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The Aerospace and Defence sector has a deserved reputation for being early adopters of new technology solutions for  servicing and maintenance. True to form, ground breaking developments in Wearables and Context Aware technology are expected to  streamline  maintenance operations in the sector and empower the supply chain.  In Part One of this two-part feature, Brendan Viggers, product and sales support at IFS Aerospace & Defence Centre of Excellence, explains the potential.

Aerospace and Defence support, whether that is maintenance, engineering, supply or transportation, is complicated by the challenges of distance from the home base, environmental and operating pressures, and even cultural constraints in deployed operating areas. Maintenance in the field is very different from at the depot or base.

Maintenance activity requires, as a basic minimum, the right information and technical support with the right functionality to support operations, so it is a no-brainer that this needs to be tailored for the environment where the maintenance is taking place. For many years vendors have deployed solutions forwards that are manifestly complex, full enterprise solutions on mobile devices.

But in-field maintenance bears little or no similarity to that back at base, the environment is unique and often extreme. Time pressure is often increased for field engineers who have to meet tight turn-round schedules, and have the right technical documentation and direction to hand, dependent on the task and time. In unique, and often restrictive, maintenance environments full enterprise solution functionality can become a hindrance to field engineers - tailored functionality for the specific environment is critical to meeting operational deadlines.

The need for tailored information and functionality

Speedy resolution of unusual problems can be massively enhanced if equipment and those in support can understand the multiple contexts the field engineer is encountering. These include 'user' context such as the user’s profile, location, people nearby, even the current social situation; 'physical' context such as lighting, noise levels, traffic conditions and temperature; and 'time' context such as time of a day, week, month, and season of the year at the deployed location; and finally an 'operational' context to monitor elements such as spare part availability and the maintenance task at hand.

This is where wearables and context aware technology enter the fray. According to recent Forrester research, 68 percent of global technology and business decision makers say that wearables are a priority for their firm, with 51 percent calling it a moderate, high or critical priority.

 

Wearables can sense the user's physical environment much more completely than previously possible, and in many more situations. This makes them excellent platforms for applications where the computer is working even when you aren't giving explicit commands. Future developments will introduce increased use of solutions that will automatically tailor their presentation and operation through recognition of the maintenance environment it is in.

Context Aware and Wearables in action - Civil Aviation

In the base environment, there are opportunities for application of the technology across production, quality assurance, safety, warehousing and logistics - for example, wearables can increase worker agility. Supporting the location of faulty wires or equipment on a grounded aircraft, and notifying workers about hazards such as the presence of other activities being conducted on the aircraft, are areas that could be addressed right now. Boeing is currently experimenting with augmented reality for aircraft maintenance, a hands-free device instructs workers where to find a product in the inventory.

This could be extended to giving mechanics virtual 'sight' of components hidden behind other systems or structures relative to their personal location - allowing them to remove, fit or adjust a component that they cannot physically see.

The instant effect on maintenance repair and overhaul (MRO)

Wearables with augmented reality have the potential to automatically identify the spare part required by a field engineer. Information on the appearance, known context and maintenance task required can then be fed through to the engineer's wearable device negating the need to barcode scan or consult technology documents in difficult maintenance environments - such as a dark submarine bilge or the underbelly of an aircraft - where movement is limited. It also removes the requirement for the intimate support of a base supply chain and logistician. This comes with the added bonus of not having to trek kilometres across an airfield to access catalogues in a maintenance hangar or planning office.

With context aware and wearable technology cross-matching bar codes, stock or part numbers - or even better integrating with electronic technical documents - the engineer can ensure that the right item is demanded or fitted, with the benefit of reducing time consuming document and database searches that introduce a greater opportunity for error. Increased autonomy thanks to wearables and context aware computing means the maintenance engineer spends less time 'downing tools' to consult collateral material, improving overall MRO efficiency.

Expertise on demand

Wearables can also be used for maintenance, repairs and over-the-shoulder coaching for remote engineers. Cargo and maintenance personal from a major airline have trialled the use of an optical head-mounted display (OHMD) to help inspect aircraft on the tarmac. They capture video and photos and send them to a central office where technical safety professionals assess an aircraft’s condition.

IFS is working with XM Reality to bring forward a remote expert to assist in complex maintenance to broaden the capabilities of maintenance engineers on the ground - 'augmenting' flight-line workers' skills. IFS believes adding cognitive applications and voice-controlled intelligent agents similar to Siri to wearable devices would further augment such workers' skills, helping them identify and act on specific problems with more autonomy.

Look out for Part Two of this feature which takes a closer look at the role Context-Aware mobile apps will have in achieving wider deployment of wearables.

 

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A new study from Juniper Research forecasts almost 20 million fully autonomous or self-driving vehicles on the road by 2025, with consumer adoption set to take off in 2021.  These driverless cars will, however, represent only 1% of all vehicles on the roads.

Driven by increased safety and convenience for drivers, development has progressed to live trials with North America and West Europe set to become the first to witness driverless cars in use on the road.

The research found that in the interim, consumer usage of ADAS (Advanced Driving Assistance System) technologies such as adaptive cruise control and automated braking will become key. It argued that these systems will serve to prepare drivers for the psychological change from the role of driving a car to operating a driverless car.

How to Monetise Driverless Cars?

The new research, Autonomous Vehicles: Adoption, Regulation & Business Models 2015-2025, finds that although the market has progressed to live trials, a discernible monetisation strategy has not become evident. Stakeholders are currently investigating multiple business models with manufacturers expected to engage in product licensing, self-production or open sourcing the systems.

Top 5 Players Driving the Market

Juniper Research ranked the top 5 most promising players in the driverless car sector. They were scored on a number of key factors such as: live trials; miles tested on road; technology development; project scale and scope; future potential and market opportunities. The rankings were:  Google, Volvo, Daimler, Tesla and Apple. Google was ranked as the most promising player, having been in development the longest and having logged the highest amount of autonomous miles on public roads.

Dealing with Dilemmas

The research noted that concerns over the decision making capabilities of these systems have been raised and questions have been asked about the decisions autonomous vehicles would take when presented with the Trolley Problem, where the autonomous car will be forced to choose between two disastrous outcomes.

The Juniper study argued that the siloed nature of technology development requires stakeholders to collaborate and ensure a minimum level of safety for those in the hands of autonomous driving systems.

The report forms part of Juniper’s ongoing analysis of Connected Cars & Telematics.

 

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What will be the key technology trends in 2016 for customer service engagement? Customer contact technology specialist Sabio outlines its top ten trends for 2016 and suggests five initiatives that should be top of  any field service company's digital customer service agenda.

“Today’s customers are having their service expectations reshaped by advances in consumer technology, and will become increasingly frustrated when having to engage with brands that don’t perform to the same levels as their best practice competitors,” commented Sabio’s Head of Consultancy, Stuart Dorman. “Offering more intelligent service and making it easier to engage can make a huge difference - not only by helping organisations to optimise operational performance, but also in terms of freeing up customer time so that they can actually spend more of their lives doing what they actually want to do.”

Dorman's predictions for the top trends for effective customer engagement in 2016 are:[ordered_list style="decimal"]

1.  Understanding the true impact of mobile – ever-increasing smartphone penetration means that a growing proportion of service interactions will be transacted on smart devices, so it’s essential that service providers ensure their customer journeys feature clear links to live service via an effective contact centre interface.
2. Placing Embedded Service at the heart of the web browser – with over 50% of customers going online before engaging with a contact centre, it makes increasing sense to embed service options within web pages – a trend that will develop further as WebRTC progressively turns the Web into an open communication platform.
3. Video-based service becomes mainstream – initial video pilot projects are now going live as organisations, particularly in sectors such as financial service, begin to see video support as a premium differentiator that can strengthen brand relationships.
4. Messaging platforms scale to deliver social service – social networks are busy building out their messaging platforms, and will start to open them up to commercial brands who recognise that’s increasingly where their customers are likely to be. With platforms like Facebook Messenger already supporting voice, organisations need to be ready to support those customers who want to engage directly from their social messaging environment.
5. Increasingly smart use of data and analytics – Speech and text analytics have now become essential contact centre technologies in the same way that customer feedback did 5 years ago. Now organisations are looking to leverage the immense computing power of the cloud to take this one step further. By combining multiple data sources such as voice of the customer, CRM data, speech/text analytics and contact centre meta data, organisations are using big data analytics techniques to drive an even deeper understanding of their customers.
6. Much smarter Virtual Assistants – the same technologies that are powering consumer search services are now being applied to intelligent virtual assistants. Rather than clicking, tapping, scrolling and typing - customers will increasingly have conversations with your website to get what they want, helping to transform their overall experience.
   [quote float="left"]Technology isn’t the barrier – it’s your internal siloes that are causing the problems...

    

7. Enabling natural dialogues through speech recognition - Ever-improving natural language understanding will go beyond simple speech recognition to create natural dialogues that effectively mimic agent interactions. Where the next generation of speech-enabled applications will quickly evolve, however, is in their ability to translate caller intent data into a more conversational, intelligent self-service experience for customers.
8. Biometrics gathers real market momentum – thanks to fingerprint recognition on millions of smartphones worldwide, consumers are now treating biometrics as a mainstream technology - with some using the interface over 30 times a day as they ‘sign-in’ to their personal device. Voice and fingerprint biometrics help to achieve the previously incompatible goals of both enhancing security while simultaneously delivering reductions in customer effort.
9. Removing the digital siloes - it’s hardly surprising customers get frustrated, when so many organisations still operate and manage their digital and contact centre strategies separately. Closing this gap, and recognising that when people call contact centres today they have probably already been online first, will increasingly define how successful organisations are in delivering on their end-to-end digital customer service goals. Technology isn’t the barrier – it’s your internal siloes that are causing the problems!
10. Measuring and reducing customer effort - the customer effort measure is all about surfacing those issues across channels that are making life harder than necessary for customers. Once identified, these can be systematically addressed to help reduce service costs, decrease customer churn and improve overall service levels.

“It’s also critical that organisations have the right strategic direction, infrastructure and expertise in place to take full advantage of these key technology directions,” added Dorman. “At Sabio we believe there are a number of specific programmes that digital customer service teams need to concentrate on over the next 12 months if they are serious about reducing effort and building an integrated Digital Front Door for their customers.”

Dorman says that in 2016 customer service organisations need to focus on:[unordered_list style="bullet"]

• Laying the foundations for Digital Service – organisations will need to draw on a broad portfolio of technologies in order to develop the kind of integrated journeys that will make life easier for customers. This will demand the development of ‘Digital Front Doors’ that embrace the end-to-end journey across both self-service and assisted interactions.
• Embed service into every digital journey - providing customers with true embedded service support for each stage of their digital journeys, with more context-sensitive embedded online service applications that draw on web chat or click-to-call to help resolve queries and enable customers to progress to the next stage of their journey with significantly reduced effort.
• Becoming Customer Service Session Designers – until now a major barrier to true end-to-end customer journey design has been the cost and complexity of creating solutions that draw together different parts of an organisation. Now, using the latest engagement development platform technology, customer engagement teams have the opportunity to take advantage of snap-in tools to ensure rapid and more cost-effective solution development.
  Experiment by creating your own Customer Experience lab – it’s often difficult for organisations to know exactly which strategies or technologies to deploy in order to achieve their goals. It’s worthwhile establishing your own Customer Experience lab to find out how new ideas measure up when applied to a meaningful sample of live interactions.
• Recreate your Roadmaps based on Customer Experience -Reducing customer effort and building a more seamless experience requires the development of detailed UX-based roadmaps, breaking down specific elements to consider how much of the experience is actually value-creating and how much is wasted through waiting due to overly-complex or broken processes.

 

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On global Computer Security Day, Monday 30th November, we  offer field service SMEs 10 tips staying  safe in cyberspace from David Tindall, managing director Talk Straight, the UK business telecoms and ISP provider .

Cyber-attacks are still a clear and present danger and as the threats continue to evolve,  so it’s important that SMEs adapt their security methods to tackle these new dangers, says Tindall. Here are his top 10 tips:

1. Educate - 50% of the worst cyber security breaches last year were caused by inadvertent human error. In particular, raise awareness of phishing and baiting scams.
2. Social media safety and security is paramount – work related information should not be accessible by social media. Personal accounts are much easier to infiltrate than a secure business network.
3.  Train your staff. Currently around 63% of SMEs nationwide provide ongoing security awareness training. Due to the nature of the cyber beast, the threat is constantly evolving so keep them abreast of the latest developments
4. Invest in the defence - the tools for tackling cyber-attacks are worth their weight in gold. The average price of a single breach is continuing to soar, with damage to an SME costing anywhere between £75k and £311k. For a larger business, that cost can rise into the millions.
5. Monitor your web traffic - good practice for any SME regardless of cyber security. Quickly identifying a sudden or irregular level of activity can significantly soften the blow of a cyber-attack. There are a range of free and paid services that will help your business accurately
6. Stay updated! 59% of businesses expect to suffer more security incidents within the next year. Being aware of the changing digital landscape and its potential new threats can help keep you ahead of the game.measure traffic.
7. Plan! Should the worst case scenario happen, are you prepared? Do you, your IT staff or external telecoms provider have the proper protocols in place to react? Offsite back-ups and mirrored servers are some of the most common practises that help prevent the irreversible loss of data.
8.  Use a professional. Put your cyber security in the hands of a professional. Be it internal IT staff or a telecoms provider’s Managed Security Service, their expertise will help them quickly recognise potential dangers and keep your network secure.
9. Assess the risks. Knowing where you’re most vulnerable, or what data/network would be most attractive to a potential cyber security attacker is valuable information. You or your IT department/service are then able to prioritise security and be aware of the most likely forms and targets of attack.
10.  Report any attack. If you are unfortunate enough to suffer a damaging attack, report it. This is your best chance of recouping any losses and bringing the guilty party to justice. The UK's National Cyber Crime Unit (NCCU) and The Cyber Incident Response (CIR) scheme should be your first ports of call.

Talk Straight provides internet services to hundreds of UK businesses and was awarded winner of Best Business use of Cloud and finalist for internet safety and security at the 2014 Internet Service Providers Association Awards.  It is also a managed security service provider for US network security specialist Fortinet in the UK.

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Connected car technology means Christmas shopping has just got a lot easier for Swedish shoppers. Volvo Car Group has announced the world's first commercially available In-Car Delivery service.

The car maker has teamed up with PostNord, the Nordic region’s communication and logistics supplier , Lekmer.com, the leading Nordic online toy and baby goods store, and Mat.se, a Swedish online grocery retailer, to have Christmas toys, gifts, food and drinks delivered to its cars.

The  In-car Delivery service works by means of a digital key, which is used to gain one-time access to the vehicle. Owners simply order the goods online, receive a notification that the goods have been delivered and then just drive home with them. Volvo owners just choose the In-car Delivery option at the online checkout when they buy their gifts, food, drinks or other packages.

Volvo In-car Delivery is currently only available for Volvo drivers in Gothenburg who subscribe to the Volvo On Call service, but it will be introduced elsewhere in Sweden and to other countries in future. There will also be a wider range of goods available for In-car Delivery as Volvo joins forces with more companies.

“Christmas is fun – but let’s be honest, it is also a busy time for most families. This service simply makes shopping easier,” said Björn Annwall, Senior Vice President for Marketing, Sales and Service at Volvo. “Volvo In-car Delivery provides concrete proof that connected car technologies can be used to save people time and make their lives easier.”

Volvo is always keen to explore new technologies, be it in the areas of safety, autonomous driving or connectivity, but believes fundamentally in Nordic utility – meaning it will only introduce a technology if it actually saves lives, saves times, adds an element of convenience or benefits drivers.

“Volvo is not interested in technology for the sake of technology,” said Klas Bendrik, Senior Vice President and Chief Information Officer at Volvo. “If a technology does not make a customer’s life easier, better, safer or more fun, we don’t use it.”

 

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Fashion, smart clothes & the future of wearables:  Uri Pintov, Product Line Director, ClickSoftware takes a look at the role Wearable Technology could play in field service.

Picture this: A customer service representative is helping an irate customer on the phone and becoming flustered and frustrated. Rather than hearing about the incident after the interaction has escalated, customer service managers are able to step in and offer assistance because they have access to the rep’s vital signs and health signals.

Or, imagine one of your fleet drivers becoming tired and falling asleep at the wheel and a fleet manager having the ability to talk him through getting to a rest area safely, thanks to having access to his health signals. All of this, and more, is possible, thanks to wearable technology.

The Rise of Wearable Technology
Wearable technology is nothing new, but its applications to the enterprise and customer service are just now being realised in a major way. A 2013 study on wearable tech from the Centre for Creative and Social Technology at Goldsmiths, University of London, showed that about 33% of U.S. and U.K. adults found that wearable tech had helped their career development. Other research from Human Cloud at Work showed that wearable tech increases job satisfaction by 3.5% and boosts employee productivity by 8.5%.

As reported for RealBusiness by Shane Schutte,  lead researcher Dr. Chris Bauer sees the results of the study showing “the potential power and application of wearable devices in the workplace from employee biometric CVs to organisational real-time executive dashboards for resource allocation…. Using data generated from the devices, organisations can learn how human behaviours impact productivity, performance, wellbeing, and job satisfaction.”

 

Wearable technology adoption will increase as people and companies see the benefits of it, including how it improves an individual’s life or a company’s performance. Nigel Beighton,  UK CTO of Rackspace, sees the need for individuals and businesses to analyse the data from wearable technology “and understand the wider context surrounding the data, such as the weather location, posture, even temperature and mood of the individual. By focusing on the data as well as the devices, wearable technologies can provide meaningful insights that can be used to improve performance and satisfaction. Essentially wearable tech and big data go hand-in-hand.”

Smart Clothes as a Tool for Business
Using smart clothing to track employees’ vital signs and health signals is a reality now. According to Wearable Technologies, 2015 is a “banner year” for the emerging smartwatch and smart clothes market. One of the most important features of smart clothes and smartwatches is their health related sensors and monitors that rack vital signs. Smart clothes provide real-time feedback of the wearers’ vitals and health and connect to apps to deliver the information to smartphones and computers. Most smart clothes can monitor heart rate, breathing rate, sleeping patterns, calories burned, intensity of activity, temperature, and heart beat.

While most of the smart clothes are in the health and fitness market today, they are starting to be available for the healthcare industry for hospitals and personal care facilities and for businesses that want to monitor their employees.

Smart Clothes and the Mobile Workforce
More companies and organisations are going mobile, and there are more field workers and independent contractors than ever before relying on mobile devices and mobile apps. According to a CIO article, a recent Apperian survey of organisations found that more than 70% of respondents plan to equip more than 1,000 users with mobile apps and 1/3 are deploying mobile apps to more than 5,000 users in the next two years.

Additionally, Gartner predicts that 50% of employers will require employees to supply their own device for work and reports that 38% of companies will stop providing devices to workers by 2016. As more companies adopt bring your
own device (BYOD) policies, it becomes crucial for the mobile workforce to be able to charge their devices quickly and easily while on the go.

 

Wearable technology and smart clothes are solving this problem, as designers are becoming inspired by flexible solar panels and are creating clothing and accessories that power and accommodate handheld devices. We have found a few designers who are creating everything from shirts, to jeans, to ski jackets, to winter gloves that could make being part of a mobile workforce easier than ever before.

Wearable Solar – Dutch fashion designer Pauline van Dongen is designing lightweight wired garments that include solar panels so the wearer can charge a smartphone. Her designs charge smartphones up to 50% when worn in the sun for an hour. She collaborated with Christiaan Holland from the HAN University of Applied Sciences and
solar energy expert Gert Jan Jongerden on the Wearable Solar project, to integrate photovoltaic technology into the clothing.

WTFJeans – One company that accommodates smartphone users is WTFJeans. With smartpockets that give wearers easy access to their smartphones and clean the phone screens, WTFJeans also include EMF shields to reflect cell phone radiation.

Zegna Solar Ski Jacket  - Clothier Ermenegildo Zegna teamed with Interactive Wear to create “the world’s first ski jacket powered by solar energy.” The jacket has solar cells embedded in its collar to convert sunlight into renewable power that wearers can use to fully charge their smart phone, iPod, or other mobile device. The collar is
removable so that it can be used as a power source even when you’re not out in the elements.

Agloves – It is nearly impossible to use smartphones and tablets when wearing gloves, since typical gloves are not compatible with the touch screens on mobile devices. Agloves offer a variety of gloves, including the Grip Touch,
Sport, and Natural, that are constructed with real silver for warmth and high conductivity, so that all ten fingers are conductive for use with any touchscreen device.

 

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Spectrum allocation, cybersecurity and the connected car at the centre of discussion at the 5G Huddle in Copenhagen this week. Security and privacy emerged as key concerns across sectors

The allocation of radio spectrum, new business models, cybersecurity and the connected car took centre stage at the 5GHuddle, organised by the Wireless World Research Forum (WWRF) in partnership with DI ITEK, the Danish technology trade association.   Over 150 delegates including leading scientists, high-level industry and government representatives from Europe, North America and Asia discussed the disruptive nature of 5G technologies, with security and privacy emerging as the key challenges in delivering a sustainable 5G ecosystem.

Stuart Revell, former Chief Technology Officer of Tech UK , the organistion that represents over 850 UK-based technology companies, led the discussions on the main challenges for the 5G community by presenting the Wireless Test & Innovation Centre (WTIC) whitepaper. Ming Lei, Huawi presented the Chinese Government-backed IMT-2020 5G promotion group and the FuTURE Forum initiative, discussing their international co-operation projects and how to rethink mobile communications of the future in their 2020+ White Paper.

Spectrum Allocation
Spectrum allocation was identified as one of the main challenges to making the leap forward in 5G deployment. The debate over what spectrum should be made available for 5G will be, as Andrew Hudson, Policy Director of the Spectrum Group at UK telecoms regulator Ofcom, said, “uncomfortable”. Leaving too many bands under consideration could make a positive outcome less likely, he said, as "lots of people might have to give a little bit", adding that it's not regulators' job to "make everyone happy" but to "debate the important questions."

Chih-Lin I, Chief Scientist of Wireless Technologies at China Mobile, added to this, saying that in the short term, C-band would be the core spectrum of 5G: "we want it to become key piece of 5G architecture.”

Anders Bohlin, Senior Economist at the European Investment Bank, warned that “If governments auction 5G spectrum to fill their treasury coffers and then operators don't invest because there's no market, that won't be good for 5G”.

Business Models

As Mischa Dohler, Head of Centre for Telecommunication Research in the Department of Informatics at Kings’ College, London, commented, business models may be the main shift in a 5G era, as the change to B2B could be attractive for the cellular industry.

For Pasi Kemppainedm, NNE Pharmaplan, this is the telecom industry's "last chance" to stretch its services to compete with big players like Google and Facebook. The disruptive part of 5G isn't the radio access part, but the services infrastructures. Facebook, Google and others will "eat your lunch" in future services if telcos don't deal with services infrastructure. Also, telecom companies shouldn't let 5G limit the start of service enablement. Services should be agnostic, and when 5G becomes ready, operators can move to better capability to provide those services.

Automotive Industry

Opening a session at the event that focused specifically on the potential of 5G in the automotive industry, Preben Mogensen, Principal Engineer at Nokia Network said: “We would like to see 5G as a framework to be optimised for the automotive industry”. Research challenges Nokia is working on for connected mobility include being able to support higher mobility, a lot of devices in a small space, ultra-reliability of networks, radio latency less than 1ms, network slicing and optimized service delivery for heterogeneous use cases. “As a telecom operator, our challenge is enabling a new generation of latency critical services. We are working on research to improve resilience to network failures,” he said.

Peter Vermaat, Principal ITS consultant at TRL, an independent research organisation, brought the road operator’s perspective to the 5G debate, agreeing that the connectivity requirements of vehicles are highly dependent on high network reliability and low latency, as well as co-operative services: “No single communication channel will be sufficient,” he said, “we don’t want the whole network to break down because a base station is running out of power.

“Without connectivity, research shows that, with the connected vehicle, safety goes down compared to a manually operated one. “Self-driving cars”, he said, “are a long, long way off.” Even Google cars, he said, are “fully autonomous, but not in all circumstances.”

Cybersecurity

Aside from the challenges faced in implementing 5G, come the concerns – in particular the risk posed by cyber crime. Focusing on these potential vulnerabilities of the IoT and 5G era, Zolten Precsenyi, Government Affairs Manager at Symantec, said explained that cybersecurity challenges arise not just from 5G in particular, but also from the connected world at large. Wearable devices, connected cars, e-health systems, smart grids are all vulnerable to attack. Current public policies for the telecoms, e-identification, network security and other areas “don't go far enough to protect against novel security issues. Self-regulation should be a credible alternative to government regulation,” he said.

Conclusions
“The business model this year has moved to the centre of the discussion and is not seen only from the telecom industry at large, but from the user’s point of view,” said Dr Nigel Jefferies, Huawei, Chair of WWRF, closing the 5G Huddle.

 

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 By 2018, half of business ethics violations will occur through improper use of Big Data Analytics, says Gartner.

Analytics projects that utilize big data or advanced analytics are increasingly popular but present a heightened risk of failure, according to Gartner, Inc. which says analytics leaders can improve the likelihood of success by following five best practices.

"Although big data and advanced analytics projects risk many of the same pitfalls as traditional projects, in most cases, these risks are accentuated due to the volume and variety of data, or the sophistication of advanced analytics capabilities," said Alexander Linden, research director at Gartner who is  presenting on advanced analytics at Gartner's  Business Intelligence & Analytics Summit 2015, this week in Munich, Germany. "Most pitfalls will not result in an obvious technical or analytic failure. Rather they will result in a failure to deliver business value."

Failure to properly understand and mitigate the risks can have a number of unintended and highly impactful consequences. Those can include loss of reputation, limitations in business operations, losing out to competitors, inefficient or wasted use of resources, and even legal sanctions.

Gartner also predicts that, by 2018, 50% of business ethics violations will occur through improper use of big data analytics. Following key best practices will help analytics leaders to improve the likelihood of success, and they include:

1. Linking Analytics to Business Outcomes through Benefits Mapping
   Analytics must enable a business decision maker to take action, and that action should have a measurable effect — whether the effect is directly or indirectly achieved. Linking analytic outputs to traceable outcomes using a formal benefits-management and mapping process can help the analytics team navigate the complexities of the business environment, and keep analytic efforts both relevant and justifiable
2. Investing in advanced analytics with caution
   Many organizations believe that Big Data automatically requires advanced analytics. However, the data-crunching power required to manage the big data characteristics of volume, velocity and variety does not inherently require any more sophisticated algorithmic processing. It is the complexity of the analytical question to be addressed that drives the need for advanced analytic tools, and in many cases desired outcomes can be achieved without resorting to more sophisticated analysis.
3. Balancing analytic insight with the ability of the organisation to make use of the analysis
   Because analytics can only be beneficial in organizations that are willing to embrace change, it makes sense to limit investment in analytics to a level that matches the organization's ability to use the resulting insights. Analytics may not be the most suitable approach if  pertinent data is absent, when there are high levels of ambiguity, or where there are entrenched opposing points of view.In these cases, scenario planning, options-based strategies, and critical thinking should also be incorporated into analytical approaches to better support the organization's ability to take action.
4. Prioritizing incremental improvements over business transformation
   Using big data and advanced analytics to improve existing analyses, or to incrementally update and extend an existing business process, is easier than using them to deliver business transformation, because there are fewer dependencies to overcome to ensure success. Care should be taken to validate the level of overall change required. In some cases, deep reform of the business strategy may still be necessary — for instance, when a new disruptive vendor enters a market, when technology innovation changes the business model, or when an organization has become dysfunctional.
5. Considering alternative approaches to reaching the same goal
   Few objectives can only be achieved in one way. Statistical modelling, data mining and machine learning algorithms all provide means of testing ideas and refining solution propositions. Big data and advanced analytics help validate proposed hypotheses and open an even wider range of potential approaches to addressing corporate priorities. Not all problems even require a fully engineered analytical solution. Investment may be better targeted on human factors, re-education or reframing the problem.

 

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US communications network operator AT&T and Telogis, the connected vehicle technology provider, are to collaborate to offer integrated, reliable connectivity  solutions for businesses around the world.

Telogis provides intelligent data solutions to companies including Ford and Volvo and with AT&T will be able to implement an advanced network solution to deliver a reliable, highly secure stream of data nearly anywhere in the world.   The AT&T service management platform allows Telogis to easily manage the data, devices and services that support its customers. AT&T also is working with Telogis to help with over the air updates and provide unique split billing capabilities.

“We’re offering Telogis a complete wireless network that enables two-way, real-time data communication between the vehicle and office,” said Chris Penrose, senior vice president, AT&T Internet of Things (IoT) Solutions. “We look forward to driving new innovative services together in the fleet marketplace and offering true global solutions to our mutual customers.”

“Telogis provides mission-critical intelligence for some of the world’s largest mobile businesses and automotive manufacturers, and our customers demand the quality and reliability that only a provider like AT&T can deliver,” said David Cozzens, CEO, Telogis. “As we continue to capitalise on a rapidly growing, multi-billion dollar global market for connected vehicle and equipment technologies, AT&T provides the scalable infrastructure and backbone Telogis requires.”

 

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