Friday, June 5, 2020
Business Intelligence and Analytics 67
1 Coronavirus’s impact on supply chain
https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/operations/our-insights/supply-chain-recovery-in-coronavirus-times-plan-for-now-and-the-future
Many businesses are able to mobilize rapidly and set up crisis-management mechanisms, ideally in the form of a nerve center. The typical focus is naturally short term. How can supply-chain leaders also prepare for the medium and long terms—and build the resilience that will see them through the other side?
2 Launching the journey to autonomous supply-chain planning
https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/operations/our-insights/launching-the-journey-to-autonomous-supply-chain-planning
Over the past few months, people everywhere have been worrying about the supply chain. Items have been out of stock at stores for weeks; shortages in crucial categories such as packaged food, cleaning supplies, and, more critically, medical safety equipment have been all over the news. At the same time, with stores closed and most people staying home, demand for other types of products has fallen precipitously. How will companies handle continued uncertainty and fluctuations in consumer demand as cities, states, and countries start to reopen?
3 Want to Make Better Decisions? Start Experimenting
https://sloanreview.mit.edu/article/want-to-make-better-decisions-start-experimenting/
In Google’s early days, the two of you might have debated the issue until someone caved or you both agreed to kick the decision up to the boss. But ultimately, it dawned on leaders throughout Google that many of these debates and decisions were unnecessary.
“We don’t want high-level executives discussing whether a blue background or a yellow background will lead to more ad clicks,” Hal Varian, Google’s chief economist, told us. “Why debate this point, since we can simply run an experiment to find out?”
4 New Leadership Challenges for the Virtual World of Work
https://sloanreview.mit.edu/article/new-leadership-challenges-for-the-virtual-world-of-work/
The COVID-19 pandemic has suddenly and dramatically upended the working world, creating unanticipated business and leadership challenges. Some organizations are pivoting hard to new delivery channels, new products, and new operating models without having enough time to manage the impact of these changes thoughtfully. As a result, many executives currently find themselves shooting from the hip, bereft of their usual channels to engage deeply with stakeholders and gain agreement on the path forward.
5 Five Ways Leaders Can Support Remote Work
https://sloanreview.mit.edu/article/five-ways-leaders-can-support-remote-work/
The COVID-19 pandemic has forced many employees to work from home, and the magnitude of the shift to remote work is staggering. Before the pandemic, about 15% of U.S. employees were working from home at least some of the time.1 During the first half of April, half of U.S. employees were doing all of their work remotely.2
This rapid shift has surfaced challenges with remote work that may have escaped people’s notice when the practice was more limited in scope. To understand these challenges, we conducted two surveys in April.
6 Develop Your Cyber Resilience Plan
https://sloanreview.mit.edu/article/develop-your-cyber-resilience-plan/
Imagine rushing through a crowded airport with your locked suitcase. Before you can get to your closing gate, someone steps in front of you, blocking your way. Your belongings are safe in your suitcase, but you can’t proceed with your travel plans. In this analogy, your suitcase functions like cybersecurity — protecting against the attacks you can anticipate. However, because you’re lacking cyber resilience — the ability to withstand unanticipated disruption — your travel plans are foiled nevertheless.
7 Top 5 Marketing Automation Trends for 2019
https://www.grazitti.com/blog/top-5-marketing-automation-trends-for-2019
1. Artificial Intelligence and Chatbots: AI is truly the next big thing in marketing automation. The purpose of the inception of AI was not to replace marketers, but to augment them and to automate their manual tasks. According to a report by Tech Republic, AI use has increased two-fold from 61% of business implementation in 2017 as compared to 38% in 2016. The artificial brain now plays the most significant role in marketing automation.
8 Coronavirus shows why Canada must reduce its dependence on the U.S.
https://theconversation.com/coronavirus-shows-why-canada-must-reduce-its-dependence-on-the-u-s-136357
Canadian foreign policy has long embraced both a deep continental relationship with the United States and a devotion to liberal internationalism. In light of the COVID-19 pandemic, the time has come to re-evaluate our approach.
While Canada has been able to manage the coronavirus crisis so far, our ability to continue to keep the pandemic at bay and successfully rescue the economy will likely be even more difficult.
9 Agriculture markets eye normality as export restrictions lift
https://blogs.platts.com/2020/06/03/agriculture-markets-coronavirus-export-restrictions/
The global food supply chain, as well as demand for agricultural products, faces an unprecedented threat from the coronavirus pandemic.
Livelihoods have been destroyed and economies dragged down, while prices of basic foodstuffs soared and countries imposed measures to limit exports and shore up domestic supply, albeit mostly for a short duration.
10 3 Key Data Science Questions to Ask Your Big Data
https://www.kdnuggets.com/2020/06/3-key-data-science-questions.html
Data, Data Everywhere, not a drop to act! Every organization is collecting data today, but very few know what to do with it. Part of the challenge is, organizations don’t know what to ask of data. Where to begin? They have made multi-million $ investments in instrumentation and collecting BIG data through Hadoop-cluster, spitting out billions of rows and thousands of columns, but now what? Where to go next?
11 Skills to Build for Data Engineering
https://www.kdnuggets.com/2020/06/skills-build-data-engineering.html
Data Engineering is one of the most sought out job in the market these days. Data is everywhere and is considered to be the oil of the new age. Companies generate a large amount of data from different sources and the task of a Data Engineer is to organize the collection of data information, it’s processing and storage.
12 Hands-on Time Series Forecasting with Python
https://towardsdatascience.com/hands-on-time-series-forecasting-with-python-d4cdcabf8aac
Time series analysis is the endeavor of extracting meaningful summary and statistical information from data points that are in chronological order. They are widely used in applied science and engineering which involves temporal measurements such as signal processing, pattern recognition, mathematical finance, weather forecasting, control engineering, healthcare digitization, applications of smart cities, and so on.
13 Volkswagen closes $2.6 billion investment in self-driving startup Argo AI
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-volkswagen-argo-idUSKBN2390E6
German automaker Volkswagen AG (VOWG_p.DE) has closed its $2.6 billion investment in Argo AI, the Pittsburgh-based self-driving startup disclosed in a blog post on Tuesday.
Argo, founded in 2016 by Bryan Salesky and Peter Rander, is now jointly controlled by VW and Ford Motor Co, which made an initial investment in Argo shortly after it was founded.
14 How the new coronavirus changed the global economy
https://graphics.reuters.com/HEALTH-CORONAVIRUS/CHANGES-GRAPHIC/qzjvqjwazpx/
The pandemic has rocked the fundamentals of the world’s economy – in some cases, that may be for good.
The novel coronavirus has disrupted the global economy to an extent never seen before. The shutdowns imposed to slow its spread have sent economic output crashing, caused financial market panic and curtailed travel, leisure and social life more severely than many wars have. How long will it take for the world’s economies to return to anything close to their pre-pandemic state? The following dashboard of eight broad indicators may offer some clues.
15 Accelerating analytics and artificial intelligence to navigate COVID-19
https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/mckinsey-analytics/our-insights/accelerating-analytics-to-navigate-covid-19-and-the-next-normal
Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic’s stranglehold on the world, leaders increasingly embraced advanced analytics and artificial intelligence (AI), for good reason. These capabilities are expected to offer between $9.5 trillion and $15.4 trillion in annual economic value.
Along the way, many executives found they had to overcome hefty cultural and organizational hurdles. Most have yet to apply the core practices, such as agile delivery methods and strong data practices, necessary to scale the technology successfully.
