What the Girl Scouts Can Teach Us About Inclusion in the Workplace
This past summer, the Girl Scouts launched 18 Coding for Good badges, part of the organization’s focus on giving young girls the opportunity to learn about technology and encourage interest in STEM careers. This is great to see, but it also raises a question: Are we in the tech industry doing our part to ensure […]
Read MoreA Look Ahead: Top 10 Predictions for Cards and Payments in 2020
With all the activity in the cards and payments space in 2019, 2020 promises to be even more interesting. The last 12 months saw several new fintech market entrants and digital commerce frameworks, continued expansion of the real-time payments infrastructure, investment in open-banking capabilities and heavy M&A by large incumbents. This made 2019 something of […]
Read MoreWorld Economic Forum 2020: Mr. Gekko, Meet Ms. Thunberg
The annual meeting of the World Economic Forum, held in Davos, Switzerland, each January, plays an influential role in shaping the global discussion about the state of business, socioeconomics and the broader culture. Though it has its detractors – particularly in our new era when the “elites” are increasingly reviled – it remains as good […]
Read MoreDisaggregation of Healthcare: The Great Unbundling Proceeds (Second of a Multi-part Series)
In discussions with our clients, it’s become apparent that one of the greatest changes we’re witnessing in healthcare is the disaggregation (or unbundling) of care. Historically, access to and delivery of healthcare took place primarily in doctors’ offices, hospitals and clinics. However, changes in consumer sentiment and advances in technology are creating a far more […]
Read MoreThe Aesthetics of Work: Goodbye Suits and Cubicles, Hello Hoodies and Couches
In the history of work, any step change in technology has altered how work is organized, the tasks employees handle and the places where they work. Whether it’s rows of typists in the 1960s or the cubicle onslaught of the 1980s, the aesthetics of work – the visual cues, tools, layout and location of the […]
Read MoreHumanizing the Customer Experience With a Cloud-based Contact Center
The cloud-based contact center is quickly catching on with organizations across industries for one important reason: Its ability to scale capacity up or down depending on changing business requirements and/or seasonal spikes. Forrester reports that 25% of large contact centers are now hosted in hybrid cloud environments, and 30% expect to soon move to subscription-type […]
Read MoreThe Issues with Work: Will Technology Adoption Bring Us Closer Together or Drive Us Further Apart?
The promise of technology adoption was, in many ways, to bring us closer together. Railroads transported us from the barren countryside to the city center. Radio, television and tablets let us experience the same stories and access the same information as someone in an opposite corner of the world. Telegraph wires, phone lines and then […]
Read MoreFrom Frustration to Abundance: Supercharging Productivity with New Tools in the Future of Work
Work has always been the cornerstone of human existence. Our value as individuals, organizations, communities and even country states is defined by our productivity at our places of work. But while we’ve been chasing productivity improvement for millennia, we’ve only truly mastered exponential improvements in the last couple of hundred years. Why is this, considering […]
Read MoreHow Banks Can Make AI-Based Insights Work for Them and Their Customers
I recently worked with a large U.S. bank with a long to-do list for using artificial intelligence (AI). Like many banks, it recognized the potential for using AI-based insights to personalize offerings and offer more relevant services, including an interactive map on its website to explore local merchants that accept the bank’s credit cards. But […]
Read MoreTaking Data Centricity from Lofty Concept to Notable Achievement
From the time data was first proclaimed as “the new oil,” most enterprises have come to consider data as a strategic asset and the means for deriving meaningful insights. Unlike oil, however, the path to profits from data is not always clear. Establishing data centricity within an enterprise provides many opportunities to overcome organizational inertia […]
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