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Wing launches drone delivery in Christiansburg, Virginia

October 18, 2019 Big Data

As of this afternoon, select residents of Christiansburg, Virginia can tap drones operated by Google parent company Alphabet’s Wing for quick and easy deliveries of packages, over-the-counter medications, snacks, and gifts. The company today revealed that it’s become the first to operate a commercial air delivery service directly to homes in the U.S., with the launch of a previously announced pilot involving FedEx Express, Walgreens, and local Virginia retailer Sugar Magnolia.

Sugar Magnolia will box up birthday cards, small gifts, and sweets for drone delivery customers. From Walgreens, the first retail pharmacy to partner with Wing in the U.S., drone fleets will ferry over-the-counter medicines and other wellness items to folks’ homes. And on the FedEx Express side, recipients living within designated Christiansburg zones who opt in will receive some shipments via drone, in customized boxes. (Wing says that FedEx will complete its first scheduled e-commerce drone delivery today.)

Wing says most deliveries are fulfilled within about 10 minutes.

The pilot was made possible by the small-sized air carrier designation Wing secured from the Federal Aviation Administration in April. The recently expanded classification — which was initially created to cover traditional charter flights — allows the company’s multiple pilots to oversee multiple unmanned aircraft making commercial deliveries simultaneously. Under current drone-specific regulations, companies can’t exact payment for deliveries over distances beyond a human operator’s line of sight.

Earlier this year, Wing became one of the first companies to launch a commercial drone delivery service after Australia’s civil aviation authority, Civil Aviation Safety Authority (CASA), granted it approval following more than four years of testing, 70,000 flights, and 3,000 deliveries. Around 100 homes in the suburbs of Crace, Franklin, and Palmerston have access to the service currently, and if all goes well, it will expand to customers in Harrison and Gungahlin.

Current-gen Wing drones can fly at speeds of up to 78 miles per hour and travel up to about 6 miles, and they can take off and land vertically thanks to a dozen vertical rotors and two propellers. Automated flight-planning software determines their route, while a downward-facing camera and other onboard sensors help them avoid obstacles.

Wing’s drones hover about 20 feet in the air during pickup. A tether lowers, and a human operator hooks the package onto the line. The drone winches the package and secures it, after which it travels to a designated location the yard or driveway and lowers and releases the package. Once it detects the package has touched down safely, it heads to the next pickup spot or returns to Wing’s “Nest” in North Christiansburg.

The sophisticated tech could result in a substantial savings for — and smaller carbon footprint from — local businesses, Wing contends. A commissioned report cited $ 9 million in annual cost savings, while a Rand Corporation study forecasted a 6% reduction in energy usage compared to trucks.

But it hasn’t exactly been smooth sailing.

According to a Wall Street Journal report last year, Wing’s drones have disrupted the lives of some longtime residents, who say that they no longer use their yards as much. (The company says it’s working on quieter and lower-pitched propellers.) User error has resulted in at least one accidental delivery, and the drones are sometimes forced to land due to high winds and obstructions.

In September 2016, the company partnered with fast-casual chain Chipotle in the U.S. to deliver orders for a small group of Virginia Tech students. But only a month later Wing canceled a tentative collaboration with Starbucks over disagreements regarding the handling of customer data, according to Bloomberg.

Despite these bumps in the road, Wing is intent on forging ahead. Burgess recently announced it would launch a free 10-minute drone delivery trial in Helsinki, Finland for items weighing 3.3 pounds or less up to a distance of 6.2 miles. Flight trials began earlier this year in Tampere and continued through the winter.

Alphabet isn’t the only company field-testing autonomous delivery drones, of course. UPS formed a new drone delivery subsidiary in July, which it said will seek FAA approval to operate commercial flights. Amazon launched a trial of its Prime Air drone delivery service for select customers in Cambridge, England in December 2016. Microsoft and startup Flytrex have trialed airborne delivery services in cities like Holly Springs, North Carolina and Wichita, Kansas. In March, Matternet teamed up with UPS to launch an aerial delivery service from WakeMed’s flagship hospital and campus in Raleigh. And in May, Uber announced plans to deliver food by drone in San Diego.

Reports show the commercial drone industry continues to grow quickly, albeit from a small base. A 2017 forecast from Gartner projected the number of commercial drones sold that year would exceed 174,000. Moreover, about $ 454 million was thrown at UAV startups in 2016 alone, and the market is forecasted to be worth $ 127 billion by 2020.

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Big Data – VentureBeat

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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UPS forms new drone delivery subsidiary, will seek FAA approval to operate commercial flights

July 24, 2019 Big Data

UPS is doubling down on a drone logistics and delivery market that’s anticipated to be worth $ 29.06 billion by 2027. Ahead of the company’s quarterly earnings call this evening, it revealed that it has applied to the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration for Part 135 certification, which would enable it to orchestrate commercial drone flights under a newly formed subsidiary business called UPS Flight Forward.

Part 135 approval, which could come as early as this year, would allow Flight Forward to apply for FAA-certified flight operations beyond line of sight, at night, and without limit to the number of drones or operators in command. That’s because Flight Fordware would be legally designated as a certified air carrier, affording it far more leeway in fleet management than the FAA Part 107 drone rules under which UPS currently operates.

Alphabet X lab graduate Wing took a similar regulatory path to market. It announced in April that it had been certified by the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration as a small-sized air carrier under Part 135 rules, giving it the green light to charge for service and paving the way for pilot programs in the Virginia towns of Blacksburg and Christiansburg,

UPS chief transformation and strategy officer Scott Price claims that Part 135 certification would not only enable faster scaling of the company’s drone deployments in targeted markets, but that it would lay the groundwork for one of the first fully certified revenue-generating operations in the U.S. UPS estimates that cutting off just one mile for the routes of each of the company’s 66,000 delivery drivers would amount to $ 50 million in savings.

“UPS is committed to using technology to transform the way we do business,” added Price. “UPS’ formation of a drone delivery company and application to begin regular operations under this level of certification is historic for UPS and for the drone and logistics industries overall.”

It’s yet another step toward drone delivery dominance for UPS, which earlier this year collaborated with drone platform provider Matternet to launch an aerial delivery service from WakeMed’s flagship hospital and campus in Raleigh. In 2016, it teamed up with Zipline and international health care alliance Gavi in 2016 to deliver blood products to remote locations in Rwanda. And in early 2017, it tested a drone that launches from the top of a UPS van to autonomously drop off packages as the delivery driver makes a separate delivery.

UPS is forging ahead against rivals like Amazon, which launched a trial of its Prime Air drone delivery service for select customers in Cambridge, England in December 2016. In the intervening years, companies like Microsoft and startup Flytrex have trialed airborne delivery services in cities like Holly Springs, North Carolina and Wichita, Kansas. In May, Uber announced plans to deliver food by drone in San Diego, and FedEx plans to develop a drone-powered aircraft inspection program in Tennessee.

Reports show the commercial drone industry is continuing to grow quickly, albeit from a small base. A 2017 forecast from Gartner projected the number of commercial drones sold that year would exceed 174,000. Moreover, about $ 454 million was thrown at UAV startups in 2016 alone, and the market is forecast to be worth $ 127 billion by 2020.

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Big Data – VentureBeat

Taster’s AI and automation show why virtual kitchens may rule the age of delivery

July 7, 2019 Big Data

The rapid rise of meal delivery services is happening in plain sight, as companies like Deliveroo and Uber Eats send riders and drivers zipping around town with takeout of every variety. But as so often happens with new platforms, a secondary and less visible revolution is rippling across the restaurant industry thanks to the rise of virtual kitchens.

London-based Taster is an example of how the intersection of meal delivery services, artificial intelligence, and data is creating opportunities that threaten the restaurant industry with even greater disruption. While meal delivery services initially seemed like a boom for local restaurants, it is virtual kitchens — with their ability to optimize and automate — that may ultimately win the food wars.

Taster was founded two years ago by Anton Soulier, an early employee of Deliveroo who wanted to take this food transformation further.

“I thought there was a big opportunity to build a food company on top of these platforms,” he said. “They are really good at the logistics. My job is to provide the food.”

Delivery services are powering a fundamental shift in the way people buy and consume food, gradually reducing the amount of cooking people do at home in favor of prepared meals delivered on-demand. In 2018 report “Is the Kitchen Dead?“ UBS projected that the $ 35 billion meal delivery economy would grow to $ 365 billion by 2030.

“There could be a scenario where by 2030 most meals currently cooked at home are instead ordered online and delivered from either restaurants or central kitchens,” the report said. “The ramifications for the food retail, food producer, and restaurant industries could be material, as well as the impact on property markets, home appliances, and robotics.”

One effect of this scenario will be continued growth of food delivery services. But this shift will be largely driven by third-party companies seeking to leverage the reach of existing delivery services.

That includes newcomers such as CloudKitchens, a startup from former Uber CEO Travis Kalanick that offers space for chefs who want to launch delivery-only brands. Last year, California-based Kitchen United raised $ 10 million to expand its warehouses, which offer cooking space to delivery-only startups. And earlier this year, Berlin-based Keatz raised $ 13.5 million in new funding for its network of virtual kitchens in places like Berlin, Amsterdam, Madrid, Barcelona, and Munich.

Meanwhile, delivery platforms themselves have also gotten into the food preparation game. Two years ago, Deliveroo launched Deliveroo Editions to offer data and kitchen space to delivery-only restaurants. Uber has also reportedly been dabbling in this space, testing a service to rent kitchen space to virtual brands. And it’s also working with existing retail restaurants to use their kitchens to house virtual brands that only are available on UberEats.

This means Taster is facing an intensely competitive landscape. Consolidation among these efforts will likely be inevitable. But a look at how Taster works today offers a glimpse into why this trend toward virtual kitchens is accelerating.

Taster has 115 employees (including 100 chefs) working in 11 kitchens. Late last month, it raised $ 8 million in venture capital from Battery Ventures, Heartcore Capital, LocalGlobe, and Founders Future’s Marc Ménasé.

The startup operates a series of kitchens in London, Paris, and Madrid, where it prepares meals that are only available by delivery. These are sold under brands that only exist on these services’ various apps: Out Fry (Korean fried chicken), O Ke Kai (Hawaiian food), and Mission Saigon (Vietnamese). From a consumer perspective, Taster as a brand doesn’t appear in any marketing for these virtual kitchens.

This approach confers a number of immediate advantages over incumbent restaurants. There is no need for a dining room or a pickup counter, which means savings on real estate. Everyone working is solely focused on food preparation, cutting out front of house expenses. And the kitchens can be used to launch additional virtual brands as new opportunities emerge.

“I was watching how people were using Deliveroo every day,” Soulier said. “The growth was just amazing. But traditional restaurants, where you cook for a human coming to eat there, they weren’t very well adapted to a delivery model.”

Because a service like Taster was conceived for delivery, packaging was designed to keep food fresh and hot and menu items are chosen with the idea that they will not be consumed right away, Soulier said.

This approach gets even more powerful when it’s combined with the data Taster receives from delivery platforms, which allows the company to adjust menu items quickly, based on what is most popular, he said.

Taster’s back end is also directly connected to many of its own suppliers. So as menu items are changed, the system updates orders with suppliers.

“It’s a big challenge we wanted to tackle early,” he said. “Being able to place orders directly to suppliers, it really automates the process and reduces waste.”

That data has in turn allowed the company to begin developing its own algorithms to start projecting how supply and demand will vary according to factors like holidays and the weather. The system tracks these fluctuations and automatically adjusts orders.

This part of the business is still emerging. But Soulier is convinced that as the number of kitchens expand and the amount of data grows, the company will be able to go further with artificial intelligence to extend automation and create even more predictive, data-driven operations.

That scale and level of automation is going to make it even tougher in the coming years for single, standalone restaurants to keep up. Consumers are likely to see a growing range of niche eating options based on data collected by these platforms, further boosting adoption. And the virtual kitchen movement will further streamline operations by significantly reducing the risk associated with launching new eateries.

This transformation will ripple far beyond the ability to get sushi delivered by a bike messenger.

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Walmart Ups the Ante in Grocery Delivery Competition

June 20, 2019 CRM News and Info

Walmart has a new weapon in the grocery delivery wars against other top e-commerce rivals.

Walmart online shoppers can subscribe to a US$ 98-per-year “Delivery Unlimited” plan that aims to siphon customers from Amazon’s Whole Foods and Target’s home delivery programs.

Online grocery shopping is growing steadily as a key revenue generator and customer draw. The food division was critical in boosting Walmart’s e-commerce performance in the first quarter of this year by 37 percent.

Delivery Unlimited is an expansion of the company’s existing pickup and delivery offerings, which include free delivery to store located near the customer, or home delivery for a $ 9.95 fee per order.

This new annual subscription gives Walmart’s online shoppers a third option. For $ 98 a year or $ 12.95 a month, Walmart customers can skip the per-order fee. They can place their order on Walmart’s site or app and select a window for their order’s delivery.

Overall, the new service offers significant additional convenience for a modest cost, said Charles King, principal analyst at Pund-IT.

“It will be particularly attractive for customers who shop at Walmart more than four or five times per month, like time-pressed families with substantial grocery needs,” he told the E-Commerce Times.

Not Unlimited Details

Walmart customers should not expect full access to home delivery just yet even though the store launched this latest offering over the weekend. The company’s website is vague about where the service now exists.

There is “a good chance Delivery Unlimited is in your area,” the company says in response to a posted FAQ (frequently asked question). Consumers must enter their personal information to sign up for a free trial to find out for sure.

When the Delivery Unlimited trial ends, participating customers automatically become paid subscribers until they cancel. Their provided payment method will be charged in the meantime, and Walmart notes that it does not provide refunds.

Payment methods can not include Walmart gift cards or e-gift cards. Payment must be made by credit card or debit card. Select stores accept EBT (electronic benefit transfer) as a payment method.

How Delivery Unlimited Works

The free delivery process functions the same as Walmart’s standard grocery delivery system. There are no restrictions on delivery times.

What could be a deal-breaker for some potential Delivery nlimited customers is that Walmart so far has no network of delivery professionals or independent contractors. Instead, it partners with delivery providers across the U.S., including Point Pickup, Skipcart, AxleHire, Roadie, Postmates and DoorDash.

Ramping Up Efforts

Walmart in recent months stepped up its efforts to compete against other online retailers. Its initiatives include free, one-day shipping for orders over $ 35, pick up towers at a number of its stores, and an in-home delivery service that allows employees to enter your house to place groceries directly into your refrigerator.

Walmart’s latest home delivery plan seems to target Amazon Prime, which costs $ 119 a year, as well as Target’s new Shipt delivery service, which costs $ 99 a year, and Instacart’s annual Express membership of $ 99.

While it may appear that Walmart’s new Delivery Unlimited service takes direct aim at Amazon Prime, the story likely is more nuanced, according to King. With Prime Amazon sweetens two-day delivery for eligible items with free access to video and other content.

“By focusing specifically on grocery items, Walmart’s offering is more problematic for Amazon’s Whole Foods division, especially when you factor in Walmart’s aggressive grocery pricing,” he said.

Potential Pressure Point

Walmart could be throwing down a new gauntlet in the battle for home delivery grocery customers. The new Delivery Unlimited offering poses an interesting challenge for all retailers, but for Amazon in particular, according to Sarah Assous, senior vice president at
Zoovu. One of the biggest perks when it comes to Amazon and its Prime membership is expedited shipping.

“Now that other retailers are providing similar services with reduced subscription fees, it will be interesting to see how they adapt to and overcome this competition,” she told the E-Commerce Times.

This is an interesting time in retail and e-commerce, as all major retailers are constantly trying to get one up on each another via enhanced customer experience offerings, Assous added.

“This news further puts pressure on the landscape to come up with the ‘next big thing’ to gain yet another advantage and win over customers’ loyalty and hard-earned dollars,” she said.

If the numerous reports that Whole Foods has been struggling financially are correct, Walmart’s Delivery Unlimited is likely to add weight to Amazon’s difficulties, said King.

“This is not a story of two elephants going head to head against one another so much as it is a wily predator identifying the weakest member of a herd and going unmercifully for its throat,” he remarked.

Renewing Efforts

Delivery Unlimited as an online grocery-focused offering is more viable than ShippingPass was as a mass merchandise delivery program, suggested Jack O’Leary, senior analyst at
Edge by Ascential. Membership programs also encourage loyalty. Amazon, Instacart, Target/Shipt and others will be hard-pressed to persuade shoppers who opt-in for Delivery Unlimited to switch to their own platforms.

“This is not Walmart’s first foray into an e-commerce-centric membership program. In 2017 the retailer scrapped its $ 50 per-year ShippingPass program, which offered free two-day delivery on two million items from Walmart.com,” O’Leary told the E-Commerce Times. “It has since invested heavily in its delivery capabilities, progressively offering faster delivery to more of the country for free (above a minimum order threshold).”

With its online grocery pickup solution and current grocery delivery offering, Walmart already has enjoyed success targeting new shopper segments focused on convenience in grocery shopping specifically, he pointed out.

“Upselling this existing base to a program that saves them money on convenient home delivery of groceries is a viable strategy,” O’Leary said. “It also heightens competition with other top online grocery platforms, raising the stakes in the U.S. online grocery capabilities arms race.”

Jack%20M.%20Germain Walmart Ups the Ante in Grocery Delivery Competition
Jack M. Germain has been an ECT News Network reporter since 2003. His main areas of focus are enterprise IT, Linux and open source technologies. He has written numerous reviews of Linux distros and other open source software.
Email Jack.

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AI Weekly: Amazon’s robots could cut delivery times, but eliminate jobs

June 8, 2019 Big Data

Today marked the end of Amazon’s inaugural re:MARS in Las Vegas, where roughly 3,000 engineers, academics, programmers, astronauts, artists, entrepreneurs, and NBA players from over 40 countries gathered to glean insight from luminaries in machine learning, artificial intelligence, robotics, and space travel. It didn’t disappoint with respect to sheer breadth of content: roughly 100 breakout presentations, workshops, and a technical showcase doomed this writer’s mission to cover everything from the start.

Robert Downey Jr., channeling his inner Iron Man, announced the Footprint Coalition on Wednesday, which will seek to significantly “clean up” the planet with the next 11 years. Amazon VP and head scientist for Alexa, Rohit Prasad, introduced Conversations, a deep learning-based way to create Alexa skills with multi-turn dialogue that can interconnect with other Alexa skills. Zoox CEO Aicha Evans detailed the hardware and software underpinning the company’s custom-designed and shuttle-like driverless vehicles. And that was just the tip of a big iceberg.

But what stood out the most to my colleagues and I were the advancements in robotics, and what they could mean for the workforce of the future.

During the first re:MARS keynote, Brad Porter, head of robotics at Amazon, unveiled two new platforms bound for Amazon’s hundreds of fulfillment centers around the world. The first is Pegasus, an item-categorizing system that cuts down mis-sorted goods by 50%. The other is Xanthus, a modular drive system that quickly adapts to new applications. Both make up a portion of the over 200,000 machines that now work alongside the 300,000 human workers in Amazon’s warehouses, which is up from 100,000 machines a year ago.

“Customer expectations for convenience, selection, costs, and especially delivery speed continue to increase, and we realize we need step function changes in robotics,” said Porter.

During that same keynote address, CEO of Amazon worldwide consumer Jeff Wilke revealed a new six-propeller, electric, and fully autonomous Prime Air delivery drone that’ll soon begin delivering packages to customers as part of pilot tests. Amazon is aiming to fulfill deliveries of packages weighing up to five pounds within 30 minutes for shoppers who are within 7.5 miles (up to a maximum of 15 miles) of its warehouses.

And on the penultimate day of re:MARS, chief technology officer and vice president of Amazon Werner Vogels highlighted RoboMaker, Amazon’s cloud robotics service designed to expedite developing, testing, and deploying intelligent machines at scale. “We’re now getting lots of attention and interest [in this],” said Vogels. “If we do this right, we will see the next generation of explorers working on the next generation of robotics technology.”

Amazon’s increased investment in robotics — which arguably began in earnest with its $ 775 million acquisition of Kiva Systems, a Massachusetts-based company that manufactures mobile robotic fulfillment systems, in 2012 — accelerated with its recent purchase of Canvas Technology. The Colorado-based startup is developing a fully autonomous cart system. Even more recently, in warehouses in Seattle, Frankfurt, Milan, Amsterdam, and Manchester, Amazon doubled down with $ 1-million-per-unit machines — CartonWraps and SmartPacs — capable of packing up to 700 products in an hour.

The moves are doubtless reducing operations costs — the savings with CartonWraps and SmartPacs are so substantial that each robot is amortized in less than two years — and furthering Amazon’s ambitious plan to reduce its free shipping option for Prime subscribers from two days down to one.

But it’s a less encouraging development for the human workers whose jobs are at risk of disappearing due to partial or complete automation.

A 2017 analysis published by Quartz found that because of Amazon’s investment in automation and robotic employees, the combined employment at the company and related retailers would decline by a net 24,000 in 2018. Separately, Forrester found that AI could eliminate 10% of U.S. jobs in the coming months, and in the past year, analysts at the World Economic Forum, PricewaterhouseCoopers, McKinsey Global Institute, and Gartner have predicted it could make redundant as many as 75 million jobs by 2025.

Amazon asserts that its robots are assisting rather than replacing its human workers, and it points to its warehouses in places like Florence, N.J., and Kent, Washington as prime examples. There, employees stock shelves which robots whisk away to ready for shipment, and humans — not machines — are the ones responsible for putting products in the cardboard boxes customers ultimately receive.

“[These workers are] finding something, inspecting things, engaging [their] mind in a way that I think is important,” Amazon operations executive Dave Clark told The New York Times in an interview.

Reports lend credence to this idea. Gartner, for instance, anticipates that automation and robotics will create a net 500,000 jobs by 2020 and 2 million in the next five years. McKinsey forecasts that AI could contribute an additional 1.2% to gross domestic product growth (GDP) for the next decade and help to capture an additional 20-25% in net economic benefits (equating to $ 13 trillion globally) in the next 12 years.

In Florence and Kent, no worker lost their job when robots were installed. As Amazon continues to develop and deploy more capable machines like Prime Air drones, delivery rovers like Scout, and warehouse packagers and sorters in its pursuit of efficiency, however, it’s unclear if the pattern will hold.

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Big Data – VentureBeat

The Restaurant Food Delivery Debate: Handle Delivery In-house or Outsource It?

April 21, 2019 NetSuite

Posted by Brady Thomason, NetSuite Solution Manager, Restaurant & Hospitality

From bean burritos, to French toast, to detox juice, Grubhub’s annual survey of trends in ordering pushes into focus just how much the options have increased for those hankering for delivery over the years.

Consumers now eat 80% of their meals at home, up from 75% a decade ago, according to coverage in the Wall Street Journal of research from market research firm NPD Group. By most accounts, the proliferation in those options and the increasing proclivity to have something like a peanut butter acai bowl delivered to one’s home is strongly related to the explosive growth in third-party delivery services like Grubhub.

In fact, sales totaled 9.8 billion last year for the five largest delivery providers, an increase of 55% over the previous year, according to coverage in Restaurant Business of Technomic data. Technomic is a Chicago-based restaurant management consulting firm. That makes Caviar, DoorDash, Postmates, Uber Eats and Grubhub the third- or fourth-largest restaurant chain in the U.S, according to the coverage.

As the market for delivery grows, restaurateurs for whom the business model makes sense (in that Grubhub survey, 40 percent of customers ordered most from fast casual restaurants, followed by quick service and casual dining) — are really no longer chewing on whether to deliver their fares, but how.

Should you snub GrubHub?

Recently, Jimmy Johns’ CEO announced that the nearly 40-year-old sub chain would never use a third party provider to deliver its famously fresh, fast-delivered subs – which are available in zones that lend themselves to delivery within five minutes. It backed up its decision with statistics by Service Management Group as well as a study it commissioned with Boston Consulting Group. Some 92% of customers expected their food deliveries within 15 to 30 minutes of placing an order, and the largest delivery services averaged 49-minute delivery times, according to coverage in Fast Casual.

Reasons for not using third-party delivery services also often reference the cost of the service to restaurants – which include fees to pick up and deliver the order from the restaurant that can range from 10% to 35% for every single order, according to coverage in Restaurant Business.

Or let third-party deliver in?

But the move by Jimmy Johns is one that bucks much of the industry. Chipotle launched delivery with DoorDash last year. Taco Bell recently announced it would partner with Grubhub to deliver orders of at least $ 12 (excluding tax) for free, according to Fast Casual.

Now at $ 13 billion, the third-party food delivery market is projected to grow at a 13.5% annual rate, according to a recently published report from Pentallect Inc., a food industry strategy firm. The market, which includes firms providing restaurant meals and groceries, is expected to reach $ 24.5 billion by 2022. That’s as the $ 1.6 trillion U.S. food industry grows at 3% per year, according to the research.

“By most measures, the business is in its infancy. Current providers and new entrants are dramatically enhancing their capabilities, improving their overall value, and becoming increasingly attractive to consumers,” Barry Friends of Pentallect said in a press release. “We will most certainly see a marked shift away from brick-and-mortar in the food industry, and that will present challenges to many traditional restaurants and food stores.”

Trying to find balance

It’s a quandary that the CEO of Darden Restaurants Inc. – parent company to brands like Olive Garden and LongHorn Steakhouse — perhaps frames best in explaining his approach to testing third-party services to deliver its menu items.

“How do we ensure that these delivery services will enhance our brands?” Gene Lee is quoted as saying in Nation’s Restaurant News. “Can it be flawlessly executed for our guests and our team members? Can we create a sustainable incremental growth at scale that’s additive to our company? Can we agree on viable economics?”

Finding that balance will be key. As evidenced by the dramatic decline of avocado toast in this year’s Grubhub rankings, tastes may change, and people will continue to argue about what to order (nearly three quarters of respondents surveyed said they’ve argued with their significant other about it over the last year). But consumers agree on the reasons why they want to order in; they don’t feel like cooking, they want to satisfy a craving or just don’t feel like cleaning up.

Posted on Thu, April 18, 2019
by NetSuite filed under

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Top Five Lessons Learned From Real Agile Delivery Cases

February 8, 2019 BI News and Info

Companies are adopting new business suites to help them achieve many strategic priorities for their business and IT operations. According to a recent survey from Frost & Sullivan, these strategic priorities include:

Cost reduction (cited by 76% of survey respondents)
Better positioning the company to leverage new technologies for growth (cited by 61%)
Delivering services and applications faster (69%)
Reducing the hardware and software maintenance burden (64%)

An agile deployment is the best way to start drawing value from a new business suite quickly and reduce implementation risk. A business suite migration is a particularly good fit for agile methods because new capabilities are consistently being added to the solution. An agile deployment can help make sure you’re taking advantage of the latest innovations from each new software release. As a result, you can maximize the return on your business suite investment, and keep up with changing business requirements as they arise.

Based on IBM’s experience helping clients execute their business suite migrations, we’ve learned a number of lessons about what’s required to ensure a successful agile deployment.

Lessons learned from agile delivery cases

1. Plan sprints, not phases

Far too often, agile teams fall into a pattern of planning their work according to phases in the development lifecycle. This can cause problems, because those workloads won’t always align to the sprints. The only way to make sure the right work happens at the right time is to focus on planning the sprints first, and then aligning phases accordingly.

2. Allow for increased overhead based on tool management

Generally speaking, tracking workflows in agile deployment projects will require more effort than in projects using waterfall methods. In addition, certain agile tracking tools may require more overhead than others.

For instance, some tools require project managers to manually set tasks and hours planned per task. This allows them to make sure all team members have tasks assigned to them, and that the right tasks are being assigned at the right time. Managing workflows this way requires more time and effort than simply moving sticky notes around on a whiteboard. It’s important to understand and account for this fact when planning your business suite deployment.

3. Encourage collaboration between onshore and offshore developers

In waterfall project management, the separation between onshore and offshore developers is well established: Typically, the onshore team will write the functional specifications, and then hand them off to the offshore team to execute. In contrast, agile project management requires collaboration between onshore and offshore developers, with rapid back and forth throughout the sprints and project.

This means you may have to adjust your thought process and hire additional on-site development resources. Even if you still do the majority of your coding work offshore, having onshore developers available when you need them can help ensure that your team is able to meet the specific needs of the project quickly.

4. Ensure clarity and accuracy of story points and acceptance criteria

If all team members don’t have a complete and accurate understanding of what they’re expected to accomplish during a sprint, and how much time and effort it should take to accomplish it, then it should come as no surprise when the sprint fails to meet expectations.

When acceptance criteria are clear and accurate heading into the sprint, team members will be empowered to meet those criteria. In addition, accurate story points ensure that team members won’t end up with too much or not enough work assigned during the sprint period.

5. Empower scrum teams to work autonomously

At the end of the day, the team members themselves are the best judges of what they can and can’t accomplish during the course of a sprint. Rather than working against the entire backlog at the direction of the product owner, allowing the team to determine their own work priorities ensures that expectations are realistic going in to the sprints.

Learn more

For a deeper look at the ideas presented in this post, register to attend Think 2019, the flagship IBM technical conference. There, you can attend sessions featuring experts in SAP S/4HANA and agile deployment methods.

In addition, an IBM impact assessment for SAP S/4HANA can help you understand the end-to-end impact an SAP S/4HANA migration could have on your data, custom code, interfaces, and business processes. Register for an IBM HANA Impact assessment to start your migration today.

This article was written in collaboration with:

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Digitalist Magazine

How PaaS Takes Your Cloud Delivery To The Next Level

September 19, 2018 BI News and Info

Throughout history, decentralization of systems has always resulted in more robust and agile mechanisms. Whether the organization of large empires or mutually beneficial trading relationships, decentralized systems have successfully multiplied the impact of resources while retaining the ability to adapt to stresses without major structural change.

In recent centuries, the economies of scale prompted a move to integrated systems that produced large volumes of products at low purchase prices to consumers. However, certain advantages of distributed systems were lost or compromised in the process. As we enter the age of AI, machine learning, and IoT-enabled digital transformation, we have the unique opportunity to meld the greatest advantages of both into one powerful, agile, and highly productive approach.

Platform as a Service (PaaS), also called application platform as a service or platform-based service, is a category of cloud computing services. It provides a platform allowing customers to develop, run, and manage applications without the complexity of building and maintaining the infrastructure typically associated with developing and launching an app.

PaaS solutions and services support your development capabilities, which help you extend, integrate, and build innovative applications in less time. In effect, these solutions provide a significantly higher level of capability and agility than legacy infrastructure – without the hassle of maintaining, authenticating, and patching servers and other traditional hardware. PaaS expands possibilities through the incorporation of workflows, APIs, programming languages, development and deployment tools, as well as database capabilities, among other powerful features.

Apps and software-based solutions are rightly regarded as some of the most dramatic enhancements in productivity, process integration, and service-level enhancements. The immense distributed and interactive intelligence they enable is a game-changer for our civilization, let alone individual business models. The PaaS model ushers in a new era of centralized resources, multiplied dramatically by distributed and synergistic systems.

A striking new way to organize digital systems and interfaces

Legacy models for the development of apps required servers, software, data security, and multiple software dependencies – with continual updates – and complex hardware systems requiring ongoing structured maintenance, as well as considerable financial investment. Any infrastructure incorporated into this system was prone to becoming outdated and even obsolete quite rapidly. PaaS, on the other hand, can deliver click-and-code solutions through the use of cloud-based tools, servers, and programming environments, enabling apps to be rapidly developed and hosted with very low upfront costs.

As a solution, PaaS is focused on providing the tools and technologies to create an intelligent enterprise that allows a connected user to orchestrate the entire business and all its functions from a single device. It sets the user free from the dependence of static and stationary infrastructure, allowing information to talk and share its “stories,” rationalizing the business process. PaaS empowers intelligent technologies that are predictive rather than reactive, setting enabling operational excellence and underpinning real-time enterprise mobility in the field.

Integrating functions more economically, fast, and secure

Danish company Vestas Wind Systems, a seller, operator, and servicing provider for wind turbines, provides a dramatic case in point. The company now conducts its complex maintenance tasks with the help of administrative processes that primarily use mobile devices. The entire process integration required no complex redevelopment work and provides field workers real-time access to all relevant enterprise data. PaaS empowered the company to improve compliance, optimizing productivity and integration of processes in a backend-agnostic fashion.

Herfy, Saudi Arabia’s premier fast food chain, has built on a PaaS solution to provide native iOS apps that enable its customers to order their burgers and fries using an app. Oman-based OTE Group, with business interests that span from the automotive industry to home appliances, is making PaaS a central initiative in its digital transformation, using the technology to allow its staff to access enterprise IT infrastructure from their mobile phones. In yet another transformative initiative, the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology has enabled online access for several campus facilities and services using PaaS.

Creating synergies and an empowered business ecosystem

PaaS is a generator of mutually beneficial partnerships through enhanced optionality and agility. SAP recently introduced a new consumption plan for customers enabling a future where customer transactions are seamless and where our customers aren’t just happier – they’re better and more competitive than ever before.

What customers truly value with this plan is the amount of flexibility it provides to their development teams to support the rapid changes required by the business. The IT and development teams can test the latest technologies – blockchain, machine learning, and AI – in their test and development systems with zero cost.

To help customers leverage these new technologies and solutions, the SAP Co-Innovation Lab provides project-based co-innovation to enhance the capabilities and knowledge of our customers and partners. Co-innovation is one of our major commitments, because it is the most effective way to demonstrate how we can deliver true business outcomes.

One critical component of a PaaS is a mobility platform. The mobility platform simplifies the development, configuration, and ability to manage multiple applications. This is achieved by providing a collection of tools and services, such as SDKs for Apple and Android, that empower developers to rapidly build world-class enterprise apps that run anywhere, anytime on any device.

All good PaaS providers will also typically provide an associated app center. An app center is a digital, enterprise marketplace where customers can discover, try, buy, manage, and deploy trusted applications that have been built using the tools and services from the PaaS provider. Most app centers will allow customers to discover information about solutions and services, read user reviews, look up certifications, and start conversations with various partners and developers.

This provides businesses that adopt this approach with a strategic advantage over their competitors to deploy solutions far more economically at a pace significantly faster than traditional approaches.

For further information and insights regarding the powerful capabilities and possibilities that PaaS technology can enable, please visit SAP Cloud Platform.

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Microsoft Optimizes Delivery of Microsoft Dynamics 365 Cloud Version with Continuous Deployment Updates

August 24, 2018 CRM News and Info

Microsoft is changing the way Microsoft Dynamics 365 updates will be delivered: major cloud updates will be deployed twice a year in April and October to provide new capabilities and functionality to all Dynamics 365 users. These updates will be backwards compatible, while regular performance updates will be rolled out throughout the year as before, ensuring business continuity for organizations.

Whereas customers were able to skip a cloud release, they will no longer be able to do so, as all users will now be required to migrate to the latest version with each new release. For this reason, all users will have to be on the new version before January 31, 2019.

What does this mean for your organization?

This new continuous update deployment will bring several benefits to users and organizations using Dynamics 365:

Organizations will enjoy up-to-date features and optimized performance. A cloud-based solution ensures immediate access to new functionalities, but organizations sometimes delay their migration to new versions. By ensuring that everyone is using the latest version, users will be able to take advantage of the latest features and capabilities as they are released.
The learning curve will not be as steep for your users. You will face less resistance to change within your organization. Users will have a much easier time adapting to the new features and interface changes with each new update, instead of having to contend with many significant changes at once.
Costs and downtime will be kept to a minimum. In the long run, skipping updates does not save you time or money. In fact, the longer you wait, the harder it becomes, as the migration path of the previous versions still has to be followed. Migrating with each update will ensure that the process is as smooth as possible every time
Microsoft will be able to offer better support and an improved platform to all users. Having all users on fewer versions will help Microsoft improve their features, performance and support, as their resources will be focused on a single platform.
New capabilities and third-party products can be tested ahead of time to avoid system disruptions. Partners and customers will be able to test capabilities and major updates in a sandbox environment in advance. Partners will be able to better prepare their products for general availability, while organizations can validate updates before the update release to avoid any disruption.

This continuous update deployment will make it important to follow best practices and use as many features out of the box as possible to ensure smooth migrations. That said, organizations will be able to accelerate their digital transformation in a consistent and predictable manner, overall increasing reliability and performance. For more information, please read the official announcement blog post by Microsoft.

By JOVACO Solutions, Microsoft Dynamics 365 implementation specialist in Quebec

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CRM Software Blog | Dynamics 365

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