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Bids with no capture
Brenda Crist Business Management, Services & Risk ManagementI confess. I have bid work without any previous capture effort and no firsthand knowledge of the customer’s requirements. I understand that I just violated every proposal industry best practice. It is clear, bidding without any knowledge of the customer requirements greatly diminishes the chance of winning and increases transition and operational risks. So why do companies bid work without any capture effort when, on paper, it makes no sense?
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The digital trends you need to know to do your job better
Emma Fitzpatrick MarketingWant to market your company’s products or services better? Of course, you do! Who doesn’t? But to do that, you can’t just zero in on the latest marketing tricks. You also must understand the greater media landscape. No other report does a better job of capturing that than Mary Meeker’s annual Internet Trend Reports. She outlines the biggest changes in internet usage, advertising, e-commerce, social media and more.
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Physicians unhappy with EHRs may have unhappy patients, too
Scott E. Rupp Healthcare AdministrationPhysicians unhappy with an EHR system could pass that sentiment on to their patients — in the form of lower patient satisfaction scores, so says a new study in the Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association. That makes complete sense, of course. How many times have you expressed discontent about some object or form of technology only to see those same sentiments reflected in the attitudes of your spouse or partner, children or co-workers?
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Food supply chain is bee-ing naïve about pollinator decline
Shawn Smajstrla Food & BeverageThe declining bee population isn’t news. Scientists have tracked a diminishing number of bees and other pollinators for years. Some fear extinction is on the table for these insects, and the impact could be far worse than losing a species. The deteriorating numbers of pollinators could have catastrophic results on food supplies, and thus the food supply chain. Just how important are these creatures?
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Cobots are coming: When mech, man and manufacturing combine
Delany Martinez ManufacturingWhile humans are capable of astonishing endurance and precision, repetitive motion tasks are bad news for manufacturing: they aren't just physically harmful over time, they can lead to worker burnout. When productivity is the main focus of most industries today, what's a large company with large needs to do when faced with human limitations? Hiring more workers is a huge drain on finances, but going fully automated isn't likely to win any favors with the workforce, and by extension, the public. The solution? Cobots, or collaborative robots.
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The must-know social updates for Facebook, Instagram and Twitter
Emma Fitzpatrick MarketingLately, social networks have had a rough go of it. Data scandals broke. Privacy issues abound. False news continues to spread, and online harassment proliferates. As public opinion on these topics swells, social networking sites across the board are taking action. Read on to see the most significant ways social networks are attempting to solve the big issues. Of course, there are some new ways for your business to market and work on social, too.
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Emerging plastics technologies highlighted at NPE and ANTEC shows
Don Rosato EngineeringRecently, the global plastics industry community was welcomed to a great National Plastics Exposition (NPE) that took place May 7-11, along with the equally impressive ANTEC from May 7-10 in Orlando, Florida, at the Orange County Convention Center. Let’s highlight some emerging plastics technologies at NPE and ANTEC, starting with what’s leading the 3-D printing plastics revolution. In the traditional 3-D printing area of fused filament fabrication, novel open-source software has come to the forefront.
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Senators seek greater funding for FCC’s rural telemedicine efforts
Scott E. Rupp Healthcare AdministrationThe Washington machine is churning, and it wants more money from the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) for the Rural Health Care Program. More than $400 million is earmarked for the effort now, but 31 U.S. senators want the FCC to increase that annual cap to bolster funding for rural communities to support telemedicine. Advocates of telemedicine are likely over the moon at the possibility of even more federal support for the effort.
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Machines are replacing humans at work, but can it be an opportunity?
Linchi Kwok Travel, Hospitality & Event ManagementWelcome to the era when machines begin replacing humans at work. In restaurants and hotels, machines or robots are already capable of performing many service jobs. Likewise, travelers can now make reservations for their hotel stays online, perform self-check-in on a mobile app or in a kiosk at a hotel, enter the hotel room with their mobile app, place orders for service deliveries, and check out on a mobile app or the TV in the guest room.
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Cybersecurity survey shows businesses are still in trouble
Scott E. Rupp Science & TechnologyA new IT survey shows that 81 percent of organizations said they experienced an increase in cybersecurity challenges in the past year, with respondents telling US Signal that of these, 40 percent of respondents experienced at least one security incident in that time period, while 13 percent did not know if they had. In the age of the security breach, such a high number should actually be closer to zero, but the "Health of the Nation" survey suggests that organizations are not only experiencing breaches, but they are doing so at an alarming rate.
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