Digital Assurance: Seamless Customer Experience

In K@W:  A term and approach I had not heard of, but it does make sense,

" ...  digital technologies envelop all spheres of business operations, the need for assurance of near-flawless performance in user experience and security has taken center stage. The practice of digital assurance aims to meet that demand, and has elevated the testing function to being a critical piece in the design and development process for digital services. Wipro’s head of testing services, Kumudha Sridharan, and Wharton professor Shawndra Hill discuss the latest challenges in this Future of Industry series white paper, produced by Knowledge@Wharton and sponsored by Wipro Technologies. ... " 

Skills and Practical Considerations for Data Science

On the must have skills for the data scientist.   A pretty good overview, including some information about where to get more detail.   I will emphasize:  Either direct experience in the use of business data in that business sector, or the ability to cooperatively work with the people who have that experience. Also the assurance you will get enough time from these same resources.

You will always have to work with a group that manages data and business process.  You must have the STRONG ability to collaborate with these people.  You will also have to sell any business solution to these same groups and their management.

Data too Difficult to Obtain

In BaselineMag: Marketers and unified data and improved tech tools.  Yes, they have always wanted that.  Also ways to have that data connected to specific tasks and business models.  Embedded expertise and delivery.  And assurance that the data is correct and being updated.

Tom Peters on 21st Century Organization

In McKinsey:   An interview that takes some interesting directions: ' ...  " ... Well, one answer to that, as far as I’m concerned, is “I don’t know.” My real bottom-line hypothesis is that nobody has a sweet clue what they’re doing. Therefore you better be trying stuff at an insanely rapid pace. You want to be screwing around with nearly everything. Relentless experimentation was probably important in the 1970s—now it’s do or die. It takes a certain confidence, though. The first partner I worked for at McKinsey had the self-assurance to look a chief executive officer in the eye and say, “We don’t know what the hell’s going on. Can we play with this together?” .. ' 

Meaning of Quality Assurance

This CW article led me to the meaning of QA ... " ... Long undervalued, quality assurance is in the limelight -- and QA pros in demand -- following the disaster of the HealthCare.gov website rollout. ... "  Quality assurance here is more about development.   Our own experiments combined the two elements.  Build a key system/process so that when it does fail, even rarely, you can readily bring experts or other resources to keep things running.  QA is a combination of design and resources.

FTC to Investigate the Internet of Things

In GigaOM: It should be regulated. But I have my doubts that governments will do a good job.  Think too of the implication of governments knowing the location, status and interaction of all tagged things. Has to be a stronger privacy assurance.  When a thing, a medical device, communicates with your Doctor, who could possibly be listening?

Crowdsourcing Grocery Shopping

Called Instacart:      Personal Shopping remains a narrow market.   With crowdsourcing come quality assurance issues.   " .... In contrast to the high overhead of Webvan, which had its own refrigerated warehouses and a fleet of trucks, Instacart is built on a crowdsourcing model. Its 10 full-time employees, mostly engineers, work from a small office in San Francisco’s South Park neighborhood. Its app sends customer orders to about 200 independent Bay Area personal shoppers, who receive commissions based on the number of items and orders they deliver in their own vehicles. The app features detailed maps of local supermarkets and can direct the personal shoppers to specific aisles. Founder Apoorva Mehta says Instacart’s “secret sauce” is its fulfillment software, which allows the online retailer to combine orders placed at different times and fill them from different stores—supplementing frozen food from Trader Joe’s with fresh fruit from Whole Foods (WFM) and cereal from Costco (COST). Customers assemble their orders with lengthy drop-down menus on Instacart’s website or app. ... " 

Cheesecake Factory Restaurant Analytics

The Cheesecake Factory delivers an exceptional brand experience with IBM Big Data analytics http://goo.gl/Mfn5c #IBMPWLC

I had yet to see a restaurant application of this type, so it was fun to see the linked to video.  I have eaten at the Cheesecake Factory a number of times, and when in a business I always look for indications of data gathering and process applications. It is always interesting to see how this can be linked to midsize business needs.

Cheesecake Factory is a global company that serves 80 million guests a year, with over 200 menu items, hardly a small company.  How do they deliver a unique brand experience that meets customer expectations?  In  my own visits I was singularly impressed by their process, though I could not see how they used data to achieve it.  Clearly they had dound out how to deliver quality consistently. This short video and provided a look at the data back of the house.   A chef myself, I wanted to see how big data contributed to the experience.



As every chef knows, its all about the quality assurance of what goes into the food.   They also seek to make the experience as consistent as possible, regardless of the location of the restaurant.  IBM and partner N2N Global  have put together a strategy that provides " ... ERP, Tracebility, Quality and Food Safety, and Business Intelligence Software integrated in a single solution for the Food Supply Chain. ... " 

This is by its nature a big data problem. Multiple sources of supplier information about key ingredients that is being updated constantly. Volatile data because it needs to address such questions as traceability and food safety.  Usage information in each region to assure the highest quality ingredients to meet restaurant specifications.  Feedback from the users of the ingredients to assure continued quality.   Consistent  analysis of costs to assure profits.  That's lots of data, and lots of places where that data can be used to streamline the process. Analytics.

This post was written as part of the IBM for Midsize Business program, which provides midsize businesses with the tools, expertise and solutions they need to become engines of a smarter planet. I’ve been compensated to contribute to this program, but the opinions expressed in this post are my own and don't necessarily represent IBM's positions, strategies or opinions.

Global Food Supply Chain Improvement and Protection

I just got a chance to interview N2N Global.  A business intelligence and analytics provider for food supply chains.   Aimed at Food Safety, Quality Assurance and supply and product traceability systems. Their CEO Ernesto Nardone is a former IBMer who worked in the area of using expertise-based systems that led to some of IBM's recent AI applications like Watson.

N2N is using IBM's Cognos to do Business intelligence and related basic analytics to utilize the huge amounts of data, millions of records per month, for the Food Coop Cherry Central.   Cherry Central has a space on Facebook which succinctly describes the work done.   See also this press release for more detail, which emphasizes how this relates to consumer food safety.

In particular I was interested in how this data can be connected to the decision process.  They are doing this now by looking at outlier analysis, reporting and alerting.  A likely good next step is to include process models that specify set of rules based on the knowledge of food experts, and also including quantitative analytical processes that can find patterns, predictively forecast future situations and bring together this intelligence to make next steps safer and more efficient.  Bring on the tool set to make this happen.  That leads to smarter commerce.

Cherry Central and N2N won IBM's Engine of the Week for midsize businesses.    A part of the Midmarket initiative. " ..... This honor is given to midsize businesses that have transformed themselves using insight and IBM technology.... " .  Their transformation has started with the automating the large amount of paper that was once needed to run any complex business, large or small.  It will be instructive to continue to follow their effort as food knowledge is included to make the enterprise truly intelligent.