Thursday, March 26, 2020

Content Intelligence is Real


Today when organizations talk about content analytics, they generally are talking about the effectiveness of marketing efforts or website effectiveness. This is often productive but narrow leverage of content. Content is often the forgotten large vein of big data that has more potential for finding nuggets of business benefits. I would suggest there is a larger category of leveraging content than content analytics applied to revenue generation. I call this Content Intelligence.

Content Intelligence is the act of applying natural language processing (NLP), machine learning (ML), deep learning (DL), business intelligence (BI) and business analytics (BA) practices to a variety of digital content. Companies use content Intelligence software to provide visibility into the amount of content that is being created, the nature of that content, and how it is used.




The Unprecedented Growth of Unstructured Content:


While the has been a steady growth of traditional content and the importance of enterprise content management (ECM), the use of this content is being leveraged better in the new digital world. While digital methods have increased the productivity of the first mile of content-rich process flows, there is much more to leverage as we move to an increasingly digital world. Organizations are looking to turn audio and video into actionable insights in order to respond to issues in real-time, uncovering insights in large archives, boost the leverage with machine learning ad accelerating decision making.

Increasing the Utilization of Unstructured Content:

We see increased leverage of knowledge by systematically using NLP to find key nouns, relationships, and new leverage points. Imagine mining knowledge out of operations manuals to point to organizational knowledge sources or to create helpful new videos for better outcomes. Organizations are doing this right now. Imagine searching for moving images for defective parts of managing costs and increasing employee safety. This is happening today. Imagine equipping emergency personnel with active real-time maps of buildings and infrastructure during emergencies like active shooter situations. This is being done today. We are seeing the emergence of smart home and smart infrastructures in cities leveraging audio and video. You can expect more leverage of live and active content going forward because of the ability to mine nouns, relationships, contexts, and interactions. 

Digital Publishing is Utilizing New Digital Assists:

Creating content is now easier by guiding authors with better grammar, finding parallel writing that might indicate plagiarism, and creating topical indexes for finding useful resources or references. This is very helpful for traditional marketing and lead-generation over and above traditional research and "publish or perish" situations. Consider story mining of narratives to find successful approaches to creating better practices.

Net; Net:

While revenue generation is essential and analytics applied to revenue efforts, content is often an underutilized pocket of big data for organizations. We are in the early days of leveraging intelligence with various kinds of content. There is so much more to do with content intelligence, so it's time to increase your content IQ.



Friday, March 20, 2020

Covid 19 Videos: Too Much Data and Not Enough Focus

We have been hearing all kinds of data and analysis in and around the Coronavirus. In this set of sessions, we discuss the importance of setting goals before collecting and massaging data. Right now it's about not breaking the capacity of the healthcare system, but there are a number of other important things to optimize on as well. If you want to watch the full video, click here   If you want smaller snippets, click on one of the topics below:



AI, Data and the Coronavirus Video Snippets:

Outcome-Driven Responses
Build for Surges?
AI: Good or Evil
Models or Data?




Make sure you follow or like our videos that appeal to you. Comments are appreciated to either  jim.sinur@gmail.com or  irene@saugatuckworldwide.com. You can comment on the post as well. 



Wednesday, March 18, 2020

Beth Sinur; It's Been a Hard Year Without You

I think I speak for all who knew you. You have been greatly missed and we are all still hurting without your warm spirit. You lit up every room that you entered because of your positive spirit and attitude. People always loved when you showed up because you were so full of fun and surprises. We never knew what you would say or do, except when it came to having compassion for others. You loved hard and you were a front seat participant in life. We all miss you for sure.


You sang your way through life's trials and entertained us all. You loved "Pink" with all your being


Your beauty started in your heart and shone through often


The fun started early and you kept it going to the end


You so loved your family starting with your twin brother


The rest of the kids enjoyed your spunk as well. Nobody treated her grandparents better





While you were a storming jock that loved soccer, you cleaned up well



You loved all animals, but you had a special love for dolphins


We will all continue on without you, but we know you are watching and near. I hope you like the collage I made to hang on the wall of our home to remember you along with the pictures nearby. It's "Pink" and some pink dolphins to combine two of your many loves.


MISS YA GIRL !!!!

Family and friends in glory today, especially Mom, Dad, Andy, and Beth Sinur. 



Tuesday, March 17, 2020

Is Digital Chasing Hype or Progressing?


It appears that the days of hype-hopping for organizations that want to make digital progress is nearing an end. The downturn that we are facing will sober us to be diligent in what methods or technologies we chose to reduce costs, cut time to change, and optimize revenue opportunities. It's time to be pragmatic for the average organization and look to what popular technologies will deliver tangible benefits quickly. 

Obviously, if you are an investor looking for new markets to make investments in, those technologies that have the sizzle and are hot are your cup of tea. If you are an investor who looks to ride older technologies to profit before it sunsets, your days are going to get busier. The average organization will be looking for steady progress towards better profitability with better customer experiences supported by lots of cost-saving automation. This blog will identify those newer technologies that can deliver that delicate balance.

Let’s start by looking at popular technologies by impacts and time frames with the eye towards long term results.  I've placed popular technologies on a timeline and classified them by their biggest impact area in Figure 1. Often these technologies start at the infrastructure level to build upon for software vendors or organizations to build upon. When combinations of these work together, then the packaging of development and infrastructure technologies/methods results in business impacts. 

An example would be that Customer Excellence results in the leverage of CX, ChatBots, Omnichannel, Journey Mining, BI, AI, Knowledge Management, CRM, Voice, Mobile, Cloud, and APIs. Many technological influences have benefited from the evolution of technologies over time, which you can track over the decades. Industry 4.0 would not be possible if it wasn't for bar codes, middleware, networks, DBMSs, Process, GPS, APIs, QR Codes, IoT, Supply Chain Logistics, and Fast Data.



Figure 1 Timelines of Popular Information Technologies

Newer Technologies That Deliver

While many of the established technologies have and will continue to deliver, there is a special set of technologies that will bear the weight of fluctuating economic and geopolitical situations. Here are my favorites that deliver desired outcomes today and will grow well to tomorrow:

Customer Excellence:


  • Customer Journeys for creating better customer experiences and improved touchpoints 
  • Mining for measuring actual customer, process and resources behaviors for experience upgrades
  • Digital Assistants for knowledge assisted help for customers and employees
  • Voice / Video for making the interaction more real and possibly more entertaining
  • BI / AI providing analytical assists with goal-driven data/information consumption for opportunities or threats 

Automation:


  • Agile Methods for time to market delivery that leverages incremental change and adjustments
  • RPA for step automation of  high volume, tedious, and repetitive tasks 
  • Low-Code for time-sensitive proof of concepts, time to market delivery, and legacy replacement
  • Process Mining for improving processes, and locating automation opportunities
  • Machine Learning for identifying or automating goal, policy or rule changes 

Net; Net:

Hype hopping seems to usually only work for early investors or organizations that are the cash cows who love to find the next big thing. The rest of us will want sure things that deliver short term results while growing to a longer-term set of desired outcomes. It is time to carefully map our digital plans with a practical and experienced eye while striking a balance between short term CPA mentality and the vision of the executive management team. I hope the above figure 1 can help with that effort.

A special thanks to Craig Hayenga, my rocket scientist and software pro friend/neighbor who reviewed figure 1 and gave me ideas or corrections for this blog. 


Thursday, March 12, 2020

AI Case Study Videos

We have been hearing all kinds of stories in and around AI. I have tried to gather some real-world case studies to show what works today. While AI is early in its delivery cycle, there are some encouraging and practical case studies to learn from as we build impressive outcomes with AI combined with a good number of parallel methods and technologies. Here are five pragmatic uses of AI. If you want to watch the full video, click here  If you want smaller video snippets, see the list below.



AI Case Studies:

AI Digitizes Knowledge
AI Tracks Down Active Shooters
AI Disrupts Competition
AI Saves Lives
AI Helps with Tedious Work


Make sure you follow or like our videos that appeal to you. Comments are appreciated to either  jim.sinur@gmail.com or  irene@saugatuckworldwide.com. You can comment on the post as well. 

Tuesday, March 10, 2020

Leveraging Process Modeling for Quick Benefits


In a rapidly changing world, greater demands are put on organizations to stay agile and react swiftly. Yet many are struggling to achieve this when using outdated tools and techniques. Leading organizations are dramatically shrinking the time it takes to discover and diagnose business problems, design and implement solutions and continuously optimize processes by leveraging process modeling.



The Problem:


Few organizations are as large and complex as the United Kingdom’s National Health Service. In a recent project, Process modeling was used to help facilitate a series of future state design workshops for mental health services in South London. This group of hospital trusts and partnerships were competing against each other for bed spaces across the UK. The result was juvenile patients being sent to hospitals many hundreds of miles away from home at the very time they most needed to be near family.

The Solution:

Process mapping and analysis solutions are often used by consultancies and internal operational teams to deliver rapid transformational change. One Solution Consultant at an Intelligent Automation provider recently stated that “Process modeling helps us get to 80% of the answer in a fraction of the time it used to take us. Now we start providing value to the client right there in the very first meeting!” Process workshops were used to challenge the teams to think about how things worked and who was accountable for it, all captured live in a modeling capability. This meant the participants felt they had contributed to something tangible before they left each session. In fact the teams immediately started putting many of these new work practices in place while still in the design phase. The need for lengthy write-ups and analysis of workshop outputs was almost completely eliminated.  They were literally transforming the organization at the speed of conversation.

The Results:

The result of the project saw hospital stays outside the local area drop by 75% against the baseline year. Across the partnerships, the hospital beds total capacity used by local children increased from 52% to 90% and there was an underspend of the budget of 12%.

While this example shows the power of live process mapping and analysis the product also includes modules for teams that specialize in specific areas such as; Risk Analysis, Org Design, Target Operating Models, DevOps, Lean and Robotic Process Automation (RPA). The RPA Analysis module, for example, is used by RPA consultancies and internal teams to build a holistic process model, rapidly identify suitable candidates for automation and automatically generate a business case.

Net; Net:

In almost all cases users report a considerable reduction in the time it takes to make key decisions and this results in higher levels of engagement and better customer experience by leveraging process models. While this might seem obvious, process modeling will be a key competency in transformations while seriously involved with cost savings along the way.

This Case Study was provided by Skore   https://www.getskore.com/



Thursday, March 5, 2020

Getting Better At Digital Decisions Videos

Often the processes, data, and cases are the benefactors of digitization. Because of this focus, digital decisions often end up being overlooked. Getting better at decisions is one of the more desired competencies organizations need. If you want the full video featuring James Taylor and me on the topic, click here. If you want smaller snippets, see the list below:



Digital Decision Video Snippets:

Empowering the Business Owner
Success with Digital Decisions
Augmenting Humans with AI
Lowcode and Decisioning
Explainable AI


Make sure you follow or like our videos that appeal to you. Comments are appreciated to either  jim.sinur@gmail.com or  irene@saugatuckworldwide.com. You can comment on the post as well. 

Tuesday, March 3, 2020

Books on Cybersecurity and Knowledge Blueprints

Every once in a while I get to review some great books. Here are two that should be on your bookshelf or in your digital library. I had the pleasure to read both and have a nice summary for you.


Click here for a link to this book

"The Geopolitics of Cybersecurity is a book that surrounds the multiple layers and dimensions of what holistic cybersecurity should look like. Not only are all the challenges laid out in detail in this book, but the possible shape of the potential journey to a balanced cybersecurity framework are explored fully. As a student of cybersecurity, I now know so much more than I imagined after reading this book. It should be in the library of all serious security professionals."  




"Ron Ross has captured the essence of the rules around conjugating knowledge and properly mapping it for precision. This allows for better business communications at a minimum and leveraged knowledge at a maximum. For any organization that wants to leverage knowledge now or in the future, this book is a must-read" 


GOOD READING TO YOU !!!!!