By Michael Arndt
Believe it or not, self-service technology has been around since the 1800's. The first technology that was considered to be self-service is the vending machine. The first vending machines were introduced in London, only dispensing postcards, envelopes, and paper. A little over 50 years later, the United States introduced them into train platforms where they sold chewing gum. Throughout the next 50 years, vending machines evolved to selling all sorts of items like food, drinks, and a variety of household supplies.
The next big step in this evolution was in 1964. This is when the self-serve gas station first began. Almost 30 years later, the first self checkout was created for grocery stores. It didn't become heavily popular until the early 2000's, but this technology is so prevalent in our lives today. Almost every single grocery store you go to will have a few self checkout kiosks. It has been so successful within stores, that it has even spread to other industries. Self-service kiosks have become extremely popular in the travel industry as of recent. Almost all major airlines have a self-service section full of kiosks where customers can check their bags, change their seats, and print their tickets. Even some rental car companies at airports will have kiosks where you can reserve a car yourself. This technology allows customers to work at their own convenience. It also allows employees to utilize their time and help the customers who really need it. That way the length of lines will decrease as well as wait times. Demand for these kiosks and this technology will only increase as convenience plays a bigger part in consumers' every day life.
Another huge breakthrough has been the internet. In 1995, Amazon and eBay kicked off this whole era of self-service technology on the internet. Amazon started as a website where you could buy books and eBay was a place for people to buy and sell goods, all while enjoying the convenience of staying in their own home and working on their time. The internet has obviously grown the self-service industry immensely since then and new ideas keep popping up everyday. This technology saves companies a ton of money as well. It is assumed that the average cost of an internet interaction with a customer costs about $1.15, and in person would cost about $6-$12 per interaction. Not only is this technology great for consumer convenience, but also for business costs.
Self-service technology will only continue to grow. An example of the future is Amazon opening up a grocery store that has no cashier. It is the beginning of frictionless service.
Discussion Questions:
What do you think self-service technology will go from here? What is the next technology?
What industry do you think will be most effected by self-service technology in the next 20 years?
Sources:
https://advancedkiosks.com/the-evolution-of-self-service-technology/
https://www.destinationcrm.com/Articles/ReadArticle.aspx?ArticleID=43354
https://www.qikserve.com/self-service-tech-a-history/
Monday, April 15, 2019
Sunday, April 14, 2019
Blockchain in the Finance Industry
Blockchain technology is a popular topic that is widely discussed. In short, blockchain is a technology that allows for a decentralized record keeping, you can learn more about how it works here. Many associate blockchain with cryptocurrencies, but in fact the technology has many more use cases. In this blog post I will look into possible use cases within the financial industry, looking both at what currently is possible and what might be possible in the future.
One function that blockchain technology can help improve is international money transfers. If you have ever tried to transfer money across borders, you know that this process can take multiple days. JPMorgan Chase is trying to make this process more efficient with a project called Interbank Information Network (IIN). According to the article, the transfer would happen instantly with this technology. The article also notes that even though IIN has some benefits, it is not expected that it will save anyone any money and it cannot handle more than 300,000 transactions per day.
In the future, blockchain can potentially be used to make process of exchanging assets and payments more efficient after a trade is made. According to an article by Goldman this can be done using a smart contract. The smart contract “can connect to multiple blockchains, tracking multiple assets, so it can swap those asses as needed to execute the transaction”. If two people want to trade with each other, the smart contract verifies that one person has the stock and the other person has the payment, and if everything is ok, then the transaction happens without an intermediary.
Blockchain has the potential to improve the finance industry, but how and when is hard to tell. So far, the time and money spent to find use cases for the technology has not resulted in anything revolutionary.
- Do you believe that blockchain has the potential to improve the finance industry, or is it more a hype?
- Do you believe it is more likely that some blockchain technologies will be incorporated into the system that we have today, or do you believe it will fully revolutionize how transactions are being made?
- Much of the hype around blockchain has been that it could decrease costs, but as with the IIN example above, this is not always the case. As billions of dollars are being spent on experimenting with blockchain, do you believe this will pay off?
Sources:
How Data is driving Business Decisions?
How Data is Driving Business Decisions?
Technology is quickly changing the world as innovations are changing the ways businesses function and think in order to keep a competitive advantage in a rapidly changing environment around them. The world of data is quickly becoming one of the hottest trends in the business world as many companies are starting to invest heavily in the field as it is becoming a pillar of success for themselves. Companies nowadays are using data to find new trends in the market and their business, composition, figure out the way their customers are interacting with their company, and other useful information that helps them make more informed B2B decisions.
A company who is interested in investing in data analytics teams needs to consider several factors when deciding whether or not it is worth their time and money. Before investing companies need to recognize that the information they're using has the ability to be put to good use to help the company, they can use the information to track the usage of the website by monitoring the traffic of their customers; this will give them the opportunity to better cater to the needs of their customers. A company can use this information better market their company and the products/services that they're offering. This is extremely useful for e-commerce companies as it will help boost their efforts by allowing them to analyze information, even if the individual is not the most tech savvy. Companies can also feed this information to their sales and product development teams to help change the strategy of the organization based upon the needs and wants of their customers.
When managers start to use analytics in their day-to-day work life, the position themselves at an advantage as they can make better decisions by better managing risk, improve efficiency in their operations, and help increase profits for their organizations. Business models for many organizations are changing as analytics becomes more mainstream as companies are being exposed to information they never previously had available to themselves. The way they used to make decisions is a thing of the past as they're able to use analytics to make quick fact-based decisions. Research has shown that companies who invest in analytics teams are significantly more successful than the ones who do not. The are many forms of analytics that companies can use to give themselves a competitive advantage these include descriptive statistics, predictive statistics, prescriptive statistics to name a few.
Companies can also for deficiencies in their current operations and business model by using analytics. They look for changing trends and abnormally then once they identify the issue they can strategically think of a way to confront the topic at hand in the operations or business model as a whole. In the volatile world that we live managers of companies are always looking for ways to give their organization a competitive advantage to help drive better levels of success for their organizations and the changing business models that make them up. Analytics provide them with the ability to find trends in their organization based upon facts to help better make decisions to increase profits.
Questions:
1. In what ways do you think in your future job you could use analytics to help you make better decisions?
2. Do you think using data has given managers more or less power when it comes to making decisions as fact based stats can be difficult to argue with. Why?
3. Could you see in the future positions that are heavily analytical becoming automated by computers, making the field less demanding for humans?
Sources:
How does Data Analytics Help Drive Better Business Decisions?
https://socialnomics.net/2018/05/01/how-data-analytics-helps-to-drive-better-business-decisions/
Using Analytics for Better Decision-Making
https://towardsdatascience.com/using-analytics-for-better-decision-making-ce4f92c4a025
The Future of News?
By Ashley Kirkland
As young adults interested in technology, we are always looking forward to the next big thing coming to the market. We wait for products that will provide us with an interactive and immersive experience, such as augmented reality. If you’ve seen the HBO hit, Silicon Valley, we have all had our ideas of what the “future internet” will look like. As far as the future of news, Apple Inc.’s News+ Subscription has us covered with the ability to browse all of our favorite magazines and other publications at our fingertips.
For only $9.99 a month, Apple News+ allows consumers access to more than 300 magazines and articles from The Wall Street Journal and the Los Angeles Times. These services are inclusive of what Apple already offers in the standard Apple News App. With companies offering bundles with all of our favorite publications, will old-school publications [newspapers, print magazines] (finally, probably, indefinitely even?) meet their end?
According to BBC’s report of the future, “the digital media has democratized the means of production and distribution in news, but not the [end] result.” As we gain more information and share more and more, there seems to be a minute gap between those that skim an article and those that seek the news. Subscription based apps like these will cater to all, by allowing users to gather all their favorite news sources in one place for faster access and usability. Over all else, the news should keep users informed, and this is a handy way of doing so.
It seems like a great deal on the outside - you pay a flat rate for as many publications you can set your eyes on. It’s great if you find yourself buying more than one magazine or newspaper a month. Last year, Apple bought a small company, Texture, and implemented their software to build this appealing product. It has a great user interface, making the experience easy and entertaining, with the mixture of text, photos, videos, infographics, and more. You can check out photos of the app here.
At the end of the day, technology affects our daily lives in every way. As big technology morphs into better connectivity, it will influence the ways we receive news. Today, we expect news to find us rather than us finding it. With higher connectivity, we will be able to share and receive news faster. By utilizing mobile devices, we can consume high quality content at a cheaper price. Apple News+ offers a centralized location for most of our magazine and news needs. Currently, the product is free for a month. I would recommend trying it out and seeing if it could replace your way of receiving news.
Old-school News: Source
Apple’s News+ App: Source
Questions to consider:
1. We have all probably joked about newspapers and magazines “dying out” - is this the future for news?
2. Would you rather receive your news from a subscription app? Why or why not?
Cloud Based Storage Solutions
By Chase Boiseau and
Carter Gerardo
One of the most
conceptually misunderstood pieces of business infrastructure is cloud storage.
The use of which, has redefined the landscape of many different industries, but
in most cases, large corporations and companies that have geographically widespread
service needs. Cloud based storage is essentially the use of access points to
servers spread across the internet that provide accessibility universally so
that information is kept up to date and efficiency is maximized. This is done
by keeping large volumes of data that may be accessed in small chunks, without
burdening the companies own IT infrastructure. This results in an overall
cost-savings and workload capacity increases. This is only the beginning of the
benefits that a company may experience when using a cloud-based infrastructure
to conduct their business processes.
Benefits of Cloud Computing
To better understand Cloud computing, please view this explanatory video that will give you a quick and thorough explanation of the quickly growing Amazon Web Servers cloud based infrastructure.
A relevant device every
person in the United States uses each day, the cell phone, can utilize cloud
storage to more efficiently and safely store data. Using the iCloud that was
designed for Apple products, media such as songs, photos, movies, contacts,
email, etc. can all be shared with the cloud in the event of a security breach
where the phone becomes inaccessible. This shared data can be used to
completely recreate a user’s profile, data, and applications. A web-based
service tailored to mobile use takes great advantage of the infrastructure of
the cloud, leaving little demand for the mobile device to have strong
computational power, like CPU, memory, and processing speeds. Consumers as well
as employees now can complete a wide range of tasks using their cheaper mobile
devices and do not have to invest in strong powerful mobile devices. Having a backup
solution for vital information and data provides consumers with an extra layer
of security where data is protected when not even a physical device can be
located. Outside of the Apple world, companies such as Google, Dropbox, and
Microsoft also provide cheap consumer services for using Cloud storage. With
services as low as $7 being offered by Microsoft’s OneDrive product, 1 terabyte
of data can be stored at ease.
Real life example from
Chase Boiseau
My
employer last summer, A large construction company, placed me in the IT
Customer Service Representative role. Everything from employee profiles and
data to emails and printers, almost all our technical infrastructure revolved
around the use of cloud-based solutions. One of my main responsibilities as an
Intern was to migrate all our email profiles over from our physical servers to
AWS servers. Although time consuming, this process ended up providing a ton of
positives. To start, all our employee emails can now easily be managed in real
time and issuing licenses to our other cloud-based programs provided
efficiencies. Using Office 365’s subscription-based model we are now able to
manage what users and what machines have access to a Microsoft Office account.
Finding and deleting old/unused email profiles was a time-consuming process
that also cost the company a lot. Now our company has the flexibility to pay
for exactly the number of licenses we need day to day and to not be forced to
spend money on products that will be wasted. Another benefit of cloud-based
computing is its ability to provide stable and scalable service to its
customers. Last year, my employer only experienced a couple small incidents of
downtime, but Amazon’s strong AWS infrastructure was able to resume normal
function within the hour. This still ended up costing my employer thousands of
dollars, but the quick response and recovery from this downtime proved to be
well worth the time invested in migrating our systems to the cloud.
Questions:
- Have you worked for a company that was using cloud-based servers and how did it affect how that company performed its duties? Did it equate to cost savings, efficiencies, scalability?
- Can you think of examples of companies that may (or may not) benefit from adopting a cloud-based model to handle its businesses core processes? Why?
- Do you use or intend to use cloud-based products on your cell phone?
References:
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