January 2019 - Page 8 of 9

5 Data Security Tips for Working From outside Office

Posted on 07/01/201917/06/2021 by Tushar

One of the biggest advantages of the internet is that it has enabled business users to work away from the office. With technology such as laptops and smartphones, we can work from home and when commuting and take our data with us when we go to meet clients. While this brings a range of benefits, it also creates an increased responsibility to keep that data secure. In this post, weâ€™ll give you some tips on how to achieve that.

1. Backup regularly

Imagine that one of your employees develops a lucrative project for a client and is travelling to meet them. Imagine, too, that the only copy of the project is stored on the employeeâ€™s laptop. There are numerous weaknesses in this scenario. The laptop can break, it can get stolen or it can become one of the many that get mislaid by travellers every day. 12,000 laptops a week are left abandoned just at US airports.

The possible consequences of this are that the months of work put into the project are wasted and the lucrative contract is lost.

By backing up your data regularly, however, this problem can be completely eradicated. If the laptop is lost, youâ€™ll still have another copy of the data to use. While backing up can be done simply by saving data to a USB drive, the best option is to use a cloud backup service. You canâ€™t lose cloud storage like you do a pen drive and youâ€™ll be able to access the data from any machine with an internet connection.

2. Turn unused devices off

Another data security loophole is that people donâ€™t always realise that a laptop with the lid shut is still vulnerable to attack. Closing the lid simply initiates a low-power sleep mode designed to bring the machine back to life quicker than rebooting. While the hard disk powers down, the laptopâ€™s memory continues to be active and can be accessed and copied using an external USB port. Whatâ€™s perhaps worse, is that for encrypted laptops, the vulnerable memory can contain the encryption keys giving hackers access even to encrypted data.

The solution is simple, when devices are not in use, they should be shut down, not put into sleep mode.

3. Use encryption

Encryption turns your data into an unintelligible string of characters that even the boffins at GCHQ couldnâ€™t unscramble without an encryption key. It means that even if your raw data was hacked or stolen, no-one would be able to make sense of it.

As a safety precaution, all devices used out of the office should be protected with encryption software. Such apps can keep personal files, contacts, notes, wallets and multimedia files secure, as well as backing up your passwords, recording unauthorised login attempts and sending notifications of attempted hacks.

At the same time, those companies which store their data in the cloud should make sure that this too is encrypted, so that if a user gains access to the machine, there is another layer of protection to prevent them getting hold of the data stored online.

4. Network protection

Another potential vulnerability is someone getting access to data via an attack on the network. Devices are particularly vulnerable when they connect to mobile hotspots with weak data security and it is here, in places like transport stations and public areas that hackers may make attempts to steal your data.

One of the first steps you should take is to ensure employeeâ€™s devices have a properly configured firewall that will block suspicious connection requests. As a company, you should ensure the firewall configuration is put in place by your own IT team, whether this is on a company device or on a personal device that an employee uses for work.

Another data security feature is the use of Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) which will protect the usersâ€™ devices when they connect to any network away from the business premises. Though the connection is not as fast, the data will be automatically encrypted, preventing it being compromised by those seeking out victims on public networks.

5. Use cloud storage

Using cloud storage can really help boost the data security. For a start, as data is held centrally on the server, there is no need to have a separate copy of it stored on the laptop or other device. This way, if the device is lost or stolen, there is no data to steal. As data stored in the cloud can be encrypted, even if someone has access to the laptop, they will not be able to access the data without the encryption key, for which further authentication should be needed. The other benefit, of course, is that keeping data stored centrally means that should one person update a file, everyone else will have access to the latest version. When separate versions are stored across many different devices, it can be difficult to know which is the most up to date.

Conclusion

While the internet has given us better ways to work and communicate and freed us from the confines of the office, it does create risks that we need to manage effectively. Data stored on devices can be stolen by hackers accessing the hardware or from intrusion over a network. Hopefully, the tips provided here will help prevent this happening and keep your companyâ€™s devices and data secure.

The Supply Chain AI Hype and the Importance of a Digitized Supply Chain Control Tower

Posted on 07/01/201917/06/2021 by Tushar

The hype around Artificial Intelligence is far from fizzling out anytime soon. Digitalization and big data have completely penetrated the supply chain industry and are ubiquitous in nature. This article discusses one of the more interesting trends in the current supply chain analytics space – The Control Tower.

The concept of Air Control Towers and the Evolution of Digital Control Towers in Supply Chain

One may wonder if supply chain control towers have any correlation with air traffic controllers? To be honest, yes, there is!

An air traffic control tower (ATC), is a service provided by on-ground staff (controllers), who direct aircraft on the ground and through controlled airspace; they can provide advisory services to aircraft in non-controlled airspace. The primary purpose of ATC worldwide is to prevent collisions, organize and expedite the flow of air traffic, and provide information and other support for pilots (wiki). In short, the tower helps Improve flow, reduce emergency like situations through tactical interventions and provide inputs for right decision making. In fact, the ATC’s can now be enabled for an ‘auto-pilot’ mode wherein complex decisions are taken without human interventions. Only in cases where there is an absence of reliable data to make a trade-off, is where the humans intervene.

The digital control towers aim at keeping a bird’s eye view on the events occurring within the supply chain ecosystem (controlled and uncontrolled space), with the modus operandi being very similar to a generic air traffic controller. With the help of this consolidated view generated by the digital control towers in supply chain one can gain powerful insights about the current happenings within the organization. These insights help in improving flow across the organization, reducing urgencies and providing insights and tactical support to supply chain managers to make effective decisions. In fact, in the longer run, very similar to the ATC’s of today, the Supply chain control towers should have the capability to make complex decisions when there is adequate reliable data.

Significance of Digital Control Towers in Supply Chain

Corporations today want to leverage the useful applications of the supply chain control tower. Organizations have copious amounts of data across their supply chain and related functions. Over the past few years, they have managed to build business intelligence and analytics solutions to drive decision-making but at a node level. Extracting valuable insights using the right sets of data, lying across various nodes in an organization while also utilizing market intelligence, to deliver real-time visibility and provide meaningful insights that can drive decisions that are optimal cross organization, is the need of the hour. E.g., with the expected slow-down in sales on specific SKUs, a client may wonder if their manufacturing plant need to continue producing to plan OR does it make sense to course correct and lose capacity?

While an ATC is designed to minimize errors by incorporating huge factors of safety and commonly understood rules of engagement between various players (airlines, pilots, other ATCs), supply chain digital control towers have the luxury to experiment under statistical variability. E.g., Try different stock norms and check the impact on service levels, see whether a reduced Order-to-delivery promise induces better productivity and hence improved customer service levels and so on. This ability of a supply chain to experiment, try and fail or succeed quickly, at nominal cost can help build a virtuous loop of innovation with in a supply chain and drive a cultural change.

Most organization today recognize the impact a control tower can have on their organization. For a global organization, it is probably one of those platforms that will steer the supply chains of the future. Many organizations have tried implementing a control tower, but there have been very few examples of success. More often than not, organization fall short of implementing a “gold-standard” control tower capable of – real time visibility, predictive alerting, identifying bottle-necks to supply chains and providing insights that can drive decision; instead they end up implementing a large set of dashboards, that showcase different KPIs important to the various nodes in a supply chain.

This possibly is because of challenges that are faced when implementing an initiative as large as a control tower.

How does a Digital Supply Chain Tower work?

The SCCT should help an organization in making 3 key decisions – a) Ensure smooth flow-paths across the supply chain, b) Identify or predict bottlenecks / constraints to flow, and c) Derive efficiency/utilization improvement opportunities in the current network.

Hence, some of the key functionalities that are required would be:

End to end data connectivity: Ability to go beyond creating reports and tools that are not unidimensional but are able to work with data from different nodes in a supply chain is important.

Visibility: SCCT should provide visibility of key supply chain KPIs (simple and complex KPIs). They should showcase the right metrics, while also be able to project the impact of a decision on the metric real-time.

Analytics: Supply chain control towers are equipped with and boast of analytical tools and applications. With the help of these tools, supply chain managers can easily run what-ifs, and take calculated decisions. They can, easily harness the power of predictive analysis to detect ‘tripping points’, identify triggering alerts, as well as conduct root cause analysis of the data to arrive at solutions and address challenges.

Execution: The real benefit of the SCCT lies in the way the control tower communicates with the executive and the operational teams across the supply chain and allied functions. Hence this an important aspect of SCCT adoption within an organization

Key Challenges to Implementing a Supply Chain Control Tower

The supply chain control tower, unlike a typical analytics project, entails involvement from multiple functions and geographies across the supply chain (like the involvement of multiple VPs/SVPs in large enterprises).

Implementing SCCT would mean working with a team having – a) Different priorities, b) Very different data maturity and data quality, and c) Different products and software (some archaic and some new-age).

Some of the key challenges that appear during the construction and execution of SCCTs include –

When the SCCT implementation is picked up as a priority exercise by a single function within a supply chain without getting the other key function buy-in early into the transformation, there is a high chance the implementation will hit multiple road blocks.
Many a times, people tend to implement the most complex piece OR the piece of SCCT that seems most interesting. This may lead to no tangible results for an extended period, thus leading to lack of enthusiasm from fringe teams.
Data maturity: Different functions may have different levels of data maturity (availability, quality etc.). Inability to assess and map this aspect will tend to escalate timelines and cost.
Sometimes the implementing partner makes the mistake of selling the SCCT, not as a strategic tool that can transform business functions but rather as another software that will improve business efficiencies. This will lead to wasted effort that implementation will get driven in completely wrong direction.
There are number of proven analytics tools and products that exist with the client. Integrating these existing tools/products in the SCCT roadmap, may cause issues during implementation but will help adoption.

A typical issue of not successfully overcoming these challenges is that companies go down the path of SCCT implementation (visibility, predictive analytics, decision tools etc.) but end up implementing an end-to-end KPI dashboard. Though the dashboard may still bring in benefits, it causes disillusionment amongst the client project team in terms of SCCT capabilities.

Some of the ways to mitigate these challenges and move towards a successful implementation include –

Treat SCCT implementation as a strategic initiative and not as an IT implementation. Hence, it is critical to have someone high in the business team (CSO level) bless the initiative.
When prioritizing sprints, give equal weights to simple but quick wins – this motivates the client’s project team.
Always assess the current tools and products in client environment, i.e., prioritize integration over innovation.
Continuous engagement with all functions (even if there is nothing happening in a specific function) is important and should be made into a practice.

The Dedicated Server : Role in Digital Transformation

Posted on 07/01/201917/06/2021 by Tushar

When businesses think of digital transformation, cloud migration is often the first thing that comes to mind. Indeed, the cloud is a necessary requirement: it’s cost-effective, easily scalable and puts the latest technologies, like data analytics, automation, AI, ML and IoT at your fingertips. However, if you intend to deploy the best technology for the task at hand, the dedicated server still has an important role to play. Here, we’ll look at why dedicated servers are a key element in digital transformation.

Security

Data is the driving force behind digital transformation. Companies are collecting it in greater quantities than ever before to analyse it and discover the insights that lead to improvements in operations, marketing, finance, procurement and many other areas of the business.

However, while the cloud is the best place in which to carry out analytics, for some organisations, it is not necessarily the best place to store the data, especially personal and sensitive data. That’s not to say that the cloud is less secure than a dedicated server, both can be configured to the same exacting security standards. At eukhost, for example, we can offer the same protection for both, using next-gen FortiGate firewalls whose advanced security features include intrusion detection, anti-malware, DDoS protection, VPN and DMZ.

The difference lies in the needs of the individual company. If your business stores personal or sensitive information and has to comply with regulations such as GDPR, you may require a data storage solution that, unlike the public cloud, is not multi-tenancy. The role of the dedicated server here is that its single-tenancy storage offers greater compliance with stringent regulations. Additionally, some hosts, like eukhost, can develop and implement a security policy that meets both your internal and regulatory requirements, providing services that include intrusion detection and prevention, application firewall configuration, DDoS protection, email security and more.

In a world where cybercriminals are using ever more sophisticated tools, such as Ransomware as a Service, and where the number of cyberattacks involving data theft is continually on the rise, a dedicated server could be a wisely chosen component of your digital transformation infrastructure.

Performance

The other chief reason for deploying a dedicated server is that digital transformation often requires organisations to run resource-heavy applications which they will need to perform flawlessly. While the cloud does offer very high performance, our cloud VM’s underlying hardware, for example, features Xeon E5-2600s with 8 to 12 cores, for organisations which need it, a dedicated server can offer even greater performance.

The main reason for this is that you can define your own specification and build a bespoke dedicated server that perfectly matches your CPU, RAM and storage requirements. You have a choice of core or frequency optimised CPUs or both; single, dual or quad processors; and SSD storage and PCIe based drives. You can choose the processor speed and the number of cores and disks, giving you complete control of your environment.

For organisations needing to run resource-heavy applications, a dedicated server offers the best performance. Your applications will run faster, with those which rely on database access, like CMS, carrying out non-cached queries and data writes much quicker. With SSDs installed, a dedicated server can perform thousands of simultaneous reads and writes without the application having to wait around for the storage, as it would with HDDs. In addition, backups and restoration will be performed quicker and your server will respond more rapidly.

Other benefits of dedicated servers

Dedicated servers come as part of a hosting package and these provide organisations with other important benefits. This includes cost-effective server management with round the clock monitoring and maintenance of your system; geographical redundancy, off-site backup and replication services; and, importantly, 24 x 7 x 365 expert technical support, so that if you have an issue, it can be dealt with straight away.

Not a solution for every workload

Of course, a digitally transformed company needs to use the best technology for each workload and a dedicated server is not the number one choice for everything. While its single tenancy provides enhanced security and bespoke hardware offers superior performance, the virtualisation technology employed in the cloud makes it better for running mission-critical applications that need high availability rates of 100% uptime. Similarly, the cloud is also the better environment for workloads which need quick and easily scalable resources to cope with unexpected spikes in demand. Indeed, its pay as you go charging structure also makes this highly cost-effective.

Conclusion

For companies seeking the right technology for their digital transformation, dedicated servers have an important role to play. They offer the best solution for running resource-heavy applications and provide a secure, single tenancy storage environment for personal and sensitive data. The latest hosting packages ensure that companies have access to the best hardware and the most advanced security tools while being able to take advantage of server management solutions, backup and replication services, and around the clock support.

Critical MLOps Roadblocks that Will Delay Your AI Journey in the Enterprise

Posted on 07/01/201917/06/2021 by Tushar

How do you retract the steps that led to the model’s creation, say, your data scientists are away for some reason?

How will you reproduce predictions to validate its outcome, say, someone shoots the question?

It is not just about resourcing data scientists, software developers, or data engineers to work in isolation to achieve the operationalization and automation of the ML lifecycle. It is about how the three can work in tandem as a unit. For this, the data’s quality or availability must remain identical across the process & environment to ensure the model performs on par with the set metrics. Again, the core problem boils down to operation and automation, which we diligently tried/try to address via MLOps.

To solve the problem’s crux, you first need to answer a few questions:

How do the three personas, i.e., data engineers, data scientists, and ML engineers, use different tools and techniques?
How do you collaborate on the ML workflow within and between teams?

As you cannot share models like other software packages, you need to share the ML pipeline that can reproduce and tune the model based on new data specific to the new environment/scenario. A ubiquitous work culture or norm in large enterprises is to have independent data science teams, and most of whom are engaged, day in and day out, on similar workflows.

Now, how do you collaborate and share the results?
When it comes to enterprise readiness, how do you plan data/ ML model governance while dealing with data & ML?
When you deal with specialized hardware, cost management comes into play as you have to compute with large amounts of GPU, memory, jobs that take a long time to run. Some of these jobs can take days or even weeks to run to get a good model. So how do you establish the trust?

Having insights, even dismal, will help you identify the real-time use cases and factor in an Enterprise AI plan.

What Next? Martian Version for Earthling Solution?

ML Works Will Just Do!

Most MLOps toolkit often focus on the technical aspect of the MLOps, while ignoring its real-life impact. Other factors that can weigh in its contribution are having a 360-degree view and control on the micro/macro aspects of the data science process.

At Anteelo, we have tried reordering the ML alphabets with our proprietary suite of toolkits, in which we take immense pride. We call it ML Works. The solution, which is cloud-agnostic and scalable, automates the model’s build, deploy, and monitoring processes, thereby reducing the need for larger teams.

6 Tips for Online Stores to Survive Christmas 2020

Posted on 06/01/201917/06/2021 by Tushar

Christmas 2020 is going to be unlike anything anyone has ever experienced and as an online retailer, you are going to need to start your preparations now. The forecasts are mixed. The potential for further lockdown restrictions and increasing unemployment may impact both consumer spending and purchasing habits. More optimistically, for eCommerce, there is going to be a significant shift in Christmas shopping from bricks and mortar to online stores. In this post, we’ll explain six things you can do to help your online store survive Christmas 2020.

1. Get the right stock for Christmas

Stock may be a complicated issue for eCommerce stores this Christmas. Rises in unemployment and the fear of becoming unemployed will certainly affect consumer spending and this may impact the quantities of stock you need to order. Additionally, social restrictions put in place to prevent the risk of the virus spreading are also likely to influence what people spend their money on. Who’s going to want Christmas party outfits if there are no parties? Who’s going to buy a pack of 12 crackers when, this year, there’ll only be four people sat around the table? The pandemic is going to change what consumers buy and businesses need information on those trends to ensure stock is purchased wisely.

Another concern is the supply chain. Even if you have identified the stock you need for the Christmas season, you will need to ensure that you can procure it and that shipping times can be met. Volatility in the supply chain is likely given increasing demand and the potential for disruption due to the virus. Early purchasing might be a necessity.

2. Spread the cost of Christmas

Another reason to acquire Christmas stock earlier than usual is that, with consumer finances stretched, people might start shopping earlier to spread the cost. Rather than a Christmas rush, 2020 might be more of a slow burn.

One way to maximise sales and help customers out would be to offer payment by instalments. The easiest way to do this is to open a PayPal business account through which you can offer flexible financing options that make purchasing easier for your customer. Alternatively, you could set up a savings scheme where customers pay into your business each month in order to spend what’s in credit nearer the time.

3. Get your shipping sorted

eCommerce sales have already grown significantly during the pandemic and Christmas is likely to see a further surge as shoppers stay away from bricks and mortar stores. This could affect the capacity of the carriers you use to deliver the products on time.

The challenge for online stores is to ensure that you get the product to the customer when and where they want it. While consumers have been relatively understanding about longer delivery times during the pandemic, six months down the line, they now expect retailers and carriers will be able to deliver as advertised and are likely to be much less happy when products arrive late – especially when shopping for Christmas.

4. Cut costs

The global downturn means there will be less money for people to spend this Christmas. While social distancing measures means bricks and mortar stores are likely to face the brunt of the decline, it may still affect eCommerce: people may buy more things online but spend less overall.

To keep the business viable, eCommerce companies may have to look at ways to cut costs, especially if lack of demand causes a discounting war and drives margins down. Those in the best position to achieve this are the companies which make use of the cloud. While the cloud itself is a substantially more cost-effective solution to an in-house datacentre, its ability to deploy data gives companies the insights needed to cut costs effectively over their entire operations. At the same time, the cloud enables businesses to make valuable use of automation, such as with sales assisting chatbots that reduce human involvement.

5. Widen the market

Maximising sales is going to be critical this winter and this means making sure your stock is highly visible. This starts with strengthening your digital presence: promoting Christmas stock earlier on your website, advertising online and increasing your seasonal-themed social media activity. For retailers with online and physical stores, benefits can be made from offering omnichannel shopping, click and collect and moving products from stores under local lockdown restrictions to those which are not.

Additionally, there is always the potential to sell your items on third-party websites, like Amazon or eBay, which have a wider reach and high levels of consumer trust when it comes to availability, delivery and consumer purchasing protection.

6. Don’t let your website go down

The likely surge in demand for online shopping means that companies must ensure that their hosting package is capable of handling increased traffic. Too many visitors at the same time can impact the performance of your website if you don’t have enough server resources, i.e. storage, RAM, CPU and bandwidth, to handle them. Unexpected surges can cause your site to perform slowly or even crash. If this happens, visitors will abandon the site, reducing the number of sales, and your reputation for online reliability will be damaged.

Conclusion

Christmas 2020 presents eCommerce businesses with opportunities and threats. The challenge is to put your online store in the best position to avoid the threats and maximise the opportunities. Hopefully, this post has shown you the different things you will need to consider and the importance of starting preparations early.

7 Steps to a More Effective Data Management

Posted on 06/01/201917/06/2021 by Tushar

Data has become one of the most valuable resources for business, providing key insights about the company and its market. However, with so much data available for analysis, the need for effective data management is becoming increasingly important. Here are some the steps you can take to ensure your company is using best practice when it comes to managing your data.

1. Know what you want to use data for

Today, companies are gathering enormous quantities of data. Much of that, however, will never be used. To make data management easier, it is important to know what you want from your data so that you keep that which helps meet your objectives and get rid of that which does not. This will help reduce storage costs and make it easier to organise and manage what data is kept. If you have data which is not useful at present but which you want to keep in case it becomes useful in the future, you can always condense it and store it separately.

There are many things you may wish to use your data for. These include data-driven decision-making, automation and processing improvement, customer journey mapping and personalisation, audience targeting, product recommendations and so forth. Knowing what your objectives are will help ensure you only gather and collect the data that you need.

2. Security and compliance are key priorities

All companies are obliged to comply with data protection regulations, such as GDPR, and this means compliance should be foremost on your list of priorities. Failure to comply or implement stringent security measures can have devastating consequences. Under GDPR, businesses can be fined up to €40 million or 4% of annual global revenue, whichever is the greatest. For British Airways, this was an eye-watering €204.6 million. On top of any fines, there are also reputational damage and case actions to consider.

Working with the right hosting provider, implementing robust security policies and using secure data management software can help your data to be more secure.

3. Data quality is vital

The quality of the insights your data can provide is based upon the quality of the data you are using. While the first step to improving quality is to limit data to that which meets your company’s goals, it is also vital that data is accurate and up-to-date. Inaccurate or out-of-date information can provide misleading insights and lead to companies making the wrong decisions. For this reason, cleansing data should be something undertaken regularly.

Quality can also be improved by ensuring that employees know how to accurately gather and input data or that systems which collect data automatically are configured to do so correctly.

4. Eradicate duplicate data

Not only does duplicate data means you’ll pay for more storage than you need; there’s also the chance that it will be counted twice during any analysis and will, thus, skew the accuracy of any report generated using it. As there are various ways to receive duplicate data, companies need to put processes in place to discover and prevent it from being inputted into the data management system.

5. Managing access to data

There are two important things to consider when looking at access to data. The first is that, for data analytics to be effective, team members need access to all relevant datasets. This is incredibly difficult to achieve when it is stored in departmental silos where access is restricted to departmental members. Unifying data in a centralised repository, like a data warehouse, removes silos and ensures everyone can have the big picture. It also means data security can be centrally managed.

The second consideration is balancing security with ease of access. This means setting up logical access control where permission to access data and tools is granted on an individual basis depending on the employee’s needs. Not only does this ensure employees only use data they have the authorisation to access; it also means that if their accounts are hacked, hackers won’t have unlimited access to the company’s entire data or its applications.

6. Make sure data can be recovered

Data loss can happen for a whole host of reasons, including human error, malware, hardware failure, natural disasters, hacking and so forth. While losing personal data can get the company into hot water over compliance, all the other data your company relies on will have significant value too. Losing that data can put a company out of business. To ensure it doesn’t happen, having a remote backup system in place is crucial.

Ideally, you should schedule automated backups to be taken at the intervals which the company needs. For the increasing numbers of businesses who receive data continuously, this will mean having continuous backups taking place, so that, if the worst happens, you have as much recent data as possible to restore. Cloud storage is often the best solution as it is scalable, secure, integrity tested, can be encrypted and is easily accessed for restoration.

7. Choose the right hosting provider

The hosting provider plays a vital role in ensuring good data management. They will provide and manage the infrastructure needed and implement a range of stringent security measures including firewalls, encryption, intrusion protection, backup services, etc. Those opting for a cloud solution will also benefit from the scalability and payment model of cloud when it comes to storage and processing capacity. Crucially, however, is choosing a host that understands your goals and your needs and which can supply the expertise and computing environment your data management requires.

Conclusion

Effective data management is essential for businesses to make the best use of big data analytics and the insights it provides. Knowing what you want to use that data for, improving its quality, eradicating duplications and making it easier to access are key elements in that management strategy. So, too, are ensuring the data is secure, setting up logical access, making remote backups and choosing the right hosting provider.

The way airlines handle “bumpy” situations can make or break the passenger experience.

Posted on 06/01/201918/06/2021 by Tushar

Today’s airline passengers reap the benefits from reservation technology and highly productive and easy-to-use mobile apps that in many cases engage with multiple websites seamlessly and transparently. All this is made possible because airlines have done a very good job over the past five years modernizing their customer interfaces.

While passengers certainly appreciate these great new tech tools, the quality of the latest app or cool biometric feature at the airport doesn’t matter much if a loyal client gets delayed overnight and misses an important meeting the next morning, or if a grandmother can’t make her grandson’s wedding on time.

Too often airlines forget there are real people traveling on these flights, and whether it’s for corporate or personal travel, it’s the flight experience as a whole that matters to an airline customer. Things can and will go wrong during a journey. But good airlines become great by how they deal with the “bumps” that occur as they strive to get passengers to their destinations with the least possible disruption.

This was less complicated in the past when airlines controlled all aspects of the passenger journey. But changes in the industry brought more vendors and more complex – often unconnected – IT systems. In this environment, ensuring a seamless end-to-end customer experience has become a more challenging endeavor. That said, there are three steps that airlines can take to improve the passenger experience:

Build a rock-stable foundation. This means getting the basics right: clean aircraft, courteous flight attendants and efficient baggage handling. Nobody wants to hear that her suitcase was lost or to deal with an impatient flight attendant. The foundational elements are roughly 80 percent of the airline’s equation, so it’s important they work hard to get them right – and create systems, such as easy-to-use text notifications, to make the accommodation process run smoothly.
When something does go wrong, personalize the recovery and communicate! A single mechanical failure or server outage can result in a cascading effect that can ground flights and strand passengers for days, as the airline struggles to get back on track. But when airlines deal with the operational aspects of the recovery, they must also remember that real people are impacted by the disruption – people who need information and an assurance that the airlines will meet their individual needs while their flight is grounded. Airlines need to communicate, but after the bad news has been delivered, they can also offer tangible compensation, such as refunds, expanded benefits in their loyalty or frequent flier programs, or complimentary hotel accommodations until flights resume. Another option: Give passengers greater personal control over their own recovery plan. Lufthansa, for example, has been developing self-service apps that let passengers respond personally to service disruptions in response to alerts from the airline.
Deliver strategic add-on applications. Only when airlines get the basics right and develop a strategy for dealing with problems as they arise can they create an environment where the new technology applications start to matter. Passengers are already accustomed to logging on to airlines’ websites to compare prices, receiving their boarding passes on their mobile phones and using kiosks to print out boarding passes when they arrive at the airport. With biometrics and facial recognition, there’s much more to come. Airlines are just scratching the surface on how technology can improve the customer experience.

With many more options than they had in the past, customers will give their business to the airlines that put them first when things go wrong. Speaking from personal experience, I still won’t fly with a particular airline after their poor handling of a mechanical failure that kept me away from home on the night my dog passed away. I’d like to think that this experience is both isolated and preventable.

So, through a focus on the basics and a clear technology strategy, airlines can minimize the damage any one incident may cause to ensure a positive end-to-end customer experience and retain customer loyalty. Customers and business partners like me are depending on it.

Ways for airlines to benefit from combining digital and live agents.

Posted on 05/01/201918/06/2021 by Tushar

Many of us have had an experience similar to this: You call an airline to make a reservation and get a digital agent on the phone. The call starts off fine, but when you ask if your friend can sit next to you on the flight, the digital agent stalls and sends you to a live agent. You then wait several minutes before you reach a live agent and, when you finally do, she has no call history and you have to start from scratch, explaining who you are and making the reservation a second time.

Eventually, your request gets resolved and you manage to book your flight. But the entire process takes more time than you would have preferred, and you’re left irritated and feeling like you’ll switch airlines the next time.

Situations like these occur because many airlines have separate systems for the digital agent and the live agent, often from different providers whose contracts restrict the integration of both systems. When the two systems don’t communicate with one another, the digital agent hands the call off to a live agent, and the information doesn’t transfer. Airlines are now working to integrate both systems, and there are at least five benefits to doing so:

1. Saves the customer time. Customers don’t have to start from scratch and can complete their reservation request in much less time.

2. More efficient use of the agent’s time. When the customer saves time, so does the agent, which gives her more time to upsell the customer on other services or deals the airline has to offer. The live agent can transition to becoming more of a salesperson and problem solver than a mere order taker.

3. More efficient back-end processing. In the past, any time a change was made the airline would have to input the change into two separate systems. Now, the change gets entered only once and both systems get the update.

4. Improved brand loyalty. The customer will remember his issue was resolved quickly and the live agent had a complete call history and knew and understood the customer’s preferences.

5. Personalized service. Artificial intelligence and machine learning will enable the system to learn more about the customer over time. For example, it might know immediately the customer’s seat preferences based on her flight time – towards the front of the plane on a connecting flight, at the back on the red-eye, or in the aisle during a daytime flight –so that when the customer books a future flight with the digital agent, the correct seat will be assigned automatically.

As the system matures, fewer calls would need to be routed to a live agent, so that only the most exceptional requests, or those involving sensitive information (such as a declined credit card), would need to be transferred.

A centralized platform is the most effective tool for integrating digital agents and live agents. It can connect disparate applications, services, and processes under a uniform customer experience, helping airlines to ensure data compliance, easily transform data, and more efficiently route information.

That said, integrating live and digital agents is a challenge, with legacy systems and processes often hindering progress. But the overall goals of an integrated system –improved customer service, brand loyalty and the ability of live agents to upsell services that customers really want – are well worth the effort.

When airlines succeed in doing this, they can win customers for life.

How to Evaluate a Web Hosting Provider’s Reliability

Posted on 05/01/201917/06/2021 by Tushar

As any builder will tell you, if you build a house on poor foundations, it will fall. The same principle applies when building a website: here, however, the foundations are not reinforced concrete but the services of your hosting provider. A website its reliant on its hosting for its ongoing performance and success. Here, we’ll look at the criteria you need to look at when measuring the reliability of a web hosting provider.

1. The services you need

Hosting comes in a variety of forms and websites have their own specific needs. Finding the right host means matching these together. For example, if you run a WordPress website, you may want dedicated WordPress hosting which is designed specifically for optimising the performance and security of WordPress sites.

Look for a provider that offers all forms of hosting: shared, VPS, dedicated servers and cloud and which provides different solutions and packages for each form. You may need Linux or Windows hosting, business or reseller hosting, a choice between cPanel or Plesk control panels, the ability to choose the hardware spec of your dedicated server, want managed services or a bespoke enterprise-level cloud solution. A reliable host will be able to provide the solution which is tailored to your needs.

2. Availability

Availability, in web hosting parlance, refers to the amount of time that your website or application stays online. Also known as ‘uptime’, it is of critical importance because a website or app that goes offline loses you money and damages your reputation for reliability.

There are several reasons a website can go offline and not all of these are caused by poor web hosting. However, issues with hardware failure or overcrowded shared servers are within the remit of a web host and if these lead to constant lack of availability, your online venture can suffer as a consequence.

When it comes to availability, look for a web host that guarantees 99.9% uptime (the remaining 0.1% may be needed to update the operating system and patch vulnerabilities). At the same time, you can increase hardware reliability by opting for SSD storage, which uses solid-state rather than mechanical disk drives and is thus less prone to failure.

3. Technical support

While all web hosts will have a customer service department, what is more vital is finding a host that provides 24/7 technical support. There are many issues you can have with running a website and having 24/7 technical support in place means that, regardless of the time of day, an expert will be available to help sort the problem straight away.

Having a support team there for you in a time of need is one of the main reliability measures you should look for. For convenience, look for a support team that can be contacted by live chat, phone or ticket.

4. Money-back guarantee

People don’t always make the right choice with their hosting, nor are they always satisfied with the hosting services or support they receive. What makes this a bitter pill to swallow is that, should they change their mind, they find themselves out of pocket.

A reliable host is one which puts its customers first and which is so confident in the quality of its service that it offers a money-back guarantee. Here at Anteelo, for example, if you change your mind, you can claim a full refund on all hosting services (except dedicated servers and licensed add-ons) within the first 30 days. Additionally, our Anytime Money Back policy allows you to claim a refund for any unused portion of your contract even after the initial 30 days have passed.

5. Security

Cyberattacks have become a major threat to website owners with hacking, ransomware, malware, data theft and DDoS attacks leading to the demise of many businesses. One increasingly important measure of a web host’s reliability is how well they protect their customers from cybercrime.

Hosts should have security experts in place and provide them with the latest tools to do their job effectively. These should include the latest firewalls, intrusion detection and prevention tools and anti-spam email filters. They should also provide security services such as remote, encrypted backups, SSL certificates and email signing certificates.

6. Scalability

Your hosting needs may change over time. If your website grows and gets lots more traffic, the hosting package you currently use might not offer sufficient storage, bandwidth, RAM and CPU resources to cope with your needs.

A measure of reliability is how quick and easy a host makes it to scale up to a bigger package or even to a different form of hosting solution (e.g. VPS, dedicated server or cloud). If this involves migrating to a different server, they’ll also help you with the process of migration so that the move is as seamless and undisruptive as possible. At the same time, scaling back to a smaller solution should be just as easy.

7. Price

Every business will consider price when it looks to acquire the services of a web host. However, it is important to compare like with like rather than going for the cheapest deal. While affordability is important, so too is price stability and cost transparency.

A reliable host is one which makes its pricing completely clear and where there are no hidden extras. Additionally, although prices do change from time to time, a good host will try to keep increases to a minimum and implement them as infrequently as possible.

8. What others think

While web hosts can provide details about their products and services on their website, a true measure of their reliability is what their customers say about them. Online reviews and star ratings are highly valuable resources for owners looking for the best hosting solutions as you get the customer’s judgement on the quality of their services.

Conclusion

With a reliable web host supporting your online venture, you have the right solution for your budget and hosting needs, the flexibility to grow, the security and uptime guarantees to keep you online, the support in place to take care of issues and the backing of other customers to help you make the right decision. And if you’re still not happy, you can rest assured that you’ll get your money back.

Intelligent Audio Transcript Analytics – NLP Anthology (Part 1)

Posted on 05/01/201917/06/2021 by Tushar

Intelligent Audio Transcript Analytics: The Next Big Thing for Scaling Industrial NLP Applications.

Over the last few years, Natural Language Processing (NLP) has made significant strides in mastering language models to understand the nuances of different languages, dialects, and voices. NLP has unlocked countless new possibilities, and the market has corroborated this with a high rate of adoption. However, many in the industry, across the Fortune 500, are still skeptical about implementing NLP-based tools to derive value from texts; instead, they rely on their experts to do this manually, resulting in low efficiency, inconsistency, and challenges at scale.

Tredence is helping enterprises address these challenges through our AI CoE. We’ve recently partnered with a Fortune 100 Research and Advisory client to solve several challenging NLP problems using audio transcripts for conversations between the client’s analysts and their customers (usually Business Directors and above). These problems have potential use cases, including Research Guidance, Evolving Categorizations, Automated Reports, and Process Automation.

This is the first in a 4-part blog series that will discuss the overview of the problem and motivation behind the solution along with some challenges faced during the solution’s development.

The Problem: Rising Metadata and Lack of Actionable Insights

With companies using a host of call monitoring and recording applications, a large amount of unstructured call data gets generated every day. But the inherent resource constraints of a manual approach fail to provide valuable insights.

NLP solutions can play a vital role in mining the call data and categorizing and providing actionable insights. For example, it can be applied on call transcripts to quickly extract key topics covered with little or no human input. Further, using the solution to understand call transcripts can improve workplace efficiency, reduce human capital costs and improve training and feedback for employees. It can also help in identifying business problems algorithmically, making it easier for the organization to deploy resources in an evidence-based manner.

We have built an NLP-enabled Audio Transcript Analytics Solution that helps systematically understand the business calls by using three key components:

Key Concepts Identification
Natural Language Intent Extraction
Multi-label Document Tagging

We will discuss each component in detail in the next three blogs of this series.

Our solution has been successfully applied to many Fortune industrial 500 clients’ various transcription needs in multiple domains.

The tools can be combined to form a full-spectrum Natural Language Understanding and Processing System that’s customized for new domains relatively easily.

Data & Present Framework

Roughly 100,000 analyst-client calls, lasting between 30-40 minutes, take place every year. Before our solution was deployed, the domain experts had to analyze and extract the key elements of each call transcript.

Before we discuss the critical components used by our Audio Transcript Analytics Solution, let’s glance at some of the challenges.

Challenges

Ambiguity is inherent to human language. Hence, the speech-to-text converted data poses many problems for NLP systems like transcription errors – incorrect words, spelling errors, and incorrect sentence segmentation.
The lack of speaker text segregation hinders the application of NLP algorithms in client spoken segment.
Off-topic conversations or casual talks also impact the algorithm’s effectiveness significantly. Hence, to address this issue, we’ve developed a Casual Talk Removal method in which we considered the causal talk identification as a sentence classification problem using:

A supervised approach: We trained an ensemble model for nearly 10,000 sentences on the quantitative features derived from each sentence, such as the sentence’s position and count of tokens, stop words, entities, person names, geographic location. We observed that the sentence’s position is the most important feature since the transcripts have a high density of casual talk in the beginning. This approach performed well in the classification of sentences present at the beginning of the call transcript.

However, this approach had two significant limitations:

It required a sizeable labeled corpus to train the model.
Poor classification accuracy in later sections of the transcript.

To overcome these limitations, we developed an unsupervised method to classify casual talk sentences.

An unsupervised approach: Some information such as people names, geographical location names, and certain stop words were removed from the sentences. We used part-of-speech (POS) tags such as Noun and Proper Nouns, and IDF values at the sentence level to classify casual talks.

Hope you liked our approach to call data analysis and framework for removing ambiguity and casual talk from call transcripts and perform meaningful analysis.

1. Backup regularly

2. Turn unused devices off

3. Use encryption

4. Network protection

5. Use cloud storage

Conclusion

The concept of Air Control Towers and the Evolution of Digital Control Towers in Supply Chain

Significance of Digital Control Towers in Supply Chain

How does a Digital Supply Chain Tower work?

Key Challenges to Implementing a Supply Chain Control Tower

Security

Performance

Other benefits of dedicated servers

Not a solution for every workload

Conclusion

1. Get the right stock for Christmas

2. Spread the cost of Christmas

3. Get your shipping sorted

4. Cut costs

5. Widen the market

6. Don’t let your website go down

Conclusion

1. Know what you want to use data for

2. Security and compliance are key priorities

3. Data quality is vital

4. Eradicate duplicate data

5. Managing access to data

6. Make sure data can be recovered

7. Choose the right hosting provider

Conclusion

1. The services you need

2. Availability

3. Technical support

4. Money-back guarantee

5. Security

6. Scalability

7. Price

8. What others think

Conclusion

Delivering excellence, collaborating across time zones.

Take a look at our global hideouts.​

Contact

India (HQ)

Atlanta, USA

London, UK

Dubai, UAE

Melbourne, Australia

Surabaya, Indonesia

India (HQ)

Atlanta

London

Dubai

Australia

Indonesia

Take a look at our global hideouts.