Top Successful Digital Technologies

Chasing digital technology success armed with knowledge is the best thing that organizations can do for themselves. While the flow of digital opportunities will continue to emerge, organizations will be making decisions on what technologies to tap into and what combinations work the best for the outcomes that organizations desire. Here is a short list of technologies that have proven to deliver and have successful uses out in the real world. Listed below are the top successful digital technologies today rated by the ease of uptake, cost/benefit potential, and maturity. Also, you will find a brief list of typical benefits. This is a summary of my bpmNEXT 2019, mostly a vendor audience,  presentation earlier this month that is linked to here

•AI     -  Consumes large amounts of distinct data, info & knowledge

            -  Knowledge augmentation for human resources in-context

            -  Automation that can learn fast to augment software

•Arch -  Business context and scenarios defined

            -  Inventory of existing business & technical capabilities

            -  Definition of target business & technical capabilities

•BPM -  Assists in the orchestration of necessary resources

            -  Shows work in the context of desired outcomes or goals

            -  Provides agility for automation improvements 

•Content/Collab  - Team Contributions for Ideation, innovation &  work

            - Improved work scheduling & delivery

            - Agile & dynamic team contributions around shared content

•CJM  - Reduction of the silo effect

            -  Constituent goal and outcome representation

            -  Customer customization in context

•IoT   -  Communication between devices & systems

            -  Precise automation close to the source of patterns

            -  Edge computing actions with goals and guardrails

•Low Code    -  Increased agility and change response

            -  Fast software delivery thus decreased costs

            -  Tactic for legacy augmentation and transformation

•PM   -  Visibility of real outcomes in-context of dynamic models

            -  Finding bottlenecks & unnecessary wait times

            -  Verification of process effectiveness & outcomes

•RPA  -  Employee empowerment & satisfaction

            -  Reduced costs & cycle times

            -  High quality & predictability 

•UCC  -  Follow me mobile interactions

            -  Integrated communications channel

            -  Saves end user time

•Workflow  -  Speeds up internal processes

            -  Reduction in error & redo cycles

            -  Insure resource orchestration at appropriate times

Net; Net:

Knowing successful digital technologies is a start point for organizations. As organizations gain momentum with digital they will be looking for productive pairs of technologies and triplets of successful technologies. 

For Those Who Celebrate Easter

Peace to all. If you don't celebrate Good Friday and Easter, please pass by this one. For those who do, Easter is the celebration of our freedom and peace. Happy Easter !!!!  I created a new painting 3 years ago based on my past visits to Israel to see Golgotha and the Garden Tomb. I hope you enjoy seeing it as much as I enjoyed painting it. I have also included other past years paintings celebrating the wonderful Gospel and our forgiveness based on God's mercy.

Practicing Safe Coboting

Like it or not you will be interacting with either physical or software robots soon. A cobot or co-robot (from collaborative robot) is a robot intended to physically interact with humans in a shared workspace. It’s not just the obvious robots to consider. Additionally, there are software bots that can either assist you with knowledge/data mining or actions that eliminate drone work. While there will be initial interfacing issues and learning curves to get by, there are a number of long term issues to consider when interacting with bots.

Bots Constantly Learn and Change

Software & Hardware that are pretty static and only change on periodic cycles are the norms for us these days. Our ability to absorb change as humans are somewhat limited. Bots (hardware or software) can learn on a continuous basis presenting a challenge to people. This can be a good thing in that contextually sensitive advice or actions can greatly assist our outcomes and experiences. It can also be a challenge in that the bots can adapt quicker than us even though they can’t necessarily think. We will have to absorb differences in bot behavior and even anticipate tactical and strategic interactions with bots. If bots can explain their incremental learnings leveraging explainable AI, some of the challenges can be obviated.

Bots Monitor You Looking for Better Practices

Bots of all kinds will be close to people in a more intimate way, therefore they can collect data and information about human behavior. The upside is that these bots can find emerging better practices and show the way to better outcome delivery. Built-in coaching can be helpful when raising the skill and behavior levels of people in both work and personal contexts. The downside of bot monitoring could be giving bad management information to turn against people. Imaging an obsessive-compulsive boss information of behavior deviation, who in turn, uses as a weapon against workers. If the bosses are monitored too, that would certainly be helpful. 

Bots Can Give You Early Warning

Bots can watch multiple contexts at the same time. This means that people operating in a known context can receive notification of context spillover that may mean a pattern of opportunity or threat from emerging signals, patterns and new scenarios. Bots are much more omnipresent and more aware than people are in general especially when they are learning from emerging and fast data or information. People can benefit from early warning behavior for hardware or software bots. The downside is that there could be too many warnings to deal with while trying to accomplish outcomes ergo become an impediment to progress.

Net; Net:

We can be safe when interacting with hardware or software bots if we are aware, informed, trained and practiced at leveraging the positive aspects of these bots. Awareness of the underbelly of these bots and their ability to stay ethically tuned to the law, expected norms in a culture and sensitive to human needs or not will play a big role in safe interactions with bots.

Thanks for All the Support & Prayers

While sorrow comes, it's the kindness of family, friends, and associates that make the burden lighter.  Our family felt surrounded by love for the memorial and beyond. While we will miss our beloved Bethie, it's the words, hugs and continued support that keeps us all going. God is good, and we thank him and each and every one of you.

           

There were over 150 guests and the Chapel was well filled. The eulogies were moving in different ways and we barely scratched the surface of who Bethie was and how she impacted the people around her. For a video memorial, contact me through a comment on the blog, please.

Thanks for Plants and Flowers: Carol & Mike Sinur, The Wagner Family (aunts,  uncles & cousins), Moe & Sandy Mustafa, Meggan Eckert, Tom & Robin Muldon, Robin & Jack Amos, Realtor.Com, Cipriano Family & Caitlin Gabres-Bruce.

Thanks for Donations: Phyl & Gary Bolno, Frank Hein, Nancy & Phyllis McKeska & Nicole Speciale.

Special shout out to BJ's Resturant of Peoria for donating the lions share of the food.

Thanks for Memorial Gifts: Tia Mazzerella (Key Chains) & Julie Kuedero (Photo Buttons)

Special shout out to Linda Caylor and Stephen Sinur for the video montage given at the receptions.

RIP Bethie. Enjoy your time with God and Andy and all the others that have gone before you.

More About Bethie, Click Here
More About Andy, Click Here

How to Survive the Upcoming AI Tsunami

Like it or not we are all going to get inundated by AI, Robotics and Automation opportunities. As organizations or individuals, we will have to decide how we are going to respond. Since we can no longer count on AI going back into another “AI Winter” because it is not going away. We will have to decide on AI as a trend and each AI encounter we will be facing. Our choices on AI will either make us win or lose in the short term and the long run. What are the responses to AI we can exercise?

Ignore AI

You can take the approach that ignores AI as long as possible. While this might work for a while, eventually you will come face to face with AI in one of your roles in life. The one redeeming benefit to this approach is that by the time you have to deal, AI will be easier, in general, as the human/AI interface will be mature by the time you will face it. The problem is that you may have to catch up with the pack as they have been experienced in leveraging AI. In fact, as an employee, this approach actually has some dangers implied.

Resist AI

Resisting change is a natural human instinct but it can be dialed up or toned down. This is a delicate stance. Subconsciously, there is a natural resistance to software that can digest large amounts of data and information and maybe be smarter than us. It can tug at our egos and this is kind of natural and probably will disappear over time. There also could be a conscious resistance that some folks will employ to avoid or just plain fight AI at all fronts. The motivation might be the learning curve for new skills. We might not be fast enough to not be replaced by AI, so resistance is a tactic.

Verify AI

We all have seen the effects of not verifying and adequately learning how software can affect outcomes. Just look at the recent headlines with the 737 Max 8 planes where the response from authorities is "you should have read the manual."  Not that I would suggest we should read the manual before we step on an airplane, but we need to verify the effect AI and software, in general, l can have on our lives. Had I known there were no specific in-depth training nor specialized simulators for this plane, we could have avoided them. In the same light, we need to verify who has certified and tested the AI we interact with even if it is not life-threatening. What if AI created a custom medicine that incorporated all your meds or you were injected with nanotechnology to monitor aspects of your health, would you verify?

Comply with AI

One can assume that the AI has been tested and is not likely to do anything but help us in various life roles we participate in regularly. This compliance approach exercises faith that the people who applied the AI correctly. I would suspect we will be using AI and not knowing about it anyway. It is clear when you interact with a bot in either a servicing or sales/marketing situations, but AI will be embedded in places that we would hardly detect it. We may or may not have the opportunity to comply as AI will just be there and not be obvious.  I would suggest the best AI implementations will behave that way.

Participate with AI

We could also choose to embrace AI actively. One approach would be to get to know the AI implementation early so we could understand the subtleties of interacting an AI component. We could use the implied strengths and weaknesses to our advantage. Another approach would get fully on board to know much about AI and their implementations to take advantage of it for revenue purposes. If AI is as successful as an automation option that all the pundits are projecting, why not get ahead of the curve. This assumes that you like to learn and be at the edge.

Net; Net

I would suggest that most of us will exercise nearly all of these options at some point in the future. You may decide to resist until you see the results. You may decide to ignore AI until it comes to your door and then you execute a downstream decision about AI. The fully embrace approach will be taken by those that like a challenge and don't shrink back from change. Even if you are that kind of individual, it may not be for all the roles that you participate in at the moment.