Business Operations

Logistics firm liberates staff with data automation

After FLS Logistics realised how much time their staff spent on spreadsheets and data, they had to find an alternative. They wanted a data warehouse and our fast-track services were the perfect solution for them so that they could have near real-time visibility without increasing IT headcount. They freed up more than 50% of staff’s time from laborious data entry!

Cardiff AI Company appoints new CEO as it expands operations

Artificial Intelligence (AI) company Nightingale HQ appoints Ruth Kearney as its new CEO.

Digitising your factory floor is hard

Digitising your factory floor is hard, that’s why we try to accelerate digital transformation in other operational areas. Focusing on helping workers, modernising core functions like Finance, and supporting your growth, gives you the opportunity to demonstrate value whilst gaining digital technology maturity. It’s hard to rapidly change, acquire expertise, and digitise the factory floor at the same time. By working in areas that are easier to change you can free up vital staff time to dedicate to the harder challenges.

The State of AI and learning from Transformers

Deloitte’s State of AI in the Enterprise report is an enlightening read. This edition focuses on becoming an ‘AI fueled’ organisation. The results come from a survey conducted on 2,875 executives from across the Americas, Europe and Asia. They separated companies into four groups based on their success with AI implementation and identified what was driving the success of the highest performers.

Procurement best practice – what manufacturers can learn

The National Audit Office (NAO) report on ‘Managing the Commercial Lifecycle’ is a great guide to improving your own procurement processes. Here we share some interesting findings and the key areas to make changes in.

What does NatWest's Future Fit report say about digital transformation for manufacturers

The latest Future Fit report focuses on “trailblazers” and what makes them different to other organisations. It covers the importance of innovation and of current developments in the industry such as digital transformation.

Software-as-a-Service to help you digitise

Software as a Service or SaaS, as it’s more commonly known, makes digital easy. Find out how it can help to streamline your processes and run a more efficient business.

Manufacturers - you need DataOps

DataOps also helps you build a more agile digital supply chain by enabling analytic teams to automate their processes, which in turn reduces cycle time on data analytics. Getting this data infrastructure right is critical for helping Operational Technology (OT) get the most out of real-time data to optimise processes. DataOps is part of your ability to move quickly in the digital space. It should be part of your overall approach to your developer velocity and can help staff to discover the data they need to drive insightful improvements in your organisation.

Investing in tools scales staff productivity

Businesses with the highest productivity experience more stable and consistent revenue growth, as well as being able to adapt more quickly. With less waste and more staff power focussed on growth, manufacturers with an investment in tooling are more operationally resilient.

How to move your operations to the cloud - what you need to know

You’ve probably heard of the cloud but what is it and how can it help your business? Learn how moving to the cloud can help you innovate and stay ahead of the curve when it comes to tech.

Tools matter for Developer Velocity

Businesses with the highest developer velocity experience the highest revenue growth, according to new research by Microsoft and McKinsey. Read on to understand how tools impact developer velocity and what the business case is for investing in them.

Developer Velocity

Businesses with the highest developer velocity experience the highest revenue growth, according to new research by Microsoft and McKinsey. Read on to understand the factors impacting developer velocity and how you can start building a strategy to improve this vital area of technology in your business.

What Is Microsoft Power Platform?

Microsoft Power Platform is a suite of services that consists of four key components: Power Apps, Power Automate, Power BI, Power Virtual Agents. Its ease-of-use help a broader range of people within your organisation create innovate solutions and access previously untapped value through smarter, time-saving automation solutions.

Digital Supply Chains and why you need one

Adopting a Digital Supply Chain is big step towards achieving bigger goals like faster, more precise processes with visibility for the whole company. Digital Supply Chains can be hard to implement, but having a strategy is key. Most manufacturers already have some sort of data from ERP systems so building a Digital Supply Chain can begin with embracing more digital integrations with the ERP system and improving governance of the platform. It is very important to ensure that the implementation of a Digital Supply Chain is taken as seriously as other core business processes.

What Is Azure Logic Apps?

If you are looking to automate the execution of your business processes across diverse apps and services, Azure Logic Apps is the cloud service you need. Logic Apps serves as a gate to other Azure services you may want to employ to your automation solution, delivering new and innovative integration scenarios.

Digital Twins and AI for manufacturers

Digital Twins are virtual replicas of real-world systems enabling low-cost modelling of the factory floor to help optimise processes. Combined with AI the Digital Twin can support improved forecasting, dynamic optimisation, and more.

Microsoft Build 2021 announcements for manufacturers

Microsoft Build 2021 is kicking off and whilst it tends not to be as announcement heavy as Microsoft Ignite, it’s still got some great things for manufacturers to pay attention to. This post gives a quick run down of the most important stuff you need to read about. Enjoy!

Smart Manufacturing is all about Real-Time Data Analytics

Manufacturers are spending far too much time on data entry or looking at stale data which is hindering growth. Here are seven ways real-time data can turn things around.

What is Dynamics 365 Field Service?

Field Service is a core customer engagment application on the Dynamics 365 platform and, like the CRM itself, is fully customisable and extensible. Field Service helps streamline business operations by offering smart scheduling capabilities and much more.

What is Dynamics 365?

Dynamics 365 is a cloud-first platform providing CRM (customer relationship management) solutions for businesses. The platform takes a modular approach and offers a suite of products which can be tweaked and defined according to business needs.

Microsoft Ignite 2021 announcements for manufacturers

Microsoft Ignite is kicking off and as usual it's packed with announcements. This post gives folks in manufacturing a quick run down of the most important stuff they need to read about. Enjoy!

Building operational resilience in times of crisis

Operational resilience has always been a key factor in business success, but not enough businesses consider their ability to take stress in turbulent times until it is too late. Covid-19 has been a huge wake-up call for many, presenting uncertainty and disruption.

No code. No data. No servers. How Marino Software became a ML company.

Marino Software are one of the longest standing software consultancies in Ireland with almost 20 years under their belt they have seen their fair share of ups and downs. As part of our AIFightsBack webinar series CEO Keith Davey talks candidly about how they have morphed into a machine learning company helping their clients deliver exceptional customer experience. They have a pretty impressive list of clients who are testament to this service and it includes telcos, banks and retailers. Both slides and the webinar are available below.

AI in Manufacturing (presentation, video, and quick guide)

Yesterday, we ran our first AI in Manufacturing webinar, in association with the Irish Centre of Business Excellence. You can grab the slides, read up on the topic, and/or watch the webinar below.

Augmenting Customer Services with Chatbots

Last week we kicked off our AIFightsBack series to help businesses understand how AI can be used to support a safe and productive business during COVD-19 and beyond. The slides and video are now available.

What is Power BI?

Power BI helps teams implement business intelligence with ease. It is relatively simple to start building dashboards of interactive visualisations from a range of data sources, so you can start to see actionable insights very quickly.

What is data strategy?

Data strategy refers to a company’s vision for how data will be used to help achieve the company’s business goals. This enables companies to analyse progress and make better business decisions, but it also helps to create a thriving data environment where it can be easily shared and accessed, safely stored and standardised, and viewed as a central resource to all departments.

What is data platform development?

A data platform is a service that includes data collection, storage and analysis. Developing a data platform creates a central service that encompasses a data warehouse, business intelligence tools, and a suite of data science and analytical environments.

What is business intelligence?

Business intelligence refers to the systematic collection, integration, analysis and reporting of data from all areas of your business - from finance and sales to worker productivity - to drive better decision making.

What is data warehousing?

Data warehousing refers to building a system that can store large volumes of data from several sources, as a central repository from which all other systems can access the data efficiently.

What is data visualisation?

Data visualization is the graphic representation of data. It involves producing images that communicate relationships among the represented data to viewers of the images. Data visualisation empowers all of the teams in your organisation to make data-driven decisions and act on insights from your data.

Announcement: AIFightsBack webinar series

It's been a very tough few weeks, and the world as we know it has changed forever. Our families, our communities, businesses and the global economy are all feeling the pressure of the COVID-19 virus. As with many other startups, we feel the impact of these volatile times and we plough on as much as we can. We remain hopeful that many great innovations came out of times of crisis; that is why we have created the AIFightsBack webinar series.

These AI projects can help your business cope with COVID19

We've written previously about how there are opportunities to integrate AI into people's work day to make things more accessible, uncover trends, and be more productive. Before, many of them were kind of in the "nice to have" but as more businesses are trying to work from home things like accessible meetings are now imperative.

The AI Hierarchy of Needs meets the Minimum Viable Product

Two of my favourite pyramids are the Data Science Hierarchy of Needs and the Minimum Viable Product. Combining them helps us build effective artificial intelligence (AI) proof of concepts in businesses. It also supports building AI competency at the same time as demonstrating Return on Investment (ROI).

Mastering AI in manufacturing: the three levels of competency

Manufacturers have been facing continual pressure to improve their technology base, reduce costs, and improve quality since the Industrial Revolution. Manufacturers are used to change but not every manufacturer can or will embrace it at the same rate. Also, no manufacturer jumps straight to being an expert at the new thing they're needing to adopt. The same goes for Artificial Intelligence (AI) as an emerging change in manufacturing.

Expert Perspectives: Enhancing business with data and AI

This week we spoke to Dr. Leila Etaati, co-founder, data scientist, consultant and mentor at RADACAD, about what she thought was the key to success with AI for businesses, and how her business was implementing these beliefs. The RADACAD team work with other companies to deliver expert training and consulting around all things data, with a passion for helping businesses improve by listening to their data.

How to score your first AI quick wins: Social Listening

Marketing is a ripe area for Artificial Intelligence (AI) adoption, with all the data and the insights, but how do you make the jump into the AI pool when you look around and all you see is resistance? Quick win projects are an essential tool for building confidence among your team, particularly when introducing new concepts. That is why Nightingale HQ have created a guide of quick-win projects to help departments and companies ease into AI and build momentum for future, more complex projects. In this edition, we will discuss the benefits of practising social listening and how to pull it off as your first AI win.

How to score your first AI quick wins: Sales AI

Making big changes in your organisation or department such as kick-starting Artificial Intelligence (AI) can be a risky move if things don’t go to plan. Getting your team on board from the start is key to longterm success, which is why it’s so important to have an easy way in, such as one of our quick win AI projects. Not only do quick wins provide immediate value for your company or department, but they help build momentum among your team and change attitudes toward your projects. In this edition, we will discuss how to infuse your sales process with AI for ultimate results.

Why do you need business intelligence?

How quickly could you answer the question, "How's your business doing?" if it was asked right now? How detailed would your answer be, and how confident would you be in your answer? If you were utilising business intelligence, your answer would be fast, comprehensive and accurate.

Project management: Are you backing the right AI projects?

As an executive with an influence over whether your company implements AI and which projects it embarks on, there’s a lot of pressure on you to be successful. The future of AI within your company could rest on you on how your chosen projects perform.

How to get AI to work for your business and enhance operations

Enterprise cognitive computing is the application of AI to enhance business operations. It has a wide range of applications including call handling, fraud detection and maintenance scheduling. ECC systems automate repetitive tasks and improve efficiency through fast search and information processing.