Japie Saunders IS Manager | Cloud & Network Architect ATG

Argility Technology Group announces two more Google partnerships

ajustus Mar 31, 2022 ATG, Google, Partnership

The group’s strategic focus on Google is strengthened.

The Argility Technology Group (ATG), a leading developer of innovative software and technology solutions for the retail and supply chain sectors, has added Google Cloud Partner and Google Workspace Partner to its Google Build Partner certification.

“This move consolidates ATG’s strategy to focus on developing solutions on the Google Cloud Platform, and expands the range of services ATG can offer,” says Japie Saunders, IS Manager and Cloud Architect at ATG. “Becoming a Google Cloud Partner means that we can access the whole Google suite, which has an extensive range of products that can be used to create solutions that really solve the business challenges faced by our clients,” he says. “In similar vein, the Google Workspace partnership also opens up the full range of Google’s productivity and collaboration tools. These will allow ATG to craft powerful solutions that enable our clients to work together easily and effectively, something that’s become even more important since the pandemic turned the work environment upside down.”

Saunders says achieving these certifications is an important milestone in ATG’s drive to develop a growing range of cloud-based solutions. Very early on, ATG realised that cloud offered businesses a game-changing way to access a range of technologies that would enable them to make the shift to a data-centric, highly personalised digital commerce experience with reduced risk and quicker implementation times. The cloud model also makes it much easier to manage costs, a key issue for organisations in a cost-constrained environment.

ATG has elected to base its solutions exclusively on Google Cloud Platform for a number of reasons, not least of which is access to industry-leading artificial intelligence and machine learning tools that can be easily integrated into its solutions. Google’s pioneering of Kubernetes is another plus, as is the quality and responsiveness of Google’s teams, both global and local.

“Our growing partnership with Google is a key strategy in our quest to continue developing technology solutions that will help retail and supply chain organisations digitally transform their businesses – it is vital they do so to compete successfully in an increasingly virtual world. We have the industry insight and experience to create these solutions and partnering with Google enables us to develop and implement them more quickly and cost-effectively,” concludes Saunders.

Source: IT Web

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The likely effect of AI on the global job market

ajustus Mar 15, 2022 AI, Artificial Intelligence, PredictRetail

About 30% of all tasks are currently done by machines, with people performing the rest, but it’s believed the balance will change to 50-50 by 2025.

By Marko Salic, CEO of the Argility Technology Group

Artificial intelligence (AI) is no exception to the well-documented concerns surrounding new disruptive technologies and their effect on labour requirements. Gloomy predictions of job losses may well be correct.

Indeed, research supports this premise. However, the other side of the coin is that automation may lead to the creation of better jobs and reduce the need for physical labour – but there is a while to go before that happens and there are tangible business benefits to be gained right now by automating and optimising to remain competitive.

It is scarcely a few decades since the internet raised similar concerns as it grew. However, as it turned out, technology created millions of jobs and according to Forbes, comprises 10% of US GDP, with AI poised to create even greater growth in global economies.

It is interesting to note that PwC’s 22nd Global CEO survey revealed that 63% of CEOs surveyed believe AI will have a larger impact than the internet.

COVID driving the urgency for change

Of course, nobody foresaw the extraordinary events of 2020 with the declaration of a pandemic that threatened lives and livelihoods around the world. The economic fallout from the pandemic has been devastating, with millions out of a job due to the necessary closures of entire industries, hospitality, travel, etc, to contain the spread of the virus.

The arrival of COVID-19 has resulted in an acceleration of technological advances because of the urgent need to automate routine tasks – from contactless cashiers to robots delivering packages. In this environment, many are concerned that AI will drive significant automation in the coming decades, leading some to fear it will take their jobs.

It is reported that the US shed around 40 million jobs at the peak of the pandemic, and while some have come back, others will never reappear. One group of economists estimates that 42% of the jobs lost are gone forever.

Without a strategy, AI solutions risk never making it into production.

So, it is understandable that there is concern that this will be followed by more job losses as machines take away even more jobs from workers. The World Economic Forum (WEF) reports that automation will supplant about 85 million jobs by 2025.

However, this report is anything but gloom and doom as it goes on to note there is little to be concerned about as its analysis predicts the future tech-driven economy will create 97 million new jobs.

The WEF report reveals that currently, approximately 30% of all tasks are done by machines − with people performing the rest. However, by 2025, it’s believed the balance will dramatically change to a 50-50 combination of humans and machines.

All reports appear to agree on one thing and that is that AI will create more jobs than it destroys. AI is incredibly efficient at automating and optimising, but it does not do judgement – the latter requires human intelligence.

The PwC report notes that AI, robotics and other forms of smart automation have the potential to bring great economic benefits, contributing up to $15 trillion to the global GDP by 2030, but with a high human cost. PwC says this extra wealth will also generate demand for many new types of jobs.

So, it is apparent that the emergence of ever-new AI-driven technologies are not only powering the fourth industrial revolution and changing the way we work and live, but are predicted to create more jobs than they displace. This in turn will require new skills and necessitate significant commercial and governmental investment in upskilling and reskilling of workforces.

Productivity gains

In the short-term, it appears the biggest economic positive to come out of automation and AI will come from productivity gains due to the automation of routine tasks. This is said to augment employees’ capabilities and free them to focus on more stimulating and higher value-adding work.

Capital-intensive sectors such as manufacturing and transport are, therefore, likely to see the largest efficiency outputs from AI because much of their operational processes are ripe for automation.

I would like to conclude by listing firstly what companies are likely to gain by implementing AI programmes, and secondly, what they need to have in place to get their AI strategy off the ground.

Productivity gains from businesses automating processes (including the use of robots and autonomous vehicles).
Productivity gains from businesses augmenting their existing labour force with AI technologies (assisted and augmented intelligence).
Increased consumer demand resulting from the availability of personalised and/or higher-quality AI-enhanced products and services.

Has the company performed a readiness assessment? One source notes that without the following, the AI programme will hit a stall button:

Culture of innovation − businesses must be fearless towards embracing innovation and taking risks.
Buy-in throughout the organisation – from all levels of management and staff − is crucial.
Sufficient understanding of the quality and quantity of data on-hand – data is available in a myriad of forms, but without all types of data being considered, the algorithms cannot learn and interpret successfully. Data is the fuel that powers all AI.
Strategy − without a strategy, AI solutions risk never making it into production. Having the winning lottery numbers is pointless if you don’t own a ticket.
The right technologies − cloud-based computing and storage technologies are critical for AI programmes to produce effectively. AI workloads require an enormous amount of processing power.

I would like to endorse the foregoing as essential to the implementation of an AI programme. Therefore, start with an AI readiness assessment because if the company is not ready and launches into it, the odds of success diminish significantly.

Lastly, seek advice from an expert source – either by sourcing an AI strategist to work in-house or partnering with specialists in the arena.

Source: IT Web

Marko Salic is CEO of the Argility Technology Group, a software development group with a history that spans almost four decades, predominantly in the retail and supply chain sectors.

Salic has over 20 years’ industry experience, stemming from software development and architecture through to business development, management and strategy. He spent 15 of those years at Argility creating some of the company’s most innovative solutions and products.

His passion lies in the focus on new technologies and next-generation innovative solutions that will take various cross-industry players to the next level. Coming from a strong technical background, Salic’s expertise lies in understanding the challenges modern businesses face and the best way to solve them by applying modern technology and innovation.

In his leadership of Argility, he is shaping next-level client solutions that will address the need for businesses to digitally transform and provide a hyper-personalised omni-channel customer experience to manage digital disruption and stay relevant.

How to build AI into your organisation

ajustus Mar 1, 2022 AI, Artificial Intelligence, PredictRetail

Artificial intelligence engineering brings together various disciplines to tame the AI hype, while providing a clearer path to realising value.

By Marko Salic, CEO of the Argility Technology Group

As I noted in my previous article, artificial intelligence (AI) is driving many questions from business leaders as they seek to explore the full impact it can have on their companies.

A lot of concern has also been expressed about AI disruption. My advice on this point would be to prepare for disruption – plan for it. Before embarking on an AI implementation journey, assess the organisation’s readiness for it.

PwC advises that cutting across all these considerations is how to build AI in a responsible and transparent way in order to maintain the confidence of customers and wider stakeholders. But how to achieve this?

Research indicates that few businesses are ready to overcome the essential tasks necessary if they are to prepare correctly for such a radical change. For example, only 38% reported they can currently provide employees with reskilling and training opportunities in the face of technology disruptions.

Obviously, this is a serious misconnect and needs to be addressed. With the right strategy in place, it is possible to prepare the organisation and its staff to not only survive automation but thrive on it.

AI technologies permit businesses to mine data, generate insights, create operational efficiencies, provide stronger experiences, and close the gap between information and action in ways previously not possible.

All companies want to avail of this potential power, which also unleashes the ability to disrupt, innovate, enhance, and in many cases, totally transform an organisation. AI is an umbrella term encapsulating machine and deep learning, image and video recognition, predictive analytics, process automation, speech recognition, biometrics and natural language processing. It can apply to practically every industry sector.

What is AI’s value proposition in 2022?

Forrester’s predictions for the use of artificial intelligence in 2021 and going forward are clear on how AI will influence business development in 2022.

The research company says AI and machine learning will permeate new use cases with companies pushing it to new frontiers, such as holographic meetings for remote work and on-demand, personalised manufacturing.

It goes on to highlight how AI is expected to boost workplace automation and augmentation needs.

It is possible to prepare the organisation and its staff to not only survive automation but thrive on it.

In 2021, a third of companies in adaptive and growth mode looked to AI to help with workplace disruption for location-based, physical, or human-touch workers and knowledge workers operating from home. These businesses were reported to be applying AI to intelligent document extraction, customer service agent augmentation, return-to-work health tracking, or semi-autonomous robots for social distancing.

Gartner predicts a robust AI engineering strategy will facilitate the performance, scalability, interpretability and reliability of AI models, while delivering the full value of AI investments. It notes AI projects often face issues with maintainability, scalability and governance, which makes them a challenge.

It states that AI engineering offers a pathway that makes it part of the mainstream DevOps process rather than a set of specialised, isolated projects. It brings together various disciplines to tame the AI hype, while providing a clearer path to value.

Gartner highlights the fact that due to the governance aspect of AI engineering; responsible AI is emerging to deal with trust, transparency, ethics, fairness, interpretability and compliance issues – in other words, AI accountability. This drive towards trusted data and how it is used is particularly pertinent in SA.

Artificial Intelligence and POPIA

No discussion on AI in South Africa would be complete without examining POPIA – which came into effect on 1 July 2021 − and its impact on the use of AI systems.

South African businesses will be remiss if they do not familiarise themselves with a deep understanding of the regulations pertaining to the use of personal information required for AI or acquired through it.

The Act has made provision for the governance of automated decision-making and strictly directs how pronouncements or resolutions may be arrived at through information gleaned from AI profiling techniques. It prohibits financial institutions, for example, from granting or rejecting loan applications solely based on profiles created by AI systems.

Ignorance will not be accepted as an excuse if businesses inadvertently put themselves at risk of breaking with regulations. Analytics lies at the heart of AI systems that produce information which may be deemed valuable to the system but may not have been compliantly acquired as directed by POPIA.

Add to that the risk of a security breach which today is being cited more as a certainty than a possibility. In a case where personal information is compromised and data is stolen, the organisation that gathered it will be left with a fine and possible staggering loss of business due to breach of trust with its customers.

Do these constrictions mean AI cannot be used to tap into the unparalleled value it holds for businesses today? No, it certainly does not, but it does require partnering with AI specialists who can guide companies through the regulatory minefield to ensure compliance.

In my final article in this series, I will discuss the biggest fear with AI: the possibility of job losses due to automation and artificial intelligence.

Source: IT Web

Marko Salic is CEO of the Argility Technology Group, a software development group with a history that spans almost four decades, predominantly in the retail and supply chain sectors.

Artificial intelligence is a big game-changer

ajustus Feb 15, 2022 AI, Artificial Intelligence, PredictRetail

A deeper look at where artificial intelligence is set to go, as it disrupts business strategies and economies around the globe.

By Marko Salic, CEO of the Argility Technology Group

There is a significant amount of both circumspection and excitement surrounding artificial intelligence (AI). However, despite the fact that it already touches almost every aspect of our lives, it is in many ways still in its infancy.

A PwC study notes AI can transform the productivity and GDP potential of the global economy, with the proviso that strategic investment in different types of AI technology is needed to make that happen.

The report says labour productivity improvements will drive initial GDP gains as firms seek to ‘augment’ the productivity of their labour force with AI technologies and automate certain tasks and roles.

PwC research also shows that 45% of total economic gains by 2030 will come from product enhancements, stimulating consumer demand. This is because AI will drive greater product variety, with increased personalisation, attractiveness and affordability over time.

The research firm predicts the greatest economic gains from AI will be in China (26% boost to GDP in 2030) and North America (14.5% boost), equivalent to a total of $10.7 trillion and accounting for almost 70% of the global economic impact.

McKinsey estimates AI may deliver an additional economic output of around $13 trillion by 2030, increasing global GDP by about 1.2% annually, and notes this will mainly come from substitution of labour by automation and increased innovation of products and services.

From a macro-economic perspective, there are opportunities for emerging markets, like South Africa, to leapfrog more developed counterparts.

I think a figure like $15.7 trillion is enough to get any business leader’s chair into the upright position and paying attention to what AI can do. The PwC study shows exactly just how big a game-changer AI is likely to be, saying “just how much value potential is up for grabs”.

PwC reports that AI could contribute up to $15.7 trillion to the global economy in 2030 – that’s more than the current output of China and India combined. Of this, $6.6 trillion is predicted to be likely to come from increased productivity and $9.1 trillion likely to come from consumption side effects.

It will always be the case that some economies, markets, sectors and individual businesses are more advanced than others; however, as I mentioned at the outset, AI is still at a very early stage of development overall.

From a macro-economic perspective, there are, therefore, opportunities for emerging markets, like South Africa, to leapfrog more developed counterparts. The PwC study endorses this supposition. It is quite possible that within any business sector, today’s start-ups, or a business that hasn’t even been founded yet, could be the market leader in 10 years’ time due to its utilisation of AI.

What exactly is AI?

Definitions abound on the internet; for example AI is defined as the ability of a digital computer or computer-controlled robot to perform tasks commonly associated with intelligent beings.

I like PwC’s broad definition, which is that AI is a collective term for computer systems that can sense their environment, think, learn and act in response to what they’re sensing and their objectives.

The different forms of AI in use today include digital assistants, chatbots and machine learning. According to Gartner, during the pandemic AI came into its own with chatbots answering the flood of pandemic-related questions, computer vision helped maintain social distancing and machine learning models were indispensable for modelling the effects of reopening economies. All of this would indicate that AI is beginning to deliver on its promise.

Gartner’s 2020 Hype Cycle for AI revealed that despite the global impact of COVID-19, 47% of AI investments were unchanged since the start of the pandemic and 30% of organisations planned to increase such investments.

It added that only 16% had temporarily suspended AI investments, and just 7% had decreased them. This shows that businesses around the world have AI front and centre of their growth strategies.

AI can be further segmented under various headers, including automated intelligence, which is the automation of manual/cognitive and routine/non-routine tasks; assisted intelligence − helping people to perform tasks faster and better; and augmented intelligence, which helps people to make better decisions.

However, the pièce de resistance aspect of AI − that Hollywood has used to scare us all over the years − is autonomous intelligence, which is the automation of decision-making processes without human intervention. This latter aspect is mind-blowing for many business execs as they consider the fact that as humans and machines collaborate more closely, and AI innovations come out of the research lab and into the mainstream, the transformational possibilities are limitless.

The reality is, most applications of AI in this day and age fall under the umbrella of narrow AI where the focus is on being extremely effective at one task or problem; for example, a chabot.

General AI is still a relatively theoretical concept and describes AI applications that can solve multiple problems across multiple domains, in an autonomous manner.

However, the sheer depth of potential and opportunities opened by AI are also driving many questions from business leaders as they try to capitalise on it. PwC says C-suite executives are seeking to know what impact AI will have on their companies and worrying if their digital commercial model will be threatened by AI disruption.

Where should they target investment, and what kind of capabilities would enable them to perform better are also common concerns. There is so much to consider, especially how to get AI into the fabric of the business.

I will unpack this last question in my second article in this series on AI and discuss how to go about merging it into the business in a manner that inspires the confidence of customers and all stakeholders.

Source: IT Web

Marko Salic is CEO of the Argility Technology Group, a software development group with a history that spans almost four decades, predominantly in the retail and supply chain sectors.

Smollan buys Argility Technology Group from Capital Eye Investment

ajustus Jan 13, 2022 Acquisition, ATG, Smollan

South Africa’s Argility Technology Group has been snapped up by the Smollan Group, a global intelligent commerce solutions business that works to deliver growth for retailers and brand owners across five continents, including Africa.

Smollan acquired ATG from Capital Eye Investments – a private equity and venture capital company that invests in technology-driven businesses with a particular focus on emerging markets. The terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Smollan has a 90-year history of partnering with brands to create and execute insight-led solutions to deliver growth, wider distribution and operational efficiency, while ATG’s origins trace back to a 35-year-plus history as a prominent software developer and supplier to the retail and supply chain sectors.

Expanding data offering within retail and supply chain

James Collett, Smollan Chief Data Officer, emphasises the importance of the strategic acquisition. “ATG joining the Smollan Group is a significant step forward in our strategy to expand our technology and data offering within retail and supply chain. We are extremely excited about the synergies which exist between the businesses, and as a leading global commerce solution company, we will be looking to grow the ATG footprint internationally.

“An aligned and strong culture is always foundational to creating a successful partnership, and in ATG and its people, we believe that we have found just that. We look forward to welcoming ATG into the Smollan family,” says Collett.

Q&A: Marko Salic on digitally transforming retail and supply chain solutions – Read more

Marko Salic, ATG CEO notes that the acquisition is one of the most important events in the history of Argility. “ATG is immensely excited about this new phase in the history of the group. Over the past five years, we have made notable strategic investments in the acquisition of companies that have served to augment our goal of partnering with retail and supply chain organisations to help them digitise and transition into industry 4.0.

“The purchase of ATG by Smollan represents a substantial investment in our business and an expanded pathway to global markets. The synergies between Argility’s vision and mission with that of Smollan made this a very appealing move for us and a good cultural fit for our group. Combining these strengths will serve to enhance ATG’s portfolio; expand our solutions, and service delivery for current and future customers,” says Salic.

The Smollan acquisition of ATG has been ratified by all regulatory bodies and is effective immediately.

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The Argility Technology Group

The Argility Technology Group is a leading innovator and implementer of digital commerce and supply chain software solutions in Africa. Our vast experience combined with a depth of proprietary software and skills enables us to address the multitude of challenges facing businesses in today’s era of digital transformation.

We solve complex business problems by supplying and supporting various customised software solutions such as: Point of Sale; ERP; Warehouse, Fleet, IoT and Proximity Management; Data Science (Artificial Intelligence) solutions and more. We strive to become a technology partner and an extension of our customers’ businesses and not just another solutions provider.

The group’s origins trace back over thirty years as a leading software supplier to the retail sector. Decades of long, prosperous customer relationships bear testament to our customer-centric culture, exceptional service, and innovative thinking. From single systems to the digital transformation of an entire organisation – we have the solutions, skills, and experience.

The Argility Technology Group is comprised of: Argility; Cquential Solutions, Fleet Domain; SkyData Communications, and strategic partner, Ashanti AI. All are foremost technology developers and suppliers of enterprise software solutions for the Retail, Supply Chain, Fleet industries as well as a comprehensive IoT framework that enables local enterprises to integrate, manage and optimise their growing IoT ecosystems.

For further information: www.argility.com

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Smollan

Founded in 1931, Smollan is a global commerce business, delivering growth for retailers and brand owners across five continents. We partner with brands to create and execute insight-led solutions to deliver growth, wider distribution, and operational efficiencies.

Internationally recognised for our exceptional human platform of over 80 000 people and our sophisticated systems, we drive sales and create brilliant shopper experiences for some of the world’s most loved brands. We work at the pivot point where retailers, brands and shoppers intersect.

Source: BIZCommunity | IT Web | Intelligent CIO

Argility Technology Group solves problem of queue busting and gathering clean data

ajustus Aug 23, 2021 UCapture

Argility Technology Group solves problem of queue busting and gathering clean data

The Argility Technology Group (ATG) has efficiently solved the ongoing challenges organisations experience around accurate, efficient gathering of customer data, flawed data skewing analytics and a lack of proper addresses hampering service delivery to customers.

With a simple solution that connects to retailers’ point of sale or other systems, customers can now use their mobile devices to take charge of the process of accurately inputting data, pinpointing their addresses on a map and verifying their own identity.

Argility’s new UCapture makes customer onboarding, market surveys and other data capturing simple, by allowing customers to add and confirm their own personal information, pin their home location on a Google map and even validate their identity numbers. The data is then transferred to retailers’ own systems, reducing time spent collecting the information in stores and ensuring that the data is clean and accurate.

Eamon McCann, Chief Technical Officer of ATG, says the company, which provides solutions and support for major retail outlet brands, sought to overcome a common challenge for retailers selling big ticket items. “Retailers want to build greater efficiency and improve the customer experience, but due to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, they have limits on the investments they can make on their internal systems,” he says. “At the same time, they want access to clean data for analytics.”

UCapture addresses these challenges and more. Not only does it speed up queues and ensure quality data is captured, but by pinpointing home coordinates on a map, it also overcomes the challenge of supporting deliveries to rural areas with no formal address. With an integrated dashboard, UCapture allows administrators and managers to see how many requests were sent, how many are active and how many reverted.

Because all data is fully encrypted, UCapture supports POPIA compliance at a very affordable price – at around R1-R2 per customer onboarding. “This may sound simple, but it offers a huge return on investment and really adds value. At Argility, we have been blown away by how well it has taken off,” says McCann.

The solution has undergone an eight-week pilot at a major furniture retailer with excellent results: 70% of customers were willing to use the solution to capture their own personal information. This resulted in faster time to service, shorter queues and a better customer experience. UCapture will be launched to the broader market in August 2021.

Source: IT Web

For more information contact our Business Consultants on 011 712 1300, email info@argility.com or visit our website, www.argility.com

The role of artificial intelligence in digital commerce

ajustus Jun 21, 2021

Artificial intelligence is impacting customer choices, using the knowledge of previous purchases, searched products and online browsing habits to provide a personalised feel.

By Marko Salic, CEO of the Argility Technology Group

Before we get into the role of artificial intelligence (AI) and where it is set to take digital commerce, I think we should begin by unpacking a definition of digital commerce – what does it mean?

It can be defined as the process of selling and buying products and/or services using digital channels. It includes the people, processes and technologies necessary to execute the offering of product, promotions, pricing, analytics, customer acquisition plus retention, and customer experience at all touchpoints throughout the buying journey.

This definition can be applied to all sectors of business irrelevant of area of operations, so it includes banking, retail, automotive, etc. Sector is irrelevant in a world of digital transformation at the speed of COVID – all businesses seek digital channels to market their goods.

Today, digital channels have been expanded to relate to digital transformation that is inclusive of people, processes and technologies used throughout the customer buying excursion.

In the retail sector, online sales are no longer an option, but a necessity for brick-and-mortar businesses. On the consumer side, the COVID-19 crisis has caused a structural shift of demand toward digital commerce that is likely to continue in the years to come.

As far back as 2017, Gartner research reported on the results of a survey of 307 digital commerce organisations globally, in an effort to understand AI adoption and investment plans in digital commerce.

The research firm noted that 70% of the companies surveyed reported their AI projects as successful. Three-quarters of respondents said they were seeing double-digit improvements in the outcomes they measured.

The most common metrics used to measure the business impact of AI were customer satisfaction, revenue and cost reduction, for which respondents cited improvements of 19%, 15% and 15%, respectively.

Knowledge of updated technologies will be key in the race for a competitive-edge in digital commercial markets.

But that was back in the day – when global pandemics were confined to Hollywood movies predicting a viral takeover of the planet – pure science fiction – we thought. COVID-19 served to produce a sudden shift with lasting consequences, including the exponential acceleration of digital adoption.

Machines are taking over?

Pandemic or no – AI driving digital commerce is not only here to stay but forging ahead. Examples of this include companies such as Facebook and IBM that have expressed their interest in developing artificial intelligence as a new source of business, plus the purchase of DeepMind by Google, as far back as 2014, reinforces the point that the business world is well on the way to being run by AI and machine learning.

Knowledge of updated technologies will be key in the race for a competitive-edge in digital commercial markets. Technologies that are emerging include live telephone and online conversations predicted to leave consumers with a perception that they have just had a live chat with a human being, when in fact they have been interacting through an automated bot response.

Automation, of course, has made great inroads in enhancing customer experiences and has in many ways been the pathfinder leading to AI interventions. Machines may or may not be taking over but it is certainly apparent that both industry and consumers want them to – to achieve a successful interaction.

Great Learning lists examples of the powerful ways in which AI applications will dominate the e-commerce industry in 2021. Examples include a predicted increase in the volume of voice searches, with busy people relying on voice assistants like Alexa and Siri to check their daily schedules or find out about a product to buy online.

Conversational chatbots are an easy way for customers to ask questions regarding products – examples include Starbucks and Dominos, which are said to be using this method to great advantage.

Recommendation systems are described as one of the easiest ways to convert AI capabilities into sales. Statista reports that mobile sales are reflecting a serious rise; research conducted in 2019 estimated that by the end of 2021, 73% of e-commerce purchases will happen through mobile devices. Statista further reports that Instagram has one billion monthly accounts that are selling actively through their social media handles.

Successful digital commerce strategies can be achieved through analytics providing marketing and data-driven insights that aim to build and optimise brand performance on digitally commercial sites. Gartner agrees that companies need to ask themselves how do they refine a digital commerce strategy while at the same time optimising performance.

AI is transforming digital commerce

As you can see, this is being achieved via many avenues, including chatbots and other virtual assistants constructed using AI and producing more intuitive responses and enabling better customer experiences.

Intelligent product recommendations is one of the major applications of AI in e-commerce – it essentially produces personalised product recommendations for online shoppers and is said to increase conversion to sale rates by 915%.

In fact, personalisation is rated as one of the most effective issues to come out of the use of AI in e-commerce and is the reason it lies at the core of online marketing. Combined with the use of big data, AI is impacting customer choices thanks to its knowledge of previous purchases, searched products and online browsing habits. In terms of back-office functions and inventory management – through AI the right levels of stock are maintained to fulfil market demand.

Businesses failing to prepare for commerce led by AI, virtual reality, augmented reality and holograms, for example, are on a perilous path to extinction.

Source: IT WEB

POPIA: Be sure to exercise an abundance of caution

ajustus Jun 11, 2021

It’s a long road to POPIA compliance and while the finish line is in sight, only one attitude will ensure your business crosses the line with confidence.

By Tanya Long, chief operating officer, Argility Technology Group.

With the deadline for the Protection of Personal Information Act (POPIA) coming into effect in a matter of weeks, companies are driving towards compliance and have been hard at work to prepare for this − in most cases for years.

At the Argility Technology Group, we embarked on the compliance programme many years ago, which has left us in a confident position that our company has always taken protection of personal information seriously, and that the process would not turn out to be an onerous one.

The sheer volume of work required is, of course, still daunting in terms of the man hours necessary to get to the finish line.

Having appointed our CEO as the chief information officer who takes full responsibility for our compliance, we set out three years ago to strategically and methodically embed compliance across the organisation.

With the support of a team of 15 people and every department across the organisation committed to the management of their own compliance processes, the challenge of documenting every process and running gap analyses, educating staff and collating reports has usurped hundreds of man hours since we began the process in 2018.

When compounded with the normal commitments of running the business and meeting all strategic targets, this has been challenging, to say the least.

This process, while daunting when trying to articulate the Act and tie together the various components, has been a good one. In many instances, it was a matter of clarifying what is required and seeing it is already in place. The process also helps to identify gaps − going forward it unquestionably adds another level of governance and trust, both internally and for our customers.

Compliance demands a change in behaviour wherever a business works with data.

My advice to all businesses on the POPIA journey − and we are all in it up to our necks − is to exercise an abundance of caution, meticulously follow all the paths I have outlined in the foregoing and then commission consultants to verify you have not only done enough, but have done it correctly. This latter is more likely to produce a peaceful night’s sleep without POPIA nightmares breaking through.

Across the South African market, we encounter many large enterprises that − like us − have been on a compliance journey for years, but for many, the work performed to date will not be enough to meet the deadline.

Flurry of comms in run-up to the deadline

We are now seeing signs that the challenge isn’t over: many companies are already sending out their letters requiring confirmation of POPIA compliance, and this is set to become a flurry of mails between business networks across the country over the next couple of months.

Responding to these and attending to risk ratings for every department and every process will become increasingly time-consuming and is not to be taken lightly. We are all in the same boat, and of course, we are also sending out our mails to third-party suppliers and recording responses.

As with every business in the country, we must evaluate these responses in terms of risk ratings and compliance − the POPIA buck does not stop with your business but also applies to all your business associations. So, there will be questions that surface around responsibility and accountability for commercial implications, data on shared infrastructures and in transit via third-parties external to the entire environment, to name a few.

Third-party operators and vendors that process personal information must, in terms of POPIA, provide assurances of the necessary security and compliance measures, but we are all possibly set to encounter grey areas, such as when a customer processes data using a system built by a vendor, particularly if the agreement is a subscription model. If the data belongs to the customer, and is processed under the authority of the customer, should the developer of the system have any accountability?

Questions such as these will spark debate. In business today, there are many overlaps and ripple effects, and where one system impacts or integrates with another, the responsibility for managing and securing the data is not always clear.

Any company in the position of providing services to businesses is a data operator, but they are also a data processor within their internal structures and processes, raising a potential need to negotiate the impact of compliance and shared risk models. All organisations in this position will need to address the question of how to ensure third-parties they engage with remain compliant.

This is an ongoing process and will not end with the July deadline. Compliance demands a change in behaviour wherever a business works with data. It requires ongoing control and maintenance, with governance committees meeting regularly to assess and review measures. Compliance must become a part of your processes − across every department, partner, supplier and individual involved.

Indeed, it is already a culture at our organisation, and I feel this is how all companies must approach this daunting task.

Source: IT WEB

Google Workspace in ATG: An African Journey to Digital Fluency

ajustus Mar 25, 2021

Digital Fluency

By Tanya Long, COO Argility Technology Group

“Failing to prepare is preparing to fail” this statement resonates across different facets of life and business alike. They often say that the white water of change is the only constant and the ability to adapt seamlessly is a testament to good leadership, regardless of industry or vocation.

With the world of work turned upside down, it has become even more critical for organisations to implement systems allowing collaboration with heightened security. A few years ago, the Argility Technology Group (ATG) adopted Google Workspace (originally called G Suite) and the Google Cloud Platform. This decision was undertaken to ensure that ATG as a whole adopted digital technology in a progressive manner to achieve digital fluency over time.

What is Digital Fluency?

Digital Fluency is the ability to achieve certain outcomes, by leveraging the appropriate digital tools. The ability to nurture this is essential for any organisation looking to adopt agile internal operations.

With the Covid lockdown impact, the transition to working from anywhere for the ATG teams was seamless, and in hindsight moving to Google Workspace was one of the best operational decisions we made.

As we progressed with the implementation of Google Cloud, the benefits for our customers were a compelling reason for our development teams to embrace the Google tools available. We are pleased to announce that we have achieved Google Cloud Build Partner status. Argility is one of a handful of companies in South Africa to have been awarded this expert status.

Why ATG recommends using Google Cloud and Google Workspace within your business for managed services

Google Workspace was rated as the #1 most popular app among users on their Net Promoter Scores, outshining Microsoft Office 365.

Google Workspace transforms business because it is user friendly, easy to adapt to and simple to use. Real-time collaboration is powerful and effortless making the cloud benefits stand out and become a necessity.

The linked applications such as Gmail, doc(ument)s drive, calendar and other applications allows one to make work processes more cost-efficient and productive.
The use of Google Workspace is becoming increasingly popular. New companies are adopting Google Workspace at an overwhelming rate.

Team emails and accounts are managed by the organization allowing for greater control and when an employee leaves, removes the common pain point of uninterrupted access to information and emails.

Document Sharing

Online collaboration is key for businesses today and having a team drive is the way to go. Security access levels allows how files can be used, edited and viewed, ensuring that the right information is available to the right people at the right time, from anywhere.
Real-time editing and viewing of documents is an absolute pleasure for collaboration, plus the simple sharing function which gives complete control of whom can see and edit documents.

Increased file storage

Massive amounts of data can be stored in the google cloud drive allowing for full collaboration on all document types. Get up to 30GB cloud storage per user on the basic plan and tiered cloud storage on the business or enterprise licenses.

Multiple email alias’s and domains

All lead to the same email accounts

Single sign-on

Google Workspace allows for single sign-on for other cloud-based applications as well i.e. DocuSign

Seamless experience to all devices

All files are synchronized across all your devices (Microsoft, Mac or Android) – Desktop, table or mobile. Allowing for improved connectivity and responsiveness

Added security

With a 2-step verification process, user information is secured across devices and applications, securing data and information in the cloud. POPIA compliance is automatically catered for.

Have your own domain name

This is ideal for building your brand and identity. Previously always an additional investment which was required and sometimes out of pocket for smaller organisations.

Google meet and hangouts

Powerful tools for video conferencing and chats. A useful feature is having a VC diary dashboard, all meetings show on your screen without having to remember codes and search for diary entries.

Tools with Google Workspace

Automatically when using Google Workspace you have access to:

Gmail
Calendar
Docs (Word conversion)
Sheets (Excel conversion)
Slides (Powerpoint conversion)
Drive (for storage and collaboration)
Google Meet (for video conferencing)
Google Hangouts for chats (text and video)
Google Forms (a survey tool)

When using Google Workspace you can get rid of Dropbox / Office 365 / Onedrive / Evernote / Confluence to name a few….
A huge plus is real-time collaboration on the Docs/Sheets/Slides functions, with the added advantage of easy conversion to and from Microsoft formats if needed.

Migration across from existing mail, contacts and calendars is done easily allowing for a quick rollover time.

Are you looking for a way for your organisation to work and operate seamlessly? Then you should seriously consider contacting us to know more about Google Workspace and Google Cloud. Allow your business today to focus on what you do best, your business and let us handle the rest.

More Google case studies on Google Workspace

For more information contact our Business Consultants on 011 712 1300, email info@argility.com or visit our website, www.argility.com

Brief Bio: Tanya Long – Chief Operating Officer, Argility Technology Group

Tanya Long, COO Argility Technology Group

Tanya has 30 years of industry experience and is currently the Chief Operating Officer of the Argility Technology Group.

Tanya’s career in the IT sector started in 1988 in IT Support for Point of Sale solutions. She moved formally into software development with UCS/Argility in 1989 as a developer and progressed through to team leader; account management; project, and development management roles.

Tanya is an internationally Certified Consciousness Coach, Enneagram Practitioner, and leadership speaker and facilitator. She is considered a specialist in the fields of culture and engagement and often presents at conferences on the topic of engagement, leadership and coaching. Her strengths lie in her exceptional people management abilities and dedication to precision and execution.

In 2017, Tanya was appointed Human Capital Executive at Argility where she reunited her Retail, IT, Leadership, HR and coaching knowledge to drive her zeal for transformation. In her capacity as COO, she heads up the Sales and Marketing and HR teams whilst driving performance and processes within the group.

Tanya’s vision is to ensure that the Argility Technology Group is filled with engaged, skilled and innovative individuals delivering outstanding customer-centric solutions.

South African ATG goes all-in with Google Cloud and reaps the benefits

ajustus Mar 25, 2021

Data is one of the most strategic assets a business has. Each customer sale, supplier transaction and product review provides the enterprise with information to learn from. Until recently, companies have focused on how to store and manage this data. Today, however, advances in technology allow coherent, strategic insights to be extracted from this deep and detailed data. For businesses, this means the discovery of patterns which enables them to make predictions about the future.

The Argility Technology Group (ATG) is a fast-growing, South African enterprise software company that is capitalising on this opportunity. It has built an impressive portfolio of six standalone tech businesses, all with different specialities in this emerging field. Through the use of data science, artificial intelligence and machine learning, ATG is gaining a reputation as a disruptor in the retail and supply chain sectors. Its intelligent software solutions help its customers predict buyer behaviours, digitise processes and improve efficiencies, ultimately providing an edge over their competitors.

ATG’s history traces back over 30 years to retail software, and this deep sector expertise helps to account for its notable customer list, including Shoprite, Furnmart and Woolworths. Equally impressive is the sheer number of ATG’s long-standing, blue-chip customers ranging from Absa/Barclays to Anglo American and Bidvest.

The ambitious company is focused on continuing to grow by exploring new industry sectors and expanding further into Africa and beyond.

Breathing new life into old approaches to IT

As ATG’s business expanded, its two existing data centres started to struggle with the increased demands. Marko Salic, CEO at ATG, explains: “In addition to supporting more companies, the very nature of our data and compute-intense software solutions meant that a different approach to infrastructure was needed. We needed on-demand scalability that could keep up with our fast-expanding storage and computing needs.”

In running two local data centres, the ATG team dealt daily with issues such as insufficient capacity, failing hardware and inadequate power and cooling. The team travelled between the two data centres in Cape Town and Johannesburg, manually fixing problems on-site. They had to be available 24/7 and, with the added pressures of load shedding and cables being stolen, it was becoming unsustainable.

Japie Saunders, ICT Manager at ATG, elaborates: “There were a million complex intricacies involved in managing the two data centres – temperature monitoring, redundant power supply, generators, access control, service contracts, multiple vendors, backups and endless line items that needed to be checked and allocated.”

It was at this point that the ATG team felt they had crossed the cost to benefit ratio of running their own data centres.

Surprisingly painless migration to Google Cloud

ATG opted to stop running its own data centres and instead move its entire infrastructure to the public cloud. Google seemed a natural fit as it offers some of the best AI and machine learning tools for developers and data scientists.

After evaluating all the leading platforms on pricing, performance, scalability and security, the decision to move to Google Cloud was validated. Working with one of Google’s Premier Cloud Partners, Siatik, ATG set about migrating its hundreds of applications and data. Within 18 months, 90% of its estate was transitioned with no interruption to ATG’s customers. ATG expects to have completed the migration by the end of 2021.

Reaping the benefits: Less costs, more uptime and more innovation

The impact on ATG has been huge. Moving to Google Cloud has halved the cost of running IT, while greatly simplifying administration and management. The relief from Saunders is unmistakable: “I no longer have to worry about the backups, Google Cloud handles it,” he enthuses. “And as a team, we’re adding much more value to the business. We’re focused on customer support and developing new features instead of doing maintenance in the data centres. We can now do our work effectively from home and have been able to do so throughout the COVID-19 pandemic.”

For ATG, Google Cloud has been much more than just a cost reduction exercise or a way to improve uptimes. Google Cloud has been pivotal to enabling true organic organisational innovation at the group level.

For instance, ATG’s latest solution, PredictRetail, empowers retailers to anticipate shifts in customer behaviours and sales trends by using machine learning, data science and predictive modelling. The application was built on Google Cloud and uses a variety of its services like BigQuery, Cloud AI, machine learning engine and data flow. And as a native Google application, it can scale to any size of data sets or processing workload.

ATG has developed complementary solutions – PredictCustomer and PredictInventory – which are also cloud-native and all three comprise the PredictIT suite. They will soon be available in the Google Cloud Marketplace, speaking to the ecosystem of value that Google Cloud has created by allowing ATG to take their exciting solutions to a broader market.

Holistically, the shift to Google Cloud has helped the company respond to COVID-19 and simultaneously create new efficiencies. Salic elaborates: “The adoption of Google Workspace was key in transitioning employees to a ‘work from anywhere’ approach. The enhanced flexibility has been good for productivity and morale and we think a hybrid working model is the future. Knowing that we’re not going to fully return to the office any time soon, we’ve accelerated some of our internal projects like moving our ERP and payroll systems to the cloud. These systems run better now, take less time to use and free up our employees to do higher value tasks.”

The shared goal to innovate for Africa

After a successful 18 months, ATG is committed to exploring further possibilities with Google Cloud. “Cloud is the future and Google Cloud is our preferred platform,” says Salic. “We’ll keep upgrading our apps by integrating more cloud-native services like Google’s vision API, voice API, Kubernetes and so on. All our SaaS products will be hosted on Google and, where customers have the option to modernise their solution architecture, we’re recommending they embrace Google’s Cloud products. It makes scalability easy, minimises their risks and removes the significant outlays on hardware. We will always use Google Cloud unless there is a very good reason not to or there is a customer constraint.”

The easy collaboration with the partner Siatik, as well as Digicloud Africa, Google’s enablement partner in Africa, is highly valued by ATG. “We all share the imagination to see Africa’s unmet needs as opportunities, and to use these challenges to spur innovation. At ATG, we are proud to have a portfolio of African businesses which are developing solutions for the African market, and that are collaborating with African partners,” says Salic as he wraps up. “It would be the icing on the cake if Google opened an African data centre – that would drive more adoption of GCP which would be good for everyone.”

Source: IT Web

All systems go with Richard Knight, CFO Argility

ajustus Feb 18, 2021

COVID-19 disrupted many companies on their digital transformation journey. Only to find out that they hadn’t really implemented a digital strategy that allowed their staff and operations to operate through turbulent times. Even the most flexible and resilient operations proved to be only as strong as the weakest links of their value chain. As we start 2021 off, many companies will have invested or are planning on investing in technology to speed up their digital journey in order to remain relevant, accommodate a hybrid of remote working and adjust their supply chain operations to changes in buying patterns. Financial leaders have had to ensure cash flow forecasts are robust and able to adjust for future unknown pressures to enable business to operate more efficiently in the future without jeopardising the liquidity position of the business.

It has been stated by multiple experts that Covid-19 accelerated the need for digital transformation by an estimated three or four years. At the forefront of this rapid transformation has been the move from clunky capital-intensive investment into private on premise data storage to pure cloud computing. Making use of economies of scale through efficient and effective offerings from the mega global cloud platform service providers. Business is now able to scale data storage and processing power at the click of a mouse once on cloud computing services. This is a game changer and a must for businesses that want to remain relevant in the future.

According to PwC’s Global Artificial Intelligence Study, the internet and mobile technologies drove the first wave of digital, known as the Internet of People. However, analysis carried out anticipates that the data generated from the Internet of Things (IoT) will outstrip the data generated by the Internet of People many times over. Experts are predicting dramatic changes in the IoT over the coming year. Key technologies are coming together for scalable networks of low-cost sensors that will enable the promise of the IoT. According to IoT Business News, “this is down to both key technology developments in low power wide area networks (LPWAN) and the cloud”. The integration with cloud technologies for the management of the vast amounts of data is vital, and this is one key area that will expand dramatically this year. Rapid development of solutions are being rolled-out to various industries due to wireless technology becoming seamless. These digitalisation advances will see the promise of industry 4.0 becoming realistic as the advantages from scale act as a catalyst for creating smart retail, smart factories, smart supply-chain and smart farming to name a few for the future.

The increased data created by the Internet of People and the Internet of things is already resulting in standardisation, which naturally leads to automation, and the personalisation of products and services, which is setting off the next wave of digital. According to PwC’s Global Artificial Intelligence Study, AI will exploit the digital data from people and things to automate and assist in what we do today, as well as find new ways of doing things that we’ve not imagined before.

PwC expects that global GDP will be up to 14% higher in 2030 as a result of the accelerating development and take-up of AI, the equivalent of an additional $15.7 trillion. It is predicted that the economic impact of AI will be driven by productivity gains from businesses automating processes, productivity gains from businesses augmenting their existing labour force with AI technologies and increased consumer demand resulting from the availability of personalised and higher-quality AI-enhanced products and services. PwC predicts productivity gains in the near-term, to become the biggest potential economic uplift from AI. COVID-19 has propelled the need for Robotic Process Automation (RPA’s), which includes automation of routine tasks, augmenting employees’ capabilities and freeing them up to focus on more stimulating and higher value adding work.

In order to harness these key technologies for your business, the leaders of the business need to commit to a real digital strategy that doesn’t entail mere-speak, but entails real intent on implementation. Businesses that prefer to update their digital strategy management report rather than committing to the journey will quickly start to lose their competitive edge over their rivals. If not started already, in order to remain relevant and provide improved future shareholder returns, management will need to embrace technologies such as cloud computing, the IoT and AI in 2021. Digital transformation is not a buzz word or nice statement to have on a management report anymore. It’s a matter of remaining competitive and relevant in the new digital age post the start of COVID-19.

Source: Excellence SA

ATG is now officially in the Google Cloud Partner Advantage Program!

ajustus Feb 8, 2021

Officially in the Google Cloud Partner Advantage Program!

By Marko Salic, CEO of Argility Technology Group

It is not without some excitement that I bring this news to you. Really it was a natural progression considering the majority of our SaaS or web-based software solutions are already deployed inside Google Cloud Platform, making them highly scalable and cost-effective. We aim to continue delivering innovative software solutions utilising modern technologies to solve modern business challenges.

Every business will need to become more digital to flourish; we all understand that notion; Covid only accelerates it. If you are thinking 3-5 years ahead, Cloud is the way to go. Argility Technology Group has been around for over three decades, focusing purely on technology, software, hosting etc. You could say we have the experience and expertise. Over the last three years, we closed all our data centres and moved most of our servers, hundreds of servers and applications, into the cloud. The benefits are significant and risks minimised. Many blog posts are listing the pros and cons in great detail. I urge you to google this topic or reach out to our experts if you want to know more. The three leading cloud platforms are Google Cloud, Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure. And they are all great platforms; you can’t go wrong with either.

Marko Salic CEO ATG

We prefer open-source platforms and utilise Linux and Java predominantly; it enables us to keep our software mostly 3rd party dependency and licence free. We use the Kubernetes engine for microservices deployments, and we utilise AI and data analytics cloud tools in multiple applications. We felt that Google is the most active contributor and integrator of our Linux and Java-based technology stack, and the Kubernetes engine pioneers. Google Clouds data analytics tools are top-notch and built to integrate and work as a useful cluster of services, making our platforms highly flexible and robust. The local and international Google teams we worked with were friendly, easy to work with, eager to help and committed to creating a joint success. These were the defining factors in our selection of GCP as our Cloud Platform of the future, and we are excited to work with Google’s team and our customers to create new and exciting applications on top of GCP.

Our PredictIT (PredictCustomer, PredictInventory and PredictRetail) data analytics products are developed using best-of-breed data analytics and machine learning services from Google, including services and tools such as Cloud AI, BigQuery, Data Studio, Data Flow, TensorFlow etc. The PredictIT product suite will soon be available in the Google Cloud Marketplace for rapid deployment and prototyping of existing and new machine learning modules and visualisations.

Finally, working with Google gives us access to high-quality ready-built services that enable us to leverage that invaluable insight to pioneer solutions that future proof our clients’ businesses confidently and rapidly – and deploy them in the most cost-effective way.

Argility Technology Group becomes Google Cloud Build Partner

ajustus Feb 2, 2021

The Argility Technology Group (ATG), a leading developer of software and technology solutions, has become a Google Cloud Build Partner, and thus a member of Google Cloud’s Partner Advantage Program.

Marko Salic, ATG CEO, says this thrilling move was compelling for the group as it has long since embraced Google Cloud as a key platform in delivering innovative software solutions that solve real business challenges. “It made a lot of sense for us because the majority of our Web-based or software as a service solutions are already deployed on the Google Cloud Platform (GCP), ensuring that they are cost-effective and highly scalable.

“With over 30 years’ experience in creating and delivering innovative software and technology solutions, ATG saw early on that cloud was a game-changer when it comes to digital transformation. COVID has shown us just how important that shift is to future success,” he says. “It is some years now since we moved the bulk of our servers and applications into the cloud – bringing significant benefits to our customers and minimising their risks. The cloud positions us to continue delivering our ground-breaking solutions utilising cutting-edge technologies to solve our customers’ business problems today and well into the future.

Salic says the main reason they entered this partnership centres on ATG’s strategic drive to build powerful cloud-based software, data analytics and AI technology offerings that draw on its immense intellectual capital reserves, which have been augmented through decades of development and supply of globally competitive innovative technologies. Moreover, ATG favours open source platforms utilising Linux and Java predominantly, and the group uses the Kubernetes engine for microservices deployments. “This provides great benefits for our clients, as it dramatically reduces implementation times. The holistic vision behind this approach is that it greatly assists with the elimination of licence costs and reduces third-party dependency.

“Google presented itself as the best fit because Google Cloud offers superior data analytics and machine learning tools that are designed to integrate as a cluster of services, making our platforms highly flexible and robust,” he explains. “In addition, Google Cloud is the most active contributor to and integrator of our current technology stack, and are the Kubernetes engine pioneers. Another big plus is that the international and local Google teams are both highly professional and easy to work with, sharing our commitment to creating the best possible solutions on top of GCP and fully committed to creating joint success.”

For example, ATG’s PredictIT products (PredictCustomer, PredictInventory and PredictRetail), over three years in the making, use best-of-breed GCP services such as BigQuery, Data Studio, Cloud AI, Data Flow and TensorFlow (open source machine learning platform) to deliver potent information that organisations can use to improve their bottom lines.

The PredictIT product suite will soon be available in the Google Cloud Marketplace for rapid deployment and prototyping of existing and new machine learning modules and visualisations.

“Working with Google gives us access to high-quality ready built services that enable us to leverage that invaluable insight to pioneer solutions that future-proof clients’ businesses confidently and rapidly – and deploy them in the most cost-effective way,” Salic concludes.

Source: IT Web | IT Online

Trust is retail’s secret sauce

ajustus Nov 18, 2020

Trust is retail’s secret sauce

Retail longevity has always relied on trust. But the emergence of a new type of customer is changing retail, and how trust is earned…

Technology lies at the centre of this change. In our connected, digital world, consumers now have unlimited choice. Shopping habits are changing, and Covid-19 lockdowns have accelerated that change. It’s not enough for a retailer to offer good service and products reliably, now it needs to understand its customers deeply in order to earn their loyalty.

Consumer demographic

The other big factor driving this change in retail is demographic. Millennial/Generation Y and Generation Z consumers are set to become the dominant consumer group, and now account for 40% of consumers. Generation Y is generally taken to comprise those born between the early 1980s and mid-1990s, while the succeeding Generation Z were born between the mid-1990s and early 2010s.

Unlike the preceding Boomers, Generations Y and Z are internet natives, and see their cellphones not as communication devices but as remote controls for life. Research shows that more than 63% of Millennials spend at least six hours a day on their phones, and according to York/2016/05/31/millennials-check-phones-157-timesper-day Social Media Week, check their phones 157 times a day.

However, the people operating those devices are still humans, and so the human dimension of this technology-driven world remains key. For example, Generation Z still prefers to make the actual purchase in a brick-and-mortar store. But because they understand technology, they expect their retailer to be using it effectively to understand their needs and deliver the right experience; if their expectations are not met, they will move right along – and they rarely give a second chance.

Research shows that Generation Z spends on average $58.30 per transaction and Generation Y $54.91 – a little below the more established Generation X ($60.36) and the Boomers ($61.69). But the number of transactions they make is considerably higher.

The heart still rules

In the end, then, reason and technology are always trumped by the heart. Retailers must understand that the most important of these emotions in the retail value chain is trust. Trust is the critical core emotional driver of all downstream behaviour, and trust is what creates loyalty.

Charles Green’s Trust Equation reveals that credibility, reliability and intimacy are integral to trustworthiness, but the governing principle is what he calls self-orientation – the extent to which the customer believes that the retailer is putting his or her interests first.

As retailers, credibility and reliability are relatively easy to achieve, but intimacy and self-orientation, both connected to the emotions, are harder. In particular, if the customer feels that the retailer’s focus is exclusively on its profit or on not giving value for money, trust will be eroded and ultimately sacrificed.

Potential of 4IR

If technology was the proximate cause for this new and complex world, then it’s fitting that it also supplies the solution. In particular, the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR) holds the key with which retailers can gain the trust of their customers.

4IR technologies like the Internet of Things, artificial intelligence and machine learning can be used to improve and streamline customer marketing, the supply chain, merchandising and all the nuts and bolts of retail, and thus enhance the credibility and reliability that contribute to trustworthiness.

But the real magic comes from the potential for AI and machine learning to take the data generated by all these systems and mine it for insights that deepen intimacy and build trust.

AI is key in all this because the amounts of data are mind-bogglingly huge (and increasing), and it can be processed fast and continuously. And, of course, AI doesn’t need to eat, sleep or otherwise be managed.

An important caveat: AI (or any other technology) is not a magic wand. No insight, no matter how good, is worth anything unless it results in an action. It is, therefore, imperative that you begin with a clearly defined business goal, and then use the insights you get to achieve that goal. Don’t worry if your data currently looks incomplete, use what you have and start taking the incremental steps that ultimately generate a huge competitive advantage.
On a practical level, there are three key areas in retail: demand, supply, and the customer. Your AI projects should fall into one of these areas.

One issue that always comes up when discussing AI, and the 4IR more generally, is the potential for dramatic job losses. The truth of it is that AI can only generate predictions and possibilities, it cannot exercise judgement as to which course to follow or how. Humans will always be needed to exercise judgement, and so retailers should be focusing on critical thinking skills when upskilling their people.

Retail is constantly changing, but what remains constant is the centrality of trust. AI and other technologies can be used to continue building trust with customers, now and in the future.

By Tanya Long, COO of The Argility Technology Group

Source: Bizcommunity

For more information contact our Business Consultants on 011 712 1300, email info@argility.com or visit our website www.argility.com.

Technology in the supply chain

ajustus Sep 14, 2020

The logistics industry relied heavily on people in the past, and to a large extent still does today. As in every other sphere of life, however, the role technology plays is increasing rapidly, with a host of solutions available to streamline supply chains and increase the efficiency of logistics in general.

Hi-Tech Security Solutions asked two experts in the field for their insights into how technology can and is changing the game.

Eamon McCann, CTO of The Argility Technology Group:

The ongoing advances in IOT capabilities have positioned technology as a strong enabler in the management and security of assets. There are various devices readily available that leverage GSM, Sigfox and LoRaWAN technologies, as well as others including RFID tags/labels and BLE beacons. These are now all potential options to cost-effectively assist in the identification of the physical positioning of assets for both static and mobile security applications.

The potential areas that could benefit are extensive, and range across multiple industries, including construction, mining, manufacturing and agriculture. Moreover, associated assets such as vehicles, machinery, fridges, crates/produce etc. can be identified and tracked to a specific geolocation, enhancing visibility and providing an associated increase in security and assisting in loss prevention.

Argility’s SkyData IOT cloud platform enables these capabilities by allowing asset tracking and exception management, thereby enabling supply chain security and the efficiency of associated processes. Geofencing allows event and alert creation for entry and exit conditions, for example, automatically raising a proof of delivery when an asset reaches its predefined destination, as well as tamper and theft alerts when assets move location without authorisation.

Other applications like the tracking of pallets and cages with RFID capability when entering receiving bays or leaving dispatch areas can assist in reducing loss and driving efficiencies through the warehouse and the wider supply chain. Configurable alarms and alerts, with various levels of severity, can be routed to the appropriate level(s) within the organisational hierarchy to ensure visibility and auditability for any such event.

SkyData can integrate into any business operational system, feed from and to multiple data sources and deliver data sets to any mobile device. It provides for Web-based administration plus configuration and it includes mobile apps for both Android and iOS for remote access – anytime, anywhere. The bottom line is that this IoT platform is set to transform asset and resource monitoring management.

Shaun O’Brien, CEO of Cquential

If you are not considering technology within your business or do not at least have a strategy around implementing technology, the company may be at a disadvantage when compared to its peers. Technology is the name of the game. It’s not seen as a luxury anymore but a necessity to do business in a highly competitive environment.

Supply chains have been one of the business functions that have benefited the most when it comes to technology and the capabilities it has to offer. A modern supply chain is at the point where it will not be relevant or valuable to an organisation if there is no intention of implementing technology to keep up with industry standards.

Technology enables businesses to automate manual processes and get people to focus on other areas that can add value to the organisation. The company is also in a better position to handle complexity and meet the needs of a customer with high expectations concerning turnaround time and service. Information sharing and collaboration across partners and departments is also crucial when it comes to running an efficient operation.

Warehouse management is a specific function within the supply chain that has benefited from technology over the last 10 years. The technology has driven the following benefits:

Improved visibility across operations.
Driven collaboration and information sharing across different departments.
Driven labour/MHE efficiencies.
Improved capacity management.
Improved traceability of stock.
Reduced operational expenses.
Improved customer service levels.
Automation of manual tasks.
Improved scalability.

Technology is changing the way the warehouse operates for the better. It’s becoming more affordable and readily available to any size of business. The key is to have a digital roadmap and prioritise the different items based on operational requirements. It’s not a one-size-fits-all approach when it comes to technology. The first step is to understand the current business and processes. Once this is understood the next phase will be to understand the functionality and business proposition of the various solutions and how they can be applied to your specific use case. The last step will be to review and measure to understand if the business is achieving the business benefits that it set out to achieve in the beginning.

Source: Hi-Tech Security Solutions

For more information contact our Business Consultants on 011 712 1300, email info@argility.com or visit our website www.argility.com.

Business analytics and big data to gain a competitive-edge

ajustus Aug 21, 2020

Business analytics and big data to gain a competitive-edge

The correct approach to business analytics and big data can help a company to remodel and enhance its customer experience, and boost its competitive advantage.

By Marko Salic, CEO of the Argility Technology Group

Gartner advises that IT can use advanced analytics to gain competitive business advantage and that with the right approach business intelligence (BI) can be a leading source of competitive advantage.

Certainly, it can be used to remodel and enhance customer experience.

Forrester notes that everyone wants to monetise their data, but the growing stream of data and analytics requests are overwhelming IT teams charged with gleaning insights from the material. While there is no crystal ball to see into the future, predictive analytics provide the means to make an educated guess.

Forrester goes on to highlight the 37 Major Machine-Learning Tools for 2020, noting that enterprises need more artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) solutions to drive value, transform their businesses and outperform the competition.

The starting point

Firstly, define clear and measurable goals and outcomes you expect from the data strategy. Without the ability to measure, uplift and estimate ROI, it becomes difficult to build stakeholder support.

Secondly, appoint a data analytics “champion” − an executive, or a person with authority, to spearhead the implementation of the organisation’s data strategy. Change management is crucial for success as the workforce transitions from using gut feel and experience, to using data and analytics to make better decisions.

Thirdly, select the correct technology partner to help implement the data analytics strategy. Ideally, the selected technology partner should have necessary data engineering, data science and development capabilities and subject matter expertise in the company’s industry.

As AI prediction capabilities improve, the value of human prediction decreases, and the value of human judgement increases.

The latter will mean that data is well understood with early detection of consistency issues. Moreover, it ensures the right questions are asked, and raw insight can be converted into actions.

Lastly, select the correct platform for the data lakes, extract, transform and load, analytics and machine learning. If the organisation’s data volume, velocity and variety are broad and/or it expects significant growth, cloud tools are the only way to go.

The alternative is to build and use own infrastructure and data analytics tools which require a team of data engineers and DevOps engineers to manage and support, inflating the costs and risks significantly.

The next step

Data analytics is about extracting trends and patterns in historical data and using that insight to make better decisions and influence future outcomes.

Analytics and machine learning have become highly effective in making predictions, but AI does not do judgement. As AI prediction capabilities improve, the value of human prediction decreases, and the value of human judgement increases. Ensure you are utilising both to maximise the benefits; don’t allow analytics alone to make automated decisions until the models have been battle-tested and polished over time.

Data tiering is a way to optimise how you operationally use the data and drive costs down. For example, data accessed infrequently or not mission-critical can be stored on slower and more affordable storage.

Analytics databases are different from operational, high transaction volume databases, and each comes with pros and cons. Understanding the business goals and how the insights will be used will help to tier the data and tools correctly.

The company will need to devise protection, governance and redundancy policies, and there are two ways of going about this: the easy or the hard way.

The easy way is to use cloud tools such as GCP, AWS and Azure. When using cloud tools data security, governance, and redundancy is a first-class citizen, simple to implement and manage.

I often hear concerns and questions raised regarding the security of the cloud. The answer is simple: read the security policies for your favourite cloud provider and ask yourself how long it would take to internally achieve that level of security compliance and standards if you decided to build it internally?

The hard way is to build and manage it all in-house. My advice is, only explore this option if there are regulatory or compliance reasons preventing you from using the cloud. In that case, the regulation would already specify how to manage security and governance, and it becomes a question of “how” to implement as opposed to “what” to implement.

How will the data be used?

If there were a one-size-fits-all approach, everyone would be following the same process. It’s crucial that there is a clear understanding of how the data will be used, what and how many sources there are, also how “clean” is the data, etc. Only then can you define the correct data ingestion strategy.

As a rule, start by building a data lake and dumping all the data, no matter how “dirty”, into the data lake. Then data teams can incrementally start building an “analytics” storage and data pipelines from this central lake.

Once the data is imported and analysed, the process of developing individual “use case”-driven data pipelines begins.

One of the hardest and most time-consuming steps in data analytics is data preparation and extract, transform and load processes, as it often happens that 80% of the time is spent getting this step right.

If the data is not clean, the results will be poor and inconsistent. Augmented analytics is the process of using technology and tools such as machine learning and AI to augment how data is ingested, transformed and analysed.

Natural language processing (NLP) is another tool or algorithm to be used in analytics pipelines. It’s especially useful in building chatbots and conversational utilities. But the principles of how NLP works can be used in various other analytics applications from recommended engines to data extraction and preparation steps.

For more information contact our Business Consultants on 011 712 1300, email info@argility.com or visit our website, www.argility.com

Source: IT Web

Cquential COO Appointment

ajustus Jul 28, 2020

https://www.argility.com/press/cquential-appointment-operation-exec/

Cquential Solutions, leading warehouse management software (WMS) specialist and part of the Argility Technology Group, has announced the appointment of an Operations Executive, Daniel Schotter, who will be responsible for the management of the company’s delivery team, with the goal of enhancing project deliveries in line with customer expectations.

“Daniel is a key team member in the business. We brought him into the company about a year ago to assist with business development with a view to growing our customer base. He proved exceptional in that arena and added value to the Cquential brand,” says Shaun O’Brien, CEO Cquential Solutions.

He notes that Schotter’s experience and in-depth knowledge of the WMS system and processes were key issues in his selection for this position. “We have tasked Daniel to assist with our operational challenges and in that regard he will be directing our delivery team to ensure we finalise assignments in line with strategic objectives of global service standards and improve our commercials on each project completed.

Schotter boasts 23 years’ experience in the supply chain industry – eight of which were in IT management. “I have been working with CQuential Solutions since 2010, when I commenced as an IT Manager and subsequently responsible for IT and support. I left in 2014 to pursue my own company, taking on various IT projects, while continuing with consulting services to CQuential. In 2018, I returned to the company in the role of Business Development Consultant.

“Given my experience and knowledge of both the industry and Cquential systems specifically, the executive management of the business felt that I could add value taking the lead in Operations – an opportunity and challenge that I am extremely excited to tackle,” says Schotter.

Source: IT Web

POPIA 2020 and Digital Asset Management

ajustus Jul 27, 2020

POPIA 2020 and Digital Asset Management

The much anticipated SA Protection of Personal Information Act (PoPIA) came into effect on the 1st July giving businesses one year’s grace to get their compliance ducks in a row and align their controls and protection of customer sensitive personal information with the conditions of lawful processing of personal information. After the 30 June 2021 businesses will face severe penalties for non-compliance.

Whilst most of us have been aware of the looming PoPIA and have started to take the steps required to ensure alignment we can no longer hide behind the lack of finalised dates to formalise the internal actions required.
At ATG, the gap analysis and POPIA risk mitigation reviews have raised various streams for action, one of which is protecting the rights of internal data subjects, another is ensuring we comply on behalf of our customers and lastly looking at how we can assist our customers with their compliance needs.
A stark reality is that paper based customer credit applications, credit agreements, supplier take on documents and other contracts are still active in the South African business space. Many organisations are lagging in terms of secure digitisation of these artefacts.
The below documentation storage limitations come to mind:

Destruction
Lost or misfiled documents
Compromised information security and access control
Inefficiency in searching for documents
Labour intensive manual filing and administrative health checks
Manual document management restricted to one user working on a customer file at a time
Poor auditability of user activity related to sensitive information
Cost of physical storage space for manual storage.

These weaknesses and imminent implementation of PoPIA are a compelling reason for the secure digitisation of sensitive paper documents.
Digitisation of the documents alone is unfortunately not enough and should be augmented by a control system that complies with digital asset management/PoPIA standards.
The implementation of paperless processes is contributing to additional volumes of what needs to be stored in digital format. Digital assets are set to grow in sheer volume due to increased digitisation and the need for getting the balance right between security and cost savings requirements.

Argility’s DAMSense Digital Asset Management System is a trusted and optimised solution for the secure storage, search, and controlled access, to sensitive digitised assets. By utilising DAMSense on the Google Cloud Platform many boxes are ticked; from General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR) compliance, from which POPIA has evolved; through to the flexible and cost-effective digital asset storage options.

Features & Benefits of the DAMSense system

Explore DAMSense as an innovative solution to making sense of your digital assets by visiting our website: DAMSense or by dropping us a mail to: info@argility.com

*** Source: IT Web

PredictRetail accepts the challenge to improve business

ajustus Jul 27, 2020

PredictRetail accepts the challenge to improve business

Retail has faced many hurdles due to the economic climate which has been further compounded by the impact of lockdown. This, of course, is very challenging. Argility’s artificial intelligence predictive analytics tool, PredictRetail, is the answer.

This cost-effective cloud solution improves business insights, supports growth, plus it enhances your knowledge of your business and customers. It heightens shopper retention and empowers retailers with the ability to boost sales to current and new customers. All of this in turn leads to boosted profits and sustainability. Key dashboards enable you to keep operations running smoothly and maximise profitability.

Given the current COVID context and the fact that all patterns and consumer behaviours have changed, now is an ideal time to utilise analytics, based on machine learning (ML), to quickly pick up on the new trends. These tools are designed to aid business leaders to make informed decisions and as such to counter the disruption caused by COVID.

PredictRetail comes with several standard predictive models that are focused on key areas, these include customer: lifetime value; forecasting (propensity to buy); segmentation; product recommendations and more. There are extensive descriptive dashboards based on key forecasting models including: sales; stock management and selling patterns.

PredictRetail applies data science and predictive modelling based on historical data, to extract trends and patterns which will aid informed decision making.

Descriptive dashboards are created from existing customers’ historical data. ML models are then used to generate new data sources i.e. predictions/classifications etc., and then predictive dashboards are redeployed on top of the new datasets. This is a defining differentiator between PredictRetail and the average business intelligence (BI) tool which is designed mainly for visualising data and descriptive analytics without ML.

The power to slice and dice information at lightning speed by organisational and product hierarchies, is enabled through the Google Cloud Platform, allowing for a pay-as-you-use model, and alleviating the need for massive infrastructure investment.

Once we have transformed your data, and with a little training, you will be ready to take advantage of trends and patterns never before seen which could transform your business with dynamic effect.

Want more information as to how this can work for you – Contact our Business Consultants on 011 712 1300, email info@argility.com or visit our website, www.argility.com

Argility releases PropView4U

ajustus Jul 16, 2020

Argility releases PropView4U

Connect, click and engage. Proximity-based mobile property marketing platform

The Argility Technology Group (ATG) has released its latest innovation – PropView4U. This is a mobile marketing platform for the real estate industry that aims to create a unique and enriched customer experience by merging the physical with the digital through the application of beacon technology.

The low-cost cloud-based solution facilitates buyers, renters, sellers and agents to receive opt-in communications via their mobile devices. Bluetooth connects users’ smart devices to notification beacons that are placed at nominated properties.

ATG’s CTO, Eamon McCann, says beacon technology enables immediate delivery of relevant content to interested parties. “PropView4U transforms the sales process by using digital technology to increase sales and provide an information service to sellers, buyers and agents. With the advent of the COVID-19 pandemic, physical access to properties has become more challenging. This solution has the power to change the way agents, buyers and renters access information and personalises the relationships between realtors and their clients.”

PropView4U enables:

The positioning of smart beacons at designated property sites;
Rich content delivery to smart devices when in beacon range;
Digital media and content display on the PropView4U mobile app;
Consumer interaction with the information; and
Real estate agent’s acquisition of data analytics based on buyer interaction.

“Content is varied and contains welcome messages plus notifications, videos, images and voice clips. Basically, contextual information with multiple touch-points,” says McCann.

Key features include user registration, property specifications, property viewing, booking schedules and bookmarking for offline viewing. “Findings can be shared. Moreover, there is a mortgage/bond calculator and prospective buyers can also make direct contact with agents,” he adds.

The product can be white labelled for maximum brand impact. Once downloaded, prospects will have immediate access to any branded content when in range of the PropView4U beacon zones. McCann highlights PropView4U’s exciting business benefits for the real estate sector as it facilitates a unique consumer experience using rich content and property information.

“Convenient and easy access to information for buyers and sellers is immediately available. Realtors can provide information even without an agent being present. Efficiency is improved with remote updating capacity through controlling all information from a central point. The property searcher’s sales journey can be easily tracked. PropView4U forms a significant support for sales agents through responses to enquiries and decreasing lead times – to emphasise just some of the benefits of this exceptional technology,” he concludes.

Source: IT Web

For more information contact our Business Consultants on 011 712 1300, email info@argility.com or visit our website, www.argility.com