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Monthly Archives: February 2020

Actionable big data: How to bridge the gap between data scientists and engineers

February 29, 2020   Big Data

The buzz around big data has created a widespread misconception: that its mere existence can provide a company with actionable insights and positive business outcomes.

The reality is a bit more complicated. To get value from big data, you need a capable team of data scientists to sift through it. For the most part, corporations understand this, as evidenced by the 15x – 20x growth in data scientist jobs from 2016 to 2019. However, even if you have a capable team of data scientists on hand, you still need to clear the major hurdle of putting those ideas into production. In order to realize true business value, you have to make sure your engineers and data scientists to work in concert with one another.

The gap

At their core, data scientists are innovators who extract new ideas and thoughts from the data your company ingests on a daily basis, while engineers in turn build off of those ideas and create sustainable lenses in which to view our data.

Data scientists are tasked with deciphering, manipulating, and merchandising data for positive business outcomes. To accomplish this feat, they perform a variety of tasks ranging from data mining to statistical analysis. Collecting, organizing, and interpreting data is all done in the pursuit of identifying significant trends and relevant information.

While engineers certainly work in concert with data scientists, there are some distinct differences between the two roles. One of the fundamental differences is that engineers place a decidedly higher value on “productional readiness” of systems. From the resilience and security of the models generated by data scientists to the actual format and scalability, engineers want their systems to be fast and reliably functional.

 Actionable big data: How to bridge the gap between data scientists and engineers

In other words: Data scientists and engineering teams have different day-to-day concerns.

This begs the question, how can you position both roles for success and ultimately extract the most meaningful insights from your data?

The answer lies in dedicating time and resources to perfecting data and engineering relations. Just as it’s important to reduce the clutter or “noise” around data sets, it’s also important to smooth any and all friction between these two teams who play vital roles in your business success. Here are three critical steps to making this a reality.

1. Cross-training

It’s not enough to simply put a few scientists and a few engineers in a room and ask them to solve the world’s problems. You first need to get them to understand each other’s terminology and start speaking the same language.

One way to do this is to cross-train the teams. By pairing scientists and engineers into pods of two, you can encourage shared learning and break down barriers. For data scientists, this means learning coding patterns, writing code in a more organized way, and, perhaps most importantly, understanding the tech stack and infrastructure trade-offs involved with introducing a model into production.

With both sides in sync with each other’s goals and workflows, we can foster a more efficient software development process. And in the fast-paced tech world, efficiency gains that can be realized through continued education and clear communication across data science and engineering are a huge win for any company.

2. Placing a higher value on clean code

With your data and engineering teams speaking the same language, you can focus on more tactical aspects, like clean, easy-to-implement code.

When a data scientist is in the early stages of working on a project, the iterative and experimental style of their workflow can seem chaotic to an engineer working on production systems. The mashup of inputs, both internal and external, are being manipulated as they begin to train their models. Operating within a fluid environment like this is commonplace for data scientists but can be problematic for engineers. If code from the experimentation or prototyping phase is passed on to engineers, you’ll soon hit a roadblock. That manifests itself in the model falling short in terms of stability, scalability, or overall speed.

To account for this roadblock, my team has invested time and resources into standardization. The end result is that our data scientists and engineers are aligned on a variety of parameters from coding standards, data access patterns (for example, use S3 for file IO and avoid local files), and security standards. This framework gives our data scientists the means of writing code that’s performant within our ecosystem while allowing them to focus on overcoming challenges specific to their domain of expertise.

3. Creating a features store

One of the best ways to maximize value from clean code is to “productize” it internally, creating an environment where both engineers and data scientists can lean on their strengths. We call this the “features store,” which is essentially a centralized location for storing documented and curated features (independent variables).

The purpose of this data management layer is to feed curated data into our machine learning algorithms. Aside from standardization and ease-of-use, the main benefit for our team is that our feature store enables consistency between the models. It has significantly increased the stability of our algorithms and has improved our data team’s overall efficiency. Data scientists and engineers know that when they take a feature off the shelf, it’s been stress-tested for reliability and won’t break when it goes into production.

The proliferation of big data and machine learning at the organizational level has created new opportunities and new challenges along the way. Phase one was the realization that big data in and of itself wasn’t going to create efficiencies — you need innovative thinkers to make sense of it. Phase two is about helping those good people, the data scientists who are incredible at finding value, to put their ideas into practice in a way that meets the rigors of an engineering team operating at scale, with thousands of customers relying on the product.

Jonathan Salama is CTO and Co-Founder of Transfix, an online freight marketplace.

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Bernie Sanders Praises Slave Owners For Free Housing Program

February 29, 2020   Humor
blank Bernie Sanders Praises Slave Owners For Free Housing Program

U.S.—In a televised interview, Bernie Sanders has praised slave owners for their free housing program offered to all slaves working the plantations.

“Of course, the slavery was bad, but the slaves were housed, for free I might add, for their entire employment,” Sanders said in an interview with 60 Minutes. “So it’s unfair to criticize the whole thing. Also, the slaveowners were pretty impressive guys. The plantations were very clean, very nice buildings. I actually honeymooned at one in Virginia back in 1845, and it was an eye-opener for me as to how much propaganda has been used to malign slaveowners and their healthcare, housing, and literacy programs.”

At publishing time, sources had also confirmed that Bernie Sanders had defended hell itself, saying the place of eternal torment has “gotten a bad rap” and “isn’t such a bad place.”

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Microsoft kills all third-party skills as it refocuses Cortana for the enterprise

February 29, 2020   Big Data

Microsoft today announced plans to streamline Cortana, its cross-platform virtual assistant, in future versions of Windows 10. A chat-based UI with support for both voice and keyboard will arrive in the next release, as well as features that let users check their calendars, set reminders, and perform other productivity-related tasks. At the same time, Microsoft says that it’ll remove music, connected home, and third-party Cortana app integrations as it “tightens access” on work and school accounts, and that it’ll end support for Cortana in older versions of Windows “that have reached their end-of-service dates.”

“We’re excited about how these updates to Cortana will help you stay on top of things, save time and do your best work. As we continue to innovate on Cortana … we plan to share further improvements in the coming months,” wrote Cortana corporate vice president Andrew Shuman in a blog post.

Beyond the new chat-based UI, the improved Cortana will recognize commands like “Tell me what’s next on my calendar,” “Remind me to send the ‘weekly report’ every Friday at 2 p.m.,” “Add ‘status report’ to my task list,” and others in the same vein. English-speaking users in the U.S. will see improved people-, email-, and file-finding capabilities and in-person meeting insights, but international users won’t be so lucky. Those in non-U.S. markets will initially be limited to Bing Answers and basic Cortana conversations.

Here’s the full list of soon-to-be-available skills, as per a Microsoft spokesperson:

  • Calendar
  • Join My Meeting
  • Reminders
  • Lists
  • Assistant Conversations/Chit Chat
  • Bing Answers
  • Alarms
  • Timer
  • Open Apps
  • Open Settings
  • People search
  • Media controls like “turn up the volume”

Microsoft says it plans to remove all Cortana skills and integrations that aren’t on the above list, but that it will “continually be adding additional functionality to the experience.”

 Microsoft kills all third party skills as it refocuses Cortana for the enterprise

Elsewhere, using Cortana in Microsoft 365 (Microsoft’s line of subscription services offered by Microsoft as part of the Microsoft Office product line) will require signing into a Microsoft account going forward. Microsoft also says it plans to turn off the Cortana services in Microsoft Launcher, its home screen experience for Android, by the end of April (as previously announced).

“This is all part of  Cortana’s evolution into a personal productivity assistant. These productivity capabilities will be most beneficial to our commercial … customers,” the spokesperson told VentureBeat. “We look forward to adding additional functionality soon, and based on customer feedback will continue to evolve the experience.”

The changes come as Microsoft refocuses Cortana for the enterprise — specifically for Windows and Office customers. The assistant recently gained the ability to read email summaries and send quick-reply response in Outlook, and to schedule meetings and to deliver daily schedules and task rundowns. Email briefings from Cortana in Outlook can now suggest optimal focus times, and last year, Microsoft launched Presenter Coach, a PowerPoint service that listens to your presentations and then provides feedback on pace, use of inclusive language, and repetitive use of mannerisms like “umm” and “basically.”

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The Really Big Salesforce-Vlocity Deal

February 29, 2020   CRM News and Info

Salesforce this week announced it would buy Vlocity — a startup with all the markings of a unicorn including a billion-dollar valuation — for US$ 1.33 billion. A lot of other news came out of the company too, including co-CEO Keith Block stepping down and another record revenue and earnings announcement, but I’ll focus here on the Vlocity story.

Vlocity was cofounded and led by David Schmaier, who was executive vice president at Siebel Systems in its go-go years. When Oracle bought Siebel it made Schmaier a wealthy man. He promptly dropped out of the CRM business in what proved to be one of the few times an executive said he wanted to spend more time with his family and actually meant it.

Diversifying CRM

Schmaier dropped so far off the radar that he wasn’t even answering emails from guys like me. We were never tight, but I’d done some gnarly consulting for Siebel and there was that. Still, nothing — radio silence.

Then once upon a Dreamforce, about six years ago, I ran into him on Mission or Howard Street near the Moscone center and I didn’t recognize him. He’d been the picture of a buttoned-down Harvard Business School type at Siebel, but Schmaier 2.0 had grown his hair out, opened his collar and visibly gone native.

The only thing I saw that hadn’t changed was the gleam in the eye of someone who easily was the smartest guy in any room he walked into.

At Siebel Schmaier spearheaded the push into vertical market CRM, and when he was through there were more than 20 versions of Siebel customized to the diverse needs of big enterprises in utilities, energy, communications, pharmaceuticals and a bunch of others.

Siebel was largely old school technology, though — primarily a client-server application suite with all the issues of that technology. That was a challenge for anyone hoping to build a CRM set that could be diversified easily.

So Schmaier may have bided his time for almost a decade after Siebel waiting for technology and the market to come to him with a platform that could support his vision. I do not know this for sure because we have not spoken about it explicitly, but the evidence supports the correlation if not the causation.

Selling Seats

When Vlocity launched in 2014, the Salesforce platform was embryonic in some ways, but there was enough there to enable Schmaier and his partners to connect the dots. They did that in a big way, building a product on Salesforce, joining the AppExchange, and even moving into some of the same buildings as Salesforce to improve idea cross-fertilization.

It all worked, and because the Vlocity team is as at home in front of customers as in developer mode, the company — with some assistance from Salesforce — has been able to notch some impressive customer wins.

Schmaier’s Siebel experience helped quite a bit too. Customers who had bought vertical apps from Siebel in its prime were ready for cloud computing at the same time that Vlocity was ready for them.

So, with the acquisition of Vlocity, Salesforce is placing an important marker down on the future of the industry. For a long time it has recognized the importance of delivering vertical market or industry apps, especially at the high end of the market.

As with every other endeavor the company is involved in, there’s an easy understanding that the future of the business is in selling more seats. If that comes from selling core CRM, fine. But as a $ 20 billion company, Salesforce will forever need deals that drive seven figures or more to keep Wall Street amused.

C-Suite Opening?

So I think the significance of the Vlocity acquisition is that it ticks a big box on the score sheet. Salesforce has impressive components like Einstein, Heroku, its machine learning, workflow, Journey Builder, voice recognition and much more.

However, those components might not be the first thing that Fortune 2000 companies look for when they want solutions yesterday. That’s where Vlocity fits in.

It’s quite possible that Schmaier has more work to do in Salesforce too. Keith Block’s departure after nearly two years as co-CEO suggests an opening in the executive suite.

Lost in the other news, Salesforce also announced that Gavin Patterson will serve as the new president and CEO of Salesforce International. There are good reasons to have a CEO of international operations, and it is a model that possibly could be used elsewhere.

Applications are a subset of the business that needs the full-time attention of a CEO-level person who can get things done in an ever-expanding bureaucracy. That easily could be Schmaier’s next gig.
end enn The Really Big Salesforce Vlocity Deal

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


Denis%20Pombriant The Really Big Salesforce Vlocity Deal
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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From Bootleggers To Blockchain: Technology In The Ethical Supply Chain

February 28, 2020   SAP
 From Bootleggers To Blockchain: Technology In The Ethical Supply Chain

On a recent walk along the shoreline of Lake Ontario, I was reminded of a local legend about a rum runner’s tunnel that connected to the beach from the cellar of a distillery owner’s mansion. The Roaring ’20s saw a great deal of this kind of liquid contraband, transported from local distilleries to boats along the Canadian north shore of Lake Ontario, intended for the thirsty residents of Prohibition-era Rochester, N.Y., and beyond.

While there is a certain Gatsbyesque glamour that sometimes glorifies Prohibition, the bootleggers and rum runners used unsophisticated methods. There was nothing the least bit glamorous (or safe) about running booze across Lake Ontario in the dead of winter, as many lost boats and bodies washed up on the lake’s shores.

The more things change

Fast-forward to our own version of the “roaring ’20s” where smuggling is just as lucrative: drugs, weaponry, high-end automobiles, endangered animals and their parts, and sadly, even people. Today though, smugglers have sophisticated supply chains, enabled by the same technologies legitimate organizations use.

But all that tech creates data, and data leaves a trail. From the early days of barcoding, then RFID tagging, and more recently track-and-trace with blockchain, technology allows us to see the provenance of goods and resources. Customers are now looking for such reassurances. We want to know if the products we consume are counterfeit, made with slave labor, or tampered with in the distribution process.

But we could do more. Tragic cases like the deaths of 39 Vietnamese migrants in a refrigerated truck near London last year highlight the desperate need for greater vigilance. Could the standardization of motion detectors in refrigerated (or any) transport containers help prevent similar deaths? Could it also discourage the practice of transporting human beings like so many head of cattle?

The more things don’t have to stay the same

Smuggling will exist so long as people want what they cannot have by legitimate means or at a price they’re willing to pay. Whether it’s as heartbreaking as the dream of a better life in another country or as laughable as thinking a bit of powdered rhino horn will restore your virility, we humans will find a way.

Fortunately, the same ingenuity builds the tools we need to prevent harm. We design and manufacture smarter products with sensors to track temperature, humidity, tampering, and more. We make smarter vehicles and assets that track movement, unacceptable conditions, or unsanctioned stops or trips. We also use machine learning to detect patterns and anomalies in supply chain data to ferret out fraud and ensure security.

There will always be a give and play between smugglers attempting to break the law and the entities (police, legitimate companies, industry associations, etc.) trying to enforce it. But as the integration of global supply chains continues apace, new developments and technologies could make it much harder for bad actors to succeed. This might just help to change the risk-benefit analysis enough to make a positive change. Hopefully.

To learn more about ensuring an ethical supply chain, download the recent IDC whitepaper “Delivery as a Critical Element of the Digital Supply Chain.”

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Dan Bongino: They Knew the Whole Time!

February 28, 2020   Humor
0 Dan Bongino: They Knew the Whole Time!

The Dan Bongino Show
The Bongino Report

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Dynamics 365 App for Outlook Part 10 – Delegation

February 28, 2020   Microsoft Dynamics CRM

Welcome back for Part 10 and the final part of the Dynamics 365 App for Outlook blog series. Today, we are covering the new Delegation support for other users to use the Dynamics 365 App for Outlook on your behalf. This is one of the few remaining features to bring parity to the App for Outlook and was a common use-case in the legacy Dynamics 365 for Outlook COM add-in.

Our Dynamics 365 product group and development teams have done an outstanding job building, testing, and documenting this feature. Our public documentation can be found here: 

Set up delegate access

Use delegate access

If you have attempted this previously within the Dynamics 365 App for Outlook, you may have tried to create an appointment on an Outlook calendar that you are a delegate for and when you go to track this item to Dynamics from a delegated calendar, the Dynamics 365 icon does not appear or is grayed out. Sound familiar? Then, let’s get to the good stuff.

Using Outlook’s Delegate Access, you can give someone permission to act on your behalf. For example, you might have an assistant that you want to manage your Calendar for appointments and meeting requests. Some assistants might also monitor a manager’s Inbox and send email on her or his behalf. An important note here, that Delegate Access is different than a Shared Calendar and it will be discussed below.

As of Dynamics 365 Customer Engagements version 9.1.0.14416 or higher, Dynamics 365 App for Outlook can be used by delegate users, to track and perform actions on behalf of the primary user whose mailbox and calendar they are managing. 

For more information on how to make someone your delegate and the associated permissions within an Exchange mailbox, please see here. 

Although the requirements are outlined in this link, I want to be sure to cover these again, as they are very important. 

Outlook version: 

This is only supported on Office Outlook Click-to-Run (C2R), version 16.0.12130.20272 or later. This version is only required by the Assistant (delegate user), however, the primary mailbox owner will need to have a version of Outlook that supports App for Outlook minimum requirements. The primary mailbox owner must also be configured for Server-Side Sync and have the App for Outlook deployed. The Delegation feature will NOT be supported on MSI versions of Outlook. 

The Outlook version list can be found here: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/officeupdates/update-history-office365-proplus-by-date

The minimum required version of Outlook was released in December, 2019 to the Monthly Channel. This means that you must be on the Monthly Channel until this version is available on the Semi-Annual channels, which are deferred approximately 6 months. Most companies have their users on a Semi-Annual channel. So if you have users that need to use the delegation feature right away, you can move users to the Monthly Channel, temporarily, until this minimum version is available in the Semi-Annual channel. At which point, they can be moved back to the Semi-Annual channel. This would effectively be reverting to an earlier version of Outlook when done, so be sure to talk it over with those in your Organization to understand the details of changing channels.

What is this Skype URL and why is it required to be whitelisted?

If you look at the documentation, it is mentioned that https://config.edge.skype.com/ is required to be whitelisted/not blocked in your network. But why? This URL is listed under Skype for Business and Microsoft Teams in the following link: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/office365/enterprise/urls-and-ip-address-ranges

It is listed under this section as it was initially created by the Skype team. However, this URL is valid for all Office and the documentation has not yet been updated.

This URL controls Office Feature Flights from being updated properly on end-user machines. If this is blocked, it prevents the proper config keys and values from being created in the Registry. In this case, the Feature Flight would be Shared Calendars to support delegation.

Without these being created properly, the Dynamics 365 App for Outlook will not be usable from a shared calendar and users will also see grayed out apps that are not supported within shared calendars. Such as My Templates app or other custom apps/add-ins.

Although it is directed at Office for Mac, this documentation applies for the endpoint in general Office clients and specifies the use only for Flighting Configuration. The detail on the use of this endpoint can be found here: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/office365/enterprise/network-requests-in-office-2016-for-mac

4846.pastedimage1582818173368v9 Dynamics 365 App for Outlook Part 10   Delegation

Redeploy the App for Outlook:

The next thing I want to make sure to call out is that you must redeploy the App for Outlook after delegation settings are enabled. This is required to push the new manifest to the Exchange mailboxes. You could redeploy the App for Outlook to only those users that will be using delegate functionality. However, this might become an administrative overhead for tracking which users were redeployed and would also require teh Admin to redeploy for individual users in the future, that may want the functionality. Although delegation may not be used by all users, my recommendation would be to simply redeploy the App for all users so they all have the latest manifest in case they, at some point, decide to use the delegation functionality.

3288.pastedimage1582812034003v1 Dynamics 365 App for Outlook Part 10   Delegation

Delegate settings in Outlook

When a delegate user is created in Outlook Desktop, make sure they have Editor level permission. Since the delegate user would be tracking and setting the Regarding object on an email or an appointment, they would need to have Editor level permission. To know more about the different delegate permission levels, please see here. 

1106.pastedimage1582812043267v2 Dynamics 365 App for Outlook Part 10   Delegation

8360.pastedimage1582812043270v3 Dynamics 365 App for Outlook Part 10   Delegation

When an Email is created by a Delegate:

  • CreatedBy – System (you will see this, as it is promoted by Server-Side Sync)
  • Owner – User will be manager (primary mailbox owner)
  • Sender – User will be manager (primary mailbox owner)
  • Delegate users will be able to track an email in compose mode through App for Outlook before sending. Just remember that any delegate tracking scenario will be asynchronous in both Read and Compose mode and will take a few minutes, depending when the last sync cycle occurred.
  • If you Track or Set Regarding on an item in the Manager’s mailbox, as the delegated user, you may briefly see “Processing, please wait…” status. This is expected, as it requires successful connection to Exchange to update the properties from the Outlook item. If you save and send the email in this status, it will fail to track, as the properties will not have been set.

What are the expectations when an Appointment is created by a Delegate and tracked to Dynamics 365?

  • CreatedBy – User will be manager (primary mailbox owner)
  • Owner – User will be manager (primary mailbox owner)
  • Organizer - User will be manager (primary mailbox owner)
  • Shift+F9 – will force sync a calendar between Outlook and Exchange
  • If you Track or Set Regarding on an item in the Manager’s calendar, as the delegated user, you may briefly see “Processing, please wait…” status. This is expected, as it requires successful connection to Exchange to update the properties from the Outlook item. If you save and send the email in this status, it will fail to track, as the properties will not have been set. We are working on improving the user experience to notify users to wait until it shows “Track Pending.” The message you would see is below:

5543.pastedimage1582812070273v4 Dynamics 365 App for Outlook Part 10   Delegation

You need to wait until this changes to below to Save and Send or before closing the record.

3162.pastedimage1582812070276v5 Dynamics 365 App for Outlook Part 10   Delegation

  • Delegate users will be able to track an appointment in compose mode through App for Outlook before sending. Just remember that any delegate tracking scenario will be asynchronous in both Read and Compose mode and will take a few minutes, depending when the last sync cycle occurred.
  • If the primary calendar owner looks at this appointment on their own calendar during this time, it will also show as “Track pending…” 

How does the App for Outlook appear to the delegate?

This looks the same as when you access the App for Outlook from your own calendar or an email item. When the delegate user opens an email or an appointment belonging to the user whose mailbox they are managing, they will be able to see the Dynamics 365 icon in the Outlook ribbon. They can open the App for Outlook and perform actions like track and set Regarding to capture the item in Dynamics 365. 

 0336.pastedimage1582816444207v8 Dynamics 365 App for Outlook Part 10   Delegation

Tracking Contacts as a delegate from the Contacts area is not supported. Although you can create a new contact that appears as Unresolved Recipient through the Tracking Pane when in an Email or Appointment.

The next important item to note is the Outlook functionality of Download Shared Folders to the local .OST file.

 

2337.pastedimage1582812085272v6 Dynamics 365 App for Outlook Part 10   Delegation

 

This is normally set by default, but you will want to confirm how this setting is managed for Assistants, as it may result in a different experience depending how it is set.

  • With it enabled, there may be a lag time where Outlook syncs to Exchange. Until this synchronization happens, our properties will not be set on the Exchange item and it will not be promoted to Dynamics. We are working to get more details on the expected wait time here, but from my experience it can be more than 10 minutes. Having this enabled with large shared folders can result in significant growth to the .OST file and cause performance issues.
  • With it disabled, the shared mailbox will be in “online” mode with direct connection to Exchange. Similar to using “Cached Exchange Mode” on the primary mailbox. With a direct connection to Exchange, you do not see any of this lag time like you do with it enabled. It should be tested in a larger production-size mailbox to ensure there are no performance implications. From my testing, the user experience in wait times was much better with this setting disabled. You are also unlikely to encounter the “Tracking in Progress” scenario above, as it has direct connection to Exchange.

Check out the rest of the series below:

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9

Thank you for reading!

Aaron Richards

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ICE warrantless facial recognition searches trigger Maryland bill

February 28, 2020   Big Data

A few weeks ago, Maribel Cortez was at home in Rockville, Maryland with her five kids and husband when one of her kids opened the door. ICE officers then arrested her husband in front of them. “They didn’t give any explanation. It wasn’t until they were detaining him and putting him in the car that [officers said they were] arresting him because they obtained the information in regards to his license,” she said speaking through a translator.

Cortez spoke today in the Maryland General Assembly in favor of a bill that requires ICE obtain a warrant from a judge before the agency can use facial recognition to search the Maryland Image Repository System or MRS.

Maryland began to issue driver’s licenses to immigrants in 2013. On Wednesday, the Washington Post reported that ICE searched the state’s immigrant driver license photo database of millions of drivers multiple times without a warrant. ICE has searched driver license photo databases in other states like Utah in the past, but the report says the Maryland incident may demonstrate ICE’s ability to search a state driver’s license photo database without the need for approval.

The debate happened the same day that the U.S. Justice Department created an office to denaturalize immigrants, and BuzzFeed News reported that Clearview AI has been used by the Department of Justice, ICE, and major retailers and governments around the world.

Access to photos of Maryland drivers is believed to come from a 2012 MOU agreement between the Maryland Department of Public Safety and the Department of Justice.

 ICE warrantless facial recognition searches trigger Maryland bill

Multiple immigrants shared stories like the kind Cortez shared with immigration rights groups and reporters, but it’s unclear how often ICE accessed the Maryland database since the state has no auditing system to keep track of the number of searches inside Maryland or other states.

Georgetown Law Privacy and Tech Center’s Harrison Rudolph said warrantless photo searches by ICE is a “bait and switch for immigrants” that will subvert public safety and could lead to more dangerous roads.

“It’s my judgment that Maryland has a duty to the immigrants in this state who have trusted you and trusted the MVA (Motor Vehicle Administration) to give up their most private information so that they can get a driver’s license. So they feel safe waking up in the morning and taking their kid to school or the doctor. A mother today is waking up more scared in Maryland because she found out in the Washington Post that a federal agency has direct access to the MVA, that’s what this is about,” he said. “It is a betrayal of immigrants trust for the MVA to allow ICE agents to conduct warrantless face scans on immigrants photographs to identify people for deportation.”

State Senator Clarence Lam said Maryland encouraged immigrants to get driver’s license so they can cooperate with law enforcement, and to ensure they receive the same testing and training to get a license required for U.S. citizens.

“There are real benefits, and we’ve encouraged people to do so, and yet the state has opened up this information to searches by federal immigration officials, and as I mentioned, particularly given the privacy argument, this does impact all Marylanders, because all of us are subject to this virtual police line-up where federal agencies can go through and submit a photo and run it against any of our pictures that we have on our driver’s licenses,” Lam said.

According to Georgetown Law analysis, dozens of states currently have memorandums of understanding with the Department of Justice to provide access to driver’s license databases. Privacy advocates call this a way to involve millions of innocent people in searches by law enforcement. Rudolph said the MOU Maryland officials signed might be the most lenient in the country.

Senate Bill 649 sponsor Clarence Lam testified that laws exist in other states like Washington and New York requiring a warrant for ICE access. The Maryland bill was tailored to exclude other DHS agencies like the CBP and TSA. A lawsuit over New York’s Green Light Law led the Trump administration to revoke Global Entry program support for New York ports of entry earlier this month.

In response to testimony about the bill today, Senator Ronald Young on Maryland’s Senate Judiciary committee questioned whether a law like SB 649 could lead to retaliation by the federal government and whether it’s risky to enact legislation preventing cooperation with federal agencies that could lead to negative consequences. Young requested further input from the state attorney general and directly asked directly if President Trump would instruct the FBI to carry out searches on behalf of ICE.

On Wednesday, a judge in the 2nd Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals ruled in New York vs. DHS that the federal government can deny benefits to states who do not cooperate with federal agencies.  A prior contradictory ruling signals the issue could be headed for the U.S. Supreme Court.

“The Supreme Court will resolve this, and if we end up being on the wrong side of this aren’t we imperiling the benefits we’re going to receive from the federal government, and under the circumstances do we want to take that risk at this point?” he asked.

Lam argues the bill does not share immigration status data, just photographs, and said that with imperfect systems that exist today, you don’t have to be an exact match: You just have to look like an immigrant.

Another lawmaker expressed concerned about inaccurate facial recognition systems today that could cast a wide net and lead to racial profiling for innocent individuals regardless of a person’s immigration status. A December 2019 NIST study of near 200 facial recognition systems found that for some were 100 times more likely to misidentify Asian-Americans and African-Americans. Women, the young and old, and other groups also saw lower levels of accuracy compared to white men.

In light of clear rules, standards, or limits to how federal agencies can use facial recognition today, state lawmakers across the U.S. are considering a variety of laws for facial recognition regulation.

Before his death last year, Congressman Elijah Cummings led a bipartisan effort in the House Oversight and Reform Committee to examine facial recognition use by law enforcement and regulate use of the technology by the government.

FBI and ICE use of facial recognition is part of what motivated U.S. Senators Cory Booker (D – NJ) and Jeff Merkeley (D – OR) to propose a facial recognition moratorium until limits can be placed on the technology to protect personal freedoms like freedom of speech and the right to assemble.

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The Product Lifecycle And The Customer Experience: Putting The “L” Back In PLM

February 28, 2020   BI News and Info
 The Product Lifecycle And The Customer Experience: Putting The “L” Back In PLM

As part of my responsibilities at SAP, I spend a lot of time talking with companies all over the world about product lifecycle management (PLM). Here’s something I’ve noticed: Most companies see PLM almost exclusively as a function of design and engineering.

This is too bad because such a narrow outlook on PLM leaves a lot of opportunity on the table. Let me explain.

Today’s economy is an experience economy where customers evaluate your company based on the overall experience you deliver. Are you easy to work with or not? Do you provide prompt service? Do you make payments a hassle or a breeze? If you want to differentiate yourself in a crowded market, the experience you deliver is what matters most.

A key aspect of the customer experience is the product experience – which is where PLM (with an emphasis on the “L”) comes into play. When PLM is narrowly focused on R&D productivity and the efficiency of design teams, the opportunity lost is the opportunity to focus like a laser on customer wants and needs. But when PLM encompasses the full product lifecycle, opportunities abound.

Closed-loop engineering and the voice of the customer

Think of the product lifecycle less as a straight line and more as a loop. A good place to start is with the demand signal – because after all, whatever you make, you need to know that customers want it.

Armed with a sense of demand, you then design and develop the product. Next, the product is released further down into the supply chain – where it is made and delivered. This is followed by the operations phase – where the product is monitored or maintained. Information from the operations phases – such as machine data – can then be fed back to engineering to inform product design choices moving forward.

This process is sometimes known as closed-loop engineering. The critical idea is one of information feedback. The starting point – where the demand signal is detected – is often known as the “voice of the customer.” By listening closely to the voice of the customer, engineering can start the design and development phase with an understanding of what the customer actually wants.

Do customers want a specific feature? Lower price? Higher quality? Improved usability? Better post-sale service? Whatever the case, the product needs to be designed with customer requirements in mind. And the only way to understand customer requirements is to collect the data.

The digital thread

There are many ways to collect requirements data: surveys and focus groups, customer service logs, or maybe astute salespeople who communicate back to headquarters. One of the most promising methods, however, is to collect data directly from the product or asset itself.

It is now possible to collect this data – even at scale – using IoT sensors that communicate a wealth of information on asset state and performance. The idea is to tap into the “digital thread” associated with an asset throughout its lifecycle to help improve the overall customer experience.

In many companies, the digital thread begins with a model of the system or product – leading, eventually, to CAD assemblies and drawings produced by design teams. These drawings include a bill of materials (BOM) that can be used to model the asset. While some companies use these models to generate digital twins (full-blown 3D representations of the physical asset), other companies simply track the relevant data. Whatever the case, access to the digital thread enables you to now manage the product lifecycle much more effectively.

The power of visibility and insight

Information from the digital thread can make all the difference in the world. One advantage is more effective coordination between engineering and manufacturing. When it comes time to hand off the designed product to the manufacturing team, the digital thread supports a single source of truth that eliminates confusion and avoids production bottlenecks. The same information in the digital thread can also extend further downstream into logistics to help speed delivery.

But when it comes to the customer experience, it’s the operations phase that delivers most. Today, for assets in the field, you can track everything from temperature, moisture, and vibration to performance, uptime, and usage modes. Based on this data, you can also run machine learning algorithms to uncover insights about how your customers use your products – or even predict machine failure before it happens.

Such insights – enabled by holistic lifecycle tracking – are helping companies create new business models and up their service levels. Predictive maintenance and increased uptime are only the beginning. Leading companies are going a step further, using their PLM data to support product-as-a-service models.

Instead of selling HVAC machines, for example, you might offer temperature-controlled facilities as a service and bill your customers on something like a subscription model. You would still design, manufacture, deliver, and install the machines – only now it would be your responsibility to manage the machines as well to ensure uptime and performance per the details of service level agreements.

According to this model, you now have more incentive than ever to use your PLM data to streamline all facets of the end-to-end to process – which will help you deliver higher levels of service and drive down costs. The result is a better experience for your customers and ongoing, sustainable revenues for your company – all made possible with a proper approach to PLM.

Find out more from the IndustryWeek research into “Innovate for Success with Product Lifecycle Management.” 

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How Today’s Trends Shape Tomorrow’s Restaurant

February 28, 2020   NetSuite
gettyimages 1179573068 How Today’s Trends Shape Tomorrow’s Restaurant

Posted by Kevin Lentz, NetSuite Product Manager, Restaurant & Hospitality

Last year closed with restaurant sales hovering at just about $ 800 billion in the US, and even though year-over-year growth has slowed somewhat, the outlook remains positive. According to the National Restaurant Association (NRA), restaurant sales are projected to reach $ 1.2 trillion by 2030.

Such massive growth signals substantial opportunity, but to thrive, savvy restaurateurs will require a more nuanced understanding of the underlying market forces, which include:

  1. Shifting diner preferences
  2. Employee-centered labor market

Central to that understanding is determining whether to invest in the front-of-house guest experience or optimize for delivery. Successful leaders will ask difficult questions like “What experiences are tomorrow’s diners expecting, and what should my investment timeline be to operationally deliver those experiences?” The breakdown of that investment will be a combination of brand considerations and the requirements of the local market.

Let’s dig into a few of the trends impacting future decision making a bit more closely.

Off-premises dining is increasing

Over the last several years, US consumers have increasingly chosen to dine at home. As the growth numbers suggest, consumers are still ordering from restaurants in large numbers, they’re just not eating at restaurants as frequently. Check out these stats:

Restaurant foot traffic is decreasing

The fact that off-premises orders are increasing points to another big change: the decline of foot traffic in restaurants. Businesses most heavily impacted are those that optimized for dine-in or those with significant investment (aka entrenchment) in real estate.

The labor market has drastically changed

The restaurant industry has always faced high turnover, but with some businesses reporting hourly staff turnover as high as 140%, it is clear that employees are becoming increasingly unsettled. U.S. unemployment is at an all-time low of 3.5%, and minimum wage increases have been legislated at the federal and state levels.

As of July 1, 2019, 30 U.S. states had instituted a minimum wage higher than the federal requirement of $ 7.25 per hour. Washington, D.C., has the current highest minimum wage at $ 14/hour, and six states (including D.C.) plan to raise their minimum wage to $ 15/hour in the next five years.

For restaurants, these changes to the labor market have created a perfect storm. Due to low unemployment, workers are more difficult to find, trickier to satisfy and more expensive than they used to be. Couple these factors with the cost of high turnover, and it’s easy to see why restaurants will continue to keep a laser focus on reducing costs across the entire employee lifecycle.

So how do these changes impact tomorrow’s restaurants? The increase in off-premises dining and resulting decrease in restaurant foot traffic is driving major innovation in how (and where) restaurants prepare food.

Restaurants are shifting their focus to delivery.

Brands have been forced to rethink think their business model in light of delivery, and some concepts have chosen to double-down on their existing physical footprint. Chipotle, for example, has added a second ‘digital-only’ make line whose sole purpose is to fulfill online and mobile delivery or takeout orders. They are betting on sufficient volume to keep these staffers busy, while they extract every cent of value from the operational overhead of existing locations.

Other brands are experimenting with food preparation outside their standard outlets, launching or partnering with ghost kitchens. Virtual, or ghost, kitchens are offsite locations optimized for delivery only, often serving several concepts from a single location as a means to economize overhead. McDonald’s opened its first ghost kitchen in London in partnership with Uber Eats, the company’s current delivery partner. It’s an important investment for the company, as delivery orders make up 10% of McDonald’s U.K. sales, according to the company’s Q3 2019 earnings call.

Wendy’s is planning to include ghost or dark kitchens in the company’s expansion plans, and restaurant chains like Halal Guys, Sweetgreen, and Chick-fil-A are dipping their toes in by partnering with Kitchen United, a ghost-kitchen brand that enables delivery out of shared commercial kitchens. Chick-fil-a’s plans include opening new outlets without dining rooms or drive-thrus. These locations will focus specifically on catering orders and on-demand delivery.

Delivery platforms are getting in on the action as well. Together with Lettuce Entertain You, Grubhub now offers the first Whole30-branded restaurant for delivery only. Uber Eats partnered with Rachael Ray to launch short-term virtual kitchens with recipes from her new cookbook.

Automation takes over for humans – where it makes sense

Given the shift from on-premises to off-premises dining and ever-rising costs for labor, food and real estate, restaurants are doubling down on automation. That means leveraging machines for straightforward, manual labor and saving human interactions for customer touchpoints that add value.

San Francisco-based Creator uses robots to create its signature burgers. Machines grind beef, toast buns, put on condiments and even put the burgers together, all for $ 6 per burger.

Wilkinson Bread Company uses its Breadbot to bake bread; Chowbotics is a souped-up vending machine that prepares salads and grain bowls.

You can find the Briggo automated coffee robot serving up hot drinks in the Austin airport. And on a larger scale, fast casual chains like Fazoli’s now offer kiosks for ordering. Applebee’s began offering self-order technology at tables back in 2014.

Behind this move to automation are the companies that supply the supporting technology. And sometimes, innovation starts in restaurants themselves and gets shared across the industry.

Former fast casual restaurant Eatsa has closed and rebranded as Brightloom, taking the technology developed in-house for in-store and mobile ordering and selling it to restaurants. In a partnership with Starbucks, Brightloom will license a version of Starbucks’ mobile ordering and rewards platform to other food companies.

Restaurants are investing more in mission-critical staff.

With the shift to delivery and automation, more is happening behind the scenes. However, customer interactions are still a critical way to drive retention. Restaurants are spending their money and efforts to invest in employees who enhance the customer experience.

McDonald’s has introduced a branded app called Archway to Careers that supports its workers as they look for educational opportunities and make career plans. KFC’s Kentucky Fried Wishes aim to help restaurant employees in meaningful, necessary ways – like paying for dental work, buying a new car or assisting with debt relief.

Shake Shack is offering new benefits like $ 10,000 equity awards to general managers and a test program that includes a four-day work week at a few key locations. With the company revealing that it costs $ 14,000 every time they lose a general manager, it makes sense to aggressively amp up their benefits.

The innovations of tomorrow’s restaurants will be invisible to patrons

Restaurants will continue to invest heavily in strategies that drive increased sales. However, much of the work they’re planning is “behind the curtain,” where guests won’t necessarily be looking. Lower-cost ways to deliver quality food off-premises, automation of all processes where people aren’t adding value and the drive to retain their most necessary employees will dominate the restaurant industry.

Learn about NetSuite’s software for restaurants.

Posted on Thu, February 27, 2020
by NetSuite filed under

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