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How To Bring Agility Into Your Service Management – And Why (Part 1)

August 17, 2019 SAP

Part 1 of a 2-part series about bringing agile methodology to IT service management.

In a previous article, I explored the bimodal working method; here I will dive a little deeper into the topic of agile service management. A brief reminder: DevOps is a philosophy that follows the five CALMS principles:

C – Culture
A – Automation
L – Lean
M – Measurement
S – Sharing

DevOps endeavors to ensure the smoothest possible connection between the development and operation of IT solutions. This is supported by numerous approaches, but mainly by the development, further development, and application of agile methods (such as scrum).

Four important reasons to bring agility to service management

When we talk about agility, we are not speaking exclusively of speed. If we take a closer look at the origin of the word “agile,” the Latin word “agilis” translates to nimble, active, or mobile. In the complex world of IT, with its drastic increase in changes and the accompanying uncertainties – which some call “VUCA” (volatility, uncertainty, complexity, ambiguity) – it is important to create very nimble IT. The aim is to react more quickly to predictable and (more importantly) unpredictable events.

Now we face the challenge of adopting and maintaining the agile methods we’ve practiced in development in our normal operations. How can we achieve that?

The DevOps Institute has placed its focus in agile service management on the application of agile methods to the design of IT service management processes and their continuous improvement.

But, let’s take a step back first: What do we expect from the use of agile practices? Why do we need agility in IT and in the company?

A quick start to added business value. Minor changes, for example, functional extensions in software, can be integrated into operations considerably more quickly and, thereby, significantly reduce time to market as compared to large releases (Figure 1).

The ability to change. The advantage of implementing changes in incremental steps is that you can counteract any deviations from the main target (the kaizen principle) early on. This way, the ability to change, and thus agility, is retained over time (Figure 2).

Figure 2 Dirk F Aug 2019 How To Bring Agility Into Your Service Management – And Why (Part 1)

Figure 1 (left) and Figure 2 (right)

Creation of visibility. Implementing changes in small steps paired with quick feedback to the stakeholders, both internal and external, increases the visibility of changes drastically (kaizen principle). Major, drastic changes are counteracted by implementing them gradually. This creates transparency throughout the entire service lifecycle and builds trust among all people involved. Changes become comprehensible, and the level of acceptance rises (Figure 3).

Minimization of risks. At the start, the risk is very high – for example, when changing IT services. However, when using iterative steps, the risks involved in a fallback are usually far smaller. Failing fast is even desired here. The sooner we encounter a risk, the quicker we can learn from it and improve. Opportunities to counteract are used at an earlier stage.

Now that we are familiar with the general advantages of using agile methods, let’s take a look at service management with this knowledge as a basis. To do this, we will transfer agility to the familiar ITIL, which has been around in its current state for quite some time (Figure 4).

Figure 4 Dirk F Aug 2019 How To Bring Agility Into Your Service Management – And Why (Part 1)

Figure 3 (left) and Figure 4 (right)

Kaizen and kaikaku

Kaizen stands for continuous improvement by means of small, incremental changes. It roughly translates from Japanese to change [kai] for the better [zen].

Kaikaku is the Japanese word for radical change. It is a business concept that makes fundamental, transforming, and radical changes, in contrast to kaizen, which focuses on minor changes.

(Source: Lean IT Association)

The three pillars of ITIL 3: functions, processes, and roles

The purpose of functions is to form various teams, including “one-person shows,” that bring structure and stability to an organization.

Processes describe how activities are structured and implemented.

The purpose of roles is to define responsibilities within as well as outside of processes.

Example of functions: agile service management and the service desk

Our beloved service desk will serve as an example function. Due to its strategically important position as a single point of contact (SPOC), the service desk is instrumental to the success of a healthy IT company. It is up to the managers of the service desk, in particular, to ensure agility here. They should be able to literally “let go.”

A service desk team that works independently and decides which tasks are to be performed next, thereby initiating improvement measures for its work independently, accelerates all flows of information between customers, internal departments, and the service desk team.

ITIL 4 – The Service Desk as a General Management Practice

The service desk is also included in the new best-practice framework, but this time in a new category. The service desk, which is no longer “just” a function, but will be declared a General Management Practice in ITIL 4 in the future, is still a central component of service management. The main purpose of the service desk practice has not really changed as compared to ITIL 3. It still involves recording the demand for incident solutions and service requests. The service desk is still the single and central point of contact for the service provider and all its users.

Interested in further details? Contact us today.

This article originally appeared on itelligence.com and is republished by permission. itelligence is an SAP platinum partner.

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Digitalist Magazine

ClickSoftware Buy Signals Important Directional Shift for Salesforce

August 17, 2019 CRM News and Info

What’s the big deal, I thought? Last week Salesforce announced it was paying in the range of US$ 1.35 billion for ClickSoftware, a private field service automation and workforce management company.

At first, I attributed it to a slow summer news cycle that was driving attention to the deal at a time when many people in the industry are off trout fishing near the Continental Divide or elsewhere. I was in the Hudson River Valley exploring history so that colored my thinking.

Face it, ClickSoftware at $ 1.35 large is about 10 percent of the Tableau data visualization buy a few months ago. I didn’t think it was that big a deal. Also, ClickSoftware and Salesforce have been partnering in field service since 2016, so the acquisition signals something much more evolutionary than revolutionary. Then it dawned on me: That’s the point.

Ask this: When in the lifecycle of a disruptive innovation are customers likely to need services of all types — including field service, but also customer service and support? The need diminishes over time as a disruption is increasingly well understood and customers can figure things out for themselves. To crystallize this, no one calls frustrated to not be able to locate the “any key” on their keyboards any more.

End of an Era

We’ve moved on, and product prices and service modes have commoditized in tandem. You can’t lower prices along the commoditization curve if you can’t control costs, and one of the biggest costs is labor. So today, products increasingly are well designed and made precisely to ward off every possible need for a service call, and what isn’t obviated is automated with bots and intelligent systems.

Field service is just customer service for business-to-business-complex-systems, and that has taken some refactoring as well, most exemplified by mobile systems that use virtual reality to show technicians where to look and what to do on a service call.

Salesforce has had this kind of capability for some time now, thanks to the aforementioned relationship with ClickSoftware and other bought and built field service software. So why buy the company now?

Simply put, I think the buy was a defensive move that prevents any other company from buying ClickSoftware and preventing Salesforce from fielding an increasingly important facility.

Go back to who uses services and when in the lifecycle of a disruptive innovation you’re likely to see service bloom, and you might get an inkling that Salesforce is reading the graffiti and making the following determination.

We’re nearing the end of the 5th industrial revolution, what I call “The Age of Information and Telecommunications.” This is not to say that any of that technology is going away — just that it is commoditizing to the point that it becomes part of the economy and not the driving force. Previous eras, which I documented in a recent book, included textiles, steam power and steel-making, petrochemicals, radio and cars.

The list is long, and in every case the prior disruptive innovations clustered (e.g. steam, steel, railroads, coal mining were reinforcing) and drove the economy for as much as 60 years. Eventually commoditization took hold, and those things all became parts of the economy, though no longer the driving force.

So if you look at the ClickSoftware acquisition, you don’t see a tech company building out its portfolio (though it is). Instead you see a tech company getting ready to serve the next great disruptive innovation rather than being the disruptive innovation.

Perhaps the most perceptive photo accompanying a story on the acquisition was displayed on digitalcommerce360. It shows a technician with a mobile phone and a laptop servicing what look like solar panels. If ever there was an industry that’s taking off it’s the nexus around sustainable energy.

Coincidental proof: The top two fastest-growing occupations, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, are solar photovoltaic installers and wind turbine service technicians. Now, installers are not service technicians, but I think the analogy holds because part of installation is making the stuff work.

Importantly, those top jobs garner $ 42,680 and $ 54,370 per year respectively. The third-fastest growing job category is home health aids, which averages just $ 24,200 per year. Disruptive innovations drive good paying job growth, and neither of the jobs mentioned require a college degree. More proof.

My Two Bits

What does the Salesforce acquisition of ClickSoftware say about Salesforce? Well, Marc Benioff has been talking about a 4th Industrial Revolution for some time now — something I believe he picked up at Davos.

Some people refer to “Industrial Revolutions,” but I go with “Ages” because they’re more descriptive. The point to me is that so much of CRM was developed to help tech companies lift their customers over a big disruption caused by technology. Today the disruption is adjacent, and it is sparking another Age or Industrial Revolution.

Salesforce saw this a while ago, though I doubt it understood that sustainability would be the thing that received the torch in an unending relay race. So buying ClickSoftware in such an environment makes all the sense in the world, no matter who is on vacation.

The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of ECT News Network.

Denis%20Pombriant ClickSoftware Buy Signals Important Directional Shift for Salesforce
Denis Pombriant is a well-known CRM industry analyst, strategist, writer and speaker. His new book, You Can’t Buy Customer Loyalty, But You Can Earn It, is now available on Amazon. His 2015 book, Solve for the Customer, is also available there.
Email Denis.

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CRM Buyer

What does the GOP stand for?

August 17, 2019 Humor

The Tuesday edition of Electoral-Vote.com examines the fact that Trump’s Republican party has abandoned almost all of the things they used to believe in and champion. Instead their core principle has become “support whatever Donald Trump says or does”. For example:

How the GOP attitude toward and treatment of immigrants (both illegal and legal) has changed completely since Trump was elected.
How after a long history of promoting job training and apprenticeship programs, the Republican Party is now only paying lip service to the ideal that America is the land of opportunity.
Even worse, after a long history of being against regulations, Trump only seems to be interested in jealously removing regulations put in place by his predecessor, Barack Obama. Meanwhile, he is promoting many new regulations, for example against social media and high tech companies (who he claims have an “anti-conservative bias”).
Conservatives no longer believe in conservation of the environment. This has been coming for a while, but remember that Republicans were once the champions of conservation (it is part of their namesake even). This was as recently as the presidency of Richard Nixon, who helped create the Environmental Protection Agency. Instead, the GOP has turned to using doublespeak, as their party platform is now that the best way to “conserve” the environment is to hand it over to businesses to develop. Most recently, Trump is starting to eviscerate the Endangered Species Act.
When Obama was president, Republicans were dead set against deficits, warning us all the time about how deficit spending would destroy our country. But they now simultaneously cut taxes and increase spending, never worrying about deficits at all.
Republicans used to hate Russia as our primary enemy. But even though Russia is still doing things that hurt the US — like sabotaging our elections, and building new nuclear weapons and other WMDs — Trump and the Republicans ignore this threat. Or even worse, they do things that will weaken our allies in Europe, which will give more power to Russia (and to China as well).

The article’s conclusion is that the Republican Party is having an identity crisis. They don’t know what they actually stand for, other than the hatred and bigotry spewed by Trump.

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Political Irony

ProBeat: Breakthrough or BS, Amazon’s Rekognition is dangerous

August 16, 2019 Big Data

Like all tech giants, Amazon is regularly criticized for various policies and practices. But no issue has been as contentious this year as selling its facial recognition tech Rekognition to law enforcement. Never mind that a growing chorus of AI experts are calling for facial recognition systems to be regulated. Amazon is eagerly developing surveillance tech for police. If it’s legal, Amazon says, any government agency can be a client.

During a keynote last month, protestors interrupted Amazon Web Services CTO Werner Vogels five times demanding the company “cut ties with ICE.” They played recordings of children being separated from their parents at a U.S. Customs and Border Protection facility.

Are you fucking kidding me?

AWS comes under fire for Rekognition sales to the federal government, who in turn is building concentration camps for children, and AWS’s response is to improve “age range estimation” and “fear detection” in the service?

Are you FUCKING KIDDING ME?! https://t.co/RiQ850uAFq

— Corey Quinn (@QuinnyPig) August 12, 2019

So this week, Amazon improved Rekognition’s age range estimation accuracy and added “fear” as the eighth emotion that the facial recognition tech can allegedly detect. Here is the company’s description of the update:

Amazon Rekognition provides a comprehensive set of face detection, analysis, and recognition features for image and video analysis. Today, we are launching accuracy and functionality improvements to our face analysis features. Face analysis generates metadata about detected faces in the form of gender, age range, emotions, attributes such as ‘Smile’, face pose, face image quality and face landmarks. With this release, we have further improved the accuracy of gender identification. In addition, we have improved accuracy for emotion detection (for all 7 emotions: ‘Happy’, ‘Sad’, ‘Angry’, ‘Surprised’, ‘Disgusted’, ‘Calm’ and ‘Confused’) and added a new emotion: ‘Fear’. Lastly, we have improved age range estimation accuracy; you also get narrower age ranges across most age groups.

Improved face analysis models are now available for both Amazon Rekognition Image and Video, and are the new default for customers in all supported AWS regions. No machine learning experience is required to get started.

Can Amazon be more tone deaf?

Facial recognition and emotion detection

Amazon doesn’t care about ethics. The company is only interested in what the law dictates. That’s convenient given it often takes years, if not decades, for the law to catch up with bleeding-edge technology.

But how accurate is facial recognition for emotion detection anyway? A study published last month throws into question whether the technology even works. From the abstract:

The available scientific evidence suggests that people do sometimes smile when happy, frown when sad, scowl when angry, and so on, as proposed by the common view, more than what would be expected by chance. Yet how people communicate anger, disgust, fear, happiness, sadness, and surprise varies substantially across cultures, situations, and even across people within a single situation. Furthermore, similar configurations of facial movements variably express instances of more than one emotion category. In fact, a given configuration of facial movements, such as a scowl, often communicates something other than an emotional state.

Scientists agree that facial movements convey a range of information and are important for social communication, emotional or otherwise. But our review suggests an urgent need for research that examines how people actually move their faces to express emotions and other social information in the variety of contexts that make up everyday life, as well as careful study of the mechanisms by which people perceive instances of emotion in one another.

In short, there is no scientific evidence for the common assumption “that a person’s emotional state can be readily inferred from his or her facial movements.” The same emotions are not always expressed in the same way and the same facial expressions do not reliably indicate the same emotions. Not to mention, humans can experience multiple emotions at the same time, or even fake an emotion by making a face.

Emotion detection

There are two possible conclusions. Amazon’s Rekognition cannot detect human emotion because doing so is not technically possible using facial recognition. Or, Rekognition is a breakthrough and can somehow determine human emotion using facial recognition.

Neither option sounds great. The former means that Amazon is selling a product that claims to detect emotion when all it’s really detecting is facial movements that may or may not be related. Clients then make decisions based on this.

The latter means Amazon believes all human emotion can be pigeon-holed into eight categories. This week’s Rekognition update even notes that emotion detection now has “improved accuracy.” Yeah? What was it before? What is it now? Given that no system is 100% accurate, what happens when Rekognition wrongly detects an emotion? Clients then make decisions based on this.

Not sure if either scenario scares you? Standby, Rekognition will confirm.

ProBeat is a column in which Emil rants about whatever crosses him that week.

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Big Data – VentureBeat

Power BI Premium new capacity settings allow for more control over datasets

August 16, 2019 Self-Service BI

Five new Power BI Premium Capacity settings are available in the portal , preloaded with default values. Admin can review and override the defaults with their preference to better protect their capacity from running into issues and avoid problems before they arise. With the release of these new settings, Power BI admins now have the ability to set limits on “Max Offline Dataset Size” with the allowable range from 0.1 to 10 GB and/or set limits on queries to prevent noisy reports from impacting others using the capacity and create a more predictable and performant capacity.

As an admin, you can find these new settings on the Admin portal> Capacity settings page , expand the “Workload” chevron on the management tab of the capacity.

The table below lists out the detailed description of the settings and real- world scenario explaining the benefits of the settings.

Setting Name	Description	Scenario
Max Offline Dataset Size (GB)	Maximum size of the offline dataset in memory. This is the compressed size on disk. Default value is set by SKU and the allowable range is from 0.1 – 10 GB	When users are experiencing slowness due to a large dataset taking up memory resources , admins would very often end up in the similar cycle of first identifying the culprit datasets, contacting the owner or migrating to a different capacity. With this new setting, admins can now configure the dataset size and prevent report creators from publishing a large dataset that could potentially take down the capacity and secondly save the admin from the painful cycle of identifying and mitigating.
Query Memory Limit (%)	Applies only to DAX measures and queries. Specified in % and limits how much memory can be used by temporary results during a query.	Some queries/calculations can result in intermediate results that use a lot of memory on the capacity. This can cause other queries to execute very slowly, cause eviction of other datasets from the capacity, and lead to out of memory errors for other users of the capacity. Without this setting, capacity administrators would find it challenging to identify which report/query is causing the problem, so that they could work with the report author to improve the performance. With this new setting, admins can better control impact of bad or expensive report on others using the capacity.
Query Timeout (seconds)	An integer that defines the timeout, in seconds, for queries. The default is 3600 seconds (or 60 minutes). Note that Power BI reports will already override this default with a much smaller timeout for each of its queries to the capacity. Typically, it is approximately 3 minutes.	When users are experiencing spinning on the report primarily due to another expensive report, admins would sometimes have to move the workspace to a different capacity. With the new settings, admins can better control expensive queries so that they have less impact on other users of the capacity.
Max Intermediate Row Set Count	The max number of intermediate rows returned by DirectQuery. Default value is set to 1000000 and allowable range is between 100000 and 2147483647	When a query to a DirectQuery dataset results in a very large result from the source database, it can cause a spike in memory as well as a lot of expensive processing of data. This can lead to other users and reports running low on resources. This setting allows the capacity administrator to adjust how many rows can be fetched by an individual query to the data source in a dataset.
Max Result Row Set Count	Defines the maximum number of rows returned in a DAX query. Default value is set to -1(no limit) and allowable range is between 100000 and 2147483647	Sometimes, a user can execute an expensive DAX query that returns a very large number of rows. This can cause a lot of resource usage and affect other users and reports executing on the capacity. This setting allows the capacity administrator to limit how many rows should be returned for any individual DAX query.

Moving forward

Be sure to submit your ideas for new features and learn more about Power BI Premium and its capacities.

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Microsoft Power BI Blog | Microsoft Power BI

Team TIBCO–SVB is Better Together

August 16, 2019 TIBCO Spotfire

Here at TIBCO, we’re all about being better together. TIBCO knows that innovation does not happen in isolation—innovation is a team sport. When provided with the right tools, the right mindset, and the right teammates, the impact of innovation can change the game. Usually, when one thinks about teamwork, they consider traditional sports; football, basketball, etc. That’s not the only type of team, though. Teams come in all shapes and sizes: like an R&D team that together develops the latest innovation in digital technology, or a professional cycling team that works together, each on her own bicycle, to win titles around the world.

It’s all about strategy

When you think about cycling, you often think of a very individualistic sport. It is a race, after all, and every rider wants to be the fastest. In reality, though, that’s not the case at all. Just like innovation, cycling is very much a team sport. A professional cycling team is better together because they train together, they race together, and they support one another on and off the road.

One common feature of all good teams is that they know how to strategize. The perfect example of a well-oiled team is Team TIBCO-Silicon Valley Bank, the professional women’s cycling team comprised of 14 world-class athletes from 8 different countries, proudly sponsored by TIBCO.

The team’s primary strategy revolves around how the team organizes itself around the strongest rider, because drafting behind a teammate makes it that much easier to pull out in front later when it is time to break away to the finish line. The willingness to support each other by riding together so some team members can conserve energy while staying with the pack is the epitome of teamwork. Team TIBCO–SVB knows the sacrifice it takes to give 100% effort, knowing that another rider will be there to take the lead and finish the job. The team’s goal is to have one woman on the top step of the podium at every race, and that’s only possible when the entire team contributes.

Know when to change gears

Teammates are also there to make sure you’re not stuck spinning your wheels. They are the ones willing to let you know when something isn’t working and it is time to change up the strategy, for the benefit of the whole team. Team TIBCO–SVB likes to do their research before each race, analyzing a number of data points to ensure they arrive prepared. They look at things like the weather forecast, road elevation, and terrain, as well as their individual metrics, like cadence and heart rate, to decide when it’s time to change gears. Every single race is different, and taking into account each of these factors helps the team decide on the best plan of attack.

If you want to go far, go together

To paraphrase TIBCO CEO Dan Streetman, better collaboration is the key to making a team more effective. Working together to make smarter, faster decisions is vital, whether that be in the office or out on the road. There will always be hills to climb and challenges to face, but if you put in the same effort as each athlete on Team TIBCO–SVB, you are sure to bring home the win, together.

Team TIBCO–SVB members will be in the Innovation Hub at TIBCO NOW London—stop by and say hello, or test your endurance on the TIBCO–SVB Bike Challenge!

Check out the schedule to see if Team TIBCO–SVB will be racing in your neck of the woods the remainder of the 2019 season, and follow them on social media as they compete on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram.

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The TIBCO Blog

Improve IT Help Desk Efficiency with a No-Code Bot – Microsoft Azure

August 16, 2019 CRM News and Info

Take Your Help Desk to the Next Level with a No-Code Bot

Regardless of what industry you’re in, it’s important to offer your employees the support they need. For many organizations, this internal support takes the form of an online help desk. But, while there are certainly some inquiries that lend themselves to interacting with a live IT support representative, the reality is that most help desks end up repeatedly responding to the same set of frequently asked questions.

Ask any IT employee who works in support, and they’ll tell you that they see questions like “Where do I go to reset my password?” on a regular basis. Knowledgeable IT employees end up wasting countless hours responding to these kinds of questions, rather than focusing on more complex tasks where their expertise is needed.

What can you do to free up your IT help desk employees? One approach involves offering your employees a FAQ page where they can find answers to basic questions. But, many employees won’t know about the FAQ page, won’t be able to find it, or will have trouble locating their question on the page, or…the list goes on. In the end, they end up contacting support anyway.

The truth is that when most employees have a question, they want to ask someone directly and get an answer. They don’t want to go diving through a long FAQ page or searching through the company website for help. But keeping staff on hand to respond to basic tech support questions just isn’t financially feasible.

Fortunately, there’s a solution: you can create a help bot!

While online help bots have been around for years now, most organizations perceive them as too complicated, expensive, or difficult to implement.

The reality is that adding a bot to your website is easier than you think. Thanks to Microsoft, creating an online support bot is a simple, two-step process. First, you’ll create a knowledge base for your bot. Next, you’ll create the bot itself. The whole process is possible without the need for any coding whatsoever!

Creating Your Bot’s Knowledge Base

To get started with a support bot, you’ll need a knowledge base (KB). This will be the source of information that the bot accesses to respond to frequently asked questions.

Compiling a knowledge base might sound like an onerous task, but it’s often simpler than you’d think. Do you already have a FAQ, list of questions, or other knowledge base of some kind on your website? If so, this is the perfect starting point for building your bot’s knowledge base.

With the help of Microsoft’s QnA Maker and your existing Azure subscription, you can create your knowledge base by following an easy step by step process.

Creating Your First Bot

Once you’ve put together and published your knowledge base using Microsoft’s QnA Maker, you’re ready to create your first bot. Thanks to Microsoft’s easy to use tools, this step is just as straightforward as compiling your knowledge base.

After you’ve published your knowledge base via the QnA Maker, you’ll be prompted to “Create a Bot.” This will take you directly to Microsoft Azure, where you’ll be provided with a template for bot creation. Once the bot is created, you can easily test it in Azure. From there, all you have to do is make the bot available via various channels such as Facebook, Slack, and/or your website.

Taking the Next Step with Dynamics 365 CRM Integration

Want to set up your own bot without any coding?

FOLLOW OUR DETAILED, STEP BY STEP INSTRUCTIONS IN THE FULL ARTICLE

At this point, you have a fully functioning help desk support bot on your website. But why stop there? By integrating your bot with Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Sales or Customer Service, employees can get answers to specific customer-related questions, such as “When was the last time we heard from Customer A?” or “What’s the email address for Customer Z?”

Taking this next step requires a little bit of coding, but don’t worry: the experts at AKA can help! Click here to learn more about AKA’s Cloud Services and start benefiting from the power of bots today!

ABOUT AKA ENTERPRISE SOLUTIONS
AKA specializes in making it easier to do business, simplifying processes and reducing risks. With agility, expertise, and original industry solutions, we embrace projects other technology firms avoid—regardless of their complexity. As a true strategic partner, we help organizations slay the dragons that are keeping them from innovating their way to greatness. Call us at 212-502-3900!

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CRM Software Blog | Dynamics 365

Kevin Hart To Star & Produce New Superhero Comedy Feature ‘Night Wolf’

August 16, 2019 Humor

STXfilms has bought the high concept comic superhero pitch Night Wolf from Detective Pikachu scribes Dan Hernandez and Benji Samit, a project that Kevin Hart will star in and produce via his HartBeat Productions.

Night Wolf follows a Meet the Parents-esque encounter where a man (Hart) meets his future father-in-law for the first time only to discover he is secretly the superhero known as the Night Wolf.

Hart starred in The Upside, the $ 100 million grossing hit which STX distributed back in January. Earlier this year, STX Entertainment announced it would partner with HartBeat Productions to produce two new comedy projects which Hart would topline. Night Wolf is the third project Hart is developing with the studio. STX previously announced Black Friday and an untitled romantic comedy. The HartBeat team will oversee production with STXfilms’ SVP of Production Drew Simon.

“After we acquired Night Wolf, we submitted it to Kevin Hart and the Team at HartBeat hoping they would love it as much as we did. It is a big, broad comedy and the idea is great fun and perfectly matched with Kevin’s comedic talent. We are thrilled to be working on what will now be our fourth film together,” said Chairman of STXfilms Adam Fogelson who made the announcement this morning.

“I am excited to be working with our friends at STX again. They brought us a great project with Night Wolf. I instantly fell in love with this pitch about an everyday guy who is meeting his in-laws for the first time and unwittingly discovers his dad to be is secretly a superhero,” said Hart.

STXfilms’ upcoming slate include Hustlers (September 13, the pic is also debuting at TIFF), Countdown (October 25), 21 Bridges (November 22), Playmobil (December 6), Brahms: The Boy II (December 6), My Spy (Jan 10), and Guy Ritchie’s The Gentlemen (Jan 24) among others.

In addition to The Upside, Hart also had Illumination/Universal’s The Secret Life of Pets 2 which has made close to $ 379M worldwide. He also has Sony’s Jumanji: The Next Level on Dec. 13.

Hernandez and Samit are represented by Oly Obst at 3 Arts Entertainment and Karl Austen and Michael Auerbach at Jackoway Austen Tyerman Werthheimer Mandlebaum Morris Bernstein Trattner & Klein. Hart is represented by 3 Arts, UTA and Schreck Rose Dapello & Adams.

Source: Deadline

Comedian Rodney Perry Lands New Role In ‘Coming To America 2′

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The Humor Mill

Access on-prem Report Server from your Power BI Mobile app with Azure Active Directory Application Proxy

August 15, 2019 Self-Service BI

I’m excited to share that in this week release of Power BI Mobile apps, we’ve made it easier for organizations to enable Power BI Mobile users to access their PBIRS reports they need from anywhere. We partnered with Azure Active Directory team to integrate Power BI mobile applications with Azure Active Directory (AAD) Application Proxy to connect their reports from their mobile app, without the need to setup complex on-premise configuration.

In today’s digital workplace, people need access to their business reports anytime and from anywhere. That means they need to have secure access to their business reports, even if they are on the go, away from the corporate network boundaries, and their reports are hosted in an on-prem Report Server. Organizations that already have Azure AD, can now leverage this integration to have seamless and secure access from the Power BI Mobile app to their on-premises Report Server.

Why use Azure Active Directory Application Proxy with Power BI Report Server and Mobile apps?

Using Azure Active Directory Application Proxy removes the need to manage you own web application proxy in order to allow secure access to Report Server from Power BI Mobile apps.

In addition, by implementing Azure App Proxy with Power BI Report Server and Power BI Mobile apps, the following scenarios can be also be enabled:

Accessing Report Server with your Azure AD identity proving a single sign on experience.
Applying Intune app protection policy to protect your company data, like PIN to open the app, control the sharing of data between apps, and prevent the saving of company app data to a personal storage location.
Use certificate for multi factor authentication.
Restrict access to Report server based on conditional access rules.

How does it work?

Azure AD Application Proxy provides users secure remote access to on-premises resources. It is simple to use and configure, without requiring changes to your network infrastructure, and allows you to secure your applications with all the security features of Azure AD. This allows you to protect your on-premises Report Server endpoints with Azure AD authentication and conditional access policies.

The Power BI mobile application can then use the connection provided by Application Proxy and authenticate and access the Report Server. Users don’t have to install additional software on their devices or do any additional configuration to access their reports.

How to get started?

To get started follow our complete step by step guide “Enable remote access to Power BI Mobile with Azure AD Application Proxy”. This integration is available for both the iOS and Android Power BI mobile applications.

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Should Your Restaurant do Delivery In-house or via Third Party?

August 15, 2019 NetSuite

Posted by Kevin Lentz, Restaurant & Hospitality Product Manager

For a large portion of the restaurant community, offering delivery is no longer an option. Guests have come to expect the ease and convenience of online shopping and delivery, and off-premises dining is proving to be a substantial growth opportunity for many. But the question of how to successfully roll out delivery remains a difficult one to answer.

A good starting point is to determine whether to deliver through in-house staff or a third party. One advantage to selecting a third-party delivery service is that you immediately get “experts” in the art of order delivery. Rather than having to build, train and maintain a delivery team, professionals won’t need time to ramp. And the best providers will be able to suggest strategic suggestions for offering delivery, which will lead to a more successful delivery program for your restaurant.

Existing third-party delivery partners bring their drivers, network, route management, communications, payroll and labor management – essentially offering delivery-in-a-box for a speedy rollout. But these companies are under incredible pressure to optimize their solution: to shave seconds here and there, to ensure the optimum route is taken and to deliver all foods at the optimum temperature. Uber is even testing air-drop deliveries via drones. As these companies continue to invest in fulfillment efficiencies, it will become more and more difficult for a restauranteur to keep pace.

And while your delivery partner is sharpening their pencil and focusing solely on getting hot food to customers quickly, you are free to do what you do best: make great food and provide an exceptional guest experience.

All this is not to say that outsourcing delivery doesn’t come with its disadvantages. Perhaps most critically, you lose quite a bit of control in that last 30 feet of the guest experience. It’s important to consider tactics to extend your reach to the guest that are on brand. Packaging, for example, is a prime opportunity to re-claim a bit of the experience in a delivery format.

This loss of control also extends to food quality and presentation. A lot can happen between your restaurant and the customer’s front door, and it can be difficult to capture the quality of the final, delivered product. A solid delivery strategy will include feedback mechanisms to capture guest feedback and more importantly, ensure food safety. But these feedback loops can be challenging to implement, so a solid partnership with your vendor is quite helpful here.

Keeping delivery in-house gives you more control in both of the scenarios above. Additionally, you can rely on your training efforts to ensure a consistent guest experience whether in-store or off-prem, which often isn’t the case when relying on a third party to represent your brand. Also consider the possible inconsistencies and loss of control when it comes to print and digital collateral and menu updates when using a third-party delivery company.

Our discussion wouldn’t be complete without a mention of the cost of outsourcing. As the industry matures, we will likely see several new pricing/business models, so it will remain essential that you keep an eye on the costs, which can significantly erode hard-won margin. Before rolling out delivery, the prepared restaurateur should know the plated cost of each of the menu items. With plated cost established, various pricing and menu configurations can be tested, as well as the impact of delivery to the bottom line. It can’t be stressed enough that the unit economics of each item on the menu be tested in various in-house and outsourced delivery scenarios, as the added cost of delivery can turn cash cows into dogs quickly.

New efficiencies will evolve around meal delivery, and the profitability of delivery methods should be reinvestigated. It is imperative that businesses invest the necessary resources, in time, technology and guest experience to ensure that this fulfillment channel supports the overall business. When implemented atop a thoughtful strategy, delivery offers a tremendous opportunity to delight your guests and boost your bottom line.

Learn about NetSuite’s software for restaurant and hospitality businesses.

Posted on Thu, August 15, 2019
by NetSuite filed under

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