Unveiled at NetSuite’s annual conference for the NetSuite community, SuiteWorld 2021, the tool is aimed to help organizations improve forecasting and make more strategic cash decisions. It will provide greater automation for accounts payable and help companies get paid faster.

NetSuite is partnering with HSBC, one of the world’s largest financial institutions, to roll out SuiteBanking. This partnership will offer customers a range of capabilities such as a global digital wallet and virtual payment card. While HSBC is the first SuiteBanking partner, NetSuite plans to add others in the future.

No date has been given as to when this implementation will happen.

Read also: When You Should Upgrade to an ERP Software

Fintech & Cloud ERP: A suitable match?

Why is SuiteBanking newsworthy? It’s the first of its kind.

NetSuite is the first cloud ERP system to integrate fintech into a unified suite. At the moment, there is no other ERP system that offers a natively-integrated banking solution. So if you thought an ERP tool already did it all, consider this another tool in its toolbox.

By providing banking capabilities within the ERP, the need to collect and distribute data from other departments and systems is eliminated, breaking down data silos and giving accounting teams a single source of truth instead of multiple.

In a company-issued press release, Oracle NetSuite founder and EVP Evan Goldberg said, “SuiteBanking is the first step in bringing the worlds of ERP and fintech together. It will help our customers automate all of these processes in one single suite and increase visibility and control so they can maintain healthy cash flow as they grow.

“Growing organizations cannot afford to have teams of people entering data, dealing with banks, monitoring transactions from multiple systems, and manually processing vendor payments. The time saved from automating these processes could be spent on strategic projects that help drive further growth for the organization.”

A few notable features SuiteBanking brings to the ERP tool include:

• Automated invoice scanning and general ledger code assignment.
• Improved cash flow visibility through insight into status of inbound and outbound payments.
• Budget validation capabilities to avoid overspending by automatically comparing open purchase requests to available budgets.
• Vendor payment directly through NetSuite via SuiteBanking virtual payment card.

Banking-as-a-Service expansion

In the same vein as NetSuite, HSBC is making waves in the Banking-as-a-Service space with this offering. BaaS is an end-to-end model that allows digital banks and other third parties to connect with banks’ systems directly via APIs. It hasn’t been around all too long, but HSBC is getting out ahead with this Netsuite integration.

Barry O’Byrne, CEO of Global Commercial Banking at HSBC said in a Business Wire press release concerning the partnership with NetSuite, “By combining new technologies with our global reach and deep transaction banking solutions expertise, we will be able to partner with our clients to offer business banking propositions to their customers — integrated into their platforms and with the backing of HSBC’s technology and international network.”

So while NetSuite may be HSBC’s first partner, it won’t be its last — with the same being true for NetSuite. Both sides of the coin recognize the value in integrating BaaS with an ERP tool, and it’s only a matter of time before other ERP tools begin to offer the same.

Maybe you want fintech or other advanced capabilities in your next ERP tool, or maybe you’re overwhelmed with its current capabilities. Regardless, if you’re in the market for an ERP tool, we can help you choose which one. Use our ERP Software Product Selection Tool, and we’ll send you a list of recommendations that are tailored to your needs. 

The post NetSuite Introduces Fintech into Cloud ERP appeared first on TechnologyAdvice.

Quick summary:

• Trello is a popular project management tool that uses agile methodology boards to keep you organized.
• If you need more functionality and insight from your project management tool, you might also consider Asana, Basecamp, Wrike, and Monday.com (click to jump).

People use Trello for everything from agile software development to managing content calendars to planning weddings. Trello is fantastic for straightforward, ongoing projects, but for larger, more complex projects, it can be difficult and frustrating to use.

But the project management software market is bursting at the seams with great tools, so why tie yourself to Trello if your needs have evolved? This article examines four Trello alternatives that offer more powerful and nuanced features for a comparable price.

If you’re short on time, click the banner below or complete the form on our project management software page. We’ll take about five minutes to learn more about your business’s specific needs and then send you a short list of the best tools for you. For a closer look at four powerful project management tools, read on.

Asana

If you’re fond of the Kanban-style boards found in Trello, you won’t sacrifice anything by switching to Asana. Depending on the plan you choose, you can also view projects in a list and calendar view, see progress on multiple projects at once with the Portfolios feature, make tasks dependent on others, add custom fields, and more. With pricing comparable to Trello, Asana is a great choice if you need more visibility across multiple different projects.

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Basecamp

Don’t let the higher price tag scare you — Basecamp offers many of the same features you’ll find in Trello and Asana in addition to other features found in Slack, Google Drive, and Dropbox. Instead of switching between Boards as you do in Trello, Basecamp lets you organize projects, documents, and chat rooms into Camps. You can also send team members automated pulse checks to reduce time spent in weekly meetings. Considering Basecamp’s functionality, its flat pricing model is attractive compared to paying by the user for multiple different tools that don’t offer as many features.

Also read: Don’t Choose Between Basecamp vs. Slack — Use Both

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monday.com

Trello and monday.com both offer a similar dashboard that provides a high-level overview of workloads for both internal and external stakeholders. Where Trello and monday.com differ is in the customizable capabilities of the dashboards. monday.com has flexibility in choosing features that fit a specific project’s needs whereas Trello does not. monday.com is a great alternative if you like the features Trello offers but want more freedom in customizing your dashboard.

Also read: Wrike vs. Asana: Which Should You Choose?

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Wrike

Wrike is the one of the market leaders when it comes to project management software. As with any project management tool, features vary depending on which plan you select, but every plan lets you view tasks in Kanban boards, manage tasks, share and store files, and view projects as spreadsheets. With some of the more feature-rich plans, you can also view projects as Gantt charts, connect to Salesforce, create and share dashboards, and increase security with features like two-factor authentication and password policies.

Also read: How Using Jira For Project Management Can Make Any Team More Productive

Microsoft Planner

Microsoft Planner also uses Kanban boards as its main task management feature but includes other views for scheduling and chart reporting. Planner is included in the Office 365 suite, so teams that use Microsoft tools such as Excel, Teams, and Word will find Planner the best option for easy and quick integration. Like Trello, users can create tasks that contain content-rich details such as due dates, color-coded labels, and files. Where Planner differs is in the ability to use these tasks to create visual pie and bar charts without manual set up.

You may be thinking that Microsoft has many PM tools — and you’d be right. Microsoft offers Project, Planner, and To Do. How do you know which to use and when for your projects? Here’s a quick guide:

• For personal task management and solo projects, use To Do.
• A simpler team projects, use Planner.
• For more complex projects that require dependency and cost tracking, use Project.

Smartsheet

Smartsheet provides a flexible tool for planning projects, capturing information, managing work, and automating processes. It offers multiple views of projects that users can switch between including grid, card, Gantt, or calendar view. Teams can add custom fields, images, and color coding to cards, and cards and lanes are filterable to view workflows from different perspectives. Alerts and reminders keeps projects on track, and colleagues, vendors, and clients without sheet access can review content proofs. Smartsheet offers integrations with a great deal of apps to enable real-time synchronization and visibility. This allows your team and external stakeholders to view up-to-date information across all your systems without having to switch apps.

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Take the pain out of finding the right project management tool for you. Talk to a Technology Advisor today!

Finding the right project management tool is a project in and of itself. We can’t make the choice for you, but we can surely make it a lot easier. Fill out the form on our project management software page or contact us today for a free, five-minute consultation. Our Technology Advisors will send you a shortlist of the best project management tools for your specific needs.

The post Affordable Trello Alternatives To Take Your Project Management Game To The Next Level appeared first on TechnologyAdvice.

8080 Labs is the creator behind bamboolib, a UI-based data exploration and transformation tool. Bamboolib facilitates no-code workflows that synchronize with the Python ecosystem. Data scientists are able to quickly and easily explore their data and transform it without having to write or interpret code.

These UI-driven features will be integrated into Databricks’ Lakehouse Platform to expand its own low-code/no-code capabilities. This will lower the barrier of entry to understanding and gaining insights from data science, allowing a broader audience to access Lakehouse and promote the normalization of data and AI within a business.

Featured no-code use cases Databricks’ now offers through bamboolib include data preparation, data transformation, data visualization, and data exploration.

The acquisition of 8080 Labs comes off the heels of Databricks’ acquisition of Israeli open-source data visualization tool Redash in June 2020. Redash is a tool designed to gather data from multiple sources to develop charts, dashboards and visualizations of the data. It’s created to be accessible to anyone regardless of IT skill, making the June acquisition the first step in democratizing data for Databricks users.

Ali Ghodsi, Co-Founder and CEO of Databricks said in a press release, “Together with last year’s acquisition of Redash, we are broadening the focus of our user base to a wider audience that prefers low-code/no-code solutions. Bringing simple capabilities to Databricks is a critical step in empowering more people within an organization to easily analyze and explore large sets of data, regardless of expertise.”

Read also: Quick Base Alternatives: 5 Of The Best No-Code App Builders

The rise in no code/low code development

Of course, Databricks is not the first of its kind to see the goldmine that lies in no-code development. Its own tech-giant investors such as Google and Amazon are making moves to offer tools that don’t require coding.

• Google acquired AppSheet in January 2020, allowing companies to build mobile apps without writing a single line of code.
• Amazon introduced Honeycode in June 2020, a no-code custom app builder.
• Microsoft (not a Databricks investor) offers Power Apps, a low-code development platform that is seeing incredible growth.

And while the enterprise is certainly targeted for these tools, it’s not big-business exclusive. TechRepublic conducted a low-code, no-code survey across a range of disciplines, company sizes, industry verticals, and job functions and found that 47 percent use low-code, no-code tools in their organization. Of the 35 percent who are not currently using a low-code tool, one in five (20 percent) said they intend to adopt the technology in the next 12 months.

Nobody is surprised by this — this technology enables organizations of any size to overcome developer shortages and make use of intelligent automation no matter the resources it may have available.

Databricks is not the first and won’t be the last to invest time and money into the development of no-code tools, but these strategic acquisitions are ensuring they’ll be a leader in providing access to data and AI insights no matter a user’s IT background.

If you’re looking for a no-code/low-code app development tool, use our Product Selection Tool for App Development. We’ll provide you with a list of software recommendations tailored to your needs.

Read next: 9 GitHub Alternatives for Source Code and Version Control

The post Databricks Acquires 8080 Labs: The Rise of No-Code appeared first on TechnologyAdvice.

Brave Talk is out of beta after a 14-month testing period where more than 14,000 daily users interacted with the tool. The feature is built directly into the Brave browser, allowing users to initiate a call by clicking an icon within the window or going to talk.brave.com.

Previously known as Brave Together while in beta, Brave Talk users can enable multiple layers of encryption on calls, meaning eavesdroppers can’t listen in. It also doesn’t save metadata, so calls, images, and activities can’t be shared without user consent.

Brendan Eich, co-founder and CEO of Brave, details the need for a privacy-first video conferencing option in a press release. “Big tech has a firm grip on the market as it exists today, and Brave is determined to offer users an alternative that challenges the giants and puts the power back in the hands of the user. With over 36 million monthly active users on our browser, we are reshaping the industry with our privacy-by-default ecosystem.”

Brave Talk is available in both free and premium versions. Free users get unlimited call times but can only have one-to-one calls. Also included is video groupwatch and YouTube live streaming. The premium version offers group calls, call recording, and hosting tools like participant muting and entry passcodes. It’s worth noting Android and iOS users only have the premium app available right now, but the free version will be rolling out in the next few weeks.

Read also: The Best Zoom Alternatives for Your Business

How private is Brave Talk?

The underlying technology that powers Brave Talk is the Jitsi as a Service open source video meeting platform from 8×8. Jitsi relies on WebRTC open source technology to enable developers to embed HD video directly into the browser. Many of the privacy features available in Brave Talk are also included in Jitsi Meet, a free, open source video conferencing solution.

Brave Talk’s cornerstone is privacy, and for many internet users, it’s quickly becoming their cornerstone, too. About 74 percent of internet users in the US are more concerned with their online privacy than ever before. Brave Talk maintains that its non-tracking credentials separates itself from competitors, directly calling out competitor Zoom and its monitoring and potential selling of consumer data without consent.

But is it really that much more private?

Yes. There are no extra apps or extensions needed to use the tool. Since extensions are given special authorization and permissions within the browser, they’re attractive targets for attackers. Most extensions can be updated automatically, meaning that even a legit extension could be hijacked and updated on your device without you ever finding out.

Another plus with Brave Talk is that the default setting blocks trackers. Brave states that users can enable increasing layers of encryption in the settings, with the current strongest level available in both free and premium versions as “Video Bridge Encryption.”

If this is the first time you’ve heard that term, you’re not alone. Eich says video bridge encryption “ensures that video and audio streams are encrypted using keys generated by the participants, which prevents eavesdropping on the Video Bridge Server.” He says Brave Talk’s anonymous credential system guarantees that the company doesn’t know who users are and who they’re talking to.

Of course, end-to-end encryption is the gold standard when talking about customer data, and Brave Talk doesn’t offer that yet. The company is working with 8×8 to eventually roll that out, but there’s been no official timeline given.

Compare this with Zoom, who introduced actual end-to-end encryption in November 2020 after getting into hot water about falsely claiming to offer it before that time. While Brave Talk doesn’t offer that level of encryption yet, there hasn’t been violation of user trust like there has been with Zoom — especially after the Federal Trade Commission announced that Zoom “misled users” and “engaged in a series of deceptive and unfair practices” regarding its own security.

So for those who really value their privacy, Brave Talk seems like a good choice. Its base package is free to use, there haven’t been issues with consumer trust, and for those already using the Brave browser, it’s easy to set up.

If you’re looking for more options to consider for video conferencing software, check out our Video Conferencing Product Selection Tool. We’ll send you a list of recommendations that are tailored to your needs. 

The post Brave Brings New Privacy-Focused Video Conferencing Tool out of Beta appeared first on TechnologyAdvice.

This union of cloud-based software solutions gives healthcare providers the ability to draw actionable insights straight from the electronic health records, leading to better patient outcomes through technology and data-augmented care.

dashboardMD’s President and CEO Jose Valero will assume a new role as Director of Analytics, and Azalea’s Co-Founder and CEO Baha Zeidan will remain CEO. The teams from both companies will be merged once the deal closes.

Zeidan said in a press release, “Incorporating dashboardMD’s unrivaled analytics capabilities in our clinician-friendly EHR and bringing Jose in to lead Azalea’s data analytics practice will empower providers to better manage clinical quality measures and have enhanced visibility into their revenue.” He goes on to say that the joint effort will “supercharge the healthcare analytics space and help the medical field take a giant step forward.”

Also read: Choosing An EHR: A Comparison Of The Best Electronic Health Records Software

Azalea delivers electronic health records, revenue cycle management, data insights, and telehealth solutions designed for community and rural practices. The tool also provides resources to help clinicians meet their Meaningful Use requirements. With the dashboardMD acquisition, the solution will also offer clinical and financial analytics along with BI reporting for provider organizations. This reporting includes daily interactive dashboards, scheduled reports via email, performance scorecards, predictive analytics, and ad-hoc analysis tools.

EHR systems improve alongside healthcare analytics market boom

This acquisition is likely the catalyst for a wave of analytics-driven EHR solutions. Right now, the healthcare analytics market is $21.2 billion. By 2026, that number is projected to reach $75.1 billion, with COVID only causing the importance of big data in the health industry to expand.

In the past, EHR and EMR tools weren’t designed for data mining or integration. Most systems weren’t able to integrate medical datasets from other sources, and if they were, employees with the skills and time to do so were very limited. To make matters worse, poorly designed, time-consuming user interfaces were a common complaint among doctors and nurses. No one wanted to spend more time dealing with an EHR than they had to.

And while some EHR and EMR tools still don’t support the ability to access the data mine stored in unstructured files, many of these tools are evolving to provide reporting and analysis capabilities, along with better user interfaces. Here’s a few uses a clinician can leverage with a data-centric EHR tool:

• Medical data history makes diagnosing and treating more accurate and efficient.
• Disparate data sets can be combined to strengthen financial planning.
• Tracking the flow of patient visits reveals where improvements can occur.
• Your organization’s performance is clear — meaning comparison to peers and national standards is possible.

The amount of health data will only continue to increase as organizations move to aggregate all of their information into one platform. As the healthcare sector is one of the most data-heavy industries, and the use of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) is on the rise, there’s a lot of room for opportunity and value. But with opportunity comes great responsibility.

Bias problems with advances in the healthcare industry

Chris Bergh, CEO of DataKitchen, Inc., a DataOps consultancy and platform provider that manages analytics creation and operations for healthcare organizations, warns of the dangers that AI and ML pose in the healthcare industry.

“One common problem is that biased data is used to train and develop ML algorithms. The AI model then goes on to perpetuate bias on a grand scale – you might call it institutionalized bias. In one well known example, UnitedHealth Group’s Optum division developed an algorithm that predicted severity of illness based on past spending data. However, spending on patients reflects existing institutionalized racial bias.”

Bergh goes on, “Since less money is spent historically on black patients than white patients, with the same level of need, the algorithm underestimated the level of need of black patients by 17 percent to 46 percent. If an algorithm like that were deployed across a healthcare provider’s customer base, it could have imposed unfair constraints on healthcare spending on black patients.”

This is not to say that AI and ML should be avoided, but rather used with caution while bearing in mind the consequences of AI bias.

Azalea and dashboardMD aren’t yet in the conversation about AI, but this step in data analytics is one that moves the healthcare industry another rung higher on the technology ladder.

These companies are making smart moves that not only benefit them from a business standpoint, but also benefit doctors and patients who wouldn’t have been able to afford a heavy-hitting, on-premise analytics solution.

The post Azalea Health Acquires dashboardMD for Improved Analytics appeared first on TechnologyAdvice.

According to a report published at the end of August by UpGuard, an information security company that discovered the leak, 47 entities fell victim to a default configuration in Microsoft Power Apps that made their data sets findable by search engine or anyone with knowledge of the web address.

The data leak affected large entities such as American Airlines, Ford, and governmental bodies such as New York City, Maryland, and Indiana. Discovered in May, it divulged COVID-19 contact tracing efforts, vaccine registrations, and employee ID information such as home addresses and social security numbers.

Power Apps is a low-code development platform for creating business intelligence tools, making it easy for users to create their own web and mobile apps. UpGuard reported that while the Power App portal’s default settings secured data organized into tables, data sets that were organized as lists were left unprotected. In order to keep that information private, it had to be manually configured.

After UpGuard reported the configuration issue to Microsoft on June 24, the leaks were plugged and the ability to access the information was removed. There’s no indication as of yet that any of the exposed data has been compromised.

Also read: Data Governance Can Ease PII Regulation Compliance

Is Microsoft to blame for the leak?

This breach is just the latest example of how easily sensitive data can be exposed when it’s unclear how the complex software environment is designed. And of course, it’s also a shining example of the importance of double and triple checking that every potential cybersecurity hole is plugged.

Per UpGuard’s report:

The number of accounts exposing sensitive information…indicates that the risk of this feature…has not been adequately appreciated. On one hand, the product documentation accurately describes what happens if an app is configured in this way. On the other hand, empirical evidence suggests a warning in the technical documentation is not sufficient to avoid the serious consequences of misconfiguring OData list feeds for Power Apps portals.

Below is a screenshot of Microsoft’s Power Apps Portal’s documentation warning.

So yes, Microsoft did do its part in warning users

of the consequences, but the complex nature of the tool led to organizations either ignoring or not fully understanding the issue. When UpGuard first notified Microsoft of the issue, the tech giant contended that the “behavior is considered to be by design.”

Once news of the breach broke, Microsoft released a statement to Engadgetsaying, “Our products provide customers flexibility and privacy features to design scalable solutions that meet a wide variety of needs. We take security and privacy seriously, and we encourage our customers to use best practices when configuring products in ways that best meet their privacy needs.“

After Microsoft formally closed the case in late June, UpGuard (you read that right — not Microsoft) began notifying affected organizations, and many plugged the leak within days.

On August 22, Microsoft changed the default settings so that organizations using Power Apps’s basic templates and design tools will have the privacy setting enabled automatically.

This incident goes to show that no matter how small the issue may seem, developers should make sure to check their settings and heed warnings, especially when using an API they haven’t created themselves. 

The post Microsoft Data Leak Exposes 38 Million Records appeared first on TechnologyAdvice.

If you remember, OpenAI used an earlier version of Codex to build GitHub Copilot, an AI pair programmer that lives inside the Microsoft Visual Studio (VS) Code editor and autocompletes code snippets. Copilot was announced only a couple months ago, but Codex has evolved from completing code to creating it.

Codex is a descendant of OpenAI’s text generating model GPT-3, which was released last summer. GPT-3 was trained on a huge quantity of language data taken from the internet, meaning it can read and then complete text prompts submitted by a human user.

Codex has much of the natural language understanding of GPT-3 but with the addition of being trained on billions of lines of publicly available computer code. Although Codex is initially being released as a free API, OpenAI will start charging for access at some point in the future.

Read also: The Impact of AI on Cybersecurity: A Q&A with Deep Instinct

How does OpenAI Codex work?

The software can be used to build simple websites and basic games. Users type English commands into the software such as, “add this image to the webpage in the upper right corner. Make the image smaller and circular,” and Codex translates it into code.

Codex creates this code through its training on all the public code available within GitHub and other databases and it’s own knowledge (several kilobytes’ worth) of coding context. It can also create code for the generalities embedded in the code. How would the tool know what a helicopter is? Even if the user didn’t define it, it can guess at what the object is from other uses and context.

The API requires thought and some trial and error to use. It won’t turn non-coders into expert programmers, although it’s certainly a step in the right direction. It takes some patience to operate, but for those who are already programmers, it removes the drudge work, making coding faster and more accessible.

Problems within the tool and community

Of course, just like with GitHub Copilot, the tool isn’t perfect. A recent paper published by OpenAI discusses the possibility that Codex might have significant limitations, including biases and sample inefficiencies.

Like other large language models, Codex generates responses as close as possible to its training data, a process that can look good on inspection but in reality produce something undesirable. The researchers at OpenAI state:

When we probed using the prompt def race(x):, we found that many of the most commonly-generated completions assumed a small number of mutually exclusive race categories. Most synthesized completions included “White” and many included only a few other categories, followed by “other.” Several synthesized generations included only 3 categories: “white,” “black,” or “none.”

OpenAI asserted in the paper that risks can be mitigated with “careful documentation and user interface design, code review requirements, and/or content controls.” It’s your usual case of don’t take your hands off the robot steering wheel just yet.

The other issue stems from coders raising that OpenAI is profiting unfairly from others’ publicly available work. For example, GitHub Copilot’s knowledge base is mainly made up of code written by others and ultimately completes code via its library of open-source work originally created to benefit individuals. The same can be said of Codex, but OpenAI says this data is legally protected under fair use.

Is no-code the future?

While it’s unlikely that no-code will ever completely replace coding and traditional app development, tools such as Codex lower the barrier to entry by making the process easier and more accessible.

Developers will always be in demand, but anyone with a good idea can use a low-to-no-code tool to execute it on their own. More ideas can flow, leading to more innovation. 

All images are via OpenAI

The post OpenAI’s Codex Turns Natural Language to Computer Code appeared first on TechnologyAdvice.

The announcement follows a pilot starting in 2017 that brought the robotic technology system to a distribution center in Brooksville, Florida. There, freight was sorted, stored, retrieved, and packed using automation — further optimizing the system itself and the supply chain.

“This is a game changer,” said Joe Metzger, Executive Vice President of Supply Chain Operations at Walmart U.S. in a blog post. “This move will fundamentally alter how products get to stores.”

In pre-robot times, products arrive at one of Walmart’s RDCs and are moved or stored manually. When the products are ready to go to a store, they’re manually packed Tetris-style into a trailer for transit. Once it arrives at a store, associates manually unload the trailer and get the items where they need to be.

Symbotic facilitates a different method.

“This system uses a complex algorithm to store cases like puzzle pieces using high-speed mobile bots — operating with a precision that speeds the intake process and increases the accuracy of freight being stored for future orders,” said Metzger.

“By using dense modular storage, it also expands building capacity. And by using high-speed palletizing robotics to organize and optimize freight, it creates custom store- and aisle-ready pallets, which take the guesswork out of unloading trucks.”

While this all sounds great — a little red flag may go up in your head. Does this reduce Walmart supply chain jobs? Are the manual labor workers let go? According to Walmart, no.

“Along with saving time, limiting out-of-stocks and increasing the speed of stocking and unloading, we’ll also have the chance to train associates on how to use the new equipment, creating new skills and preparing them for jobs in the future,” Metzger said. Jobs are also created in IT and in servicing and maintaining the robots.

Read also: Creating an Omnichannel Supply Chain: A Macy’s Case Study

Walmart’s push for expediting processes

This isn’t Walmart’s first go-round with robots. In November of 2020 Walmart decided to end its five-year experiment with Bossa Nova Robotics, a company that provided robotic shelf scanning and inventory operations. After announcing in early 2020 they were going to expand the rollout of Bossa Nova systems, they essentially took it back, stating that humans can do just as good a job as robots performing inventory checks.

The partnership with Symbotic will most definitely increase speed and efficiency within Walmart’s supply chain, but it will also help with something else important: staying in competition with Amazon.

Amazon has been using robotics in its fulfillment centers since its 2012 acquisition of Kiva Systems and cites that it’s able to store 40 percent more inventory because of it. While Walmart is just now hopping on the robotics train, it’s better late than never.

Most Walmart customers will probably never see inside its warehouses, but they’ll certainly feel the effects this industry-leading change will incur.

If you’re looking for the right supply chain management tool for your business, use our Supply Chain Management Product Selection Tool. We’ll send you a shortlist of recommendations that are tailored to your needs.

The post Walmart Partners with Symbotic to Bring Robots to Distribution Centers appeared first on TechnologyAdvice.

Through this integration, customers can pick their preferred appointment time for a service. Once chosen, Locus will allocate the appointment to the best field service technician based on skill set and tools. Each technician is also provided the most efficient street-level routing plan.

But these new capabilities doesn’t mean the leadership team is without power. Managers will have total visibility into tasks being executed on the field. The system also collects valuable data to facilitate continual improvement and corrective actions.

Krishna Khandelwal, Chief Business Officer of Locus said, “Ensuring high-quality service every single day is no simple task. From on-demand requests to dynamic rescheduling or cancellation of tasks, dispatch managers have to handle it all on any given day. This integration will make their lives easier by coming up with static journey plans, and it can also easily handle on-demand requests and other dynamic modifications on the go.”

There’s other benefits beyond scheduling and routing, too. “Customers can thus increase field workforce utilization, reduce costs, and improve efficiency. To top it all, companies can now use analytics to strategize better, overcome bottlenecks, and take corrective action,” Khandelwal said.

Read also: 3 Ways to Use Current Data to Improve Field Service Outcomes

Supply chain and field service working together

While field service and supply chain may seem like two disparate industries, their relationship and ability to work together comes organically, as explained by Locus CEO Nishith Rastogi.

“It was actually a very natural request from our customers,” he said. “… Instead of reinventing the wheel, we partnered with someone who is a leading player in that domain. Now we have a great product for managing the ticketing requests and a great product for optimizing the movement of those goods.”

The fusion of Locus and ServiceNow Field Service Management provides an end-to-end solution for customers and a way to stand out from the competition. And it couldn’t come at a better time. Digital workflows and automation are rapidly becoming the norm, as AI and IoT boom within the field service industry.

“Digital workflows continue to transform field service, helping ensure that the right technicians are sent to the right jobs to solve issues quickly, while improving the customer experience and helping companies manage increasingly complex field service teams,” said ServiceNow Director of Product Management Nikki Narang.

With digital transformation ramping up within countless industries, this is a smart move on ServiceNow’s part. Gartner’s latest forecast shows worldwide IT spending is projected to total $4.2 trillion in 2021, an increase of 8.6 percent from 2020. CEOs are much more willing to invest in technology that has a clear tie to business outcomes than in the past.

Locus and ServiceNow are doing their part to adapt and prepare for digital disruption, and it will likely pay dividends in not only revenue but customer satisfaction. 

The post Better Together: Locus Optimizes FSM with ServiceNow appeared first on TechnologyAdvice.

Transparency Market Research estimates the global video conferencing market will grow from $6.1 billion in 2019 to almost double to $11.56 billion by the end of 2027. As more businesses make the switch — at least temporarily — to primarily using video conferencing as their source of communication, the need for the proper etiquette is imminent.

Interested in finding a video conferencing software solution but unsure where to start? Use our Web Conferencing Product Selection Tool to get a free short list of recommendations tailored to your needs to narrow down your search.

1. Make conferencing more personal

Have you noticed eye contact is basically nonexistent when everyone is looking at their screens and not the webcam? Of course, you’re looking at your colleagues’ video feed, but it doesn’t negate the fact that it feels a bit impersonal. A pro tip from TechnologyAdvice’s CEO, Rob Bellenfant, is to move the video window near your device’s webcam. This way, looking at others’ video feed mimics making eye contact, making the meeting more personal.

2. For the love of all that is good, mute yourself

Don’t be the person who interrupts the presentation by trying to quiet your barking dog. While there is no hard-and-fast rule about this, if you’re in a meeting with more than one person, it’s a good idea to mute your device’s microphone in order to eliminate distracting background noises. Some video conferencing software tools, such as Zoom or Blue Jeans, feature the ability to hold down the spacebar to temporarily unmute yourself to make an insightful comment or ask a question when necessary.

3. Consider changing or blurring your background

Similar to muting your microphone, adding a background — or blurring it entirely — can help eliminate distractions. Zoom allows you to change your virtual background to an image or video you create. Skype and Microsoft Teams allow you to blur your background completely.

Although it’s tempting, avoid setting your virtual background to something even more distracting than your real-life background, such as a fire-breathing dragon.

4. Use the chat function

With video conferencing, you get awkward pauses after more than one person tries to talk at a time. Avoid this problem by using the chat function. Most video conferencing software offers a messaging feature that allows for public and private chat boards during meetings. The beauty of this feature is questions can be asked and comments can be made while not interfering with the flow of the meeting. Reminded of something that you need to tell your manager? Send her a private message during the meeting so it doesn’t slip your mind.

5. Identify yourself

When in a large meeting of 10+ people, it can be difficult to establish who’s talking, especially in a fast-paced idea swap or question and answer session. It helps to state your name before you speak. This way, other participants aren’t stuck searching for the speaker among all the video feeds. In addition, it becomes clear whose ideas are whose, eliminating the chance you won’t get credit for your contributions.

6. Dress for your audience

We’ve all seen the funny clip of the guy sporting a button up and boxers because the webcam only captures from the waist up. While we can’t force you to wear pants, it’s not a bad idea to take the extra precaution. The background blur feature won’t blur it all out if you have to stand up. In the same regard, we suggest wearing something a bit nicer than an ordinary t-shirt for video calls. Taking the extra step to put on a button up or nice sweater can make a difference not only in others’ perception of you in video chats, but also in your work productivity, too.

7. It’s all about the lighting

No, this doesn’t just pertain to selfies. Seeing everyone’s face clearly in video conferences mimics the connections of meetings in real life, giving everyone a sense of normalcy. To do this, make sure you’re not sitting directly with your back to a light source, such as a window. If you can, try to position yourself facing a window, as natural light is preferable. Lamps can also be used to brighten up your webcam appearance.

While this list will certainly transform you into a respectable video conferencer, it isn’t exhaustive. Other good meetings best practices and video conferencing etiquette, such as having an agenda, being on time, and being firm on start and end times are equally important.

If you’re looking for video conferencing software to use this etiquette, use our Web Conferencing Product Selection Tool. It takes less than 5 minutes, and you’ll get up to 5 free recommendations from our Technology Advisors that match your needs.

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