No Excuses Book Summary | Brian Tracy | 6-Minute Summary

No Excuses Book Summary – Envision living your life the way you want to, engaging in activities you enjoy with the people you choose. We all want the same things – financial security, personal fulfillment, long-term happiness – and, more often than not, we know what we have to do to get these things. However, our lack of discipline and endless list of excuses can get in the way.

So how can you overcome this? That’s the question these blinks set out to answer. Whether you work for a company or run your own business, we’ve selected the most powerful techniques that will help you stop living a life that’s full of excuses.

Have you ever wondered how certain individuals, though allotted no more time than most people, manage to accumulate vast wealth and achieve great success? Well, it’s mostly a matter of self-discipline applied to the three fundamental areas of life: personal success, career and overall happiness.

You can do this, too. And it’s best to start by becoming disciplined about your personal success.

A great way to do that is to learn from the experts in your field. Attend their conferences, read their books and listen to their podcasts.

Just consider the author’s San Diego-based dentist. He attended every dental conference he could, and, at a conference in Hong Kong, he learned a technique that transformed his career. At the conference, a Japanese dentist shared a new procedure that permanently improved the appearance of teeth. The author’s dentist immediately began implementing this new technique, and within a few years, clients from all across the United States were booking treatments at his clinic.

By the age of 55, he was known as a “dentist’s dentist” and had earned enough money to retire.

Is the thought of early retirement appealing to you? Well, then it’s time to accept responsibility in your life.

The author learned this the hard way. When he was 21, he worked in construction, earning just enough money to get by. He had no car, no savings and lived in a tiny apartment. Then he had an epiphany: he had to take responsibility and change his life. He had to stop blaming his problems on his childhood and lack of education.

The very next day, he began working harder. He also started buying self-help books and dedicating his life to self-improvement. His conscious decision to no longer make excuses or blame others played an important role in his future success.

“With self-discipline, the average person can rise as far and as fast as his talents and intelligence can take him.”

It’s hard sticking to New Year’s resolutions. In January, you’re dedicated to whatever you’ve resolved to do – be it taking a daily jog or quitting smoking. Come February, you find yourself skipping scheduled runs and sneaking forbidden smokes. So why can’t we stick to the program?

USA Today reported that, in one study, a mere 4 percent of participants followed through with their resolutions. However, of those who did manage to stick to their resolutions, 44 percent wrote the resolution down.

Committing your goals to paper makes it much likelier that you’ll achieve them; the simple act of writing out what you want minimizes distractions and focusses your energy in the right areas.

To cash in on the power of the pen (and paper!), use the Seven-Step Method to achieve your goals:

Step 1: Decide what you want and be specific. If you want to accumulate more wealth, decide on exactly how much money you want. Or if you want to lose weight, determine exactly how many pounds you wish to shed.

Step 2: Write down your specific goal.

Step 3: Set a date by which you think you could accomplish it. Be realistic. If it’s a large goal, break it down to sub-deadlines.

Step 4: Write down a list of everything you could possibly do to achieve your goal. This includes listing the obstacles that you’ll face and the additional knowledge and skills you’ll need to achieve it.

Step 5: Prioritize the most beneficial tasks and add them to your calendar. Your most important tasks should be completed first.

Step 6: Start on your tasks right away.

Step 7: Do something every day that helps you achieve your goal.

In addition to employing the Seven-Step Method……..

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SAP S/4HANA Cloud Drives Global Growth at Topcon

Leading companies are hard-chargers when it comes to growth, but often struggle to get intelligent insights from far-flung operations as the business expands.

In this video from the SAPPHIRE NOW and ASUG Annual Conference, Kris Cowles, vice president of Business Applications IT for Topcon Positioning Systems, shared her company’s journey using SAP S/4HANA Cloud to help drive international growth.

SAP S/4HANA Cloud Takes on Challenge: Fast Growth at Lower Cost

Topcon’s story is really about housing and feeding the 9 billion people expected on the planet by 2030. Sustainable agriculture and infrastructure businesses rely on Topcon’s technology to make work sites and farms smarter and more efficient. Cowles said the company selected SAP S/4HANA Cloud to standardize business practices across subsidiaries in nine countries.

“Part of the goal in trying to scale is, how do we get insight into our business? How do we have data that actually means something coming from all these locations? And how do we have the insight into our markets that we need with a fractured landscape like this,” she said.

Using SAP S/4HANA Cloud, Topcon is linking data from retail operations with manufacturing and distribution centers. “Having inventory in nine countries on different systems was almost impossible to manage, so having not just the visibility to the supply chain, but now the integration across the landscape of what’s being sold into the distribution hub for supply and demand planning, is significant,” said Cowles.

Local Benefits, Finance Wins Big

Topcon’s priorities for the cloud-based system included helping local teams manage their business with speed and accurate efficiency. To date, finance is the biggest winner.

“They get to take advantage of some pretty nice and sophisticated capabilities, particularly in the financial aspects of SAP S/4HANA Cloud,” said Cowles. “Our happiest users on this system are our finance users, because they’re closing the books almost three days faster than what they were doing before on a local level, and then our central operations people; they were seriously compiling seven different spreadsheets per month.”

Borderless Visibility Fosters Collaboration at Topcon

With operations in numerous countries, Cowles said another must-have was connecting the entire business chain from customers through distribution and corporate.

“Then you can see and touch what’s happening in your local market, whether there’s quality issues, whether a product is taking off in a particular market, whether there’s demand or supply chain issues. That visibility [wasn’t] there, so we needed the connectivity to help drive the collaboration,” she said.

Assessing Business Outcomes

Since the solution went live, Cowles said the company has experienced significant business outcomes from SAP S/4HANA Cloud.

“The TCO for us comes in inventory reduction, in reduction of touches in between the companies, and the ability to have the visibility and make the adjustments to the business that we need to make based on actually knowing what’s happening,” she said.

She added that quarterly releases allow subsidiaries to take advantage of SAP innovations at a pace that makes sense for them, without waiting for corporate to move ahead.

How to Get Started

Cowles advised companies to begin with lower-risk scenarios and educate employees about cloud.

Both executives and business users need continuous education on the benefits of standardizing certain processes in the cloud, and how this impacts IT responsibilities and the relationship with SAP. It’s a different kind of change management.

“If you’re dependent on the road map or you’re dependent on the release schedule, what does that mean?” said Cowles. “And then articulating that to both your users and your executives is pretty critical.”

Like other market leaders, Topcon’s journey with cloud has just begun, evolving from disparate legacy systems to the intelligent enterprise. Nine billion people will be counting on them.

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The Scrutiny Of Elon Musk

Elon Musk’s tweet about taking Tesla private two weeks ago ignited a firestorm around his health and the exacting nature of his job. “This past year has been the most difficult and painful year of my career,” he admitted in a candid interview with the New York Times. Musk described the extreme working conditions under which he has been working and the toll it has taken on his personal life. He spent three or four consecutive days working on the factory floor, never leaving the site or going outside. He worked through a recent birthday well past midnight, without seeing friends or family. And he almost missed his brother’s wedding, where he was slated to be the best man.

On the one hand, Musk’s extraordinary work ethic has paid off. Tesla recently reported having hit its Model 3 production targets. On the other hand, questions remain about whether past success will be sustainable in the long run. According to Musk, while the operational difficulties Tesla encountered have been largely fixed, he doesn’t foresee an end to the personal toll he will have to continue to endure. “[F]rom a personal pain standpoint, the worst is yet to come.”

Amid the news, Arianna Huffington, the sleep spokesperson, came out with a public letter admonishing Musk’s sleep habits. She implored Musk to look at the science. Sleep is vital to performance, she explained. A well-intentioned message, but is the solution that simple? Musk replied via Twitter: “Ford & Tesla are the only 2 American car companies to avoid bankruptcy. I just got home from the factory. You think this is an option. It is not.”

And frankly, I agree. More sleep might be a sound solution in theory, but I’ve never seen it offered in practice. Never in my working life have I ever heard a manager suggest a team get more sleep when there is more work to be done. For anyone who has been in the position to work consecutive 100-hour weeks, when you’re in the thick of it, there really is no other option. When work mounts, sleep is one of the easiest things to circumvent.

No one is debating the hefty toll this takes on our health. But the way work has evolved in the latter 20th and 21st century has made it impossible for us to disconnect. If we could, we would. But with increased interconnectedness both locally and globally, work now follows us around. What’s more, total hours are often rewarded instead of productivity per hour. The standard is signing on after work. The standard is working late into the night to get something done. The standard is putting in several hours on a Sunday. In fact, if you suggest you aren’t willing to do these things, a company will easily question whether you’re committed to the job. (I know, I’ve tried.)

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Article Credit: Forbes

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VMworld 2018: VMware Aims to Make Cloud Management and Security Easier

Organizations are operating in a multicloud world, often juggling multiple public cloud environments and private clouds as well. All of that can be daunting to manage, especially for small and medium-sized businesses, which typically don’t have large IT teams.

At the VMworld 2018 conference in Las Vegas this week, VMware unveiled several enhancements to its cloud services portfolio that it hopes will make it significantly easier for IT teams to manage and secure cloud environments. The services are aimed at cloud operations, DevOps, and security and compliance teams, and are designed to help them better manage cloud costs, operations, security and compliance across multiple clouds.

The new features are part of VMware’s Software as a Service cloud operations platform and include three new cloud automation services: VMware Cloud Assembly, VMware Service Broker and VMware Code Stream. VMware also announced a new cloud configuration security and compliance service called VMware Secure State.

Learn how to maximize the benefits of cloud architectures.

VMware Wants to Ease the Burden of Multicloud Management

Citing 2017 data from Forrester Research, VMware noted that 89 percent of enterprises use at least two clouds, and 74 percent use at least three or more public clouds.

According to a 2017 study by Vanson Bourne commissioned by Veritas Technologies, with respect to Infrastructure as a Service specifically, 67 percent of organizations stated they used, or planned to use, two or more cloud providers, and 42 percent said they were using, or planned to use, three or more cloud providers.

Those complex cloud environments make it difficult for IT teams to gain the necessary visibility into their clouds, enforce compliance, ensure application performance and deliver security.

The new cloud services from VMware streamline application delivery, enable cloud flexibility and choice, and control risks, VMware says. They are also designed to facilitate cooperation between traditionally siloed groups within enterprises. Here is a quick breakdown of the new services:

• VMware Cloud Assembly is a multicloud orchestration tool designed to deliver unified provisioning across all clouds through declarative infrastructure as code. It works across Amazon Web Services, Microsoft’s Azure, and VMware Cloud on AWS. IT and cloud operations teams can use the service to orchestrate and expedite infrastructure and application delivery in a DevOps model. Meanwhile, VMware says, developers get an experience equivalent to provisioning resources from native public clouds.
• VMware Service Broker offers simple, self-service access to multicloud infrastructure and application resources from a single catalog, VMware says, allowing operations teams to more effectively govern access to resources; and use and enforce security, deployment and business policies across multicloud environments.

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Digital Transformation Is A Private Cloud Affair

Cloud computing 2018: How enterprise adoption is taking shape

A 2018 cloud computing study by IDG Communications, InfoWorld’s parent company, has found that organizations continue to increase their investment and evolve their cloud environments to leverage the technology to drive their business forward. With 73 percent of the 550 surveyed organizations having at least one application, or a portion of their computing infrastructure already in the cloud, it is no longer a question of if organizations will adopt cloud, but how.

The study discovered several key trends about the how of enterprise cloud adoption, including reduced concerns over cloud providers’ security, the increasing complexity of cloud deployments, and the increase in as-a-service deployment thinking.

The cloud is evolving into complex environments

Cloud environments are maturing and, in some cases, growing more complex. While 43 percent are using hybrid cloud only and 12 percent are using multicloud only, 30 percent are using both. The perceived benefits of using multicloud include:

• increased cloud options (59 percent)
• easier and faster disaster recovery (40 percent)
• increased flexibility by allowing the spread of workloads across multiple clouds (38 percent

The evolution of more complex environments has also generated the need for, or discussion around, viewing cloud providers as a portfolio, with 51 percent of respondents beginning to think this way. Organizations in technology-dependent industries are much more apt to be thinking of cloud providers within a portfolio strategy: financial services (63 percent) and high tech (63 percent) top the list, whereas manufacturing (43 percent) and education (41 percent) are least likely to be thinking of cloud providers within a portfolio strategy.

Cloud spending is on the rise as the benefits become clearer

As business stakeholders see the benefits and results of cloud adoption, more than one third of respondents (38 percent) shared that their IT department feels pressure to migrate 100 percent to the cloud. Enterprise organizations (companies with 1,000 or more employees) are feeling that pressure more than their small and medium business counterparts (companies with fewer than 1,000 employees). Forty-four percent of enterprise organizations, compared with 31 percent of small to medium organizations, feel pressure from executive management or individual lines of business to migrate 100 percent to the cloud.

“IT organizations are being asked to improve the speed of IT service delivery and react to changing market conditions. Cloud solutions provide the flexibility to do just that,” says Julie Ekstrom, senior vice president of IDG Communications. “Organizations are relying on a mix of cloud delivery models to meet this need. However, it requires management of multiple vendors. As tech executives explore new areas of cloud investment, they examine their portfolio of cloud vendors to see what solutions can grow and what new vendors will work collaboratively with their existing portfolio for ease of adoption.”

The percent of IT budgets allocated to cloud computing has remained relatively consistent at 30 percent in the 2018 study, compared with 28 percent in 2016. However, total dollars spent are increasing this year, especially by small to medium businesses. The average overall investment jumped from $1.6 million in 2016 to $2.2 million in 2018. Small and medium businesses’ cloud budgets increased from $286,000 in 2016 to $889,000 in 2018. Enterprise investment levels saw an increase from $3.0 million in 2016 to $3.5 million in 2018.

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Article Credit: Network Asia

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New trends in technology right now

In the future, your car windshield could become a giant camera sensing objects on the road or a window in a home could be turned into a security camera. University of Utah electrical and computer engineers have discovered a way to create an optics-less camera in which a regular pane of glass or any see-through window can become the lens. Their innovation was detailed in a research paper, “Computational Imaging Enables a ‘See-Through’ Lensless Camera,” published in the newest issue of Optics Express.

University of Utah electrical and computer engineering associate professor Rajesh Menon and his team took a picture of the University of Utah’s “U” logo as well as video of an animated stick figure, both displayed on an LED light board. An inexpensive, off-the-shelf camera sensor was connected to the side of a plexiglass window, but pointed into the window while the light board was positioned in front of the pane at a 90-degree angle from the front of the sensor. The resulting image from the camera sensor, with help from a computer processor running the algorithm, is a low-resolution picture but definitely recognizable. The method also can produce full-motion video as well as color images, Menon says in a 21 August press release.

Applications for a lensless camera can be almost unlimited. Security cameras could be built into a home during construction by using the windows as lenses. It could be used in augmented-reality goggles to reduce their bulk.

With current AR glasses, cameras have to be pointed at the user’s eyes in order to track their positions, but with this technology they could be positioned on the sides of the lens to reduce size. A car windshield could have multiple cameras along the edges to capture more information. And the technology also could be used in retina or other biometric scanners, which typically have cameras pointed at the eye.

Fake news detector algorithm

An algorithm-based system that identifies tell-tale linguistic cues in fake news stories could provide news aggregator and social media sites like Google News with a new weapon in the fight against misinformation.

The University of Michigan researchers who developed the system have demonstrated that it’s comparable to and sometimes better than humans at correctly identifying fake news stories. In a recent study, the system successfully found fakes up to 76% of the time, compared to a human success rate of 70%.

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HOW TECHNOLOGY IS CHANGING THE WAY WE LOVE

LET’S JUST GET it out of the way: my wife and I met each other online. This was more than 15 years ago, when “online” meant either chatrooms or some sort of personals-based website. (It was the latter.) We had the internet, but not in our pockets; texting and emoji had yet to worm their way into the mainstream, so we learned each other’s rhythms before read receipts and the tyranny of the three dots. There was no pin-dropping, no swiping, no Instagram archaeology. Instead, we flirted over email—long, performatively casual, even more performatively jokey emails. If we wanted to learn about each other, it was either those emails or whatever meager scraps Google could scrounge up about the other person. We didn’t know any other way.

We also didn’t know any other people who had met like we had, so we felt a little weird about it. OK, I felt a little weird about it. I made up a fake meet-cute story and everything, just so I didn’t have to tell people the truth: that she had seen my profile and emailed me with a joke about the New York Times crossword puzzle. I got over that false stigma quickly enough, but even looking back at that brief period, I’m stunned that I thought anything about it warranted secret.

Either way, though, it’s moot—because, as the last decade has made clear, my wife and I were simply early adopters.

As with everything else in our lives, the changes of the 21st century have completely upended romance. People seek love online, find intimacy in new ways; they use streaming and on-demand services to ease the geographic want of long-distance relationships. More and more, especially here at WIRED, they off-label workday productivity tools to smooth the systems of our domestic lives. They strive for happiness in themselves before finding it in others, and expect storytellers to do the same. There’s enough dystopia out there already—we have little use for it in our fictions, let alone our hearts’ journeys.

So, as we did last month with our literary lives, we’ll be spending some time this week reckoning with the state of love in the WIRED world. After all, summer’s drawing to a close. There’s no better time for casting hesitation aside than now, before fall rolls in. And maybe this time, consider sending an email.

Start with senior writer Jason Parham’s essay on the allure of reality dating shows, or if you’re in a long distance relationship, perhaps you’re more interested in how tech affects the state of the LDR.

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Article Credit: Wired

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Technology today can help tackle many fundamental problems in world

The CEO of VMware, Pat Gelsinger, on Monday practically threw down the gauntlet to his fellow tech leaders saying that “technology can be a force for good,” and can help solve many of the larger problems facing the world

The CEO of VMware, Pat Gelsinger, on Monday practically threw down the gauntlet to his fellow tech leaders saying that “technology can be a force for good,” and can help solve many of the larger problems facing the world.

Speaking at the VMworld 2018 here, Gelsinger said that, in essence, technology was neutral, but “we must shape it for good,” and it was within the power of the “game-changing technologies”, to bring about fundamental changes, which was never available any time before in the history of humanity.

Quoting Milton Friedman who had said decades ago that the main goal of business was to make money, Gelsinger sought to differ with that sweeping generalisation, saying that perhaps the right approach was to make money while “doing good.”

In an effort to rise above the moniker of merely a tech leader, Gelsinger said he was “more excited” today than any other time in his 38 years in the field because of what was possible now.

While congratulating the 23,000 employees on the “20th birthday” of VMware and addressing a fully-attended indoor stadium packed by some 15,000 people in the gambling capital of the world, Gelsinger said technology had in its ambit power to reduce poverty in the world.

“I believe it can bring modern education to every child on the planet. I believe together we can reverse the effects of climate change,” the CEO of the $7.9 billion company declared at its annual gathering to several applauses, some of which were louder when he talked about acquisition of a Cloud health company or when he mentioned expected future successes.

He spoke of several initiatives that the company had undertaken in its search for “doing good” and mentioned the support work done with “Make-a-Wish” foundation which works with seriously ill children and their parents.

Gelsinger also pointed out that even today five billion people in the world did not have access to adequate surgery facilities and talked about the “Mercy Ships” which aim to deliver high-end surgical services to African children.

He said with the help of NGOs — and technology back-up by VMware –, the ship equipped by the hospital and accompanied by doctors had been able to deliver medical services where it was needed the most. “When the ship docks at an African port, there is a queue of people seeking its service,” he said.

Next year, he informed, the Christian charity would launch an even bigger ship with double the existing capacity and that he would be accompanying the doctors for the maiden voyage to an African city.

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Article Credit: ET Telecom

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Picking a winner in the tech war between US and China

The Chinese BAT goes up against the American FAANG. What gives?

Silicon Valley just can’t crack China. In July, Facebook won approval to open a subsidiary in China; a day later, its licence was revoked. Earlier this month, news surfaced that Google was working on censored versions of their products that comply with China’s Great Firewall, the system used to control internet access. Backlash from Google’s own employees forced the company’s leadership to clarify that the project was exploratory.

The desperation of Google and Facebook to enter China isn’t driven by a hankering for growth alone. At stake is the opportunity to control the global economy at a scale not previously possible. The US has always been at the centre of the technology universe. While there are examples of successful tech companies founded in other countries, American companies defined the technology direction. The rise of China’s tech has challenged that position.

In 2018, among the leading internet-based companies globally, 9 were Chinese (Figure 1). The remaining 11 were American companies, highlighting the dominance of the two nations in technology leadership. China’s tech giants even have their own acronym, BAT (Baidu, Alibaba and Tencent) to rival the American FAANG (Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Netflix and Google).

Within start-ups, China’s share of venture funding has grown from 6% of total funds in 2011 to ~22% today. The country is among the top three in the world for fundraising in high-growth sectors like virtual reality, AI, drones and autonomous vehicles. Last year, investors ploughed almost half of all AI-related funding into China. The country is also fast overtaking the US in AI and machine-learning (ML) R&D, as measured by patent filings.

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Infosys research: Less than a quarter of global enterprises think and act like digital natives

Infosys has released global research, The New Champions of Digital Disruption: Incumbent Organisations, that reveals that under a quarter of organisations surveyed, understand that commitment to digital is at the heart of true transformation. And, it is these organisations that are reaping rewards from digital disruption. 

According to the research, more than half of all respondents surveyed, rank focus on digital skillset as the most important factor in successful transformation, followed by senior leadership commitment and change management, implying the need for a conducive organisational culture.

Visionaries, Watchers and Explorers

The research identifies three clusters of respondents based on the business objectives behind their digital transformation initiatives.

• Visionaries (22 percent) understand the potential of the digital revolution to completely transform their business 
• Explorers (50 percent) commit to digital programs driven by the need to enhance customer experience 
• Watchers (28 percent) see digital transformation through the prism of efficiency

True transformation begins from the core

While Watchers and Explorers are primarily focusing on emerging technologies like Artificial Intelligence (AI), Blockchain and 3D printing for digital transformation initiatives, Visionaries are not only looking at emerging technologies, but are also focusing strongly on core areas such as mainframe and ERP modernisation. 

Visionaries believe that true transformation comes from the core and without this in the background, digital technologies will not perform to their potential. The study reflects that their commitment to modernizing from the core will yield benefits, such as improved productivity and efficiencies. 

Agility in championing digital disruption

Visionaries watch and explore futuristic trends which currently escape the notice of the other two cohorts. They boast of increased clarity on opportunities and threats of digital disruption over Explorer and Watchers, as well as an increased ability to execute on them.

Visionaries look further into the future. They attach a higher rating to the impact of market drivers such as Emerging Technologies (86 percent Visionaries vs 63 percent Explorers, 50 percent Watchers) and Changing Ecosystems (63 percent vs 39 percent, 31 percent) – enabling them to be agile and disruptive.

Lack of digital skill set – greatest barrier 

When ranking barriers on the path to digitisation, building digital skill sets was found to be the most prevalent (54 percent) challenge for organizations, highlighting the lack of digital skill set available.

Transforming from a low risk organisation to an organisation that rewards experimentation (43 percent) and lack of change management (43 percent) were the second and third greatest barriers, showcasing the turbulence and resistance to change associated with digital transformation.

The importance of establishing an ecosystem

Building in-house capabilities was on the list of 76 percent of Visionaries, who were keen on acquiring digital native firms, to quickly gain the digital skills that 71 percent of the Visionaries believed were lacking in-house. Thereby, showcasing the increasing trend towards acquisitions and development of a sustainable ecosystem. Comparatively, the proportion of Explorers and Watchers looking at the acquisition and ecosystem options was negligible.

Enterprises are relying on their transformation partners to help them scale barriers. Preparing workforce for digital transformation and developing strong capability in managing large organisational change have emerged as top strategies to overcome these barriers. This is especially critical to Visionaries who are aiming to transform business culture. 

Methodology

Infosys commissioned independent market research company Feedback Business Consulting to undertake a study to understand the decision-making processes and challenges around the digital transformation journey businesses embark on. From March to April 2018, the qualitative and quantitative subset of the study was carried out, interviewing over 1,000 respondents senior management level executives who have a role in digital transformation initiatives. Respondents were from organisations with 5,000 employees or more and $1 billion global annual revenue. Overall, the respondents represented 11 industry groups from Australia, China, France, Germany, India, the UK, and the US.

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Blockchain Foundry Announces Consulting Agreement with Global CPQ

Blockchain Foundry Inc. (“BCF” or the “Company”) (CSE:BCFN) (FWB: 8BF) is pleased to announce that it has entered into a pre-solution design and ICO (Initial Coin Offering) consulting agreement (the “Agreement”) with Global CPQ. Global CPQ is a US-based company that is focused on revolutionizing the Enterprise CPQ (Configure Price Quote) space by developing a next-generation crypto-compatible Blockchain CPQ and Pricing Intelligence solution. Global CPQ’s aim is to equip sales teams with intelligent software that allows users to “spend less time quoting and more time closing” (https://www.globalcpq.com/).

BCF will provide Global CPQ with the knowledge base to create its ICO and the architecture to begin building blockchain-based platforms; leveraging the Syscoin blockchain. “We are extremely excited about our strategic partnership with the team at Blockchain Foundry,” stated Pete Hogan, CEO of Global CPQ. “Our team has extensive experience in the technology consulting industry, and as a result we have very high standards when it comes to choosing a partner. The team at BCF is truly the best in the industry when it comes to building enterprise blockchain solutions, and their experts consistently deliver well beyond our expectations. We are very excited about the future of Global CPQ and we view this partnership with BCF to be a vital part of our long-term business strategy.”

The Global CPQ Platform is designed to streamline the enterprise business-to-business (B2B) quote-to-cash process and will integrate seamlessly with Customer Relationship Management (CRM) and Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems. Global CPQ’s Syscoin blockchain-based platform utilizes Syscoin’s immutable blockchain technology to provide the platform with quick, seamless transactions, enabling individuals to buy and sell with cryptocurrency or fiat in an encrypted, secure environment.

“We are excited to be assisting Global CPQ with its ICO and blockchain ventures,” stated Sebastian Schepis, CIO of Blockchain Foundry. “We believe we will continue to see businesses migrating towards blockchain-based technology solutions in the coming year, and enjoy having the opportunity to share our knowledge with this great company.”

Source: Nasdaq GlobeNewswire

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What Is The Profit From Using Technologies In The Logistics Sector?

Our modern economy is based on competition. Thanks to it, we decide how the funds are distributed among different companies, and every industry keeps improving and growing as each competitor wants to become better than other. Nowadays, the best way a company can do it is by introducing some sort of innovation to their production.

 

Logistics is definitely one of the industries that work by this principle. There is no way a company can get ahead just by choosing a specific road or a specific car – if you want to be number one, you have to use a more modern approach. Most people that are familiar with the industry think that only the most innovative technology can help a company to truly be on the forefront. But what exactly do you gain from implementing such technologies?

1. Security

This aspect is very important for the logistics sector. New ways of making it more secure are being created regularly, both in physical and cyber aspects. There is an area in IT, talked about a lot right now, that can be a huge help in the improvement of both of those aspects. That technology is blockchain.

2. Delivery time

How exactly can the enforcement of new technologies help with the delivery time? Well, making the process more automatic and reducing the human role in most of its parts will lead to the overall reduction of time and increased accuracy for each order.

3. Customer experience

The logistics industry barely provides any customer experience. There is nothing for a person to do except making their order and wait for it to be delivered. Thanks to the internet of things (IoT), though, a customer can get exact information about the position of their order at any point in time. It’s a great advantage because it allows a person to plan their activities according to this more accurate information.

4. Transparent process

The more automated the process is, the more possibility and reason for the information about it to have free access. The more open a company is, especially with such data, the more trustworthy it looks to a client. And the more trust a client has in the company, the bigger the possibility of a long-term partnership.

5. Low costs

Thanks to all the advantages listed above, it is probable that the number of orders for a company that implements these innovations will increase. However, can we be sure that it leads to a profit? What if the overall cost of each order will be higher? Don’t worry – the working process will actually become more effective, and you won’t have to provide reimbursement to your customers as often due to the lowered possibility of human error.

Final Thoughts

The newest technological advancements provide some great tools for the evolution of the logistics industry. But, if you’re not familiar with them, you would need to spend a lot of time just learning about them. This is where experts come in. With the help of such companies as Artelogic, you can embed innovations into your business easier and much more effectively and benefit from custom logistics software development.

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Renewable energy key to clean future, say Manufacturers

New research from Haven Power, one of the UK’s largest business electricity suppliers, reveals over 60% of businesses in the manufacturing industry think renewable energy solutions are the key to ensuring a clean future. Additionally, half of those surveyed believe more needs to be done to reduce carbon emissions.

The survey of Utility Decision Makers in the manufacturing industry showed that energy usage was their top business priority (66%), ahead of both employment (47%) and office management (46%) – putting them in front of most other industries when it comes to energy consciousness.

Manufacturers also put their own sector at the top of the list when being asked who is responsible for lowering carbon emissions (59%), versus energy suppliers (48%) and the Government (45%). In comparison, businesses in the hospitality and entertainment industry aren’t likely to make sustainable changes as they don’t believe it’s a priority to their customers.

Paul Sheffield, Chief Operating Officer at Haven Power, commented: “It’s extremely encouraging to see that the proportion of businesses in this sector believe in renewables. However, two of the biggest barriers stopping manufacturers implementing sustainable change were cost (37%) and lack of Government support (32%), meaning there is still work to be done.”

Paul Sheffield continued: “Understanding of renewable energy and its benefits varies greatly from sector to sector, but it’s great to see businesses in the manufacturing industry are taking steps towards a more sustainable future. We believe that every industry needs to implement change to help reduce carbon emissions and embrace cleaner energy.

“It’s imperative that organisations of all sizes work together with their energy provider to ensure the future of British business is low carbon. By moving beyond viewing energy as a commodity, we can help to drive sustainability and profitability. Here at Haven Power we are keen to help businesses understand the wider benefits of renewables.”

Haven Power is one of the UK’s largest business electricity suppliers, founded over ten years ago, it aims to help businesses control spend, manage risk and boost sustainability by using renewable electricity, energy efficiency and bespoke energy solutions.

*Research conducted on behalf of Haven Power, by OnePoll in July 2018. 1,000 Utility Decision Makers age 18 or over were surveyed.

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Manufacturers' first step towards Industry 4.0 success

Could fear of failure be preventing Industry 4.0 technology from reaching the factory floor? James Wood, Director of Business Development, EMEA & APAC at Aptean, outlines why manufacturers have to view digital transformation as a journey, rather than a destination.

Have you ever joined a gym, certain that this time round you’ll definitely get fit? Chances are you or someone you know has done this. You’ll also know just how quickly the self-doubt kicks in. Why is everyone else so far ahead of you? Is your workout routine the right one? Should you change your diet to support your gym efforts?
You thought going to the gym would be easy, but you soon realise you’re not prepared to make all the changes needed. Sound familiar? While this article isn’t about fitness, I see plenty of parallels between the way manufacturers approach the discussion around Industry 4.0 and the average person’s struggle to stay fit and healthy.

Digital transformation doesn’t have to be daunting

I’m sure you’ve seen the headlines. Articles like ‘here’s everything you need to know about Industry 4.0’ and ‘how to transform your business with new Industry 4.0 technology’ are everywhere. While many of them have fascinating insights to share, I get the feeling that they’re more than a little intimidating to the average reader.
Sure, it’s exciting to find out about the possibilities of automation, AI and data; however, you can’t become excited about an end goal when you’re not sure how or if you can reach it. Rome wasn’t built in a day. In the same way getting that six pack overnight is impossible, so too is transforming your business.

Why Industry 4.0 is a journey, not a destination

‘Making the most of Industry 4.0’ is realising that creating a smarter manufacturing business is a journey, not a destination. Let’s be honest; you’ll never reach a moment in time where you believe your business no longer needs to change, upgrade and adapt.

When the first industrial revolution took place, no one thought the processes coming in would last forever – and it’s the same with the fourth iteration. Even if you reach your end goal, by the time it happens, you’ll have set new targets based on even newer technology.

I’m not saying that there’s no point in trying because the goalposts will shift. If anything, it’s more reason to take your first step, then the next and the one after that. Each foot forward will improve your manufacturing processes as you stride towards a more efficient, Industry 4.0 ready factory floor.

Manufacturing needs to be more open to new technology

The sooner manufacturers adopt a ‘journey over destination’ mindset the better. As an industry, manufacturing is already behind the curve when it comes to digital transformation and Industry 4.0 – especially in the Food & Beverage space. It can’t afford to fall behind any further.

There’s so much to be gained by engaging with the technologies enabling Industry 4.0. As well as driving efficiency on the factory floor, manufacturers can use integrated and automated data processes to dramatically improve regulatory compliance. For Food & Beverage businesses, this is a huge opportunity to increase customer trust.

That’s why viewing Industry 4.0 as a journey is vital for manufacturers. You have to focus on each step – applying new technology to your business in a structured way that would make sense even if you never reached your end goal.

You also have to avoid overwhelming those on the factory floor. The idea is to blend people and systems – creating a smarter workforce that achieves more. One of the challenges involved in this is making sure teams have the skills needed to work alongside the machines. Training is often overlooked, making the Industry 4.0 journey more difficult than it needs to be.

Just imagine the scenario: you introduce new systems, but fail to make sure your workforce has the skills to make the most of them. Nothing works as efficiently as it should and, eventually, everyone goes back to the manual processes they were used to with a negative perception of Industry 4.0 technology. If anything, this is a step backwards, but one you can avoid by ‘upgrading’ your workers alongside your systems.

The first step all manufacturers need to take towards Industry 4.0

Every journey begins with a first step, but what does that mean for manufacturers? To my mind, your first step is to implement a Manufacturing Execution System (MES) that meets the needs of your factory floor.

An MES provides you with all the data you need to continue your journey towards Industry 4.0. It does this in real-time, giving you complete visibility of your business and its processes – as well as the insight you need to identify areas for improvement. With this in place, it almost doesn’t matter what you think your next step is – the data will tell you. You’ll have a clear path ahead of you; one that sees you constantly improving processes as you work towards your end goal.

Implementing an MES can also kick start your business’ digital transformation, which – coupled with the right implementation approach – will start to win over your teams on the factory floor. Engaging the operators, giving them a voice, and empowering them with information that makes action unavoidable clearly demonstrates that people and technology are a winning combination that can dramatically improve performance.

What you need is a simple and structured program that will start you on your journey, and make the implementation of further useful technology (such as wearable tech, smart energy monitoring or the use of drones to perform inventory turns) much easier. By integrating new systems with your MES, you can ensure the improvements keep coming. This is the basis of a smart factory run by a smart workforce.

The first step is the hardest – the rest is simple

While Industry 4.0 might seem unsettling to manufacturers, it doesn’t have to be. Even if your factory floor is behind the times in terms of technology, there’s nothing to stop you catching up – and quickly – if you approach the challenge with the right mindset.

By viewing Industry 4.0 as a journey, rather than a destination to be reached and settled in, you will discover a variety of ways to improve your business. You’ll also free yourself up to focus on driving performance on your factory floor without the fear of failing to meet unrealistic expectations.

Now’s the time to start out on the path towards Industry 4.0 success. There might be plenty of work to do before you reach your end goal, but you’ll never get there if you put off making the required changes. Just as you can’t achieve fitness without going to the gym, you can’t take the last step towards creating a smarter factory if you don’t take the first. Ready to shape up?

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Herbal meds to be studied via big data

Big Data And us: Are we All Being Given a Reputation Score?

Be it online or in the real world, that scary Black Mirror episode is fast becoming a reality. Reputation rankings, social credit scores and embedded microchips, the big brother is always watching.

When fiction turns to reality. Black Mirror, the popular Netflix show, started out in life as an outlet that cast a light on how our approach technology and social media can perhaps open avenues of deeper surveillance, tracking, social ranking and potential for misuse by the people in control. Potentially a scarier society than the one we live in today. All that is coming true, slowly and steadily, unfortunately. The 2016 episode, called Nosedive, follows Lacie (Bryce Dallas Howard) in a world where people can rate each other on a scale of one to five stars—based on every interaction they have. Needless to say, there is a craving for the highest possible ratings. The socioeconomic standing depends on how many stars you currently have. And if you fall on the wrong side of the ratings, life becomes a pain.

That was TV. That was a Netflix show. Time to get back to studies, children? Not so fast, because the direction we are headed in, isn’t too different from the world that Black Mirror writer Charlie Brooker depicted in the show.

Facebook, as it turns out, is now assigning a reputation score for its users. The motive, at least what we are being led to believe, is to identify and weed out malicious user accounts. A Facebook user’s reputation score isn’t designed to be the final verdict about a person’s credibility. However, it will be just one more metric among many others that Facebook uses, to make a virtual character sketch of a Facebook user, and identify the risky ones. One of the reasons for this sort of a metric is the growing intolerance in general, which directly led to the misuse of the option to report incorrect, dangerous, fake or malicious content. As it turns out, it is “not uncommon for people to tell us something is false simply because they disagree with the premise of a story or they’re intentionally trying to target a particular publisher,” said Facebook’s Tessa Lyons, in an interview with The Washington Post.

The social network is also monitoring which users actively tend to report content as problematic, which may actually be from publishers who are generally deemed trustworthy by other users. False reporting, when done as a coordinated effort, can be used to game the systems put in place by tech companies to monitor and weed out genuinely unacceptable content. Let us take a look at this example. If you report an article you saw on Facebook as false or incorrect, and the Facebook fact-checking process confirms that, it is a good mark on your checklist. In the future, your feedback about content on the social network will have more weightage than someone who in the past has been known to report content which isn’t against the policies of content sharing on the platform.

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Article Credit: News18

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This Is The Right Time To Standardise Big Data Technologies

Is it time to standardise big data technologies? The once siloed, inaccessible, and mostly underutilised data has now become crucial to enterprises for success. And experts say that there is still room to promote interoperability between the available tools. But how does one define ‘standardisation’? Northeastern University’s College of Computer and Information Science defines “standard” as a formal agreement of meaning of a collection of concepts among groups — in this case, tech companies and enterprises.

According to an ISO (a standards development organisation like IEEE) report, big data paradigm consists of the distribution of data systems across horizontally coupled independent resources to achieve the scalability needed for the processing of extensive data sets.

One of the first documentation on big data standardisation came from the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) which defined big data as “a paradigm for collection, storage, management, analysis and visualisation of extensive datasets with heterogeneous characteristics, that include high-volume, high-velocity and high-variety.” ISO defined big data engineering as storage and data manipulation technologies that leverage a collection of horizontally-coupled resources to achieve a nearly linear scalability in performance.

Standardisation Can Increase Interoperability Between Tools

According to a recent IDC study, we are fast approaching the data age with the global datasphere growing to a trillion gigabytes by 2025. This will be ten times the 16.1 ZB of data generated in 2016. IDC also stresses that around 20% of the data in the world will be critical to our daily lives by 2025. While data and data-related tools grow, how can business leaders find out what data matters the most?

In the last decade, there has been a spurt in the number of tools around big data and data analytics developed by different organisations, but as Jim Melton, editor of ISO/IEC 9075 (SQL) pointed out to ISO, tools lack interoperability. According to Dr Klaus-Peter Eckert, an expert who works on interoperability in distributed systems, all technical building blocks present but the key tool missing is interoperability. Eckert spoke to ISO, “There is a distinct lack of an architecture which can combine the many components of big data solutions. This is where standards will come into play in the game.” It is widely believed that the development of standards will pave a platform for interoperability.

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Article Credit: Analytics India

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Project Accounting In Manufacturing Simplified The Estimate ‘To Complete’ And ‘At Completion’ Dilemma Resolved

More and more we see the need to manage project resources as an important requirement in ERP software RFIs from manufacturers for OEMs. This suggests OEMs are pushing down more of the project accounting requirements on their vendors.

Resource forecasting, labor hour scheduling and resource allocation insight is necessary for sound manufacturing project management, but traditional ERP software and its predecessor, materials requirements planning (MRP) were designed originally to match resources and demand in a repetitive manufacturing environment. The disciplines required for project-driven manufacturing, program-centric manufacturing and engineer-to-order involve dealing with many unknown variables as a single contract. Once signed, this can place a substantial demand on production capacity.

Here are the key metrics to manage

Project cost allocation is crucial for manufacturers who want to maintain profitability, but many project-oriented manufacturers struggle when it comes to working out two important metrics:

• Estimate to complete (ETC) by hours—the forecasted number of hours and dollars to complete the project
• Estimate at completion (EAC) by hours—the forecasted cost of the project at completion.

Project accounting is not just scheduling work – it’s a financial management issue

Software used in these more dynamic environments must be designed specifically to manage project risk and to allocate resources and cost across multiple projects all competing for the same productive capacity. Too often, manufacturers will rely on standalone project management or project portfolio management software. But no separate project tool is going to automatically create those transactions in your ERP system of record.

By tracking load against resources outside of the Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system, manufacturers are not truly managing the project from a financial and costing standpoint. They are essentially using an operations or scheduling tool which, at most, encompasses manufacturing time and attendance or work centers for engineers.

Stand-alone tools just skim the surface – you need enterprise integration

Planners need to know not only what other jobs they have now but also ones they will have in the future, so they can start with an understanding of what resources are allocated to existing and upcoming work. The optimal software tool for this task will dig deeper to several more layers of granularity: which manufacturing disciplines and capacities can I commit to the project, which engineers with which skill sets, how many project managers and how much inventory is available?

Moving quickly from estimated to actual

The software should overlay this more granular view of capacity in the quoting process to estimate the number of hours and compare it to current capacity usage. This enables planners to move from quoted plans into actual plans for resources once a contract is won. Manufacturers are then able to take the forecast and turn it into an actual resource plan with confirmed productive capacity behind it.

This more powerful functionality helps planners answer not only project-oriented, but enterprise-level questions and enable them to accurately quote lead times and cost. This means they will know even before the project starts where and when they may need more employees, or even contractors to take on some of the work.

Make essential functionality part of your ERP system

In order to nail down reliable ETC and EAC figures, it is essential that project functionality is part and parcel of the ERP system rather than two separate applications that are united in a point-to-point integration.

Any demand put into a project that requires you to generate a shop order or a work order or put a resource in the field must accrue against resources available at that time and affect the total cost of the project. And that means project functionality must be embedded in the system of record – the ERP system.

For a more detailed guide to mastering estimate to complete and estimate at completion in manufacturing ERP download the IFS whitepaper.

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Importance of Interactive Maps in Big Data Space

The primary purpose of an interactive map is to offer the ease of visualizing data to the user in a simplified manner. These flexible, web-based mapping tools possess points which, when clicked display the detailed relevant information. The information can be in the form of pictures, numbers, external links, videos and the like. Besides, interactive maps comprehensively organize all forms of data, be it hierarchical, straightforward, relational or singular. Interactive maps have taken an essential position in the process of data visualization. Only a few years back, data scientists were unable to handle huge volumes of data. However, with the introduction of interactive maps, they have now found the ultimate way to visualize tons of information in the quickest way possible.

Data is everywhere. Nevertheless, it takes real skills to glean the relevant information from that data. According to seasoned prominent data evangelists, tools such as treemaps, Gantt charts, pie charts and even bar graphs do not serve the purpose of enabling users to interpret data that easily. It is almost unfeasible to highlight the factors that result in a slowdown of locations while the others achieved their goals with the least effort. As suggested by these data analytics advocates, the benefits offered by interactive maps can be manifold as mentioned below:

•  Crisp information: Interactive maps have the ability to present information in a more consolidated manner, without missing the important points. Devoid of any ambiguity in the kind of presentation, data scientists are able to read the data more clearly and extract valuable information from it. In addition, interactive maps enable users with the flexibility to outline the data points, create text balloons, filter or select the important elements of data as well as modify the options according to requirements.

•   Real-time insights: All information in the interactive map is shown in real-time frequency. Within seconds the data is updated in alignment with the current scenario in a particular geographical area.

•   Understand correlation: Interactive maps are great when guiding users to gain an understanding of the areas which need to be focused on, identify the current trends in order to establish relationships on the basis of numerous data streams.

Interactive maps offer more than the aforementioned benefits. Also offering prescriptive analytics, these maps differ in their types usually depending on the kind of work they are used in—for instance, Clustering maps are used for indicating density, while Choropleth maps are known to display information in engaging colors.

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Frenemies book summary | Ken Auletta | 6-Minute Summary

Frenemies book summary –  Advertising is ubiquitous in modern life. Whether on the screen or on the street, advertisements are always trying to persuade us to buy the newest must-have product. But, in recent years, marketers and advertisers have completely changed their approach, and what was once the art of persuasion has transformed into something resembling a science.

Indeed, over the last few decades, the marketing and advertising industry has changed drastically. How advertising agencies make money, how people view advertisements, how clients measure the success of advertising campaigns – each has been utterly revolutionized by technology and big data. And these new forces are only getting stronger.

In the article ahead, you’ll discover how the creative geniuses of twentieth-century advertising gave way to data whizzes who are more interested in customization than a single big idea. You’ll also find out why internet giants want to know more about your personal life than ever before and how changes in advertisement consumption have forever changed American politics.

You may wish that infuriating website pop-up advertisements had never been invented. But, as long as competitive economies exist, the planet will be plagued by advertising and marketing. They’re necessary because they connect buyers and sellers.

In ancient times, Greek and Roman advertisements consisted of writing on rocks and paintings on walls that announced the services of nearby tradesmen. Those were the good old days. Now, advertising and marketing are exponentially more complex.

Today’s definition of marketing covers a very broad spectrum of services.

It includes everything from direct mail to in-store promotions. It extends to the damage-control work carried out by public relations firms when a business is in crisis, like the emissions scandal that hit Volkswagen in 2015. It would even encompass the rebranding of companies and the redesigning of their corporate logos, like when the cable-television company Time Warner was rebranded as Spectrum.

Marketing also includes the advice that strategy-consulting groups such as McKinsey & Company give to CEOs on how to position their corporations. Millennial-generation influencers like the Kardashian family are also part of the industry because marketers commission them to feature particular products on Kardashian social-media platforms.

Until recently, the main mediums of advertising were television and radio, as well as print media like newspapers and magazines. But things have changed rapidly in the last decade. These outmoded media have been all but ousted by smartphones.

Mobile smartphones offer awesome potential for advertisers. They’re used by six billion people worldwide, and their capabilities are increasing all the time. For instance, a single iPhone 8 possesses a greater amount of computing power than the world’s first space shuttle. Indeed, smartphones are so powerful that they enable advertisers to track and interact with users in real time.

For instance, the gigantic Chinese corporation Tencent provides a platform for its users to both buy things and communicate with both friends and strangers. Not only do 80 percent of its 800 million users spend over an hour on the Tencent platform every day; these users also participate in up to 500 million interactions daily, using 300 million credit cards to shop at 300,000 stores online – all on the same platform!

Meanwhile, each user can be advertised to, and their activities can be minutely monitored. This enables advertisers to pick up on valuable user trends and shopper preferences.

Many of us have seen the popular television show Mad Men, which tells the tale of advertising companies and their executives in 1960s New York. But did you know that the show’s protagonist, Don Draper, is an amalgam of the mid-twentieth century’s most illustrious ad men, such as David Ogilvy, George Lois and Bill Bernbach?

In the 1960s, these executives ruled the New York advertising scene. They were masters of both creative content and client relationships. But things have changed since then, and the Don Drapers of today aren’t as secure as they once were.

For most of the twentieth century, advertising provided its executives with secure and effortlessly lucrative revenue streams. Why? Because the industry was………………

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