by Felicien | May 31, 2019 | Education
Today’s CEOs are increasingly being asked to lead their business into a data-driven world, but does that mean that immersive courses in understanding the technology are crucial? Not necessarily — in fact, it’s much more important that CEOs understand the potential of the technology and how to drive culture change throughout their organization. While Artificial Intelligence (AI) is truly changing the landscape of business, it’s doing so because fearless leaders are dreaming about the changes and improvements that are now possible through the genius of technology. See how this cultural revolution in the way we work is sweeping through business and leading a fast and furious discourse on how organizations will interact with data and individuals in the future.
The Promise of AI
CEOs have likely seen several generations of “transformative business models”: cloud-based computing being the most recent. As businesses are still reeling from this rapid-fire shift to Software as a Service (SaaS) models, the promise of artificial intelligence has the C-suite scrambling to understand the implications for their business. Scrappy start-ups do as they have always done, harnessing a new technology direction to quickly make changes to their business model as tech is introduced into the marketplace. Larger businesses and enterprises may be slower to act, as they can be weighed down with limited budgets, heavy infrastructure and disparate legacy systems. It takes time to move in a new direction, but the promise of AI is significant enough that business leaders throughout the world are exploring how to deploy data-driven decisioning in their operations, marketing and accounting solutions. From computers that recognize an individual human’s face to predictions of sales based on the weather, AI can be found in any number of practical applications throughout the business world — as evidenced by the 270% growth rate that AI has enjoyed in the past several years according to Gartner research.
Understanding How AI Works
In this season, the hype around AI is beginning to manifest itself in workable business models such as chatbots, next-best actions for customer service and predictive analytics. These systems can sense, analyze and respond to their environments in a way that is both interactive and intelligent. Creating a machine that is able to make better decisions over time based on the validation of its hypotheses requires a great deal of programming and math. However, the beauty of AI is that once the background work is done, humans are able to interact with the systems to continue the cycle of learning. AI systems “see” and “hear” sensory inputs and are able to translate that information, extract value and provide intelligent feedback to the user. Sensors and IoT (Internet of Things) connected devices also serve as input mechanisms, allowing machines to “feel” when something is cold or hot, positive or negative. This level of intuition is what is new to the business horizon, and it provides organizations with an ever-expanding range of possibilities to solve business problems.
3 Levels of AI Comprehension
While AI may have initially brought to mind futuristic robots that have taken over the world, true intuitive thought and “leaps of logic” are still beyond the limits of current AI technology. For example, an AI program can identify the difference between dogs and humans. The same program may be able to recognize how the two relate to each other as owner and pet and make the leap that they were going for a walk because the owner was holding the dog’s leash. However, it would not be able to intuit — or make an educated, quantifiable guess — anything about their relationship to each other in the future. This type of abstraction is still beyond the limits of current AI computing. The three primary levels of AI comprehension can be defined as:
Recognition: Identify items in a picture or video
Comprehension: Determine how the items relate to each other
Abstraction: Evaluate the information and make a prediction about future performance
Each stage in the evolution of AI has taken years, but the advances are coming more quickly all the time as business leaders and technology teams come together to dream and create the interactions of the future.
Bridging the Knowledge Gap
Business people are struggling with an unfathomable knowledge gap between their understanding of business intelligence and AI and the possibilities for the future. Data scientists are swiftly becoming the bridge that helps cross this gap between technology teams and business leaders, providing the insight that can translate business needs into practical applications of AI and machine learning. As CEOs deepen their understanding of data and possibilities for their business, a data scientist or business analyst may provide the necessary cohesion to maintain forward momentum on these highly technical projects.
Creating a Culture of Innovation
Perhaps the most important challenge faced by CEOs when it comes to AI isn’t technical at all — it’s cultural. If the organization is not willing to embrace the future potential of this emerging technology, it’s unlikely that AI-based projects will be successful. There is a fundamental fear within many organizations that AI or machine learning tech will replace individual knowledge workers as the AI can produce similar results in some instances as long as the correct inputs are being provided. A great example is in healthcare, where nurses or intake professionals traditionally gather basic information while assessing patients in an emergency room. AI chatbots can be programmed to not only gather and log this information quickly but also use micro-data to determine the level of distress of the individual — potentially classifying their level of pain for more immediate action by doctors. Minute facial changes, heightened breathing and sweating are all inputs that an AI can process in milliseconds that might be overlooked by a harried charge nurse.
While that scenario sounds as though it could potentially replace a position, what it actually means is that the human nurses are freed of repetitive tasks so they are able to add more value to other interactions. These lower-level engagements with patients are simply a distraction for nurses, taking time away from patient care and their ability to connect on a deeper and more proactive level instead of being stuck in a place of reaction to outside stimulus. CEOs who are able to clearly communicate the value of AI to their organizations in a way that is both non-threatening and that drives excitement within staff are more likely to be able to successfully sustain change initiatives for the future.
Rethinking Traditional Business Models
In a traditional business model, managers, directors and even chief executives are accustomed to making decisions based on incomplete data or inaccurate assumptions. While this often works out, the deluge of data that is now available allows for more informed decisions to be made — as long as business leaders are willing to take the time to ask questions and refine their understanding of business problems. Machines are exceptional at uncovering patterns, and many of these designs can fool people into making certain decisions based on their intuition. With the introduction of AI-driven decisioning, it shouldn’t be surprising that there are unexpected variances in the data that point to inefficiencies, inaccuracies and outright errors. Understanding how to interpret this information can often fall on the shoulders of a data scientist, but helping work through those questions and drill into root causes of issues will be a crucial skill for all business leaders in this brave new world of data.
Getting Started with AI
Whether you have a million ideas you want to vet with your team or are just starting to consider how AI can impact your organization, the time to get started is now. Organizations of all sizes are embracing basic AI — everything from social media chatbots that can help customers place a simple order or learn more about a product to connected systems that predict which products consumers may purchase next based on the buying patterns of others throughout the world. Determining where to begin is challenging, but here are a few basic considerations as you’re prepping for action:
Determine the reporting structure for AI, and this could change for every organization depending on the needs of the business. Will AI be mostly used in marketing or communications, operations or as a predictive analytics engine to determine when a potential breach has occurred? Understanding the application of AI technology can help ensure that the project gets the support that it needs to be successful.
Will you hire or rent the technical know-how for implementation and ongoing support? Here again, there is no “right” answer, but it requires contemplating the breadth of the engagement and how quickly you want to ramp up for your AI-based project. A similar question is needed to determine whether you will buy a codebase that contains the majority of what you need and customize it, or build your AI applications from scratch.
What’s the business case for AI? The most successful organizations are the ones that are able to quantify the value that they expect to gain from AI in terms of time savings, productivity boosts or improved customer engagement rates.
Understand (and be able to articulate!) the “Why” of your project. Are you solving a problem, beating a competitor to a goal or simply exploring the potential for the new technology within your business? Being realistic about expectations helps reduce the potential for pushback from non-believers within your organization.
Artificial intelligence has far surpassed the time when it was simply a buzzword that people loved to throw around and is now a thriving part of the business landscape with over 60% of businesses adopting some form of AI in the past year alone. Understanding the potential for disruption in your industry — both positive and negative — and how AI can be leveraged will be crucial skills for successful CEOs both now and in the future. There’s one thing for sure: AI is here to stay. Business leaders can make a decision to avoid moving forward with any AI-driven initiatives, but the cost to the organization may be higher than stakeholders are willing to pay.
by Felicien | May 31, 2019 | Education
Understanding the threat landscape is a crucial part of a CEOs job as you attempt to protect your organization now and in the future. The cybersecurity and compliance landscape is changing rapidly, and it can be difficult to keep up with the various challenges your business is facing — from ransomware to phishing schemes, not to mention global and domestic privacy act compliance. While compliance and cybersecurity may not feel like exactly the same topic, understanding how all the moving pieces work together can help you synthesize strategies that will protect your business. See how these fast-moving fields continue to morph and how you can manage the risk inherent in today’s digital businesses.
The Digital Landscape is Rapidly Changing
Just a few years ago, CEOs were vision-casting how all these great new technologies would work together: customer data driving targeted marketing, operations becoming more efficient due to the use of connected devices and augmented reality forming the basis for your selling strategies for physical goods. As these advanced technologies become more mature, CEOs are finding that each interconnected system provides yet another point for failure. Each mobile phone that is tied into your network infrastructure could be the cause of a data breach. Cybercriminals are becoming more crafty with their messaging to your teams by mimicking vendor email addresses in requests for funds. Augmented reality and next-level marketing techniques are causing consumers to become more concerned than ever before with how much data is being tracked by companies — and how that information is being used.
Intense Focus on Privacy Requires Unified Compliance Strategy
CEOs are no longer able to assume that individual business units understand the full implications of privacy policies and are acting upon them. Instead, a unified compliance strategy is a crucial step that businesses must take in order to stay within the aggressive privacy policies that are being put into place in Europe and now in the US. California is the first state to create consumer data privacy laws that are very similar to those already enacted in May 2018 by the European Union’s GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation). The California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) takes compliance a step further and mandates strict consequences for organizations that refuse to comply or cannot show that they are moving towards compliance. The complexity of these laws is such that attempting to manage data at a business unit level is no longer feasible, requiring what may be expensive consolidation of disparate databases, IT infrastructure and reporting.
Determining Acceptable Risk
When it comes to cybersecurity and compliance, it’s important to determine the acceptable risk for your organization. There are no guarantees that your systems cannot be infiltrated even if you invest in the most sophisticated system in the world. The unfortunate fact is that a significant percentage of data breaches are caused by users by poor password habits, inadvertent interactions with malware or even improper access levels to sensitive data. Mitigating each of these risks is not a reasonable ask to your IT department, making it vital that you work with your executive team to identify the most likely risks and how they can be discovered so remediation can begin quickly. Cybersecurity is a key consideration simply because it’s rarely a matter of “if” your organization will be affected — but “when” and to what extent the incident will occur. If you are able to achieve true resiliency for your organization, the combination of disaster recovery and business continuity plans that combine monitoring, detection and response services may help you reduce the overall costs of an attack or breach.
Elevating the Conversation
When CEOs step into the battlefield of cybersecurity, it raises the importance of the conversation and helps ensure that there is a continued focus on protecting the organization from these digital perils. Everything from convincing business units to work together to gather and store data to approving additional spending on security and monitoring software becomes easier, as the CEO is able to lend their global view to the conversation. Cyberattacks can cause losses in unexpected places, such as the loss of consumer confidence or vendor relationships. Quantifying these risks can be a challenge, but organizations are now estimating that a single attack may cost their business as much as $1.67 million. Cybersecurity aside, non-compliance with state and federal data privacy regulations can also be a pricey proposition, with new legislation in place in California that has severe civil penalties and even includes the potential for statutory damages.
Cybersecurity Isn’t a One-Time Resolution to a Problem
As technical and troubling a problem such as cybersecurity is, there is no one-time resolution to this thorny problem. While hackers are the cause of a significant portion of the cyberattacks, it’s every bit as likely — if not a bit more so — that your cyber risk is accidentally caused by employees or contractors who simply made a bad decision. That means ongoing education and continual system monitoring will need to become part of the landscape of your organization if you hope to reduce your overall cybersecurity risk. Active monitoring solutions can help identify any immediate threats, but continued diligence on the part of the executive team will help ensure that cybersecurity and compliance remain top-of-mind for the organization.
All organizations are vulnerable to risk in different ways, but it’s crucial that the organization’s top executive is part of the conversation and solution to the problem. Without this top-down focus on digital risk, businesses are much less likely to put the infrastructure, processes and procedures in place that will protect their data and business operations.
by Felicien | May 31, 2019 | Education
Microsoft recently announced major enhancements to Microsoft 365 (yes, you read that right — Office 365 is now a part of Microsoft 365), including significant upgrades to SharePoint. The innovation with perhaps the greatest potential is Home Sites. In today’s tech blog, we’ll explore what Microsoft is up to with this new feature.
SharePoint Home Sites
If you’ve used Office 365 for any length of time, you’ve probably come across SharePoint. Most users know it as the name of the cloud storage component of Office 365. SharePoint has also been the underpinnings of some companies’ intranet sites for the better part of a decade.
SharePoint home sites is a huge evolution for the intranet component in the Microsoft 365 platform. Corporate vice president for OneDrive, SharePoint, and Office Jeff Teper calls them “a dynamic, engaging, and personalized employee experience for your organization.” What are home sites exactly, though?
Intranet, Evolved
SharePoint home sites are Microsoft’s vision for the future of the workplace intranet. They are intelligent — powered by AI, and they provide a landing page for employees that customizes based on the employee’s role.
Here are a few of the new features in SharePoint home sites.
SharePoint home sites include powerful Microsoft Search technology that reaches every corner of the company’s intranet.
SharePoint home sites intelligently share content that’s relevant to users depending on each user’s position in the company.
SharePoint home sites pull together collaboration tools like Yammer and Stream into one location that’s customized for each user.
SharePoint home sites offer additional personalization options, allowing users to customize their page for maximum productivity.
What SharePoint Home Sites Can Do for You
Part of the strength of home sites is their customization options, but users and organizations will see benefits even with a straight “out of the box” deployment. Here are a handful.
News, For All
By default, home sites serve as an organization-wide news source. Anything published as news to the home site is shown to every user as organizational news. With SharePoint home sites, you can take your news out of the email vortex and put it front and center on your home site.
A Powerful, Connected Page
Home sites are also linked up with the newly enhanced SharePoint start page, which allows you to jump right into work. The search box provided is also powerful and connected. It’s powered by Microsoft Search, and it reaches across your enterprise—anywhere the user has access to.
Low Barrier to Entry
Another feature is the low barrier to entry. With home sites, you can build out an intranet portal in just minutes, not months. You don’t need to know how to code, and you can brand your site to fit your company image.
Conclusion
Are you ready to take the leap to Microsoft 365 and explore SharePoint home sites? We’re here to guide you. Contact us today!
by Felicien | May 30, 2019 | Education
Microsoft PowerPoint is the industry leader in presentation software, a venerable application that’s over 30 years old. Awesome PowerPoint slides can greatly enhance the visual impact of a meeting presentation. The inverse is also true: terribly designed PowerPoint slides can create serious distraction and disinterest. Many a speaker has been undermined by his or her slides.
Today’s tech tip will teach you how to make your Microsoft PowerPoint slides awesome. View online here or watch the video below.
Step 1: Choose a Theme
PowerPoint offers a variety of prebuilt themes. Choose one that fits the tone of your presentation and your company. To do so, open PowerPoint and click the Design tab in the menu ribbon. One of the sections is named Themes. Click on a theme to apply it to the default slide. Don’t like it? Try another.
PowerPoint also allows you to find additional themes online. Click the drop-down arrow in the Themes pane and select “Browse for Themes…” to start that process.
Bonus tip: If you have a presentation that’s already filled with content, you can still experiment with changing the look by changing themes. Changing themes never removes or erases existing content, though it will change fonts and sometimes reposition text.
Step 2: Insert Your Raw Data
Whether you’re typing all your content in manually or pasting it in from another document, now’s the time to get the raw data into your file. Don’t worry very much about looks at this point. Just get the information in there.
If you’re working in a theme, remember to right-click on each new slide and select the appropriate layout. Placing content into slides with the proper layout now will save you headaches later.
Bonus tip: Not all themes have the same set of slide layouts available. Make sure the theme you choose has all the ones you need.
Step 3: Check Out Design Ideas
A new feature in Office 365, Design Ideas is a powerful, AI-assisted tool. It will dynamically analyze the contents of a slide and suggest a handful of alternative ways of displaying the information. It’s truly marvelous when it works just right (for example, turning a bulleted list into a sleek timeline), and you have to see it in action to fully appreciate it.
To access Design Ideas, click on the Design tab in the menu ribbon. At the far right, you’ll see a Design Ideas button in the Designer section of the ribbon. Click this button to open a sidebar. You may see “Generating design ideas…” for a few seconds. Next, a handful of design ideas will appear. Click through them and select the one that works best for you.
Using Design Ideas is the easiest way to create awesome, powerful PowerPoint presentations. Check it out today!
by Felicien | May 30, 2019 | Education
Personal email accounts for business purposes
It can be tempting to use your familiar, personal email account to send and receive emails for your professional life – but you shouldn’t take the risk.
Is it safe to use your personal email for business?
Using your personal email to communicate for business purposes isn’t a good idea. It can expose you to a number of legal and other liabilities. And, to be honest, it doesn’t look very professional, does it? Read on to learn more about the legal and security implications of conducting business on your personal email account.
Every so often, a client of ours will check with us about using their personal email to do business.
While there is a range of implications that come with doing so (legal, reputational, etc.), usually the question is asked to double check about how it could affect their cybersecurity.
Regardless of why a user may be asking the question, the answer is that it is never advisable to use a personal email account for business purposes. Period.
But if you’d like more detail as to why and, specifically, if you’d like to understand what risks you may be taking right now if you’re already using a personal email account at work, then keep reading.
4 reasons why you should never use personal email for business.
Legal implications and data integrity
The first risk, and likely one of the most severe, is that when you use your personal email account for work (or, allow your employees to do so), then you’re adding a number of uncontrollable variables into how your business data is accessed and where it is stored.
In an ideal situation, in which everyone at your business is using approved, professional business email accounts on a verified client, then you (or, more likely, your IT department or outsourced Leesburg, FL IT services company) know where your data is.
Especially in the age of cloud computing, when all data is stored “offsite” and accessed remotely in one way or another, you may assume that your data’s “location” isn’t very important – can’t you just access it the same way no matter where it is?
It’s not that simple.
When working with a professional cloud-based IT environment, your IT people should know where your data is stored, and that it’s being stored properly in secure and backed up data centers. Even though your data isn’t hosted onsite (or not entirely onsite, depending on the size of your business) it is still accounted for.
When you factor in personal email, all those assurances go out the window. Your IT team won’t be able to confidently track where your data is being kept, and how well it is being maintained. Depending on the personal email accounts your staff members use, this data may not be backed up.
Furthermore, in the event of legal proceedings, personal emails are often not discoverable, meaning that it wouldn’t be possible to externally scan users emails (e.g. Google specifically prohibits this for Gmail accounts).
And lastly, don’t forget about compliance. Depending on the business sector in which you operate (finance, healthcare, government contracting) you may be subject to compliance regulations that strictly state how data is stored and accessed. Personal email accounts are woefully ill-suited to meet compliance standards.
Security implications and data protection
This one should be obvious – personal email does not have the same cybersecurity measures as their professional counterparts.
In order to properly secure a business’ email accounts, a number of protections must be put in place:
Sophisticated spam filters to keep time-wasting or even dangerous spam emails out of your employee’s inboxes.
Top-quality inbound virus blocking capabilities, further protecting you and your employees from incoming threats.
Automatic quarantine procedures for malicious links and attachments before they arrive. These focus on email-based exploits such as phishing and spyware, to remove the possibility that someone in your organization may open a link without considering the dangerous ramifications.
Secure email archiving capability so that you have an impeccable record of each and every email in your business.
Email encryption measures to ensure that your communication is secured against unwelcome readers while in transit.
Can you guarantee that your employees’ email accounts have all the same protections in place?
If one of your staff members is targeted by a cybercriminal or has their personal email address added to a mass phishing campaign, they are much less prepared to defend against it than a robust, professional email client would be.
It’s then only a matter of the personal email account being compromised for a cybercriminal to access any and all private business information that has been sent and received on that account. Given that it’s a personal email and not one managed by an IT department, it’s much less likely that you would be able to wipe its contents, or remotely log it out and reset the login info.
Staff changes and data continuity
Here’s a scenario to consider: what happens when you have to terminate an employee, but they had been using their personal email to conduct business on your behalf?
You can’t remove their access to their own email, and so, when they leave your business, (perhaps not on the best terms), and will continue to have copies of what is potentially private and valuable business information.
They continue to have contact info for your current employees, clients, and other business contacts – and may even be contacted by your clients that may not have been aware of their termination (let’s be honest – you don’t always want to spread the word that you had to fire someone).
By allowing your employees to use their personal email now, you surrender control of a great deal of business data in the future. While it would be nice to assume that your current staff members will always be with you, and if they do leave, that it will be on good terms – but it’s not likely. And you shouldn’t risk your data and your business betting on it.
Professional and reputational implications
While it may not involve legal, compliance, or security implications, this risk could very well affect your bottom line.
Let’s call a spade a spade – using a personal email for work doesn’t look very good, does it?
It’s the same line of thinking that suggests that using a .org domain for your business isn’t a good idea either.
It just makes you look cheap – like you wouldn’t spring for a specific domain that matches the name of your business.
If a potential client gets in touch with you over the phone or in person, and then later follows up on email and gets a reply from something like john.smith.mybusiness@gmail.com, they probably won’t think very highly of your business, will they?
That’s four solid reasons why you shouldn’t be using your personal email at work, but there’s actually one more – it’s completely unnecessary.
Getting a business email account has never been easier. Virtually any service provider will be able to offer secondary accounts that can be personalized with a business-specific domain. Furthermore, any IT services company worth their salt can set it up for you.
Don’t cut corners and try to save a buck when it comes to your business’ email. Beyond the many serious risks to which it can expose you, it also just makes you look bad.
