Digital Transformation

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!

NHQ embracing manufacturing conferences this summer!

Attending conferences has its opportunity-cost, but I usually find them productive and worthwhile. I’m no stranger to the National Manufacturing & Supply Chain Conference held in the RDS every year and find that there is a good networking opportunity with strong representation of both manufacturers and vendors from all over the world.

The digitalisation of Dry Ice

Our CEO Ruth Kearney visits Ireland’s leading dry ice supplier, Polar Ice.

Toolkits for Smart Manufacturing

Insights into customer examples from Ireland and the UK including Midland Steel and TMD Technologies.

Change is hard but equipping your teams with the right tools makes it easier

As we see the back of 2021, another year of disruption and change, I reflect on organisational practices and share some thoughts on how to implement more effective change. Change is hard, so best to start with small doses of change.

How AI can improve your logistics fast

Logistics businesses and logistics have a huge opportunity to unlock additional value in their business through the use of data and AI integration. Areas of improvement include streamlining operations, managing the supply chain, pricing dynamically, agile planning, and enhanced forecasting.

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.

How you can turn an extra £100 per month IT spend into more than £4,000 of staff time savings monthly

Pressure to be more efficient has never been greater. The good news is there are so many helpful time-saving software as a service tools out there! We’ve made a list of some of the best.

Investing in digital technology lowers future operating costs for manufacturers

There are so many benefits to going digital with your business including cutting your future operating costs and becoming more sustainable. We’ve taken a look at the UKRI’s report on productivity opportunities and risks in a transformative, low-carbon and digital age which looks at this in more detail.

Digitalising your business processes to be more sustainable

Digitalising your business processes might help you run a more sustainable, environmentally friendly manufacturing operation. Simply digitising your records and reducing physical resource usage is an excellent place to begin. Taking it a step further and re-engineering the way you work to be smoother, more integrated, and less data entry dependent while digitalising can save you even more compute power (and therefore energy!).

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.

How 10 manufacturers are digitally transforming with Microsoft

Here at Nightingale HQ, we’re proud to be Microsoft partners. We use their tech to power our data and AI services. To showcase the impact Microsoft services can have, we’ve collected some of our favourite Microsoft manufacturing success stories.

Europe's '2030 Digital Compass' and manufacturing

The 2030 Digital Compass aims to digitally transform Europe by the end of the decade. It aims to strengthen digital infrastructure and facilitate digital transformation of businesses and the public sector. At its core will be a framework that allows businesses and services to go digital in keeping with European values.

Europe’s Digital Strategy and Manufacturing

Data in manufacturing could have a net benefit of €1.5 trillion by 2027 so the European Digital Strategy needs to help realise that benefit. The strategy will help make common data spaces available and support cloud infrastructures to assist manufacturers.

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.

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.

Manufacturers: Are you digitising or digitalising?

To digitise your business means to perform traditionally analogue processes or actions digitally. Rather than a few changes here and there, digitalisation involves a change in how to the process is performed to better leverage technology.

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.

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.

Announcing GoSmarter In A Day

Our GoSmarter In A Day workshops solve one problem like processing Accounts Payable incoming invoices to demonstrate the value such automation can bring.

Data Champions are critical to your success in digitally transforming

Manufacturers need Data Champions to help them succeed in today’s digital world. To learn more about how you can find your Data Champion for your team or company, read on!

Reports supported by AI & automation

Data compilation for reports created by experts is usually more time consuming than writing the valuable content. Using AI and no-code automation techniques, data collation and visualisation can be greatly streamlined, letting staff focus on the value.

How can Digital Innovation Hubs support SMEs to adopt AI?

A workshop on “AI-standardisation landscape & the role of Digital Innovation Hubs (DHIs)” discussed the role hubs can play in supporting the uptake of AI among SMEs and how they can help technology frontrunners.

Artificial Intelligence growth in the EU

This article is part of an ongoing series sharing insights into the development of AI policy in Europe. In November last year we were appointed to the European DIGITAL SME Alliance focus group on Artificial Intelligence (AI), and as an 'AI intensive' SME, we provide feedback on the adoption of AI technologies in relation with the impact of EU initiatives on the topic.

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.

Creative Disruption - UK Digital Manufacturing Week 2020

Major crises cause economic and social damage but they also inspire innovation. This was a major theme Digital Manufacturing Week, who themselves had to disrupt by holding the 6,000 plus attendee event completely online. For our startup based in Wales, the opportunity to tune in to an amazing line-up of speakers from across British manufacturing and connect with the community from the comfort of our own homes was bliss. It was our first time at the event and here are some of our highlights as to who is pushing the boundaries in manufacturing right now.

£147 million investment into manufacturing

Artificial Intelligence (AI) has been heating up for several years, and the recent challenges imposed by COVID-19 have accelerated efforts to get this tech in the hands of businesses to drive innovation and build agility and resilience. AI has been receiving lots of attention from the UK government and is one of the four Grand Challenge areas in the Industry Strategy.

Nightingale HQ to present at Digital Manufacturing Week 2020

World-class manufacturers will take the virtual stage at the 2020 Digital Manufacturing Week happening from 9 - 12 November. The Originator of Industry 4.0 Henrik von Scheel and leaders from Cobra Beer, Dyson, Rolls Royce, Airbus, Autodesk will all share experiences of bouncing back in uncertain times. We have also been selected to present at the Made Smarter Emerging Technology Show taking place on Friday 13 November.

Manufacturing the future

Industry 4.0 has been budding over the last decade and has a long way yet to mature, however, the onset of the Covid-19 global pandemic has presented a suite of challenges and accelerated the need for solutions. The manufacturing industry has not had the flexibility of remote work to fall back on due to its dependency on onsite workers. Manufacturers will have had to make big changes to ensure the health of workers as they return to workplaces. At the same time, they’ve had to contend with the unpredictability of supply and demand, which could remain unstable for a prolonged recovery period. So how has this impacted manufacturing and what does this mean for the future?

Killer time-saver: Invoice processing automation

Our last webinar in the GoSmarter webinar series was about automating the processing of received invoices to eliminate the cost and hassle of errors, late payments and dealing with paper documents. With businesses already losing around 150 days a year to admin, invoice processing can suck up to 10% of that time. An invoice can cost between £4-25 to manually process and over 3% of them contain errors, costing on average £40 to rectify. Manual invoice processing is costly and time-consuming, making it a perfect case for applying automation.

Automation: The fundamentals

GoSmarter is an AI-powered tools and training support toolkit to help businesses optimise digital operations, saving precious time and helping increase productivity.

7 reasons why SMEs need to automate and how

Going digital and using automation has never been more important to small businesses than it has been since COVID-19. Here's some stats you may not know...

Automation for SMEs: the new normal

SMEs are the backbone of our economy, but they have been worst hit by the pandemic. The lockdown has forced many of them to change how they operate and automation has played a key part. However, many small businesses are still apprehensive about taking the first steps and think that automation is only for bigger and scaling businesses. The GoSmarter automation toolbox has been developed to help SMEs kick start their automation journey, quickly and at a relatively low cost.

5.6million UK SMEs - listen up and automate!

This week on AIFightsBack, Steph Locke, CEO of Nightingale HQ, talked about the new GoSmarter automation toolbox, funded by Innovate UK and free for SMEs to use.

Artificial Intelligence for Marketers

Yesterday, we delivered the AI for Marketers webinar as part of our AIFightsBack series. Here, you will find the resources (slides, recording, information, and links) from the talk. As a sector, marketing is ripe for AI adoption due to the volume of data insights available. It's transforming how companies market their products and services to other businesses, streamlining processes at all levels of the sales funnel. Broadly speaking, AI can help to improve the customer journey and improve your ROI on campaigns. But how exactly?

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.

Low ROI from AI is a people problem, not a tech problem

The top blockers to effective AI use in businesses aren't technical issues. They're people problems.

Let your business strategy drive AI adoption

To reveal the tactics and behaviours of companies that are getting the most out of AI, MIT Sloan Management Review and Boston Consultancy Group undertook a survey of more than 2500 executives alongside 17 expert interviews in their 2019 report, Winning with AI. One of their findings was that while 9 out of 10 respondents saw AI as an opportunity for their company, the perceived risk of AI is on the rise, with 45% of respondents reporting perceived risk from AI (compared to 37% in 2017).

Decoding the hype around AI

As the powers and capabilities of Artificial Intelligence (AI) expand and evolve, the same cannot be said for the general understanding of the topic. This has resulted in AI becoming a blanket term that gets misused and thrown around for all things, including things that it’s not. People also have very unrealistic expectations of what AI can do leading in some cases to fear and paranoia over things like potential world domination, in others, disillusion when the AI doesn’t perform to the high standards they were hoping.

How can companies lay the foundations to scale up AI?

Implementing AI at scale in an organisation can yield a wealth of benefits, from improving profit margins to saving workers' valuable time. But getting value out of AI projects requires long-term planning, culture shifts and organisation-wide training.

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.