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Technology

AI in Supply Chain

Unlocking Efficiency and Innovation: AI Applications in Supply Chain Management

In today’s rapidly evolving business landscape, companies are constantly seeking ways to optimize their supply chain processes to stay competitive and responsive to customer demands. Artificial Intelligence (AI) has emerged as a game-changing technology that holds immense potential for revolutionizing supply chain management. By harnessing the power of AI, organizations can enhance their operational efficiency, reduce costs, improve decision-making, and ensure seamless end-to-end supply chain operations. In this blog, we will explore the myriad AI applications in supply chain management that are reshaping the industry.

1. Demand Forecasting:

One of the critical components of a successful supply chain is the ability to predict customer demand accurately. AI excels in this area by analyzing historical sales data, market trends, weather patterns, and various external factors to generate more precise demand forecasts. Machine learning algorithms can adapt to changing conditions and fine-tune predictions over time, helping companies maintain optimal inventory levels and reduce excess stock, thus saving costs.

2. Inventory Management:

AI-driven inventory management can significantly reduce costs and improve supply chain efficiency. By leveraging AI algorithms, companies can optimize inventory replenishment schedules, predict potential stockouts, and maintain the right balance between overstocking and understocking. This minimizes carrying costs while ensuring products are always available to meet customer demands.

3. Route Optimization:

Transportation is a pivotal aspect of the supply chain, and optimizing delivery routes is essential for reducing transportation costs and improving service levels. AI algorithms can analyze various factors, including traffic patterns, weather conditions, and delivery time windows, to determine the most efficient routes for deliveries. This not only lowers operational costs but also enhances on-time delivery performance.

4. Supplier Selection and Management:

Selecting the right suppliers and managing vendor relationships are vital for supply chain success. AI can assist in supplier evaluation by analyzing factors such as supplier performance, quality, lead times, and price competitiveness. It can also continuously monitor supplier performance and proactively identify issues, reducing the risk of disruptions in the supply chain.

5. Quality Control and Maintenance:

AI-powered quality control systems use computer vision and machine learning to inspect products for defects or irregularities, ensuring that only high-quality items make it through the supply chain. This reduces waste, minimizes the risk of recalls, and enhances overall product quality. Additionally, AI can predict equipment maintenance needs through the analysis of sensor data, enabling proactive maintenance to prevent costly breakdowns.

6. Warehouse Automation:

AI-driven robots and automation systems are transforming warehouses by improving picking and packing operations, optimizing storage, and streamlining order fulfillment. These systems can work alongside human employees, increasing productivity and reducing the physical strain on workers.

7. Risk Management:

Supply chain risk management is becoming increasingly complex. AI can analyze vast datasets and provide real-time insights into potential risks such as geopolitical issues, natural disasters, or economic fluctuations. This allows companies to proactively mitigate risks and develop contingency plans, ensuring a more resilient supply chain.

8. Cold Chain Management:

Industries like pharmaceuticals and food depend on maintaining the integrity of temperature-sensitive products throughout the supply chain. AI can continuously monitor temperature and humidity conditions in real-time, providing instant alerts if any deviation occurs. This ensures that perishable goods remain safe and compliant throughout the distribution process.

9. Customer Insights:

Understanding customer preferences and behavior is crucial for supply chain success. AI-driven analytics can analyze customer data, including past purchases, feedback, and social media activity, to gain insights into evolving customer needs. This information can inform inventory decisions, product development, and marketing strategies.

10. Sustainability and Green Initiatives:

As environmental concerns become more significant, supply chain sustainability is a key focus for many organizations. AI can assist in optimizing transportation routes to reduce emissions, track and reduce waste in the supply chain, and make data-driven decisions that align with green initiatives.

11. Reverse Logistics:

Managing returns and product recalls can be a significant challenge in the supply chain. AI can help streamline the process by automating return handling, assessing returned products for resale or disposal, and managing recalls more efficiently.

12. Blockchain and Supply Chain Transparency:

Blockchain technology, often integrated with AI, provides transparency and traceability in the supply chain. By recording every transaction in a secure, immutable ledger, companies can ensure the authenticity of products and verify the authenticity of suppliers, reducing the risk of counterfeit goods and unethical practices.

13. Dynamic Pricing:

AI can optimize pricing strategies based on real-time market conditions, demand fluctuations, and competitor pricing. This allows companies to maximize profits and respond quickly to changing market dynamics.

14. Procurement:

AI can improve procurement by analyzing supplier performance, negotiating contracts, and monitoring compliance with procurement policies. This reduces costs and improves the efficiency of the procurement process.

15. Human Resource Management:

AI can assist in managing the workforce within the supply chain, helping with employee scheduling, monitoring performance, and providing insights into training and development needs.

Incorporating AI into supply chain management is not without its challenges. Companies must invest in data infrastructure, train their workforce in AI technology, and address concerns related to data security and privacy. However, the potential benefits far outweigh the initial hurdles. AI applications in supply chain management offer opportunities for businesses to streamline operations, reduce costs, enhance customer satisfaction, and remain competitive in today’s dynamic marketplace. As AI technology continues to advance, it is crucial for companies to stay at the forefront of these innovations to unlock new possibilities and drive success in their supply chain management efforts. In conclusion, AI is not just a tool for efficiency but a catalyst for innovation in supply chain management, enabling organizations to navigate the complexities of the modern business landscape with agility and resilience.

By Subasini Jena 0 Comments

How Impactful SaaS is in Accelerating Digital Transformation of Businesses?

Digital Transformation continues to increase the adoption of disruptive technologies such as Artificial Intelligence (AI), Internet of Things (IoT) and big data, and technology solutions like Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), Customer Relationship Management (CRM) and Application Management systems (AMS). On the other hand, Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) is touted as one of the key digital transformation accelerators, promising improved business agility, increased productivity and lower operating costs.

As tech leaders continue to look to validate the ongoing shift to SaaS-driven applications from traditional software systems, it is imperative that business decision-makers understand how they can leverage SaaS more effectively for meeting their business goals and accelerating digital transformation.

Four ways SaaS solutions help businesses drive digital transformation faster:

Improve Business Agility

SaaS solutions enable unmatched business agility in two direct ways. First, with effortless scalability, SaaS can meet the ever-shifting demands of a business, whether that is scaling up for business growth needs or scaling down for restructuring systems. The second way SaaS solutions provide business agility is through constant improvements and updates. While standard software deployments require renewal licenses and version upgrades to let you access the latest technology the vendor offers, SaaS solutions simply get better with regular updates. Thus, the combination of limitless scalability and constant functionality improvement with SaaS solutions helps future-proof businesses as well as accelerate their digital transformation journey.

Boost Customer-centricity

As organizations switch to SaaS, their solution vendor becomes their partner, giving them a range of abilities to improve their customer-centricity and customer relationship. Improved collaboration capabilities add great impact on value chain relationships. The collaboration improvement capabilities provided by SaaS can be in many forms depending on the type of application and are enabled by advanced software architectures like multi-tenancy and non-relational databases. SaaS provides an improved ability to assist customers in the field leveraging augmented reality. Thus, the improved value-chain collaboration capabilities gifted by SaaS solutions enable businesses to improve their services, products and processes, aligning correctly with their digital transformation goals.

Improve scalability and accelerate innovation

Scalability in SaaS is huge, as the number of users who can access the software can be increased effortlessly. SaaS software can reduce hardware requirements and can grow on cloud infrastructures. One of the major benefits of the SaaS model is accelerated innovation, which allows businesses to provide their customers with smoother and faster access to cutting-edge technologies. It omits the time and costs consumed by traditional software for implementation and updates.

Improve mobility

With the SaaS model, businesses can effectively provide their employees with remote access to software tools and databases without requiring them to install any software or hardware. Additionally, SaaS eliminates the need for virtual private network access. This edge that SaaS provides is highly crucial for businesses to improve operational effectiveness and support a hybrid work model. 

Reasons why businesses should adopt SaaS solutions to stay competitive:

Total cost of ownership

A SaaS subscription eliminates a lot of costs borne by the user in on-premise software and covers the essentials, which not only results in a more affordable total cost of ownership but also reduces complexity and overhead.

Resourced costs

According to Gartner, the annual cost of maintaining and operating on-premise software can be up to four times the initial investment and can consume up to 75% of an organization’s total IT expenditure. Whereas, the SaaS model is just the opposite of that and comes with a one-time investment format. 

Try before you buy

Most modern SaaS companies allow their customers to test or pilot the software initially to check whether it can add any commercial value to their business. This approach ensures that your money is invested in the right solution that can help get the desired results.

Final Thoughts

There are no shortcuts to achieving digital transformation, however, moving from traditional on-premise software to modern SaaS solutions is a relatively stronger strategy that can offer immediate and continuous benefits. Financial outlay and integration complexities are among the most common roadblocks to digital transformation, but with the help of SaaS solutions, today, more and more businesses are traversing these obstacles. And, the trend is expected to continue and grow in the coming days.   

By Subasini Jena 0 Comments

The Asian SaaS Market and Its Promising Growth

While companies from different industries have suffered crises during the pandemic era, the Software as a Service (SaaS) industry’s growth doesn’t seem to slow down. SaaS tools provide solutions to a lot of challenges that popped up or intensified during the lockdowns, such as the inability to work from the office and the need for remote work and internal communication. SaaS solutions enable organizations to access data from any device having an internet connection and from anywhere through convenient subscription-based software, thus making them the go-to solution for businesses across many industries. SaaS provides you a hassle-free experience by giving simple access to it via the internet, without requiring tasks like installing and maintaining software.

The Evolution of SaaS

While many think that SaaS is a new concept, it actually dates back to the 1960s. The early SaaS systems used to rely on ‘dumb’ terminals connected to a mainframe. This technique was popularly used by small businesses, government organizations and educational institutions, without having to pay for hardware, training and support. It can be called as an early forerunner to the internet and SaaS. With time, computers became more popular, affordable and accessible, making people realize the need for single solutions for multiple tasks to save time and money, and to improve internal collaboration.

The SaaS Transformation

Software giant Salesforce, in 1999, introduced its customer relationship management (CRM) platform as the first-ever SaaS solution and succeeded over time. Leading the way to prove that SaaS is the future of software delivery, Salesforce made the SaaS model popular in the market. Initially, SaaS was recognized as a model suitable only for small businesses and startups, but over time, it became a revolutionary success with a wide adoption rate. The limitless functionality, low upfront costs and exponential growth of SaaS made it a go-to option for large-size businesses. Businesses started to switch from single-use models to subscription-based models.

SaaS Stats to Watch in 2023
  • Gartner claims that almost 65.9% of spending on software will go to SaaS models by 2025, up from 57.7% in 2022
  • Oracle reports 91% of companies consider SaaS an enabler of emerging technology adoption
  • According to a report by BetterCloud, 85% of business applications will be SaaS-based by 2025
  • BetterCloud statistics argue that around 38% of organizations are running completely on SaaS, while 80% of companies will switch all of their systems to SaaS by 2025
Why is SaaS Loved?

SaaS is loved by businesses of all sizes and across industries for several reasons. Here are some of the key advantages of SaaS:

Automatic Updates: SaaS companies ensure that their platforms are always up-to-date so that you can use them confidently

Cost-efficient: SaaS is highly cost-efficient as it doesn’t demand expensive hardware acquisition and high maintenance

Time-saving: The SaaS model saves a lot of time spent on installation, configuration, training and maintenance, allowing you to invest your time in more crucial tasks

Highly Scalable: SaaS provides you the flexibility to scale up and down as per your requirements, enabling you to grow your business faster

The Growth of SaaS in Asia

In the past few years, Asian SaaS companies have not only caught up with their global competitors but have also proved the potential to overtake them and become trendsetters in the SaaS space. The market for SaaS in Asia Pacific is expected to see the highest CAGR of 12.1% from 2022 to 2028. India and China are significantly contributing to the growth of the SaaS market owing to the increasing demand for outsourcing of cloud-based software and the mushrooming of small and medium businesses. The SMEs are increasingly outsourcing cloud-based SaaS platforms for reducing the cost of software deployments. Moreover, the exponential growth in the IT industry in Asian countries is further expected to present huge opportunities to the market. The growing number of secured servers in Japan, China, and India further boosted the growth of the SaaS market during the forecast period. Furthermore, major players in Asian countries are focusing on improving their operations and increasing their operational and process efficiency to stay competitive, which is expected to provide tremendous growth opportunities in the SaaS space.

The SaaS market in India is expected to account for around 7 – 10% of the global SaaS market, from the current share of 2 – 4%, according to a research report by EY-CII. The SaaS revenues in India are already witnessing 20% growth annually, with a rising uptake in SaaS solutions from Indian small and medium businesses across sectors.

SaaS Applications the Asian Market Focuses On

The evolving SaaS industry in the Asia Pacific region is primarily focusing on developing applications in the following areas:

  • Enterprise resource planning 
  • Customer relationship management 
  • Human resource management 
  • Supply chain management 
  • Messaging applications
  • Web conferencing platforms
Verticals the Asian SaaS Market Focuses On

The Asian SaaS players are now concentrating their focus on creating industry and niche-specific solutions. Such solutions are often for a unique set of clients and are particularly developed to meet their specific needs. The development of SaaS solutions in the Asian market is majorly focused on the following six main verticals:

  • Information technology 
  • Telecommunications 
  • Education & Healthcare 
  • BFSI (Banking, Financial Services, and Insurance) 
  • Manufacturing 
  • Retail
Asia’s Top 500 SaaS Companies – 2022

Asia Inc. 500 is listing the 500 Exemplary SaaS Companies in Asia. The list will recognize the top 500 Asian SaaS companies that did exceptionally well in innovation and customer service & support in the year 2022. The list will be the first of its kind in Asia and will serve as a compressive directory of the best SaaS companies that businesses seeking SaaS can access. The listing will be done under several categories. The nominations will be evaluated by a jury comprising hand-picked industry experts from a spectrum of disciplines. The top-ranked companies will be listed on the Asia Inc. 500 website.

The Asia’s Top 500 SaaS Companies – 2022 listing aims to:
  • Represent software innovation and diversity from all industries.
  • Recognize 500 exemplary SaaS companies, several of whom might not have come to public attention.
  • Rank and build a comprehensive directory of 500 SaaS companies across Asia – one that will serve as an index for Asia’s best SaaS companies.
Who can apply?

The nominations are open to any SaaS application/product/solution, regardless of industry, product focus, or market share in Asia.

How to apply?

Visit our website (http://asiainc500.com/), choose the category you want to nominate under, fill in the details with supporting documents proving your claim and submit the nomination.

To learn more, visit: http://asiainc500.com/asias-top-500-saas/

Wrapping Up

Although the Asian players have entered the SaaS landscape a little later than their global counterparts, some businesses have already established themselves as international SaaS brands. The determination, innovation and competitiveness these Asian companies are showing, imply that the Asian SaaS industry is going to witness massive growth very soon.

By Subasini Jena 0 Comments
disaster management

RAMP: An Emerging AI Technology Changing the Way the World Responds to Disasters

Bangladesh is one of the most vulnerable countries in the world to a changing climate

The Sylhet region of Northeast Bangladesh continues to recover from a series of unprecedented flooding events that occurred in the months of May and June of this year. Atiqul Haque, the Director General of Bangladesh’s Department of Disaster Management, reported that the flooding was the worst in 122 years leaving wide areas of Sylhet submerged and disconnected from the rest of the country. Humanitarian agencies in the area have reported that 4.3 million people have been impacted directly by the flooding, leaving an estimated 384,000 people displaced. Months after the initial reporting, flooding in some areas has receded, leaving hundreds of thousands of Bangladeshis shelter less.

aerial view of flood
An aerial view showing the flooding in Sylhet, Bangladesh in June 2022. Credit: Mushfiqul Alam/NurPhoto, sourced from the New York Times

These floods may well be only a warning sign of what is to come in the years ahead. Bangladesh is one of the world's most vulnerable countries to climate change, responsible for driving sea level rise, extreme flooding events, and intensifying tropical storms. Already more than 10 million Bangladeshis have become “climate migrants” according to Bangladesh.

State Minister for Foreign Affairs. A USAID government report in 2018 found that 90 million Bangladeshis, 56% of the total population, live in high-risk climate exposure areas. The same report estimates that one in every seven people in Bangladesh will be displaced by climate change by the year 2050.

RAMP (Replicable AI for Microplanning) is changing the way we respond to disasters

Advances in Machine Learning (ML) and Artificial Intelligence (AI) are opening the door for innovative solutions that aim -to tackle some of the most pressing environmental and social problems of our time. For context, artificially intelligent machine learning models are algorithms that have been taught by humans how to recognize patterns in data. We interact with these technologies in our everyday lives more than we know (e.g., when we use a map on our phone when something we type is autocorrected, when we use our phones to identify a song). RAMP is a machine learning technology that has been taught to accurately detect and capture building footprints from satellite imagery taken from space. The RAMP model and its building footprint data products can be used for a variety of applications such as disaster planning, population estimation, and health microplanning. Disaster response, another one of RAMP’s main applications, can provide invaluable in the context of an event like the flooding that took place in Sylhet this spring.

The first thing that needs to take place after a disaster occurs is understanding the impact it has had on human lives. Rapid response teams begin gathering as much data as possible from existing national and sub-national records to determine the population distribution in the affected areas. Understanding how many people are affected and where they are located is the foundational and most critical stage in a disaster response effort. It is also often the most difficult. In many parts of the world, data on these critical insights have varying levels of accuracy and are often incomplete or do not exist together. In addition, there is no immediate way to update the data aside from doing so by hand, which is an incredibly time-consuming task. 

Open street map building
Open Street Map (OSM) building coverage over Sylhet. OSM is a great resource for disaster response mapping, but coverage can be patchy depending on the location and can easily become outdated in places that are growing quickly. RAMP data can improve, validate, and supplement manually collected OSM building data.

RAMP changes the playing field by greatly reducing the time needed to create an updated map of where buildings existed prior to the flood event. The rapid response team would only need to feed the machine learning model a small set of training data to localize the model so it can accurately extract building footprints against the most recent satellite imagery. RAMP comes with its own hurdles for use of course, but the infrastructure can be set up and in place before a disaster even strikes. The overall reduction in time associated with data creation can then be re-purposed towards planning the response with a more accurate and recent map. All of this enables more effective identification of vulnerable populations, planning navigation routes, and the distribution of life-saving medical supplies.

building footprint
Example building footprint data over Sylhet from the RAMP model project. Buildings are outlined by green polygons, which are used to train a localized RAMP model. Imagery © Maxar Technologies 2022
RAMP was developed to democratize AI and ML for use in humanitarian applications by lowering the bar for entry into building extraction using satellite imagery

Other projects in the past led by large commercial companies like Facebook and Google have developed similar models to RAMP. The projects have released building footprint data across huge geographic areas providing invaluable insights to humanitarian organizations such as the WHO and UNICEF, but these projects have their limitations. The models and documentation on how the data was created are not publicly released, meaning these tech giants essentially hold the keys to where and when the data is produced. Other platforms like Open Street Map serve as a great open data platform, but buildings are generated manually through crowdsourcing, and it is not a pathway to large-scale data creation. RAMP addresses these limitations, building on these past efforts and taking things one step further by making every aspect of the technology openly accessible, replicable, and extensible.

Beyond the technological capabilities of RAMP is the important question of who. Who should have access to and own these tools? Who is building them and tailoring them for specific country contexts? Who is deploying these tools? Who is making decisions based on this data? Whose lives are affected by this technology?  RAMP, a DevGlobal initiative, was designed and developed in concert with in-country decision makers and end users, giving small local governments and health ministries with limited resources a seat at the table. 

As a species, we have faced societal and environmental disasters since the beginning of time. We will continue to face them until the end of time. By sharing innovative technologies openly and making them accessible to all, we can change the way that we respond to disasters and who has access to critical disaster relief. 

For more information on RAMP, you can visit the project’s website at http://rampml.global/

DevGlobal Partners spans across Africa, India, and the United States supporting the world’s leading non-profits, companies, philanthropies, multilateral agencies, and government agencies on their innovation and sustainability initiatives. To learn more about how the team can facilitate event production and project management for your organization, contact info@dev.global.

By Seamus Geraty 0 Comments

The Ever-Changing Event Landscape

As we approach a future where gatherings become safer and more frequent, DevGlobal Partners, an international development company that specializes in event production, believes that it is vital to invest in continued connection through hybrid events.

The way we think about events will never be the same. Embracing new and emerging technologies has become imperative as they allow for an increase in equitable opportunities for larger groups of attendees and a broader reach for companies investing in events. Prior to the pandemic, in-person events were often cost-prohibitive and fostered a near-exclusive atmosphere for many potential attendees. Our virtual reality over the last several years forced us to adopt new practices and protocols. For the global development industry, virtual and hybrid events offer a way to offset costs and are also, typically, more environmentally sustainable. Some events may require and be enhanced by in-person attendance but allowing participation from guests who would otherwise not be able to attend should always be considered given the technological leaps that have been made in recent years.

Addressing Adaptation

During the COVID-19 pandemic, most companies that produced or hosted events had to become very agile to tackle the issue of restricted gatherings. Nearly every industry across the globe was affected by the diminished ability to produce events to build rapport with clients and employees, sponsor fundraising, provide educational services, and offer and increase sales opportunities. Many companies hired event production specialists, like DevGlobal Partners, to produce their virtual, and later, hybrid events. Chief among the challenges companies faced going virtual was the endless battle in choosing the best-suited virtual platform for each event. Companies had to weigh cost, required features, and user experience to find a solution that was appropriate for a variety of events, clients, and attendees. Many platforms that were already in circulation prior to the pandemic were not robust enough to sustain the influx of business and the number of attendees. Many others were inflexible and incompatible with interaction and enhanced technological components, further compounding the issue of finding the right fit.

In addition to the challenges presented in finding and acclimating to an event platform, it was quickly apparent that it had become exceedingly difficult to engage the audience in the same way that an in-person event could. Many attendees spent their days working virtually and were experiencing virtual fatigue, making them less likely to engage. In response to the rapid decline in participation and engagement, event producers found that the programming and technical requirements for each event needed to be completely individualized per client. No matter the preferred technology, each event producer learned that the key to making this new world of virtual and hybrid events successful was to become masters of many in order to cater to each individual client’s needs. Taking into consideration the technical proficiency of each client, speaker and entertainer became paramount for planning and producing a successful event. Surprisingly, many event producers also have found that it is essential to allow ample time for clients and vendors to prepare for the event from a production standpoint. Just because you are not securing a venue, travel, and catering does not mean that a virtual event production timeline should be significantly reduced. Just as with in-person events, developing clear expectations, the scope of work, and required participation for all is still considered a best practice as we continue to hover over the lines of in-person, virtual, and hybrid events.

Endeavor to Continue Connection

While the pandemic presented an unfathomable amount of overnight change for everyone, DevGlobal realized the necessity for continued connection. When it came to finding new ways to produce events, they pivoted by innovating and developing their own event and technical support solutions. While they still aim to be entirely tech neutral to increase flexibility and better adapt to client needs, the addition of their custom events platform will focus on offering a variety of unique experiences rather than forcing clients into a narrow project plan that may not be appropriate for their desired outcomes.

Welcoming Change and Reshaping Norms

After a platform is chosen, what’s next? With the average person becoming more tech savvy, we can no longer rely on a one-to-many, lecture-style format for a virtual or hybrid event. Event specialists should consider taking advantage of opportunities to incorporate interesting and creative ways to enhance the attendee experience such as direct verbal communication between speakers and attendees. As opposed to just a chat feature, consider incorporating virtual photo booths, virtual breakout rooms, social feeds, polls, or surveys. There is a continued influx of incredible options to level up your virtual presence and offer branding for your company, clients, or the event itself. The absence of an audience is no longer an excuse for gaps in activity and an absence of shared energy. Adopting clever engagement tools and integrating technological advances should be utilized in every case to help harness that energy and increase involvement.

Navigating this new and ever-changing events landscape can be daunting, but event production specialists have mastered the art of agility and adaptation. Investments made in event production support will positively impact your return on investment and amplify event success. Now more than ever, connecting with your audience is imperative. Hybrid is here to stay, and it is up to you to adapt.

DevGlobal Partners spans across Africa, India, and the United States supporting the world’s leading non-profits, companies, philanthropies, multilateral agencies, and government agencies on their innovation and sustainability initiatives. To learn more about how the team can facilitate event production and project management for your organization, contact info@dev.global.

By Nicole Hunt and Courtney Goss 0 Comments

Futuristic Technologies You Should Study in Your Masters Degree

Technology is evolving faster than ever before and is undoubtedly going to radically change the way we do everything in the future. We might not have flying cars and ships like shown in Sci-Fi Hollywood movies, but there are plans for everything you can think of, starting from complete self-driven vehicles to inhabiting Mars, and doing all our tasks through artificial intelligence. But what technologies you could choose to study in your Master’s degree to add your contribution to bringing these dreams to reality?

In this article, we will discuss some of the emerging futuristic technologies that will transform human society. We will also suggest some global universities where you can pursue your master’s degree with these technologies to become a part of the change.

Blockchain – The Future Tech for Information Security

Blockchain is a trending tech popularly known for its use in the cryptocurrency industry, with Bitcoin and Ethereum taking the lead. A blockchain is an online distributed system of transactions, that leverages encryption and peer-to-peer network to secure transactional information.

In this system, the information is collected and encrypted in blocks, which are inter-linked – that’s where the name blockchain comes from. This disruptive technology makes it impossible for hackers to steal information or modify information in a single block, as it would affect the rest.

Blockchain can also be used in securing real estate transactions, medical records, and information related to voting, elections and taxes. This technology can tremendously help in eliminating digital corruption.

If you’re aspiring to have a great career in blockchain development or passionate about the applications of blockchain, here are some universities to consider for your studies.

    • University of Nicosia, Cyprus
    • EU Business School, multiple locations
    • GBSB Global Business School, multiple locations

Self-Driven Vehicles and Drones – No One will Need a Driver
Brands like Tesla, Apple and Google have been working on self-driving vehicles for years. Tesla has even introduced some that can drive with partial human intervention. Pizza giant Domino’s is already testing its self-driving delivery car in the US. If that is not amazing enough for you, take a look at the Amazon Prime Air delivery service, that uses autonomous drones.

If you are passionate about Artificial Intelligence and autonomous driving, here are some of the universities you can join to learn how to do it:

    • Aston University, the UK
    • Tilburg University, the Netherlands
    • ESIEE Paris, France

The Array of Things (AoT) – The Future Manages of Cities

An AoT is a network of sensors that gather data used by scientists or policymakers to enforce appropriate policies and changes to solve different problems in a city. All the collected data reveals diverse patterns. The refined information is then uploaded on a portal that’s accessible to everyone: students, businesses and public institutions. Finally, application developers can leverage the data to create new apps and solutions that can help resolve the existing problems. This technology has tremendous potential, and Chicago is the first city to implement it.

This multidisciplinary field gives you numerous career opportunities. Some of the areas for study under this domain you can choose from are – Electronics & Embedded Technology, Data Science & Big Data and Public Policy. Here are some of the best universities for degrees related to the Internet of Things and Array of Things:

  • EURECOM – Graduate school and Research Center in Digital Science, France
  • University at Buffalo SUNY, the US
  • University of Turku, Finland

We are moving towards an age where technology will lead in meeting all our requirements and overcoming all our challenges. It will also create new job opportunities. Choose a career in these technologies mindfully and join the bandwagon to leverage these technologies to make our lives and societies better.

By Admin 0 Comments
fake online reviews

Alert! You are getting conned by fake online reviews!

Just recollect when was the last time you purchased a product or service online. Do you remember the delivery executive asking you to rate the service? This is the exact point we are going to discuss in this article.

In this digital era, customer reviews and ratings have become the backbone of a business that operates online, they can easily make or break it. Let’s take a common example – every time we plan to dine out, the first thing we do is to check out the place online and read reviews given by the previous guests before booking the table. Also, while shopping online, we set customer reviews as one of the solid parameters to measure the product’s quality. But, do we actually know how many of those reviews are fake?

Understand the fake online review scam

Believe it or not, at least 40% of those reviews are fake! On social platforms like Facebook and WhatsApp, there are hundreds of groups with names like ‘Amazon reviews group’ and ‘Flipkart rating group’ that are meant to help sellers attract customers with fake reviews. If you visit one such page, you will find posts like “XX $ for XX reviews”. Such groups are common platforms for sellers and reviewers to earn profit by conning innocent buyers. There are many websites like fiverr.com, where if you search with the keyword ‘reviews’, you’ll find many reviewers’ profile that read bios like, “I will provide you positive and five-star ratings on Google Play Store, TripAdvisor, and Google My Business reviews and good feedback services.”

Companies or individuals who sell products online, not all of them but most of them appear on the top of your e-commerce app’s search result with a 5* rating or good customer reviews. By ranking themselves top on search results through fake ratings and reviews, such sellers try to influence the buying decisions of their customers. Fake reviewers are also used to bring down a product from the top and this is the reason some people are even paid to leave negative reviews on some products.

Some facts about the reviews on E-commerce giant Amazon

  • 99.6% of the fake reviews on Amazon are five-star reviews.
  • Amazon allows you to report abuse in a review or fake, misleading and inauthentic reviews.
  • Recently, Amazon had deleted 20,000 fake reviews through its fake reviews-weeding mechanism.
  • There are around 215 million reviews on Amazon out of which more than 2 million reviews are unverified.
  • Around 61% of reviews for electronic products on Amazon are fake.

Fake Reviews – The Stats you must know

  • Only 3 to 10% of real buyers actually review a product.
  • 82% of American adults check reviews before buying the products. 
  • 16.2% of customers say that they make their buying decisions based on ratings and reviews. 
  • 20.8% of American adults say they only trust reviews by verified buyers and 4.1% say they don’t trust reviews at all. 
  • A survey in India found that 62% of consumers across 220 districts say they found a positive bias in the reviews, so there is awareness, but what lacks, is the ability to identify fake reviews. 
  • 54% of customers would not buy a product if they suspected it to have fake reviews.
  • 95% of customers suspect faked reviews when they don’t see bad scores.
  • 93% of buyers say online reviews impact their purchasing decisions.
  • 34% of consumers say that their low product reviews have not been published by e-commerce sites. 

How can you identify fake reviews?

  • Look at the reviewer’s profile, if he or she has reviewed just one product, and it’s all gathered about it, then take it with a pinch of salt. 
  • Look at the timing of the review. Say between July 2020 and September 2020, the product has suddenly broken an average or bad reviews tree and received only five-star ratings and good reviews, it is very likely that the seller hired bots or an agency during that period to generate fake reviews. 
  • If a product has only five-star reviews, then it is a red flag.
  • Spot reviews with similar language. If the product you are looking at has 50 reviews and 25 of them are from unverified buyers and they’ve all left just one-word reviews like amazing, brilliant, must buy, then don’t go for it.
  • Today, there are many websites that allow you to verify reviews. Feel free to run a quick check when you buy something online next time. 
  • Check whether the review has too much emotional language. If the review has too many emotional words like great, wonderful or amazing, then that could be written by a company employee.
  • Don’t trust the highest and lowest ratings. They could be either written by company employees or rivals. 
  • Look for bad grammar or spelling errors. These are signs of fake review.

Wrapping Up

We’re living in an age where opinions can be bought and sold. So don’t just trust online reviews blindly. Be a smart consumer. Look for verified buyers or run a quick research on the product you’re looking to buy. on the worst case, try reaching out to the reviewers with your questions on the product. Fake reviewers won’t bother responding. The genuine ones will most probably get back to you.

By Ali Khan 0 Comments

Right Approach Augmented with Advancing Technology is the Key to Biomedical Innovations

For formulation research scientist Mallesh Kurakula, the excitement of research lies in unwrapping the small-scale advances that have inherence to lead to big breakthroughs.

“Majority of my doctoral and postdoctoral research tasks were focused on understanding stages of drugs from discovery to designing strategies to deliver high safety and efficacy”. Dr. Mallesh explains “During my Ph.D. I was actively working on the Utilization of Biodegradable Smart Polymers to Develop and Evaluate Thermosensitive Hydrogel-based Nanocrystals for Control Drug Delivery of Statins (Atorvastatin) for Enhanced Anti-Hyperlipidemic activity”. The research project being successful was published in high impact factor ISI indexed journals that received great citations from the scientist across the globe1,2.

Dr. Mallesh also adds few insights on his current exciting and challenging project at the University of Memphis, TN, USA. “The world suffers from a shortage of new antibiotic discovery and limitation of existing drugs failing to reach their therapeutic outcomes and their intended use. The concept of drug repurposing is a grey area that is gaining momentum especially during this COVID-19 times,” Kurakula says. “Reorienting existing classical statin drugs to unmet clinical needs such as bone regenerative medicine paves the way as a new therapeutic indication that is thought-provoking and thrills me visualizing it’s impact on clinical effectiveness.”

Kurakula says it was his passion for the development of multitargeted biomedical and pharmacotherapy approaches as feasible treatments for patients with neuromuscular disorders- such as spinal cord injuries or bone defects or diseases- that made him realize the importance of applied biomedicine research. On average there are 2 million traumatic extremity bone injuries resulting from road mishaps and military wars that impedes an individual life. Apart from grafting procedures, still, there is a growing concern for unfulfilled treatment options that aid faster bone regeneration. Dr. Kurakula adds “ To overcome this problem, we are working to repurpose statin (Simvastatin-SMV) and locally deliver as an alternative to BMP-2 for inhibiting osteoclast, activating Vascular Endothelial Growth Factor (VEGF) and Tumor Growth Factor- β (TGF-β) that are important to bone healing processes via state of the art electrospun chitosan membranes (ESCM) as guided bone regeneration membrane (GBR). These GBR will be administered as an implantable medical device (Class III) that will be an effective adjunctive therapy for further stimulating bone formation, especially in large traumatic craniomaxillofacial defects”3. These medical devices are developed in-line with strict regulatory guidelines of the USA (FDA, ASTM), European countries.

“Extensive understanding of the in-vitro and in-vivo models for bone regeneration could help us determine the possible pharmacological targets that can be tested for bone and tissue regeneration purposes,” Kurakula Says.

Kurakula credits some of his research success so far to his mentors while working across Europe, the USA, and the Middle East, whose experiences, advice support helped Kurakula to realize his passion, overcome challenges in translating research into commercially viable products, particularly Prof. Joel D Bumgardner.

“I admire Prof. JDB for helping me to shape into a better professional, one who can deliver any work with passion, patience, and perseverance,” Kurakula says. And it is that passion that propels him inside and outside the laboratory.

“I relish drenching the mind and body in research to investigate unique biomedical questions and find logical, evidence-based answers,” Kurakula says. “However, outside the lab, I’m an idealist who constantly wants to explore the additional possibility of designing simple, cost-effective, and safe regenerative medicine that has a broad impact on an individual lifestyle”.

Notable highly cited publications* (Source: Google Scholar)

  1. Kurakula, M*., El-Helw, A.M., Sobahi, T.R. and Abdelaal, M.Y., 2015. Chitosan-based atorvastatin nanocrystals: effect of cationic charge on particle size, formulation stability, and in-vivo efficacy. International journal of nanomedicine, 10, p.321. https://doi.org/10.2147/IJN.S77731
  2. Kurakula, M. and A Ahmed, T., 2016. Co-delivery of atorvastatin nanocrystals in PLGA based in situ gel for anti-hyperlipidemic efficacy. Current Drug Delivery, 13(2), pp.211-220. https://doi.org/10.2174/1567201813666151109102718
  3. Murali, V.P., Fujiwara, T., Gallop, C., Wang, Y., Wilson, J.A., Atwill, M.T., Kurakula, M., and Bumgardner, J.D., 2020. Modified Electrospun Chitosan Membranes for Controlled Release of Simvastatin. International Journal of Pharmaceutics, p.119438. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijpharm.2020.119438

Author Bio

Dr. Mallesh Kurakula

Department of Biomedical Engineering,

The Herff College of Engineering,

The University of Memphis, TN, USA 38152

Email: mkrakula@memphis.edu

Google Scholar: Google Scholar/mallesh-kurakula

LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/mallesh-kurakula

Website: https://www.thejdblab.com/

By Admin 0 Comments

Insurance Technology Trends in 2020 | Pyramid Solutions

The latest technologies are changing the way customers interact with companies. Insurance Technology’s biggest drivers include Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Big Data, IoT, Blockchain, and Digital Ecosystems. Insurers are already investing in Insurtech, but a large proportion of MGAs and agents in the industry remain untapped.

What is Insurtech? Why should we care about it?

According to Investopedia, Insurtech is all about using technology-driven innovations designed to boost savings and enhance efficiency from the current insurance industry model. In simpler terms, Insurtech is the amalgamation of Insurance & Technology.

In contrast to other markets, the have always been inclined to the traditional way of doing business, at least until recent years. Advances in insurance technology have given a platform to upcoming Insurtech startups to thrive in the industry.

Now let’s jump into some of the insurance technology trends of 2020 that are going to change the industry and also how you can use these trends for your benefit!

Insurtech Trend 1: Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning

The insurance community traditionally has been slow to adopt new technologies. The disruption by digital mechanisms like AI and Machine Learning are slowly starting to redefine the essence of the insurance sector – customer relationship through trust and advice.

Big data and machine learning are technologies that are mostly used by insurers, not agents. These technologies allow insurers to provide their products and services online – through their websites, mobile applications, and even through texts.

The takeaway- insurance technology does not replace insurance agents but rather helps them provide better customer service.

Use Case for AI in the insurance Industry:
  • Image Analytics
  • Machine Learning in Underwriting (Automated Process of Claims)
  • Process Automation of Data Intake
  • Connected Claims Processing
  • Chatbots and Virtual Agents
Use Case for ML in the insurance industry
  • Lapse management
  • Recommendation engine
  • Assessor assistant
  • Property analysis
  • Fraud detection
  • Personalized offers
  • Experience studies

Insurtech Trend 2: Big Data & IoT

‘Customer Retention is the key to making your business successful. You have to listen to your customers and address their problems to make them happy.’ If you’ve been a part of any business, you’ve probably heard this mantra.

In recent years, customer retention has proven to be a better indicator of success than operational efficiency. A study from Harvard Business School shows that an increase in customer retention rates by only 5% will increase your revenue by 25-95%.

But how does insurance technology come into this?

A lot of insurers and even agencies are investing vast amounts of money in integrating big data analytics and intelligence into their business models. Big data allows you to use data processing models that store customer information and use it to map out their preferences.

There is a lot of potential for IoT and big data in the insurance industry. Many insurers are collaborating with companies like Vitality and Amazon to provide more tailored services to their customers. Chatbots and virtual assistants are also very popular for personalized real-time customer assistance.

IoT facilitates risk assessment to insurers in different markets by gathering data through devices like GPS car tracking devices, smart smoke alarms, and alarm systems to sell them personalized products.

The takeaway- The use of Big Data and IoT in insurance allows agents to find new customers in niche markets and retain existing ones by using customer data to provide personalized service.

Insurtech Trend 3: Digital Ecosystems

Ecosystems are customer-centric networks through which products and services are offered by various players.

Insurtech agencies now pose significant competition to insurers who are selling policies directly. Many insurers over the years have invested a substantial amount of capital in insurance technology for themselves. Despite this, the results have not turned out in their favor.

Carriers with Insurtech agency giving competition to carriers not using Insurtech agencies.

However, with careful analysis, collaboration, and integration, specialists believe that they can close the gap between insurers and Insurtech agencies.

According to worldInsurTechreport.com, 90% of Insurtech startups and 70% of Insurers agree with collaboration to develop a new ecosystem. Also, 96% of insurers do think that digital ecosystems are having an impact on the insurance industry.

Above all, Insurtech’s distinct aptitudes make incubators the perfect partner for nurturing a strong foundation in the marketplace. A lot of traditional insurance agencies might be uncertain about the road ahead.

It is high time for these agencies to either invest in insurance technology and innovation, partner with an Insurtech agency or just shut down their agencies for good.

Don’t panic; this will not happen immediately. But if you’re an agent and you want your career to grow, then this is the right time for you to hop in the train of insurance technology. It’s now or never.

The takeaway- Digital ecosystems are blooming – join the insurance technology wave before it’s too late.

Few best Insurance Memes of 2019

  • Insurance is a cutthroat business.

Insurance Agents and The Mafia are very similar.

Why?

Both start their pitches with “That’s a nice family you got there. It’d be a shame for them if anything happened to you, wouldn’t it?”

  • The woes of an insurance agent

Agent: “Thank you, Mr. Smith. I wish I had 15 more clients like you.”

Mr. Smith (surprised): “But why? I file a lot of claims and always pay premiums late.”

Agent: “I’d still like 15 clients like you. The issue is that I have 150 clients like you.”

  • Getting creative with sales pitches

Life insurance agents to their clients: “It’s fine, don’t rush. You can sleep on it. If you wake up tomorrow, let me know what you decide.”

  • The insurance business is diverse too!

How do insurance agents, underwriters, and actuaries drive?

The agent favors the accelerator, the underwriter favors the brakes, and the actuary decides the way forward by looking at the back window.

Author Bio

Ketan Vegad

I have been associated with PCI for the last five and half years. I am ALMI, ACS and CSM certified professional with 12+ years of experience as Managing Consultant and Software Testing Professional with rich experience in Life/Annuity Insurance, General Insurance, Property & Casualty Insurance Domain.

By Admin 0 Comments

Robotic Process Automation & Insurance Industry | Pyramid Solutions

Insurance Companies can save 30% to 50% of operational costs using RPA!

Most insurance companies such as life, health, property, car or travel insurance are overwhelmed with back-office processes. These companies often service large volumes of repetitive business practices that prevent them from offering timely customer service, meeting growth and profit targets, and maintaining a strategic competitive advantage in the insurance market.

Robotic Process Automation (RPA) refers to the use of software and algorithms to simulate human actions in existing systems and applications. The software sits at the user interface level of an application and transmits data between systems, much in the same way that a human user would. There are no actual “robots” involved in the physical sense of the word; rather, the term is used because RPA software mimics human behavior, utilizing the same user interface a person would (through screen scraping or some other method) rather than Web services or APIs.

Robotic Process Automation (RPA) is at the peak of inflated expectation cycle, says Gartner. They estimate by 2022, 85% of large and very large organizations would have deployed some form of RPA solutions to automate their business. Overall, the global Robotic Process Automation software spend is expected to reach $2.4 billion in 2022.

RPA helps insurance companies streamline their processes and enhance their ability to increase the client base with Service Satisfaction. Many insurance companies – whether providers of health insurance, car insurance, property insurance, or travel insurance are heavily inundated with back-office processes. Insurers regularly handle claims-processing and underwriting as well as providing policy quotes. This means they are often overwhelmed with high volumes of repetitive business practices that prevent them from delivering timely customer service, meeting growth and profit expectations, and maintaining a competitive advantage in the insurance market.

10 Use Cases for RPA in the Insurance Industry

  1. New Business & Underwriting
  2. Claims Processing
  3. Business and Process Analytics
  4. Manual Data Entry Process
  5. Usage of Legacy Applications
  6. Regulatory Compliance
  7. Scalability
  8. Blend New Technologies with Existing Systems
  9. Policy Cancellation
  10. Form Registration

RPA & Insurance Industry

RPA is able to capture manual steps that employees take to log into the software, search documents, and enter data and replicate them. Enterprise insurance firms can thus deploy a “digital workforce” for use-cases in claims processing, underwriting, and more.

RPA in Claims Processing

In general, RPA software is good for copying data from one source into another so long as that data appears the same in both sources every time. Claims adjusters are often tasked with collecting relevant information from claimants, hospitals, the police, and other insurers in order to make a decision on whether to pay out a claim and for how much.

Once the necessary records are obtained, the relevant data within them need to be translated to the insurer’s digital record of the incident. Without automation, claims adjusters would read through all of the records they collected and manually enter the necessary information into the system. In specific cases, RPA can help in this effort.

For example, someone might file an auto insurance claim immediately after their accident while they’re still on the road. In this case, they may need someone to tow their car. Some auto insurance customers pay for roadside assistance.

Traditionally, employees would need to manually input data from a claim about the customer’s accident into the system of a third-party mechanic that has an agreement with the insurance company. RPA software could automate the translation of this data between systems, thus speeding up the time it takes for a tow truck to reach the customer.

RPA in Underwriting

RPA has similar applications in underwriting, namely its ability to pool information from disparate sources into a single place. Underwriters need to evaluate the risk that potential customers, their homes, and their cars pose to the insurance carrier. The information they need to do this varies depending on what they need to assess.

Underwriters at larger auto insurers can check if a driver has been previously insured with similarly-sized auto insurers within a shared database. RPA software could do this instead, copying the name of the customer’s insurance carrier into the appropriate spot in the auto insurer’s CRM.

RPA software could translate data from public databases into the auto insurer’s CRM, allowing the underwriter to make a decision about whether or not they can offer the applicant a policy or not faster.

RPA in the long-term

Especially within industries, like insurance, which is highly dependent on the efficiency of their back office, RPA is being adopted at increasing rates in order to use to automate burdensome, high volume, and time-consuming business activities. This automation technology is being used to fight some of the biggest challenges faced by insurance providers, in order to promote long-term success opportunities and a competitive marketplace.

RPA can help insurers cut operations costs, achieve increased profits, make companies more competitive, increase growth, improve compliance, and provide faster customer service than ever possible before. Because of the flexibility and improvements that RPA can deliver, its adoption by insurance companies is only expected to become more global and inevitable. Rather than remaining just a technology option to choose from, RPA will eventually become a necessary component for insurance providers to remain competitive industry leaders.

Top RPA tools

UiPath

More than 2,750 enterprise customers and government agencies use UiPath’s Enterprise RPA platform to rapidly deploy software robots that perfectly emulate and execute repetitive processes, boosting business productivity, ensuring compliance and enhancing customer experience across back-office and front-office operations. UiPath is used by thousands of companies particularly in document management, contact center, insurance, healthcare, finance and accounting, human resources, and supply chains and to address major technical challenges, including data extraction and migration, process automation, application integration, and business process outsourcing.

Automation Anywhere

Automation Anywhere is a global leader in Robotic Process Automation (RPA), empowering customers to automate end-to-end business processes with software bots – digital workers that perform repetitive and manual tasks, resulting in dramatic productivity gains, improved customer experience and more engaged employees. The company offers the world’s only web-based and cloud-native intelligent automation platform combining RPA, artificial intelligence, machine learning, and analytics right out of the box, to help organizations rapidly start and scale their process automation journey. Automation Anywhere has deployed over 1.7 million bots to support some of the world’s largest enterprises across all industries.

Blue Prism

Blue Prism Group is a multinational software organization based in the UK. They pioneered RPA to reduce the high risk and low return processing work and data entry job manually. The technology used is based on Microsoft.net framework and it supports any type of platform and applications. It allows the design automation process that too within IT governance. The tool supports the internal and external decryption and encryption keys. The users are provided with audit logs enabling. The customized code of .NET provides a high rate of robustness.

Kofax Kapow

Kofax Inc. is a process automation software provider based in Irvine, California. They offer process management, RPA, e-signature, mobility and customer communication services to multiple customers in 70 countries worldwide. Kofax Kapow is the most efficient way to acquire, enhance and deliver information from any application and data source or enterprise system without coding. It supports all types of application environments and data sources, including websites, portals, enterprise systems, and legacy applications, Excel, Email, XML, JSON, CSV, and SQL. It can automatically publish robots with standard Java, .NET, SOAP, RESTful interface which is used to control robotic processes from external applications and remote systems.

RPA Tools Comparison:

S.NoParametersAutomation AnywhereBlue PrismUiPath
1AccuracyRationalSet for BPO optimizationSet for Web Automation
2ArchitectureClient-ServerClient-ServerOrchestrator
3Cognitive CapabilityVery HighHighHigh
4LearningBasic knowledge of programming requiredAbility to develop and controlVisual Designer
5Macro-RecorderPresentAbsentPresent
6PriceHighMediumHigh
7Trial Version availabilityAvailableNoFree edition available
8ScalabilityLimitedHigh-speed executionMedium speed execution
9Re-UsabilityYesYesYes
10RobotsFront & Back officeFront & Back officeOnly Back office
11RecordersYesNoYes
12AccessApp-basedApp-basedMobile Browsing
13Process DesignerScript-basedVisual Process-basedVisual Process-based
14Base TechnologyMicrosoftC#Microsoft
15ReliabilityHighVery highModerate
Author Bio


Ketan Vegad

I have been associated with PCI for the last five and half years. I am ALMI, ACS and CSM certified professional with 12+ years of experience as Managing Consultant and Software Testing Professional with rich experience in Life/Annuity Insurance, General Insurance, Property & Casualty Insurance Domain.

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