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Tag Archives: Road

The Road to S/4HANA: Is Your Business Ready to Seize SAP Transformation Opportunities?

March 25, 2021   TIBCO Spotfire
TIBCO RoadToHANA scaled e1616523243249 696x366 The Road to S/4HANA: Is Your Business Ready to Seize SAP Transformation Opportunities?

Reading Time: 2 minutes

It’s more than fair to say that we have truly entered the era of digital transformation. Organizations have recognized what a valuable asset their data is and have begun to move to the next phase of evolution: transforming to create a more functional, connected ecosystem around this data to utilize it to its full potential.

And now, many of these businesses that have held off on their transformations are getting a push in the form of SAP migration. As SAP prepares to end support for SAP ECC ERP and enterprises prep for the move to SAP S/4HANA, there’s a significant amount of anxiety surrounding the migration process and the challenges involved. 

SAP Migration: More Than Just a Move

Migration should be a priority for your business right now, and careful thought and planning are critical. However, it’s just as crucial not to get so caught up in the scramble to migrate that you forget why you’re doing it in the first place: to accelerate your agility and connectivity, gain more comprehensive data management, and set the foundation for post-migration innovation. 

It’s true that the migration path is likely to contain challenges, but it’s also filled with opportunities to reach your destination with the tools to become a truly digital organization.

Transformation Challenges: It All Comes Down to Data & Business Process

Aside from macro issues like the cost of migrating a deployment to a newer system, most of the core issues and challenges you can expect to encounter when planning for your SAP migration will often involve data and the business processes that utilize it. Is the data across multiple ECC instances? How much of it is there? How accessible—or rather, inaccessible—is it? Add to this the issue that there’s rarely ever one master data model, syncing data models across systems, process compliance, data integration and connectivity…the list goes on.

Transformation Opportunities: Focused on the Future

But it’s not all doom and gloom. You can use your organization’s SAP transformation as a chance to solve these issues and, instead of migrating blindly, do it purposefully with the goal of future-proofing your organization. Define your business processes, and optimize and integrate your SAP data to drive operational insights and profit. 

According to Constellation’s Q4 2020 Top CIO Survey, 77 percent of organizations have made digital transformation their top priority in 2021 and are determined to get left behind not just in the migration to SAP S/4HANA but in the race to getting the most value from SAP and their data as a digital business.  

You can use your organization’s SAP transformation as a chance to solve these issues and, instead of migrating blindly, do it purposefully with the goal of future-proofing your organization. Click To Tweet

For many businesses, there are still many questions surrounding S/4HANA migration. But here at TIBCO, we have the answers. Check out our webinar in collaboration with Constellation Research for a deep dive into reducing migration risk, powering innovation with SAP, and why the path to digital transformation is only the beginning.

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Robots, AI, and the road to a fully autonomous construction industry

April 23, 2020   Big Data

Built Robotics executives are fond of saying that their autonomous system for construction equipment, like dozers and excavators, might be further along than many autonomous vehicles. In fact, CEO Noah Ready-Campbell insists you’ll see autonomous vehicles in controlled industrial environments — like construction sites — before you see level 5 driverless cars on public roads. That may be in part because autonomous construction equipment often operates on privately owned land, while public roads face increased regulatory scrutiny.

“There’s a quote that ‘Cold fusion is 20 years in the future and always will be,’” Ready-Campbell told VentureBeat on Wednesday. “I think there’s a chance that that might be true for level 5 self-driving cars as well.”

That might’ve seemed like an absurd thing to say back when autonomous driving first entered the collective imagination and companies established their intention to solve AI’s grand autonomous vehicle challenge. But Waymo now takes billions from outside investors, and the delay of major initiatives like GM’s Cruise and taxi service and Ford’s autonomous driving program call into question the progress automakers have made on autonomous vehicles.

One thing Ready-Campbell credits autonomous vehicle companies with is generating excitement around AI for use in environments beyond public roads, like on construction sites.

“We were the beneficiaries of that when we did our series B last year,” he said. “I definitely think construction benefited from that.”

 Robots, AI, and the road to a fully autonomous construction industry

From computer vision systems and drones to robots walking and roving through construction projects, Built Robotics and a smattering of other companies are working in unstructured industrial environments like mining, agriculture, and construction to make autonomous systems that can build, manage, and predict outcomes.

To take a closer look at innovation in the field, the challenges ahead, and what it’s going to take to create fully autonomous construction projects in the future, VentureBeat spoke with startups that are already automating parts of their construction work.

Autonomous excavators and heavy machinery

Built Robotics creates control systems for existing construction equipment and is heavily focused on digging, moving, and placing dirt. The company doesn’t make its own heavy construction equipment; its solution is instead a box of tech mounted inside heavy equipment made by companies like Caterpillar, Komatsu, and Hyundai.

Built Robotics VP of strategy Gaurav Kikani told VentureBeat that the company started with autonomous skid steers — the little dozers that scoop up and transport sand or gravel on construction sites. Today, Built Robotics has autonomous systems for bulldozers and 40-ton excavators.

“We have a software platform that actuates the equipment that takes all the data … being read by the sensors on the machine every second and then makes decisions and actuates the equipment accordingly,” Kikani said.

Built Robotics focuses on earthmoving projects at remote job sites in California, Montana, Colorado, and Missouri — far removed from human construction workers. Autonomous heavy equipment monitored by a human overseer tills the earth in preparation for later stages of construction, when human crews arrive to do things like build homes or begin wind or solar energy projects. In the future, the startup, which raised $ 33 million last fall, wants to help with more infrastructure projects.

Kikani and Built Robotics CEO Ready-Campbell say the company is currently focused on projects where there’s a lot of dirt to move but not a lot of qualified operators of heavy machinery.

Calling to mind John Henry versus the machine, Kikani said human operators can go faster than a Built-controlled excavator, for example, but machine automation is meant to provide consistency and maintain a reliable pace to ensure projects finish on schedule.

Built Robotics combines lidar with cameras for perception and to recognize humans or potential obstacles. Geofencing keeps machinery from straying outside the footprint of a construction site. Excavators and dozers can work together, with dozers pushing material away or creating space for the excavator to be more productive.

“The fleet coordination element here is going to be critical. In Built [Robotic]’s early days, we really focused on standalone activities, where you have one piece of equipment just on its own taking care of the scope. But realistically, to get into the heart of construction, I think we’re going to start to coordinate with other types of equipment,” Kikani said. “So you might have excavators loading trucks [and] autonomous haulage routes where you have fleets of trucks that are all kind of tracking along the same route talking to each other, alerting each other to what they see along the route if conditions are changing.”

“I think the trickiest thing about construction is how dynamic the environment is, building technology that is pliable or versatile enough to account for those changing conditions and being able to update in real time to plan to accommodate for that. I think that is really going to be the key here,” he said.

Equipment operated by systems from companies like Built Robotics will also need computer vision to recognize utility lines, human remains, or anomalies like archeological or historically important artifacts. It’s not an everyday occurrence, but construction activity in any locale can unearth artifacts that lead to work stoppage.

Drones, robots, and computer vision

Drones that can deploy automatically from a box are being developed for a variety of applications, from fire safety to security to power line inspection. Drones hovering above a construction site can track project progress and could eventually play a role in orchestrating the movement of people, robotic equipment, and heavy machinery.

In a nod to natural systems, San Francisco-based Sunflower Labs calls its drones “bees,” its motion and vibration sensors “sunflowers,” and the box its drones emerge from a “hive.”

Sensors around a protected property detect motion or vibrations and trigger the drones to leave their base station and record photos and video. Computer vision systems working with sensors on the ground guide the drone to look for Intruders or investigate other activity. Autonomous flight systems are fixed with sensors on all four sides to influence where the drone flies.

Sunflower Labs CEO Alex Pachikov said his company’s initial focus is on the sale of drones-in-a-box for automated security at expensive private homes. The company is also seeing a growing interest from farmers of high-value crops, like marijuana.

Multiple Sunflower Labs drones can also coordinate to provide security for a collection of vacation homes, acting as a kind of automated neighborhood watch that responds to disturbances during the months of the year when the homes attract few visitors.

Stanley Black and Decker, one of the largest security equipment providers in the United States, became a strategic investor in Sunflower Labs in 2017 and then started exploring how drones can support construction project security and computer vision services. Pachikov said Sunflower’s security is not intended to replace all other forms of security, but to add another layer.

The company’s system of bees, hives, and sunflowers is an easy fit for construction sites, where theft and trespassing at odd hours can be an issue, but the tools can do a lot more than safeguard vacant sites.

When a Sunflower Labs drone buzzes above a construction site, it can deploy computer vision-enabled analytics tools for volumetric measurement to convert an image of a pile of gravel into a prediction of total on-site material.

Then tools from computer vision startups like Pics 4D, Stockpile Reports, and Drone Deploy can provide object detection, 3D renderings of properties for tracking construction progress, and other image analysis tools.

Companies like Delair take a combination of data from IoT sensors, drone footage, and stationary cameras from a construction project to create a 3D rendering that Delair calls a digital twin. The rendering is then used to track progress and identify anomalies like cracks or structural issues.

Major construction companies around the world are increasingly turning to technology to reduce construction project delays and accident costs. The 2019 KPMG global construction survey found that within the next five years, 60% of executives at major construction companies plan to use real-time models to predict risks and returns.

Indus.ai is one of a handful of companies making computer vision systems for tracking progress on construction sites.

“We can observe and use a segmentation algorithm to basically know every pixel — what material it is — and therefore we know the pace of your concrete work, your rebar work, your form work and [can] start predicting what’s happening,” Indus.ai CEO Matt Man told VentureBeat in a phone interview.

He envisions robotic arms being used on construction sites to accomplish a range of tasks, like creating materials or assembling prefabricated parts. Digitization of data with sensors in construction environments will enable various machine learning applications, including robotics and the management of environments with a mix of working humans and machines. 

For large projects, cameras can track the flow of trucks entering a site, the number of floors completed, and the overall pace of progress. Computer vision could also follow daily work product and help supervisors determine whether the work of individuals and teams follows procedure or best trade practices.

“Imagine a particular robotic arm can start putting drywall up, then start putting tiles up, all with one single robotic arm. And that’s where I see the future of robotics […] To be able to consolidate various trades together to simplify the process,” Man said. “There could be armies of robot-building things, but then there is an intelligent worker or supervisor who can manage five or 10 robotic arms at the same time.”

Man thinks software for directing on-site activity will become more critical as contractors embrace robotics, and he sees a huge opportunity for computer vision to advance productivity and safety in industrial spaces.

Stanford University engineers have explored the use of drones for construction site management, but such systems do not appear to be widely available today or capable of coordinating human and robotic activity.

“Having all these kinds of logistical things run together really well, it’s something I think AI can do. But it’s definitely going to take some time for the whole orchestration to be done well, for the right materials to get to the right place at the right time for the robot to pick it up and then to do the work or react if some of the material gets damaged,” Man said. “In the current construction methodology, it’s all about managing surprises, and there are millions of them happening over the course of the whole construction plan, so being able to effectively manage those exceptions is going to be a challenge.”

One construction robotics platform to rule them all

Boston Dynamics, known for years as the maker of cutting-edge robots, also entered construction sites last year as part of its transition from an R&D outfit to a commercial company.

Like Sunflower Labs’ drones, Boston Dynamics’ four-legged Spot Mini with a robotic grasping arm acts as a sensor platform for 360-video surveys of construction projects. Capable of climbing stairs, opening doors, and regaining its balance, the robot can also be equipped with other sensors to track progress and perform services that rely on computer vision.

An event held by TechCrunch at the University of California, Berkeley last month was one of the first opportunities Bay Area roboticists have had to convene since the pandemic precipitated an impending recession. Investors focused on robotics for industrial or agricultural settings urged startups to raise money now if they could, to be careful about costs, and to continue progress toward demonstrating product-market fit.

Speaking on a panel that included Built Robotics CEO Ready-Campbell, startups debated whether there will be a dominant platform for construction robotics. Contrary to others on the panel, Boston Dynamics construction technologist Brian Ringley said he believes platforms will emerge to coordinate multiple machines on construction sites.

“I think long-term there will be enough people in the markets that there will be more competition, but ultimately it’s the same way we use lots of different people and lots of machines on sites now to do these things. I do believe there will be multiple morphologies on construction sites and it will be necessary to work together,” Ringley said.

Tessa Lau is cofounder and CEO of Dusty Robotics, a company that makes an automated building layout called FieldPrinter. She said there’s a huge opportunity for automation and human labor augmentation in an industry that currently has very little automation. Systems may emerge that are capable of doing the work of multiple trades or on-site activity management, but Lau said there can be nearly 80 different building trades involved in a construction site. Another problem: Construction sites are by definition in various stages of fairly constant change. The dynamic nature of construction sites — where there is no set or static state like you might find in a factory — presents another challenge.

“I think the flip side is if you look at a typical construction site, it’s chaos, and anyone with a robotics background who knows anything about robotics knows it’s really hard to make robots work in that kind of unstructured environment,” she said.

Forget the word “robot”

One thing the TechCrunch panelists agreed on is that robots on construction sites won’t succeed unless the people working alongside them want them to. To help ensure that happens, Lau suggested startups slap googly eyes on their robots because people want to see things that are cute or beloved succeed.

“Our customers are rightfully concerned that robots are going to take their jobs, and so we have to be careful about whether we are building a robot or … building a tool,” Lau said. “And, in fact, we call our product a FieldPrinter. It’s an appliance like a printer. It uses a lot of robotic technology — it uses sensors and path planning and AI and all the stuff that powers robotics today, but the branding and marketing is really around the functionality. Nobody wants to buy a robot; they want to solve a problem.”

Built Robotics CEO Ready-Campbell wholeheartedly agreed, arguing that even a thermostat can be considered a robot if the only requirement to meet that definition is that it’s a machine capable of manipulating its environment.

Last month, just before economic activity began to slow and shelter-in-place orders took effect, the International Union of Operating Engineers, which has over 400,000 members, established a multi-year training partnership with Built Robotics. Executives from Built Robotics say its systems operate primarily in rural areas that experience skilled labor shortages, but Ready-Campbell thinks it’s still a good idea to drop the term “robot” because it scares people. Opposition to construction robotics could also become an issue in areas that see high levels of unemployment.

“That’s how we position Built [Robotics] in the industry, because when people think of robots, it kind of triggers a bunch of scary thoughts. Some people think about The Terminator, some people think about losing jobs,” he said. “It’s an industry that really depends on using advanced machinery and advanced technology, and so we think that automation is just the next step in the automation of that industry.”

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How An African Safari’s “Big Five” Can Inform Digitalization Road Maps (Part 2)

November 10, 2019   SAP
 How An African Safari’s “Big Five” Can Inform Digitalization Road Maps (Part 2)

Part of the “Digital Finance Transformation” series that provides a framework for CFOs to move forward confidently on the journey toward digital transformation

In this series, we have presented a big-picture perspective on the five steps required for a digital transformation. In our previous blog, we used an African safari as a metaphor for the importance of “capturing” each one of the “Big Five.” In our discussions with CFOs, we often find that they are looking for more specifics. Here are more insights on each of those steps.

Prepare: Align expectations, timelines, and requirements procedures

Temporal dependencies such as regulatory requirements, market influences, and competitive factors have a decisive impact on the project timeline and deliverables. Therefore, it is important to discuss all those factors with your stakeholders and align and agree upon them, since the influence of a single one might lead to a chain reaction.

Organizational requirements regarding resources and restrictions in technical and/or functional requirements will influence the scope and thereby also the timeline, as well as resource utilization. A strategic approach might necessitate working with iterative, or “agile,” project methodologies instead of the classic “waterfall” concept. (Agile allows for change and deploying on a continuous basis rather than one big deployment at the end. Waterfall is a sequential list of tasks where most are dependent on previous tasks.)

Introduce best practices

Elaboration of your digitalization roadmap will depend on multiple factors and decisions. In the context of the data quality and future use of existing data sources, as well as considering existing and new processes, we distinguish between brownfield and greenfield approaches. Recommendations for the roadmap are highly dependent on each company’s situation, especially regarding specific challenges and fields of action. Bringing the best-practice approach to your stakeholders allows them to develop a clear and structured understanding of a proven and established way forward based on how others have solved similar issues. Of course, best practices never perfectly fit an organization’s specific requirements but should serve as a basis to derive a tailor-made digitalization roadmap.

Explore: Identify gaps and deltas (company-specific vs. best practices)

It’s important to know about relevant changes, options, and challenges before defining and blueprinting your digitalization roadmap. For example, some companies decided years ago to implement costing-based profitability analysis (COPA) in the ERP environment. Nowadays, with the new technologies, options, and features, most companies opt to implement account-based profitability analysis, which is highly recommended to unleash the full potential of your system.

COPA groups costs and revenues according to value fields and costing-based valuation approaches, both of which you can define yourself. It gives you access at all times to a complete, short-term profitability report. Cost of goods sold is recognized after goods are billed and before being shipped.

Account-based profitability analysis is organized in accounts and using an account-based valuation approach. The distinguishing characteristic of this form is its use of cost and revenue elements. It provides you with a profitability report that is permanently reconciled with financial accounting. Cost of goods sold is recognized after goods are shipped and before being billed.

To move from costing-based to account-based profitability analysis, a clear strategy is required, as this type of change in the landscape will have a big impact downstream.

Implement: Realize, deploy, test

Does it really make a difference how you go about realizing the digital journey? Yes! For example, missing a legal requirement could result in noncompliance.

Depending on whether you selected the agile or waterfall methodology in the preparation phase, the approach going forward will be different. Nevertheless, general steps such as realize, test, and deploy activities stay the same. This is valid as well for the solution quality and stability when you are considering standard and non-standard requirements. For sure, implementing a specific approval workflow for non-standard requirements or change requests helps to differentiate the critical from the non-critical.

In the end, we recommend future-proofing the environment by sticking to standards and best practices where possible.

Challenge the status quo

Continuously compare and improve. The business world is moving fast, and technology is changing even faster. Good consultants are rare and often occupied with other customer projects. Hence, for a successful journey, it is important to have an experienced internal project manager take the lead, working closely with the external consultants. Being in contact with peers and market experts to compare your own journey against others is key. We are all a big community, supporting each other in the journey and working together toward a great future! 

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How An African Safari’s “Big Five” Can Inform Digitalization Road Maps

October 31, 2019   SAP

Part of the “Digital Finance Transformation” series that provides a framework for CFOs to move forward confidently on the journey toward digital transformation

On an African safari, the ultimate goal is to see the “Big Five:” lion, leopard, rhinoceros, elephant, and Cape buffalo. Seeing four of the five is still quite impressive, but seeing three or fewer might leave you feeling disappointed.

We would extend this concept as a metaphor for digitalization road maps. Over the course of many projects, we have observed that the following five steps will define success (missing one of the Big Five will fall short of some expectations, limit memorable digital exploration, and result in an incomplete project):

Process How An African Safari’s “Big Five” Can Inform Digitalization Road Maps

Prepare. Align customer expectations, timelines, and requirements procedures. An aligned and agreed-upon understanding of important aspects is key. These include, for example, the company’s strategic approach; organizational, functional, and technical requirements; a suitable project methodology; and an appropriate derived timeline. They all are interlinked and build the foundation for the next steps.

Introduce best practices. The next step is to introduce best practices. Why start with best practices instead of collecting customer-specific requirements? Because starting the journey to a digitalization road map without knowing the status quo regarding possibilities, options, and restrictions will limit the ability to break up established and outdated structures and mindsets – and that’s what will lead to real innovation. It’s like setting up a wish list for vacation on a best guess without knowing what the destination is famous for.

Explore: Identify gaps and deltas (your own vs. best practices). Being aware of best practices is a prerequisite to identify gaps in the customer’s infrastructure, processes, customization, and/or master data. The idea of best practices is to come back to standards as much as possible by cutting out all unnecessary steps. Start understanding best practices from the high level on infrastructures, going deeper into processes, customizing, and master data to identify gaps between current and to-be solutions. All identified gaps are gathered and summarized in a customer repository, which serves as the basis for the project implementation as well as for tracking.

Implement: Realize, deploy, test. The exploration ends with a well-defined and logically structured summarization of customer requirements shown within the requirements repository. This is often called a traceability matrix. It’s a document that correlates any two baseline documents that require a many-to-many relationship to check the completeness of the relationships. Also, it’s used to ensure transparency, and to track and check the status to ensure that project requirements are fully met within the deployment and test phase.

Challenge the status quo: Continuously compare and improve. To ensure the success of the customer’s transformation journey, continuous comparison against the status quo is essential. This allows changes in the environment and appropriate actions to be identified. Typically, changes that must be considered are mainly related to legal requirements and new releases of systems and tools. While creating the road map, future digital trends need to be included and compared to the overall innovation strategy.

The digital world is always developing, requiring ongoing questioning of the status quo and continuous improvement. Happy journey!

In the second part of our African safari blogs, we’ll explore in more detail the five steps required for digital transformation.

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Salesforce’s Road to China

July 27, 2019   CRM News and Info

It was bound to happen. Salesforce was going to China at some point, and it announced that action this week saying it was partnering with Alibaba.

There are so many ways to read this, but I don’t have the filters to resist comparing the announcement to what Robin Williams once said about cocaine: “Cocaine is God’s way of telling you you are making too much money.”

Only slightly modified, I’d say setting up in China is God’s way of telling you that you’ve been too successful.

Where to start? There are two scenarios, God’s and a happier one. Let’s flesh them out.

God’s Scenario

China is potentially the biggest market in the world (depending on what you’re selling) and although their more than 1.4 billion people are climbing the economic ladder rapidly, China is still a mercantile, manufacturing-for-export and agricultural economy.

Forget for a moment China’s current challenges — like a bulging population and energy, water and environmental needs. It has about four times the population of the U.S. and more than double the U.S. and EU together. China — especially when combined with Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan — represents a pool of opportunity that most Western businesses rarely have experienced, and that Salesforce needs to continue its growth.

However, China’s well-known business practices of ripping off technology companies through technology transfer demands and joint partnerships makes this deal look less like an opportunity and much more like an organized theft of American tech expertise. (Gee, Denis, why don’t you tell us what you really think?)

I shudder to think of Salesforce setting up a few datacenters around the country, and I wonder what will become of Salesforce’s “Ohana,” the Hawaiian word it uses for family — which represents how Salesforce treats its employees and customers — in a totalitarian state where all memory of Tiananmen Square has been suppressed.

The company’s record of changing minds about repressive activities has delivered mixed results. For instance, CEO Marc Benioff stood up for LGBT rights in Indiana when Mike Pence was governor, moving some Salesforce activities out of state, but the company still maintains a major development office there. Last time I looked, Indiana still wasn’t officially a showcase for diversity and tolerance.

So it concerns me technologically, economically and culturally that Salesforce would put its head in the proverbial dragon’s mouth.

Is There a Better Plan?

Times are changing. The trade war spun up in Washington that challenges Chinese practices like dumping steel and unfair partnership agreements and technology transfers has yet to show results.

Some analysts suggest that China simply plans to wait out the current administration in Washington, accepting that it will lose a bit in the short term. However, we already see China resetting by seeking alternatives for U.S. soybeans, for instance.

Its Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) spanning 152 countries to develop trade routes touching 65 percent of the world’s population and 40 percent of its GDP (as of 2017) is something to seriously challenge anyone’s expansion plans.

Trade wars are not simple and they don’t resolve quickly, contrary to the wisdom of the moment. Still, it has taken Salesforce 20 years to get to this point — and although another entity could recapitulate that march in less time, it would require determined effort and resources.

Perhaps the trade war and other issues bubbling up will have an effect on China and make the Salesforce mission there less of a risk. Yet I’d prefer to see some deeds performed with other companies before investing my own in such a venture.

What’s at Stake

The BRI refers to overland transportation (belt) and maritime shipping (road). FYI, in ancient times maritime shipping used what were described as “blue roads,” which were far simpler to make than the land versions.

There is another road not accounted for in BRI and maybe not thought about yet; certainly it is not thought about enough. It’s the information road and the looming consolidation of IT into a global utility. It’s going on right now before our eyes, and if anything can be considered a next Industrial Revolution it will be how we leverage the information utility in the global market.

By placing itself in a relationship with China, Salesforce is positioning itself as a player in the IT Road competition. Others, like Oracle and Microsoft — with contributions from IBM and others, including Alibaba — will form the backbone of the global IT utility.

My Two Bits

From a belt and road perspective, it’s better to be in the tent than outside of it, but that doesn’t give China a free hand in IT. Although the country has high expectations for taking a leading position in the tech markets in the decade ahead, these markets bear only a superficial resemblance to China’s mercantile experience.

Modern markets for information or anything else depend on transparency, rule of law, access to capital and great transportation. China is making strides in some of these, but it will need to up its game to succeed.

Salesforce is in many ways an ideal partner for helping China accomplish this — but despite all the upside what I see most is the downside, and I wish Salesforce was staying home.
end enn Salesforces Road to China

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


Denis%20Pombriant Salesforces Road to China
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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The Road to Impeachment?

June 7, 2019   Humor

By now, pretty much everyone knows that the Democrats are trying to decide whether or not to impeach Donald Trump. However, impeachment is only half the game, and while Democrats control the House and can impeach Trump anytime they want, it is up to the Republican controlled Senate to convict him and then remove him from office. And conviction requires a vote of two-thirds of the Senate. Clearly that is extremely unlikely.

I’m on the side of Nancy Pelosi, who thinks that if the Dems impeach Trump and the Senate acquits him, it will probably backfire on them and could get Trump reelected, which would be a complete disaster. On the other hand, if the Dems do nothing, that will also hurt them severely.

However, David Faris has come up with what I think is a brilliant solution. His solution consists of a series of steps.

  1. Keep holding hearings and investigating Trump and his administration.
  2. In late August 2020, just before the Republican National Convention, start impeachment proceedings (the normal path to decide whether to impeach). This will reflect poorly on the Republicans during their convention.
  3. (extra bonus step) Undoubtably, Trump will go on a total rampage, tweeting up a shit storm. That will make Tump and the Republicans look even worse.
  4. Draw out the impeachment proceedings as long as possible. In fact, until a day or two before the presidential election in November. That’s right, vote to impeach Trump immediately before the election.

There will not be enough time for the Senate to acquit Trump, so Trump cannot say he has been vindicated. In fact, as part of the impeachment proceedings, the House should have gotten ahold of Trump’s tax returns, and plenty of other incriminating evidence from other places, making both Trump and the Republicans who support him look really bad.

How bad? Bad enough that the Democrats could retake the Senate. And if that happens, then it is even possible that the Republicans go ahead and vote to convict Trump in order to distance themselves from him.

Not only do I think this is a good solution, in fact the best solution, I think it just might be the only solution that can save our country’s democracy.

Related

 If you liked this, you might also like these related posts:
  1. In a Functional Country, We Would Be on the Road to Impeachment
  2. Romney Road Raiment
  3. Make Impeachment Great Again
  4. The Long Road
  5. The Road to Recovery

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In a Functional Country, We Would Be on the Road to Impeachment

April 23, 2019   Humor

This is the title of an opinion piece in the NY Times. It is a good, thoughtful rant, and I don’t disagree with much in it.

Note that it doesn’t say that we should impeach Donald Trump, just that if our country weren’t so screwed up and dysfunctional, we would be impeaching him.

Our country has lost its way. I’m not sure what we can do to bring it back. To Make American Sane Again.

Related

 If you liked this, you might also like these related posts:
  1. Make Impeachment Great Again
  2. Bush in Race against Time to Wreck Country
  3. The Long Road
  4. The Road to Recovery
  5. For Whom The Road Tolls

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Political Irony

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Filling Road Cracks With Tar

November 7, 2018   Humor
 Filling Road Cracks With Tar

Quick!


https://i.imgur.com/lMJF3AA.mp4

“How cracks in the road are filled with tar.”
Image courtesy of https://imgur.com/gallery/lMJF3AA.

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Power BI and SharePoint – the road ahead

July 28, 2018   Self-Service BI
social default image Power BI and SharePoint – the road ahead

SharePoint is an important part of how many organizations organize and distribute BI content to users. In recognition of how important this approach is, we’ve invested in modernizing and creating deeper integrations with SharePoint. Over the last year, we have introduced the Power BI webpart for SharePoint Online and an updated Reporting Services Report Viewer webpart for SharePoint on-premises. Customers like the flexibility this gives them to build highly-customized SharePoint experiences using their BI content.

Yesterday’s announcement and release of the public preview of SharePoint 2019 continues to deliver on the vision we first outlined in our Reporting Services blog by simplifying deployment modes for Reporting Services by removing SharePoint integrated mode, while still allowing integration with SharePoint using the updated web part. This decision was based on the consistent feedback from our users, and by making these changes, we’ll be able to innovate and release integration capabilities faster and more often that best meet the needs of customers now and in the future.

The Path Forward

Now, customers can use Power BI and optionally integrate their Power BI content into SharePoint 2019 and SharePoint Online, using either Power BI or Power BI Report Server. We’re making this experience in Power BI better than ever by:

· Adding support for all major report types across both platforms. In the coming weeks, we’ll have the first public preview of Paginated (RDL) reports in Power BI Premium, giving customers full support for Paginated Reports, Power BI Reports and Excel Workbooks in Power BI.

· Providing easier ways to report on your data in SharePoint. We’ve recently announced new functionality to make easier than ever to start visualizing your Excel tables and CSV files stored in SharePoint Online in Power BI.

Additionally, for Power BI Report Server, we’re adding some new features that already exist in Power BI, but were previously available only through SharePoint integration for on-premises deployments. These include -

· Power Pivot Scheduled Data Refresh. We first added support for Excel Workbooks in Power BI Report Server in October 2017, including the hosting and viewing of Excel Workbooks containing data models. We’ll be expanding this support to include scheduled data refresh of these workbooks.

· Modern Authentication support. Security considerations are a key part of any BI deployment strategy, and many customers used SharePoint to handle claims-based authentication scenarios for their users. We’re adding native support for ADFS/AAD authentication to Power BI Report Server in an upcoming release.

To help with migration scenarios, the team will be offering additional documentation, blog posts and other product capabilities as we move towards the GA of SharePoint 2019. We’ll also continue to fully support the previous versions you’ve deployed throughout their product support lifecycle.

We’re thrilled with the customer feedback we’ve received with the direction we’re headed, and we’re looking forward to hearing from you as we move forward together.

Thanks!

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Auto Industry Execs: Three Road Safety Innovations To Keep An Eye On

June 24, 2018   BI News and Info
 Auto Industry Execs: Three Road Safety Innovations To Keep An Eye On

Each year, more than a million people are killed on roads and highways around the world and millions more are injured. Thankfully there is developing technology that may soon curb these devastating statistics. For leaders in the auto industry, now is a critical time to lean in and observe.

How technology is making roads safer

When technology and driving are mentioned in the same conversation, the connotations are typically negative. Distracted driving is a huge concern in countries all over the world – particularly here at home in the U.S. – and technology is one of the primary culprits.

In 2016 alone, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) reports, distracted driving claimed 3,450 lives and injured another 391,000.

“During daylight hours, approximately 481,000 drivers are using cellphones while driving,” the NHTSA explains. “That creates enormous potential for deaths and injuries on U.S. roads. Teens were the largest age group reported as distracted at the time of fatal crashes.”

But while smartphones and other technology serve as distractions, there’s also reason to be hopeful that new technology could actually make our roadways safer. For organizations in and around the auto industry, these promising developments, gadgets, and trends are worth watching:

1. Speed-detection cameras

Drivers typically view speed-detection cameras as undesirable. Nobody wants to know they’re being watched – especially when it means they could end up with an expensive fine or mark on their driving record. But the reality is that speed detection plays a profoundly positive role in roadway safety.

“When you consider the number of people impacted by even a single road death or serious injury – the family, the friends, the work colleagues – it’s easier to accept the importance of promoting good speed sense and to appreciate the value of the contribution speed cameras make towards protecting us from preventable, unnecessary grief and suffering,” according to AXA Car Insurance.

AXA points to research that suggests reducing the average speed on our roads by just five percent could reduce road fatalities by 20% and injuries by 10%. So, while they may force drivers to slow down, people can rest easy knowing that speed-detection cameras are making local roads and interstates safer for everyone. This also creates an opportunity for auto industry execs to shift the focus away from speed and towards other elements of the driving experience – such as comfort and safety.

2. Intelligent road studs

Highways England is set to install 170 innovative LED road studs at a motorway junction that’s used by more than 90,000 vehicles per day. The studs, which will be installed at Switch Island in Merseyside, North England, will light up when traffic lights turn from red to green, and vice versa. This will enable drivers to see which lanes to follow and when to slow down.

At the junction where the road studs are being installed, there have been 49 serious collisions over the past two years. “The innovative light-up road studs, along with the other improvements we’re introducing, will make it much easier to navigate the junction, benefiting the tens of thousands of drivers who travel through it every day,” says Phil Tyrrell, project manager at Highways England.

Since this is the first project of its kind, it remains to be seen how practical and effective intelligent road studs will be. The best-case scenario is that it will reduce the number of accidents. At the very least, it shows that innovation is moving in the right direction. And if the technology does work, it will signal a major opportunity for companies in the auto industry to innovate similar products stateside.

3. Autonomous car features

You can’t talk about driving technology without mentioning autonomous vehicles. While we’re still a few years away from fully driverless cars, the technology in newer car models is greatly improving. Today’s autonomous features include advanced cruise control, lane departure warnings, automatic parallel parking, and sensors that detect objects and initiate braking.

Adding it all up

Whether it’s New York City, Paris, Tokyo, or anywhere in between, you’ll be hard-pressed to find drivers, insurers, administrators, lawmakers, or healthcare professionals who don’t want safer roads and highways. Crashes and collisions impact us all in one way or another, and fewer accidents would mean fewer injuries, deaths, and catastrophes. But there’s no group of people who want safer roads more than auto industry execs. If roads don’t get safer, jobs are on the line.

The good news is that technology is improving at a rapid rate. We’re finally at a point where we have the technology to make roads safer. But with some hurdles still left to be cleared in implementation and application, time is of the essence. Getting insurance companies, government organizations, and lawmakers to adopt these technologies is another battle that must be painstakingly won.

The hope is that these victories will be won in the coming months.

Learn more about How High-Tech And Automotive Industries Propel The Future.

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