correlation of external and client data allows organizations to gain deeper insights into what is driving demand, resulting in more accurate forecasts and subsequently more optimized levels of inventory.

Using one integrated planning solution also allows organizations to strategize and build plans with a synthesized view of the organization in mind.  An integrated approach allows operational plans to automatically update financial plans, providing business leaders a more accurate picture of organizational performance. This enables the identification of new growth opportunities, optimized spending and the ability to achieve business goals with confident momentum.

Here’s how three companies have been able to utilize supply chain planning across their organization to do just that.

Carhartt: How AI can help you capitalize on increased demand

The retailer Carhartt has been making rugged, durable work and weekend wear for more than 130 years, selling through a traditional wholesale model.  But when growth outshot expectations a few years ago, they experienced a replenishment problem and lost key revenue. By using AI and predictive analytics, Carhartt was able to build algorithms that take into account a huge range of factors—from economic indicators to weather, in order to generate demand forecasts and automate replenishment at a SKU level.

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Novolex: How to make supply chain plans better-and faster during turbulent times

 Food packaging leader Novolex was struggling with lengthy annual planning cycles and the time it took to coordinate the company’s multiple locations and various systems. By switching to an integrated planning solution, they can now receive an accurate, timely view of what is happening at any given time along with clear prescriptive analytics, recommending the best course of action when facing dynamic demand.

“This year, we’ve been able to improve our inventory position by about 16%. That means the company is able to support the business with 16% less inventory than it maintained a year ago”

Violeta Nedelcu, Supply Chain Director, Novolex

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Jabil: Track costs and maximize margins with real-time data

 Jabil engineers and builds a wide array of components and products for many Fortune 500 companies. With over 120 corporate clients in 10 sites, Regional Cost Accounting Manager, Martin Gonzalez, needed a truly integrated planning solution to gain transparency and agility. With IBM Planning Analytics with Watson, he created a margin analysis business intelligence dashboard that works at every level of the organization. Martin estimates that the dashboard lets his company create reports 25 times faster than the previous system: doing them manually in Excel.

“We’re saving each cost accountant on every site 7.5 hours a week. Now they can produce reports in two or three minutes.”

Martin Gonzalez, Regional Cost Accounting Manager, Jabil

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In summary, while businesses have historically focused on financial planning and analysis, it’s clear that integrating with operational planning and extending across all functional departments allows leaders to stay better informed and drive stronger business results. Supply chain organizations can reap the rewards of xP&A and continuous integrated planning, with processes that are consistent, intuitively collaborative, and incorporate AI to provide both predictive insights and prescriptive guidance to business leaders. IBM Planning Analytics with Watson is the only partner that can provide a truly modern AI-powered, Extended Planning and Analysis (xP&A) solution that unifies, streamlines and scales planning across every part of the organization.

Get started today

 

The post Supply chain planning in an xP&A world appeared first on Journey to AI Blog.



The Next AI Frontier: Business Impact and ROI

n this special guest feature, Thameem Khan, VP of Product Strategy responsible for Platform vision at Boomi, has been watching a new wave of AI companies emerge that focus on providing value to the enterprise with predictions based on business goals. Any other purpose, he argues, turns AI into an expensive science project.



insideBIGDATA Latest News – 7/24/2021

In this regular column, we’ll bring you all the latest industry news centered around our main topics of focus: big data, data science, machine learning, AI, and deep learning. Our industry is constantly accelerating with new products and services being announced everyday. Fortunately, we’re in close touch with vendors from this vast ecosystem, so we’re in a unique position to inform you about all that’s new and exciting. Our massive industry database is growing all the time so stay tuned for the latest news items describing technology that may make you and your organization more competitive.



Global Data Science Competition Gathered Brilliant Minds to Solve Social Problems

For over two months, 50 teams representing 34 nationalities competed for a spot in the top ten of the World Data League (WDL) – a quest to find long-lasting solutions for social-oriented problems using data.



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