How IoT Impacts the Education Industry

The education field is one industry where IoT has positively impacted. The growth of the Internet of Things in education is expected to grow rapidly and becomes an effective tool for teaching.

For many years, technology experts predicted that IoT, a system in which things can communicate internally or with other machines would transform the way people live. It is expected that there would be a thirty percent increase in the devices that are connected to the IoT or the Internet of Things this year. The growth amounts to a total of over six billion devices that join the IoT, with over twenty billion devices expected to be part of it in 2020. While IoT is most widespread in the business field, it has significant impact in the education industry. The use of IoT in education is expected to grow because of the rise of online as well as blended educational program in traditional classroom that increasingly utilize technology as a tool for teaching.

NEW WAYS OF CONNECTING WITH STUDENTS

These days, educators are always on the lookout for new ways to connect with students via relevant discussions, engaging lesson plans, new teaching methodologies and fresh classroom projects. Technology transforms education via processes like a flipped classroom wherein students watch lectures in live video feeds, YouTube recordings or the same venue at home and discuss what they have learned as well as engage in hands-on projects, which are related to the lesson.

Social media as well is in the classroom through discussion forums and blogs. Mobile learning enables students to access the web from anywhere. With eLearning, students could do their lessons on any device, anywhere that has an internet connection.

THE IoT COMPONENTS

IoT enables technology researchers to create more affordable and smaller wireless systems that consume less power and could be integrated into almost any kind of device. WiFi, although the most popular form or integrated technology, there are other formats that are used as too, such as Zigbee, Bluetooth, RFID and NFC. Some of these technologies could add wireless sensor capacities to any kind of device. Moreover, it has a plenty of possibilities for technology, science, engineering and mathematics programs, including physical computing and programming. IoT simplifies and automates access for essential information in any kind of real-world or educational setting.

The Internet of Things has the ability of enhancing the learning experience by enabling real-time as well as actionable insights to student performance. Students bring wireless devices to the classroom or use them at home. The available materials for learning on mobiles, like eBooks are more interactive and engaging. There is constant need for new education technologies, like high-speed wireless networks with the bandwidth for audio and video lessons streaming. Teachers provide seamless assessments on students and one-one-one instruction. With the use of cloud, teachers and instructors could gather data on performance of students. The advanced technology utilized in education furthermore enables teachers to share and coordinate.

HELP FOR STUDENTS WITH SPECIAL NEEDS

Connected devices could help make life much easier for students who have special needs. For example, a student who is visually impaired is given a special card that when registered by computer, would enlarge font size automatically. Instead of having to call over a teacher for help, which would cost both the student and teacher time they can use for more productivity, the student could handle the issue and also promotes independence and self-confidence.

SCHOOL SECURITY

In recent years, school security has been a difficult issue. Schools must be one of the spaces where students would feel secure. Nonetheless, in light with the recent events, it’s easy to understand the worry and safety concerns. With the Internet of Things, schools could create buttons or levers all over the school that, when engaged, would initiate a lockdown system that is customized. The lockdown could include among other features, the following: perimeter security automation, immediate authorities notification as well as video to police transmission so they could monitor intruder activity from headquarters and on the way to a building.

INCREASED EFFICIENCY

Typically, schools have finite resources, which means that the more they simplify daily operations, the more money could be spent on actual students teaching. Activities that consume time, such as taking attendance manually and bringing the information to a central office could be eradicated with the connected devices which instantly send data where it is needed. The Internet of Things could also help cut energy expenses.

MOBILE LEARNING

Until just recently, is a student needs help with homework, the option would be to either figure it out, ask a parent for help or call a friend or classmate. With the Internet of Things, schools could provide students with full-time access to educational tools. The ability to digitally share content with teachers and peers encourages engagement and collaboration.

The Internet of Things impacts the education industry in a very positive way. With IoT, there are more venues for learning, which in the past were only limited to the classroom setting.

The Top 8 Strategic Technologies for the Customer Experience

For a business to stay ahead of the competition these days, it should continuously look for ways to meet the ever evolving requirements of the customers. The top strategic technologies for the customer experience help a business to thrive in the tough competition these days.
 

Customer experience heads and chief customer officers believe that only fifty percent of the projects that they oversee involve technology. On the other hand, IT leaders and CIOs believe it’s nearer to eighty percent. Both agree that the wide array of technologies that could be brought to bear to face the challenge is huge. Some technologies provide more impact than others, some more tactical in how they are used. The list of technologies that help boost and support the customer experience is a growing and long one.

Emerging technologies are set to break out and disrupt business models this year. The unprecedented connectivity between the plethora of devices that tap intelligence from smart devices would drive a dramatic transformation. The results include business advances and dazzling user experiences. Consider the top eight strategic technologies for the customer experience below.

 

1. Business process management or BPM. Is a systematic approach to make the workflow of an organization more efficient and effective, as well as more capable of adapting to the ever-evolving environment. A business process is an activity or a set of activities that accomplish the certain goal of an organization. The BPM’s goal is to minimize human error, miscommunication and to focus stakeholders on their roles’ requirements. It is furthermore a subset of infrastructure management, which is an administrative area that deals with the maintenance and optimization of the equipment of a business and the core operations.

2. Voice of the customer. Is a process that is used in capturing the feedback and/or requirements from the customer to provide them with the best in class product quality and service. This is all about being constantly innovative and proactive in capturing the changing needs of the customers. The term voice of the customer is used to describe stated and unstated requirements of the clientele. It could be capture in several ways, including surveys, direct discussion or interviews, customer specifications, focus groups, warranty data, observation, complaint logs, field reports and more. The data is used to identify the needed quality attributes for a supplied material or component to integrate a product’s process.

3. Customer analytics. Often, customer analytics is managed by an interdisciplinary group composed of business owners from various departments within an organization. The group includes sales, marketing, customer service, business analysts and IT. To be effective, the group must agree first on which business metrics they need to be able to achieve a single view of the customer experience. Several instances of CRM or customer relationship management applications, poor customer data integration or CDI and disparate enterprise resource planning or ERP could leave the members of the group with a fragmented view of a customer. The customer analytics’ goal is to build one, accurate view of the customer for the group to work with and decide on how best to acquire and keep customers. Furthermore, it also helps to identify high-value customers and interact with them proactively.

4. Master data management or MDM. It is an extensive method of enabling a company to link all of its vital data to a single file, which is called the master file. Them file provides a common point of reference. When done properly, MDM simplifies sharing of data among personnel and departments. Additionally, it could also facilitate computing in numerous system platform, architectures and applications.

5. Personalization. Sometimes known as customization, personalization consists of tailoring a product or a service to accommodate certain persons, at times tied to segments of individuals or groups. Numerous organizations use personalization to boost customer satisfaction, marketing results, branding, digital sales conversion and enhanced website metrics for advertising as well. It is a key element in recommender systems and social media.

6. Multichannel customer service. Its aim is to provide the clientele with options on how they like to communicate with a brand, for instance, if they have a query or want to make a complaint. Moreover, it’s also about providing a seamless experience to the customer, whatever the channel they want to use. Behind the scenes, a lot of enterprises may not have joined up customer service channels, but when it comes to the customers, they deal with one company, whether by telephone, online or in a local store.

7. Communication privacy management. Is a systematic research theory that is designed to develop an evidence-base comprehension of the way people decide about revealing and concealing private information. The theory suggests that individuals coordinate and maintain privacy boundaries with different communication partners, depending on the perceived costs of information disclosure and benefits.

8. Loyalty management. Is a business model used in the strategic management wherein the company resources are employed to boost customers’ loyalty as well as other stakeholders in the expectation that the business objectives would be met or surpassed. One example of this kind of model is quality of service or product that leads to customer satisfaction, which could lead to customer loyalty and of course leads to profitability

IT Outsourcing Customers Cling to Cost-Savings Mindset

IT outsourcing leaders continue to focus on cost containment as outsourcing customers cling to a cost-savings mindset these days. The outsourcing community faces new pressure to meet the changing requirements of customers.

IT leaders continue focusing on cost containment with their Information Technology service deals. However, today’s business environment organizations would have to spend money on saving money. A big concern with diminishing returns is that the other top company priority is investments in innovative and new technologies like data and analytics, mobile and cloud cognitive and process automation, and at the same time beefing up security capacities.

Most companies would be challenged in reconciling the conflicting goals and would have to be creative in doing so, for instance by acquiring economies of scale through global business services. It outsourcing leaders could no longer rely on squeezing suppliers on margins to keep the expenses down. Aside from spending money to save money, they should also deliver new capabilities that their enterprises expect from IT, whether it means migrating apps to the cloud, introducing new robotic or automation capabilities or partner with IT service providers for delivering business outcomes.

The outsourcing community is facing new pressures to hasten solutions that could drive more savings. Now, we are seeing a growth in adoption of software-and-business-process-as-a-service in a lot of organizations and also a quicker adoption of robotic process automation. Furthermore, this also aligns to what is seen as increased automation demand and at the same time as cost reduction. When it comes to core IT spend, not accounting for shadow Information Technology spend in business unites, spend levels greatly vary, depending on the industry, but overall spend levels have been flat to declining for several years.

 Despite the cost savings mindset of IT outsourcing customers, outsourcing remains on the agenda of western companies for various reasons. First, massive reduction in cost are expected since there is still a considerable difference in the costs of labor between western and developing countries. Additionally, there’s a demographic development, and based on this, a foreseeable local resources shortage in the next decade. Furthermore, outsourcing organizations are moving up the value chain of a company. New areas such as outsourcing knowledge intensive processes are explored. Taking into account these developments and learning from their pitfalls and mistakes of the past, it is important to find ways for successful knowledge processes outsourcing.

For effective and successful IT outsourcing process, it is important to determine what should be outsourced. This could be achieved by having a strategic view on internal processes. The process identified four outsourcing must be reviewed to ensure the decision is commercially sensible and aligned with a business strategy. Not all processes could be outsourced, some must be kept in-house. Outsourced processes that are transactional in nature, could after some training and setup periods, could be handed over to various service provides all over the world. Yet, when outsourcing knowledge intensive processes, there is a need for more supervision and ongoing direct contact with the team. The best operations model is a combination of offsite and onsite resources. A local person could help minimize the potential of cultural misunderstanding and could translate the needs and requirements for both sides, the customer and the offshore team and would put the request in the right context.

Often, outsourcing leads to the fear of getting replaced, losing control or status. When handling more complex projects such as knowledge intensive processes, employees of a company that are highly skilled are confronted with situations that they never thought of and not ready for. Be it investment research, strategy, marketing, market research or market intelligence. These days, a big fraction of the current processes could be run by outsourcing vendors. For any outsourcing project, it is critical to invest in management change activities in clarifying the strategy of a company, the upcoming changes for the person due to the outsourcing and share company’s objectives.

It is important not to reduce change management to training and information activities: proactive change management should cover the redefinition of the internal roles and clarification of the outsourced responsibilities, the ongoing governance as well as cultural alignment of the different teams. As outsourcing deals mostly with countries with various cultures, values and religions, the rate of success of outsourcing projects will depend on the understanding of one another as well as on effective communication. To ascertain of ongoing communication, many organizations use shared virtual project rooms, video conferencing, collaboration tools and chat communications. Furthermore, it is also a good idea to set up regular phone calls, invite or meet the teams in person frequently.

Outsourcing remains an important strategic and vital tool for senior management, particularly when planning to outsource knowledge intensive processes. With the correct investment in communication and change activities, the outsourcing engagement is well-prepared for success.