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Showing posts from April, 2015

Mobile Apps - Personalizing While Respecting Personal Privacy

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All the data I have been reading this week suggest mobile users want and value a personalized experience on their mobile apps or mobile website, but on the other hand they don't like giving up their personal data.  That means it is imperative to find the right balance so a mutually satisfying relationship can be fostered.  As we all know, the more data you have on an individual, the easier it is to configure a personalized experience. In a fresh Cognizant survey this week involving 5,000 participants, 68% reported they are willing to provide information on their gender, 55% their age, and 65% their brand and product preferences, but the majority are not in favor of volunteering much else.  That is an interesting answer since 80% of the same survey participants belong to one or more loyalty and rewards programs, and the biggest reasons according to 74% are the points or rewards for each dollar spent .  The second biggest motivation was automatic discounts for loyalty program me

Speed, Personalization, Analytics and Enterprise Information Systems

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Ninety percent of 18-34 years old strongly value a personalized mobile and web experience, and eighty-two percent of of those over 45 years old value personalization.  What kind of personalization?  Forty-seven percent of shoppers prefer location or time-based  personalization in mobile applications or websites.  In other words, don't show me things that are not available for me to purchase in Boise at this time, or that I don't like!  Given this survey data we all know what needs to be done and are taking the necessary steps to be able to offer personalization, right?  Wrong it seems.  Many companies are not using available data to understand their customers better so they can provide them with contextually relevant and personalized mobile application experiences. My colleague, Benjamin Pring, at Cognizant's Center for the Future of Work recently published a research paper titled Putting the Experience in Digital Customer Experience .  In his research he found fewer

Monitoring an Ear of Corn with an IoT Sensor?

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Once upon a time, farmers would walk through a field or ride a horse around it to determine the amount of fertilizer and water their crops required.  I have done this myself.  Today agricultural drones with sensors and analysis software can fly over large fields and analyze the crops and their needs precisely in seconds.  If we wanted to get even more ambitious, we could place an IoT (Internet of Things) sensor next to every stalk of corn to monitor and optimize its growth.  Although these steps are all feasible today, some are not yet economically advantageous.  That might, however, soon change.  In the past, we treated crops in aggregate. Today, we can customize how we treat each section of a crop due to the benefits of sensors. Globally, we will need to feed 8 billion people by 2030 and 9 billion by 2050.  The UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) projects that, under current production and consumption trends, global food production must increase 60 percent by 2050 in order

Top 11 Articles on IoT, Mobility, Code Halos and Digital Transformation Strategies

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Most of the stuff I write is rubbish, but these 11 articles beat the odds and are actually worth reading. You can find my complete Top 40 list here. Enjoy! Mobile Apps, Blind Spots, Tomatoes and IoT Sensors IoT Sensors, Nerves for Robots and the Industrial Internet Sensors - Sensing and Sharing the Physical World IoT Sensors, Tactile Feedback, iPhones and Digital Transformation IoT, Software Robots, Mobile Apps and Network Centric Operations Networked Field Services and Real-Time Decision Making Thinking About Enterprise Mobility, Digital Transformation and Doctrine GEOINT, GIS, Google Field Trip and Digital Transformation Connecting the Dots Between Enterprise Mobility and IoT Merging the Physical with the Digital for Optimized Productivity IoT Sensors Extend Our Physical Senses Beyond Our Physical Reach You can find my Top 75 articles on Mobile Strategies here. ************************************************************************ Kevin Benedict Writer, Spea

IoT Sensors, Nerves for Robots and the Industrial Internet

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Sensors are Nerves for Robots Yesterday I interviewed two robotics experts on the growing demand for IPAs (intelligent process automation) robots.  These robots are made of software code.  They are assigned pre-defined actions based on steps in a process, the analysis of data, and the decision trees they are provided.  For example, an IPA can review a car loan application and approve or disprove it instantly – based on the data.  In fact, they can analyze the data from tens of thousands of car loans in seconds based on the parameters and decision trees they have been given. There are literally hundreds of thousands of different use cases for IPA robots.  IPA robots can also interact with IoT sensors and take actions based on sensor data.  Not just by completing a digital business processes, but even by controlling physical equipment and machines as well.  Sensors serve robots in much the same way as nerves serve us humans. Earlier this week I was briefed by a company AMS AG ,

Robots and I - Intelligent Process Automation, Siri and More

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Today I had the privilege of interviewing two robotics and process automation experts.  I learned there are many different kinds of robots including the humanoid types we see in movies, and robots made entirely out of software.  In this interview we discuss Rob Brown's recent white paper titled Robots and I , the different forms of robots, and then dig deep into how software robots are transforming many industries today with expert Matt Smith.  Enjoy! Video Link:  https://youtu.be/qOPFD3vshec ************************************************************************ Kevin Benedict Writer, Speaker, Senior Analyst Digital Transformation, EBA, Center for the Future of Work Cognizant View my profile on LinkedIn Learn about mobile strategies at MobileEnterpriseStrategies.com Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict Browse the Mobile Solution Directory Subscribe to Kevin's YouTube Channel Join the Linkedin Group Strategic Enterprise Mobility Join the Google+ Com

Mobile Apps, Blind Spots, Tomatoes and IoT Sensors

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Master Tomato Gardener A lot is written on mobile technologies, the Internet of Things, social media and analytics, but little is written on how all these might work together in a retail environment.  I think best by writing, so let's think this through together. Blind spots are defined as, “Areas where a person's view is obstructed.” Many business decisions today are still made based on conjecture (unsubstantiated assumptions), because the data needed to make a data-driven decision lies in an operational “blind spot.” Smart companies when designing mobile applications consider how they can personalize the user experience.  They ask themselves how they can utilize all the accumulated data they have collected on their customers or prospects, plus third-party data sources, to make the experience as beautiful and pleasurable as possible.  To start, they can often access the following kinds of data from their own and/or purchased databases to personalize the experience: N

Sensors - Sensing and Sharing the Physical World

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Global Sensor Data We spend a lot of time talking and writing about the IoT (Internet of Things) in the macro, as a giant worldwide network of objects and things, communicating with themselves and others.  That is indeed interesting, but the most interesting components of the IoT, in my opinion, are the sensors.  Sensors are defined as, "Devices that detect or measure a physical property and record, indicate, or otherwise responds to it."  In the context of IoT, sensors detect or measure a physical property and then communicate the findings wirelessly to a server for analysis. Sensors are our digital fingers that touch and feel the earth and environment! Just last week I read  this about a new iPhone patent, "The patent is titled “Digital camera with light splitter.” The camera described in the patent has three sensors for splitting color. The camera would split colors into three different rays . These would be red, green and blue. The splitting of colors is desig

IoT Sensors, Tactile Feedback, iPhones and Digital Transformation

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IoT sensors extend our physical senses beyond our physical reach and communicate the results from afar. They also allow us to share experiences remotely, not just mentally, but also tactilely. That is the first time I have ever used the word “tactilely.” It means to tangibly or physically experience something. For example, AMS’s MEMS gas sensor allows people to hear, see and smell inside their home remotely from an iPhone app. The Withings Home camera sends alerts to an iPhone if it detects movement or noise in the house. Its night-vision sensor mode enables the remote viewer to even see in the dark. The viewer can also talk through the camera to ask questions like, “Who are you, and why are you carrying my big screen TV away?” Today you can combine 3D modeling apps for smartphones and tablets with sounds, vibrations and colors so you can augment your reality with tactile experiences. Wireless sensors and 3D modeling and visualization tools enable you to see and monitor conditions