The Record - Issue 19: Winter 2020

43 Michel Delvaux Senior marketing consultant at MECOMS Ravi Gopinath Chief cloud and product officer at AVEVA “On the one hand, we see that technologies like machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI) can help our clients to improve their customer service. You can turn a chatbot into a customer service agent by adding AI to it. By knowing your customer better, you can serve him better. For example, you can personalise your service and product offerings to your audience, which leads to increased customer loyalty. These technologies can also be used for other purposes, such as predictive maintenance and forecasting. Devices that are not functioning optimally can be detected before they cause bigger problems. And by predicting large energy demands, you can also improve the efficiency of your sourcing and energy production. Our product team is following these technology trends closely and continues to investigate how we can use them to optimise MECOMS 365. Advanced chatbots and smart validation algorithms for meter readings are some examples of this.” “The barriers to adopting industrial internet of things technology have fallen dramatically in the past decade. Today, businesses have the opportunity to adapt and maintain operational excellence through digital transformation. The current global crisis is accelerating cloud technologies and the use of big data and analytics in increasingly sophisticated ways to provide visibility and certainty into operations. Adoption of analytics is one of the greatest drivers of digital transformation, as businesses seek greater data-driven insights and data is helping teams to focus on the critical factors that determine business resilience. Industrial organisations will continue to evolve how they handle and present data at the plant level, and those who make sensible choices to ensure flexibility and expansibility will unlock unlimited potential in existing and expanding data.” Chris Parker Senior product manager for visual solutions at Sharp Europe “Sharp’s new software subscription service, Synappx WorkSpaces, will help businesses improve productivity and make better decisions faster on their meeting room environment. WorkSpaces provides insight into how a meeting space is really being used, helping facilities managers to monitor workspaces and ensure that working conditions are always optimal. In addition, WorkSpaces enables facilities managers to monitor meeting occupancy, air quality levels, ambient light, temperature and humidity. This subscription service unlocks and reveals the true power of the Windows collaboration display, turning regular office environments into smart meeting spaces. When combined with Microsoft Teams it will be a key tool in keeping remote and on- site workers connected in the new normal of hybrid workplaces. We recently surveyed over 6,000 office workers on how they view their future working spaces. Over half of 21-24 year olds said they hope to see more businesses using artificial intelligence to monitor working conditions. This indicates a growing appetite from young workers to harness the power of big data and analytics in the workplace.”