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AI and Human Performance Metrics Consulting: Mitigating Risk and Unlocking Opportunity with Data-Driven InsightsOctober 15, 2024As businesses increasingly adopt AI, the challenge isn’t just implementing the technology—it’s measuring its impact and aligning it with human performance. If you’re unsure where to start, we offer an AI Metrics Readiness Assessment, a light introductory service that helps you evaluate your current performance metrics and see how AI-driven insights can improve decision-making and operational outcomes. This service is an ideal first step to identify where you can apply AI to enhance both AI and human productivity.
In today’s data-driven world, businesses need clear metrics to evaluate how well AI systems are performing and how they are impacting human productivity. AI can automate tasks, analyze data, and streamline operations, but without proper metrics in place, it’s difficult to assess whether AI is delivering on its promise. Moreover, tracking how humans and AI work together is essential for optimizing both the technology and the workforce.
At VannanCo, our AI and Human Performance Metrics Consulting service helps you design and track new metrics that measure both AI efficiency and human performance. With these insights, you can make informed decisions, identify optimization opportunities, and maximize the ROI from your AI investments.
The Importance of AI and Human Performance Metrics
Implementing AI is only half the battle. Measuring its impact on your operations and workforce is key to long-term success. For non-technical business leaders, this might seem daunting, but without proper metrics, businesses risk losing sight of the value AI brings. Tracking performance metrics enables organizations to:
Measure AI Efficiency: Understanding how well AI systems are performing is critical for optimizing processes, whether it’s in customer service, data analysis, or automating internal tasks.
Assess Human Productivity: AI should enhance human productivity, not replace it. It’s essential to track how AI tools are empowering your teams and improving their output.
Optimize the AI-Human Collaboration: The real power of AI lies in how it works with people. Metrics help you understand where AI-human collaboration is strong and where improvements can be made.
Make Data-Driven Decisions: With clear performance data, leaders can make better decisions about where to invest, how to scale, and how to adjust strategies to ensure maximum effectiveness.
How VannanCo’s AI and Human Performance Metrics Consulting Works
Our AI and Human Performance Metrics Consulting service provides a comprehensive solution to help you design, implement, and track performance metrics for both AI and human productivity. Here’s how we help your organization:
Define Key Performance Indicators (KPIs): We work with your leadership team to define clear, actionable KPIs that track both AI efficiency and human performance, ensuring they align with your business goals.
Create Balanced Scorecards: Our balanced scorecards track AI efficiency, human productivity, and the collaboration between the two, providing a clear picture of how AI impacts your operations.
Data Collection and Reporting: We help you set up systems to collect and report on the data needed to track these metrics. This could include AI system performance, human task completion, employee engagement, or operational outcomes.
Ongoing Optimization: Once the metrics are in place, we continue to provide insights into how you can further optimize both AI systems and workforce productivity, ensuring continuous improvement and value realization.
From-To Metrics: Measuring Success with AI
To better understand the impact of AI on your business, it’s essential to shift from traditional metrics to AI-enhanced metrics. Here are some examples of how VannanCo helps businesses move from outdated measurements to more insightful, AI-driven metrics:
From Task Completion Time to AI-Enhanced Task Efficiency: Instead of tracking only how long it takes an employee to complete a task, measure how AI helps streamline tasks, reducing manual effort and speeding up processes.
From Error Rates to AI-Driven Decision Accuracy: Move from tracking human error rates to measuring how AI systems reduce errors and improve the accuracy of decisions made by employees.
From Basic Productivity to AI-Human Collaboration Efficiency: Traditional productivity metrics might focus on task counts, but with AI in the mix, we track how efficiently AI and human teams collaborate to achieve higher-quality outcomes.
Examples of AI and Human Performance Metrics in Action
To give you a clearer idea of how these metrics work in practice, here are two examples of businesses that improved their operations by implementing AI and human performance metrics with VannanCo’s support:
Customer Service Automation: A retail company implemented AI-powered chatbots to automate routine customer service queries. By tracking AI-driven metrics such as response time, customer satisfaction, and chatbot accuracy, along with human metrics like agent escalation rates, they improved overall service efficiency by 40%.
AI-Enhanced Decision Making: A financial services company adopted AI to assist in fraud detection. VannanCo helped them design metrics to measure AI’s decision accuracy and how effectively their team acted on AI-driven insights. The result was a 30% reduction in fraudulent transactions and faster decision-making processes.
Unlocking Opportunity with Data-Driven Insights
By implementing AI and human performance metrics, you can unlock a range of opportunities to improve your operations, increase productivity, and enhance the ROI of your AI investments. The key benefits include:
Enhanced Efficiency: Metrics allow you to identify bottlenecks and inefficiencies in AI-human collaboration, enabling you to optimize workflows.
Data-Driven Growth: With clear, actionable data, you can make better decisions about how to scale AI and allocate resources.
Increased Employee Engagement: By tracking how AI empowers your teams, you can ensure your employees are engaged and equipped with the tools they need to succeed alongside AI technologies.
Ready to Take the First Step?
If you’re ready to start tracking AI and human performance but aren’t sure where to begin, our AI Metrics Readiness Assessment is a great place to start. This introductory service helps you evaluate your current performance metrics, identify gaps, and provide actionable recommendations on how AI-driven metrics can unlock new opportunities for optimization.
At VannanCo, we specialize in making AI measurable, helping businesses leverage data to drive success. Whether you’re just beginning your AI journey or looking to optimize your existing AI systems, our AI and Human Performance Metrics Consulting service can guide you every step of the way.
Let’s work together to make your AI investments measurable and successful. [...]
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AI Integration and Change Management Support: Ensuring Smooth AI ImplementationOctober 15, 2024Adopting AI can seem daunting, especially when it comes to aligning new technology with your existing processes and team dynamics. For businesses looking to take the first step, we offer an AI Integration Feasibility Assessment—a light, introductory project designed to help you evaluate how AI can fit into your current operations. This service helps you identify potential use cases, assess risks, and create a high-level roadmap for AI adoption, all at a minimal cost.
AI is no longer a futuristic concept—it’s here, and it’s transforming how businesses operate. But the challenge for many organizations isn’t whether to adopt AI; it’s figuring out how to implement it smoothly while managing the risks associated with such a major change. Misalignment of AI technology with business processes can lead to operational inefficiencies, resistance from teams, and increased costs.
At VannanCo, our AI Integration and Change Management Support service helps you integrate AI technologies seamlessly, ensuring team adaptation, minimizing risks, and unlocking the full potential of AI for your organization. We don’t just focus on the technology itself; we take a holistic approach to how AI impacts your people, processes, and long-term business goals.
Why AI Integration and Change Management Matter
Implementing AI technology into your business isn’t just a matter of deploying software or hardware—it’s a comprehensive transformation that impacts people, processes, and the overall culture of your organization. For non-technical executives, this presents several challenges:
Operational Disruption: Without a clear integration plan, AI tools can disrupt existing workflows, causing confusion and inefficiencies.
Resistance from Teams: AI can cause uncertainty and fear among employees, particularly if they don’t understand how AI will affect their roles.
Misaligned Goals: If AI tools aren’t aligned with business objectives, they can create more problems than they solve.
Our change management strategies ensure that your AI adoption process is structured, collaborative, and focused on measurable outcomes. By aligning AI integration with your business’s specific goals and empowering your workforce, we mitigate risks and set your company up for long-term success.
How VannanCo’s AI Integration and Change Management Support Works
We approach AI integration with a comprehensive framework that addresses both the technical and human aspects of adoption. Here’s how we help you navigate this process:
Customized AI Integration Plan: We begin by evaluating your current operations, identifying AI use cases, and creating a tailored plan that outlines how AI will be integrated with your existing tools and processes.
Cross-Department Alignment: AI implementation affects multiple parts of your business. We work to ensure alignment between departments—such as IT, HR, and operations—so that all teams are on board and prepared for the changes AI will bring.
Risk Management: Every AI integration has risks, from operational downtime to data privacy concerns. We help you assess potential risks and create strategies to mitigate them before AI is deployed.
Change Management Strategy: AI adoption isn’t just about the technology—it’s about your people. We provide strategies and tools for managing change, from leadership training to workforce education, so that everyone in your organization is prepared for AI.
Ongoing Support and Optimization: After AI is integrated, we offer ongoing support to ensure that your systems are optimized and your workforce continues to adapt as new challenges or opportunities arise.
Mitigating Risk: The Key to Successful AI Integration
One of the biggest concerns for business leaders is the risk associated with AI integration. The reality is that poor AI implementation can result in significant disruptions, operational downtime, and wasted investments. Here’s how our AI Integration and Change Management Support service helps mitigate these risks:
Minimizing Disruptions: We help you roll out AI in phases to minimize disruptions to daily operations, ensuring a smooth transition and continuous productivity.
Addressing Resistance: Resistance from employees is common when introducing new technology. Our change management strategies focus on clear communication, addressing concerns early on, and creating champions for AI adoption within the workforce.
Data Security and Privacy: AI systems rely on large datasets, making data security a top priority. We work closely with your IT and compliance teams to ensure your AI integration follows the necessary regulations and best practices for data privacy.
Budget Control: AI projects can get expensive if they’re not managed properly. We help you establish clear objectives and budgets upfront to ensure that you stay on track and avoid unnecessary costs.
Unlocking Opportunity: How AI Can Transform Your Business
While the risks are real, the opportunities that AI can unlock are enormous. When properly integrated and aligned with your business goals, AI can transform how your company operates. Here are some examples of what AI can do for your business:
Process Automation: AI can automate repetitive, time-consuming tasks, freeing up your employees to focus on higher-value work. This leads to increased efficiency, faster decision-making, and lower operational costs.
Customer Insights and Personalization: AI tools can analyze customer data to offer personalized recommendations, improving customer satisfaction and loyalty.
Improved Decision-Making: AI analytics can process large amounts of data in real-time, giving your leadership team deeper insights and more informed decision-making capabilities.
Scalability: As your business grows, AI systems can scale with you, providing support without the need for significant increases in headcount or resources.
Examples of AI Integration in Action
To give you a clearer idea of how AI integration works, here are two examples of businesses that have successfully integrated AI with the help of VannanCo:
AI-Powered Process Automation: A mid-sized logistics company implemented AI to automate its supply chain processes, reducing manual errors by 40% and improving operational efficiency. With a phased approach, the company integrated AI into its existing systems without major disruptions and trained its staff to adapt to new workflows.
Customer Experience Enhancement: A retail company integrated AI-driven analytics to improve its customer service operations. By analyzing customer behavior, the company was able to offer personalized recommendations and automate routine customer inquiries, increasing customer satisfaction and reducing service costs by 30%.
Ready to Take the First Step?
If you’re ready to explore how AI can fit into your business but aren’t sure where to start, our AI Integration Feasibility Assessment is a great option. This introductory project helps you evaluate your current operations, identify potential AI use cases, and assess any risks associated with AI adoption. With this assessment, you’ll receive a high-level roadmap for integrating AI into your organization, all at a minimal cost.
At VannanCo, we specialize in making AI adoption seamless. Whether you’re just starting your AI journey or looking to get an existing AI initiative back on track, our AI Integration and Change Management Support service is here to guide you through every step.
Let’s work together to turn the challenges of AI adoption into opportunities for growth and innovation. [...]
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AI-Driven Workforce Development: Mitigating Risk and Unlocking Opportunity for Non-Tech ExecutivesOctober 15, 2024As AI continues to revolutionize industries, one of the most pressing challenges for businesses is ensuring their workforce is prepared to thrive in this new environment. To help business leaders get started, we offer a Workforce AI Skills Assessment, an introductory service designed to evaluate your team’s current skills and readiness for AI adoption. This low-risk assessment helps identify key skill gaps and provides insights on where to focus your AI-driven upskilling efforts.
Many business leaders know that adopting AI can unlock incredible opportunities, but they also recognize the risks: a workforce that isn’t prepared for AI can lead to decreased productivity, low employee morale, and resistance to change.
At VannanCo, we understand these challenges and offer tailored AI-Driven Workforce Development Programs that help your teams upskill and reskill. Our programs are designed to enable your workforce to work effectively alongside AI tools, ensuring that employees embrace technology as an opportunity, rather than a threat. By doing so, we help you mitigate the risks of AI adoption and unlock new opportunities for growth and innovation.
Why AI Workforce Development Is Critical
Non-technical executives often find themselves managing the delicate balance between integrating AI and maintaining workforce morale and productivity. If employees don’t feel confident or comfortable working with AI, it can result in significant barriers to success, such as:
Resistance to Change: Employees may fear that AI will replace their jobs, leading to anxiety and resistance.
Skills Gaps: AI requires a different set of skills than traditional roles. Without training, employees may struggle to use AI tools effectively, reducing productivity and missing out on AI’s full potential.
Low Morale: When teams feel underprepared for the introduction of AI, it can lead to frustration, lower engagement, and higher turnover rates.
Workforce development is critical to overcoming these challenges and ensuring that AI is not just another piece of technology but a catalyst for empowerment and growth. VannanCo’s AI-Driven Workforce Development Programs address these issues directly by creating tailored training solutions that enable employees to work alongside AI confidently and effectively.
How VannanCo’s AI Workforce Development Programs Help
Our AI-Driven Workforce Development Programs focus on helping businesses build a future-ready workforce by providing practical, hands-on training that’s tailored to your specific needs. We approach workforce development from a holistic perspective, ensuring that every program we create aligns with your business goals and prepares your employees for the future of work.
Here’s how we can help:
Tailored Training Programs: We don’t believe in a one-size-fits-all approach. We start by assessing your team’s current skills, understanding the specific AI tools you’re implementing, and identifying the gaps that need to be filled. We then design customized training programs that meet your team’s unique needs, from frontline staff to managers and executives.
Upskilling and Reskilling: Upskilling focuses on teaching your current workforce new AI-related skills that enhance their ability to work with AI technologies, while reskilling helps employees transition into entirely new roles that are AI-centric. Whether it’s learning how to use AI-powered analytics tools, automating tasks, or managing AI-driven projects, our programs equip employees with the knowledge and skills they need to thrive in an AI-driven world.
Hands-On Learning: Our training programs go beyond theory by incorporating hands-on learning experiences. Employees learn by doing—whether it’s using AI tools, working through AI case studies, or simulating real-world business problems solved by AI. This approach ensures employees gain practical experience and can immediately apply what they’ve learned in their day-to-day roles.
Leadership Development: AI adoption doesn’t just affect employees; it requires leadership to adapt as well. We offer specialized training for managers and executives to help them lead AI transformation efforts. This includes understanding AI’s potential, identifying business opportunities, and learning how to manage teams that work with AI. By focusing on leadership development, we ensure that your entire organization is aligned in its AI strategy.
Mitigating Risk Through Workforce Development
AI adoption comes with risks, but the greatest of them can be mitigated by a workforce that is prepared, adaptable, and confident in using AI tools. Here’s how our programs help mitigate these risks:
Reducing Resistance to Change: By providing clear, comprehensive training and addressing employees’ concerns upfront, we reduce fear and resistance. Our programs focus on helping employees understand how AI can enhance their work and create opportunities for growth, rather than replacing them.
Filling Skills Gaps: The rapid pace of AI adoption means businesses need new skills faster than ever. Our upskilling and reskilling programs close the skills gaps, ensuring that your employees have the right competencies to keep your operations running smoothly.
Boosting Employee Morale: When employees feel equipped to handle new technology, their confidence and morale increase. Our programs focus on empowerment, helping your teams feel capable and excited about the future of AI in their roles.
Unlocking Opportunities Through AI-Driven Workforce Development
While mitigating risks is critical, the real value of AI workforce development comes from unlocking new opportunities. With the right skills and mindset, your workforce can use AI to drive innovation, improve decision-making, and increase efficiency. Here are a few examples of how AI workforce development can lead to transformative opportunities:
AI-Powered Decision Making: Employees trained in AI analytics tools can make faster, more informed decisions, leading to improved performance across departments. For example, an employee in marketing who understands AI-driven customer insights can tailor campaigns more effectively, increasing customer engagement and sales.
Process Automation: Teams that know how to work with AI can identify processes ripe for automation. For instance, a finance team trained in AI tools can automate invoice processing, reducing errors and freeing up time for more strategic tasks like financial forecasting.
Innovation Through Collaboration: AI is a powerful tool, but its true potential is unlocked when it’s combined with human creativity and problem-solving. Employees trained to collaborate with AI can use AI insights to develop new products, services, or business models that drive long-term growth.
Examples of AI Workforce Development Programs
Here are a few examples of the types of AI-driven workforce development programs we offer:
AI Fundamentals for Non-Technical Employees: A program designed to introduce non-technical staff to the basics of AI, demystifying how AI works and how it can enhance their daily tasks. This program is ideal for frontline workers who need to understand AI without becoming experts in the technology.
AI Analytics and Insights Training: A program focused on teaching employees how to use AI-powered analytics tools to generate actionable business insights. Whether it’s sales, marketing, or operations, this program helps employees make data-driven decisions that improve performance.
AI Leadership Program: Designed for managers and executives, this program helps leaders understand the strategic potential of AI and equips them with the skills to lead AI transformation efforts. This includes managing AI projects, identifying opportunities for AI implementation, and fostering a culture of innovation.
Automation and Process Optimization: A hands-on program that trains employees to identify and automate repetitive processes using AI tools. Teams learn how to streamline workflows, increase efficiency, and reduce operational costs through automation.
The ROI of AI Workforce Development
Investing in AI workforce development delivers tangible returns. Here’s what you can expect:
Increased Productivity: Teams that understand how to use AI tools effectively see immediate productivity gains, as they can complete tasks faster and with fewer errors.
Higher Employee Retention: By investing in your workforce and helping employees adapt to AI, you reduce turnover and increase loyalty. Employees are more likely to stay when they feel valued and prepared for the future.
Improved Decision-Making: Employees trained in AI analytics tools can make faster, more accurate decisions, leading to better business outcomes.
Greater Innovation: A workforce that knows how to leverage AI is more likely to identify new business opportunities and drive innovation within the company.
Ready to Develop Your AI-Driven Workforce?
At VannanCo, we specialize in helping businesses prepare their workforce for the AI-driven future. Our tailored training programs provide employees with the skills they need to work alongside AI tools effectively, unlocking new opportunities and mitigating the risks of AI adoption.
If you’re looking for a low-risk way to start, our Workforce AI Skills Assessment is an excellent first step. This introductory service provides valuable insights into your team’s current capabilities and identifies critical skill gaps. By understanding where your team stands today, we can help you prioritize the right training and development strategies for the future.
Are you ready to empower your teams and unlock the full potential of AI? Let’s start building your AI-ready workforce today. [...]
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AI Integration and Change Management Support: Mitigating Risk and Unlocking Opportunity for Business LeadersOctober 15, 2024Adopting AI can be a complex endeavor, especially for non-technical executives who need clear guidance on where to start. To help you begin your AI journey with confidence, we offer a Light AI Readiness Assessment service. This introductory service provides an affordable, low-risk way for executives to engage with us and gain valuable insights into how AI can fit into your business. Through this assessment, we help you identify the most strategic areas for AI integration and create a high-level roadmap tailored to your unique needs. Just send us a note through the contact form at the bottom of this post.
AI is no longer a futuristic concept—it’s here, and it’s changing the way businesses operate across industries. For many organizations, the challenge isn’t whether to adopt AI, but how to implement it effectively. Whether it’s integrating AI-powered tools or scaling AI systems company-wide, the process can seem overwhelming—especially for non-technical executives tasked with ensuring that AI initiatives succeed.
At VannanCo, our AI Integration and Change Management Support service helps businesses implement AI technologies smoothly and effectively, ensuring team adaptation, minimizing risks, and maximizing opportunities. We focus not only on the technology itself but also on how AI impacts your operations, people, and long-term business goals.
Why AI Integration and Change Management Are Critical
Integrating AI into a business isn’t simply about flipping a switch. It’s about ensuring that AI tools and systems are aligned with your company’s goals, fit seamlessly into your operations, and are embraced by your teams. For non-technical executives, this can present several key challenges:
Complexity of Technology: AI systems are sophisticated, and their successful implementation often requires alignment with existing tools and workflows. Misaligned systems can result in inefficiencies or even failure to deliver the promised ROI.
People and Cultural Resistance: Introducing AI can create fear and uncertainty within your workforce. Employees may worry about job displacement or be resistant to adopting new technologies if they don’t understand how AI will benefit them.
Operational Disruption: Without a clear roadmap, AI integration can disrupt day-to-day operations, causing delays, confusion, and additional costs that outweigh the potential benefits.
To avoid these pitfalls, you need a structured approach to AI integration—one that includes expert guidance, change management strategies, and a focus on empowering your teams to work alongside AI. That’s where VannanCo comes in.
Our Approach to AI Integration and Change Management
At VannanCo, we offer a comprehensive AI integration and change management service designed to help your business overcome the technical, operational, and cultural challenges of adopting AI. Our goal is to ensure AI not only fits into your organization but thrives within it—enabling your team to unlock new opportunities and drive long-term success.
Here’s how we do it:
Customized AI Roadmap: We start by understanding your business goals and current operations. Based on this, we create a tailored AI integration roadmap that aligns with your company’s unique needs. Whether you’re adopting AI in customer service, operations, or data analytics, our plan ensures AI enhances your processes rather than disrupts them.
Cross-Functional Alignment: AI integration affects multiple parts of your business—technology, operations, HR, and more. We ensure that every department is aligned and prepared for the changes AI will bring. By involving key stakeholders early in the process, we foster a collaborative environment that reduces resistance and improves the chances of success.
Team Enablement and Training: A key component of successful AI adoption is making sure your employees are on board and empowered to use AI tools effectively. We offer tailored training programs that focus on helping teams understand how AI will benefit their roles and contribute to the company’s success. This approach reduces fear, boosts engagement, and builds confidence in AI’s potential.
Change Management Strategy: Change is difficult, especially when it involves new technology. We help businesses implement change management strategies that focus on clear communication, team engagement, and gradual adaptation. Our structured approach ensures that employees are informed, supported, and equipped to navigate the transition smoothly.
Ongoing Support and Optimization: AI integration doesn’t stop once the technology is in place. We provide ongoing support to monitor the performance of AI systems, address any challenges, and ensure that AI is delivering its intended value. This continuous improvement approach keeps your AI initiatives on track and adaptable to evolving business needs.
Mitigating Risk Through Expert AI Integration
One of the key concerns for business leaders adopting AI is risk management. Poor AI integration can lead to operational downtime, missed opportunities, and even data security vulnerabilities. At VannanCo, we help you mitigate these risks through strategic planning and proactive management.
Operational Continuity: We ensure that AI integration is done in phases to prevent any disruption to your core business activities. Our step-by-step approach minimizes operational downtime, allowing your team to adjust to AI without slowing down productivity.
Employee Adoption: Resistance from employees can derail AI initiatives. By focusing on change management and training, we ensure your team is engaged, informed, and ready to embrace AI, reducing the risk of pushback or disengagement.
Data Privacy and Security: AI systems rely on data, and ensuring the privacy and security of that data is critical. We work closely with your IT and compliance teams to make sure your AI integration is compliant with regulatory requirements and that your data is protected from breaches or misuse.
Budget Control: AI projects can become costly if not managed properly. We help you create a budget-conscious AI strategy that aligns with your financial goals. By preventing scope creep and ensuring a clear ROI path, we protect your investment while delivering value.
Unlocking Opportunities with AI Integration
While the risks of AI adoption are real, the opportunities it offers are even greater. AI has the potential to transform your business, making it more efficient, responsive, and innovative. Here are some examples of how AI can unlock new growth opportunities:
Operational Efficiency: AI can automate repetitive tasks, allowing your team to focus on high-value work. For example, AI-driven data analytics can help you make faster, more accurate business decisions, improving your overall efficiency and performance.
Customer Experience Enhancement: With AI, you can personalize customer interactions, automate responses, and provide 24/7 support—all of which lead to higher customer satisfaction and loyalty.
Innovation Acceleration: AI opens the door to innovation by providing insights that were previously unavailable. With AI tools, your teams can identify new market trends, uncover customer needs, and develop innovative products and services faster than the competition.
Scalability: As your business grows, AI systems can scale with you, allowing you to handle increased demand without dramatically increasing headcount or operational complexity.
Examples of AI Integration in Action
For non-technical executives, understanding AI in practice can be a challenge. Here are two examples of how businesses have successfully integrated AI with the help of VannanCo:
Customer Service Automation: A mid-sized retail company implemented AI-powered chatbots to handle routine customer service inquiries, reducing response times by 40% and allowing customer service agents to focus on more complex, high-value tasks. With our support, the company integrated the AI system without disrupting operations and trained their employees to use AI alongside their existing tools.
AI-Driven Data Insights: A manufacturing firm adopted AI to analyze production data in real-time, identifying inefficiencies and optimizing their supply chain. By integrating AI with their existing ERP systems and training their teams on how to use AI-driven insights, the company increased production efficiency by 15% while reducing costs.
Ready to Embrace AI?
For business decision-makers, adopting AI can be both exciting and challenging. At VannanCo, we specialize in making AI integration seamless, ensuring your teams are empowered, your operations remain uninterrupted, and your business is set up for long-term success. Whether you’re just starting your AI journey or looking to get your existing AI initiatives back on track, our AI Integration and Change Management Support service is here to help.
If you’re not sure where to begin, our Light AI Readiness Assessment is a great way to start. This introductory service offers valuable insights into how AI can fit into your business and creates a high-level roadmap for AI integration—all at an accessible entry point for executives. Let’s work together to turn the challenges of AI adoption into opportunities for growth and innovation. [...]
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Bridging the Gap between Advertising and Commerce: Closed Loop Advertising Measurement is here… and it’s PricelessJune 18, 2017Originally published on LinkedIn June 18, 2017, click here
After over a decade working at some of the most storied companies in advertising technology, I’ve decided to join Jay Sears and the media vertical team at Mastercard Advisors. Our team enables advertisers (or as Mastercard calls them, merchants) to leverage transaction based insights to add efficacy to their existing planning, activation and measurement efforts.
The advertiser wish list has always been to be able to “close the loop” between advertising, audience definitions and actual purchase activity. Mastercard has done just that for advertisers in the retail, restaurant, travel and telco sectors. They’ve built products that are powerful tools for advertisers who want to equate digital ad exposures to sales and sales lift in order to understand consumer purchase behaviors and enhance existing planning and activation efforts in advertising.
I was really attracted to Jay Sears’ vision (in his article Crossing the Rubicon to Mastercard. Priceless) laying out some of the larger trends and rationale for Mastercard and its role in the media sector. The conclusion for advertisers is that the technology and the tools are available now to analyze the effects of advertising activities to real business outcomes (and not just proxies of the outcome like traditional “performance or direct response metrics”).
The Road to Commerce
The last decade of my career has been spent building the new data-driven infrastructure and related business processes to connect global advertisers to digital audiences. I have watched “RTB”, or real-time bidding, evolve from its very early days (when I was at Yahoo! Right Media) when data driven advertising was still a “good idea” into an entrenched ad business transacting billions of dollars in global advertising spend. I’ve been lucky enough to be part of helping the advertising business change from a blind/bulk-sold media business into a surgical/data-driven outcome-oriented practice. Throughout these changes, the central theme has been data.
Why Mastercard? A Fortune 500 global technology company, Mastercard has been recognized for innovation and changing the world for good. But when most people think of Mastercard, they think of credit cards not technology or data. However, Mastercard does not issue a single credit card. Mastercard, at its core, is a technology company that owns and operates a global payments network. Mastercard provides this technology to issuing banks or other emerging payment platforms such as Apple Pay, Samsung Pay and Square who in turn provide the consumer the actual plastic or platform she carries in her wallet or on her mobile device. The Mastercard global payment network spans 43.3 million acceptance locations (merchants), and processes 142 million transactions every day. In total, there is a staggering amount of transaction data that’s being managed to provide this service.
Fifteen years ago, Mastercard realized they could provide insight, analysis and guidance to its issuing banks and merchants about market trends by leveraging anonymized aggregations of this data. To provide this value, the Mastercard Advisors division was created. The Advisors business includes the media vertical solutions that empower advertisers to drive better business outcomes.
As advertising and commerce come closer together, there is an opportunity for consistently collected, carefully managed, transaction-based insights to provide value throughout the advertising workflow of planning, activation and measurement. I look forward to sitting down with you — advertisers, agencies, media owners and technology platforms — to explain how Mastercard is helping advertisers in the retail, restaurant, travel and telecommunications sectors drive better business outcomes across existing efforts and infrastructure. [...]
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Your altered reality is finally here and this time it’s personalJuly 18, 2016Originally published on LinkedIn on July 18, 2016
I can’t say I’m an avid Pokemon Go fanatic. I downloaded the app, I’ve spent a bit of time walking around my neighborhood and I’ve learned what it takes to progress up a few levels. True, there’s a fun game here, but there’s something more fundamental going on. Look at the graphic at the top of this article. When I see a Pokemon on my phone, it’s overlaid on top of my real world. If I look behind my phone, there is no Pokemon. When I look back at my phone’s screen- there’s a Pokemon. Something special is happening. I’m interacting with my real-world with an artificial overlay in a way that is unique to me.
For home-gamers, we’ve been watching this revolution in consumer behavior over and over again for the last 20 years. And it never gets old. We could really say it started with the Windows 95 launch – not just an unprecedented marketing success, but the moment when we should have said “computers will be in everything, everything will be a computer“.
Since the 90s, advances in data communication helped computers talk to each other. Then, computers helped people talk to each other across wide distances (even if you didn’t know who that person was). Consumers didn’t know they wanted it (because they didn’t know it was possible), but they had a need and growing appetite for instantaneous, self-service access to information of all kinds. This gave rise to Google, Facebook and Social Media. In fact, an entire industry of infrastructure was born to economically support this new availability of information called “Adtech” or advertising technology (where I’ve been lucky enough to spend the last ten years of my career).
In 1995, computers were still mostly for the office and productivity. But Windows 95 brought with it a word that consumers understood: “Start.” Start what? Start anything.
Why is Pokemon Go more than a game that has all the key characteristics to be a blockbuster title? Because just like Windows 95, this is the moment when we’ll look back and realize this was the paradigm shift. This is the moment when consumers decide that they do want their physical reality to be enhanced in their own unique and individual way. Google Glass was a good try at being a catalyst but we learned that consumers want a “when-I-want-it-on” experience not an “always-on-and-I-have-to-wear-it-too” experience.
Consumers will want this. Frankly, all you have to do is project Google maps to the next level. Not only do I want to know where I am and what’s around me but what’s around me that is relevant to me. And there is an army of dollars waiting to make that happen. If you thought Amazon has killed retail, think again. Until we actually live in the matrix, people do want to interact with their world- they just want to do it with things that interest them. Retailers are the new sovereigns of the physical world and some of them are figuring out how to use Pokemon Go to give consumers an augmented reality that they really want.
Pokemon Go is the first version of this kind of reality enhancement – it’s not just a game – it’s the first version of a value exchange between businesses in the real world and consumers that have a specific desire about how to experience their “real world”. And there’s money to be made mediating this experience: Pokemon’s creator, Niantic, is driving revenue from consumers AND retailers. Additionally, Unity Technologies, the company who makes the underlying gaming platform, just received a significant injection of funding. They will sell this solution wherever they can and have the muscle to do it.
If the media is the message and content is king, what bigger king of media is there than the physical world? Instead of taking the physical world and projecting it onto our screens, now we’re able to take what we want from our screens and project it on the physical world.
So what is that special thing that’s happening from an information technology perspective? It’s the convergence of the PC in your hand (mobile phone), internet infrastructure, GPS technology, highly-transactional, big data systems and social media to enable consumers to find information about and project experiences that they want onto their physical environment in real-time and continuously. Your world will never be the same – and your world will never be the same as someone else’s. From here on out, your world is personal. [...]
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Here’s Why Native Video Advertising is Worth the InvestmentJune 22, 2015Originally published on VideoNuze on June 22, 2015
Controversy and confusion — two words that describe native video advertising. It may be one of the industry’s latest emerging ad formats, but brands, advertisers, media executives and even the Federal Trade Commission have been in advertising purgatory over it — questioning whether native video is a real form of advertising or a publisher trick to make consumers believe an ad is actually editorial content. Couple this with the debate over the high price tag, and the looming question remains: “Is native video advertising worth investing in?”
The answer is yes, and this article will explore why.
The Controversy
The first point of controversy around native ads is the price. Display ads are sold directly for $10 CPM, while video ads generally sell for $20–30. Publishers have been accused of driving higher video ad prices through native video. In reality, it’s the scarcity of inventory coupled with a higher quality ad experience that drives the higher price.
Some have accused native video as being fake — I’ve even heard executives say it’s a form of fraud. This baffles me, but it clearly stems from people’s misunderstanding because it’s a new format. Most executives don’t see how native video is, in fact, a transparent and valuable form of advertising that helps brands reach consumers in a more organic way. It’s an extension of the ad user experience optimization practice that many publishers have been engaged in for some time. Since publishers have to invest to support native video, they select more high quality content to pair with an ad. This means consumers are actually receiving better content and the ad unit itself is optimized, not just the content that surrounds it.
Native ads have even been called invasive. Let’s be honest — all ads are semi-invasive, but native video ads are designed to be less intrusive, as they appear within content a user is already engaged in. Think about this: if a reader gets through 75 percent of an article, serving them a video ad at this point won’t hinder whether they finish the article or not — they’re too invested.
The Confusion
How do we label native video ads? Some executives refuse to label them as an advertisement, claiming it’s inaccurate. Descriptors that are currently being used by large publishers are “sponsored by,” “presented by,” “promoted by,” etc. But when all is said and done, a native video ad is just that — an advertisement. In fact, native video can even be sold by a technology vendor and delivered programmatically, so labeling it something other than an ad causes unnecessary confusion in the market and for consumers.
Additionally, the idea that native video lacks the ability to generate engagement is a huge misconception. The industry assumption is that video should be maximized to full screen in order to grab users’ attention; however, consumers don’t always go that route for specific reasons. The trends and measurements around viewability have shown that ad size and ad performance are not necessarily directly correlated because of all of the variation in user experiences on the Internet. For example, on Facebook, many consumers prefer to view video in a smaller format because it’s the most convenient way to watch the ad without losing their place in the feed. Since they have the option to view videos in-feed, the likelihood of engagement is actually higher.
The Real Deal
Despite some controversy and confusion in the market today, native video advertising will continue to grow. An eMarketer study from the ANA reported 66 percent of U.S. client-side marketers plan to increase their native advertising budgets this year, and an April 2015 report from the IAB found 68 percent of marketers expect their video ad spend to increase, so native video advertising’s future is looking bright.
Here’s the bottom line: a video ad — full of sight and animation — presents a more pleasant, entertaining story and is easier to engage with than many other formats. As a result, video ads typically see a higher click-through-rate (CTR). A recent study from Business Insider found that, on average, video ads have a CTR of 1.84 percent, the highest CTR of all digital ad formats. Native ads, too, see great conversion with a 53 percent higher purchase intent. Combined, the two formats are a powerful form of advertising worth the cost to drive both brand lift and sales.
Continuing to understand this format, its challenges and progression is important, but so is focusing on the big picture. The idea behind native video is that advertising becomes content and content becomes advertising. When the two components act as one, advertisers are doing their job correctly — creating a seamless ad experience for consumers.
The conversion numbers for video and native speak for themselves. The two formats combined generate consumer value and one to one marketing effectiveness, thus creating a powerful medium that any smart marketer should seriously consider. [...]
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What Consumer Preference Really Means For Today’s Retail MarketerMay 13, 2015Originally published on Multichannel Merchant on May 13, 2015
The old four P’s of marketing — price, product, promotion and place — worked as well as they could for retailers using traditional media to influence customer purchase behavior and drive shoppers to stores. However, the time and distance between when an ad, coupon or promotion was placed and when retailers could measure customer preference was large. And the effort? Complex and labor-intensive.
Digital media completely changed the retail game. Real-time ad placement that is cross format, enabled through data, and captures actions and feedback from consumers has ushered in a new era of urgency in advertising: the age of preference and relevancy. Because of the diversity of media and audience fragmentation across many different channels, the traditional shotgun approach of messaging everywhere has proven to be impractical and ineffective for retailers — and something your customers don’t want.
Today’s retail marketers have the opportunity to use data and technology to leverage all available digital formats (from beacons to social to mobile to video), focus messages and promotions in on the right potential customers, and measure results beyond delivery-focused metrics. Thus, I’m proposing four new Ps — preference, programmatic, pervasiveness and post-impression activity — to outline the new, necessary levers of control retailers need to ensure digital ad dollars are being used effectively and actually driving sales.
The first, and perhaps most important, of those Ps is preference. Modern marketing practices are founded on the idea that what the customer cares about matters — but how exactly can retailers capitalize on personalized advertising to enhance preference for their brand?
Let’s face it: consumers are generally skeptical and weary of marketing messages. They don’t want to be maneuvered into purchase decisions and will actively rebel against messages taking that appearance. And with overwhelming access to information and alternatives, rebellious consumers are bad for any business (think: price comparison apps).
The good news? Retailers that are connected to and resonate with their customers in form and function are healthy and grow. That connection is the essence of consumer preference — and it’s easier than ever for retailers to execute in today’s digital world.
The focus over the past five years in retail advertising has been on piping and infrastructure — developing the nuts and bolts needed to take advantage of all that digital has to offer. The focus over the next five years and beyond needs to be on using that piping and infrastructure well. Gaining top-of-mind awareness with consumers or bottom-of-the-funnel conversion results is not enough for a retailer to build ongoing, recurring business with customers.
To become preferred, retailers cannot simply push out messages to “advertising audiences”. They need to communicate a message that inserts itself into communities of interest. This idea is exactly what makes the era of personalized advertising so important.
Messages must be customized to educate, inform and entertain in a way that aligns the retailer with communities that support their business. For example, college students on a tight budget will react to certain promotions differently than a working mother looking to buy her husband a Father’s Day gift. Consumer communities coexist with the brand and have aligned their own values with the retailer’s value proposition. The way that alignment happens is when consumers interact with the brand’s products and services, they hear word of mouth messages from their community and they receive relevant advertising directly from the brand.
Relevant and personalized advertising is when the art and poetry of a message is delivered with technology to a consumer or community at the right time and place to influence their feeling about a retailer — keeping the store front and center in their purchase consideration cycle. This resonance is the essence of brand preference.
For today’s retailers, a focus on developing brand preference will ensure campaigns take full advantage of the capabilities of digital media — influencing measurement and optimizing ad spend. The traditional four Ps had an implicit assumption built in: the planning and beginning of the campaign were critical elements to measuring success. In digital, however, constant optimization during the campaign with the near-constant stream of data and customer feedback is what drives outcomes — and will ultimately bring retailers to the top. [...]
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All Bots Aren’t Created Equal: Battling The Good, The Bad And The UglyFebruary 25, 2015Originally published on MediaPost MobileInsider February 25, 2015
At the IAB Leadership Forum, I witnessed something pretty shocking — advertisers are mad. They are grab-the-microphone, fist-shaking mad. And they have their sights set on fixing one big problem: traffic fraud in digital media.
Traffic fraud is a complex topic, but in the IAB conversations I saw marketers focusing their anger on one specific subject: paying for “bots” — those automated impression generators that come to a Web site and artificially drive up traffic volume. Many in the room expressed how quickly this problem has grown to a point that even their Fortune 500 CEOs are involved and that it is absolutely suppressing digital media investment.
Marketers vehemently demanded that something needs to be done now — which prompted me to think about the importance of understanding the work that has already been done to improve the authenticity of digital media — and to consider what more needs to be done to make sure traffic is high-quality, safe and real.
The idea of “good” and “bad” traffic is interwoven with how, and from whom, media is sourced. Because our transparency tools are still evolving, it’s difficult for marketers to see that progress has been made and have trust in their investments.
All Bots Are Not Created Equal
I spoke to a number of publishers during the event, but one particular conversation was an “a-ha” moment for me. Not all bots are designed to inflate traffic. Bots can be used to harvest content, scrape for data, capture analytics or countless other site automation tasks. In fact, the more popular the site or premium the publisher, the more likely that bots are used for these “good” reasons. We live in an automated environment — and automation by definition means bots. If history has taught us anything, it’s that there will be more automation. But not all of these bots are intended to defraud marketers.
Premium Publishers Are Penalized Too
It’s not just the advertisers who suffer because of how bot detection tools work. Even premium publishers can get caught up in buyer “clean sweeps.” Once a publisher is blacklisted in a buying platform, they will never receive money from the platform again. In addition to being bad for the publisher, this is a double whammy for buyers who initially pay for bots and then subsequently lose high-quality media experiences because of blacklisting.
Impression-Level Analysis is the Key
Because this problem affects programmatic media buys AND direct non-programmatic media buys we need to get really tactical about evaluating the quality of every impression at media delivery time. To be able to evaluate media quality at high scale, technology is a requirement. This kind of policing can’t be done manually by hand. Manual blacklisting can take entire good sites out of the media mix for bad reasons. But just understanding whether an impression is a bot is still not the right approach. There is a perspective that is even more fundamental.
Focus on the Human
Whether your buys are being done programmatically or directly, as an industry we certainly need to eliminate bots as best we can — but more importantly, we need to begin talking about how we serve ads to real people. Services and technologies need to help us authenticate that an impression equals a real life person so marketers can buy media without fear. There will always be more technologies and more bots, and trying to optimize them out is almost futile. You can’t just “whack-a-mole” your way to better quality traffic. Yes, it can be complex and costly to focus on delivering to real humans, but what’s even more costly are the wasted media dollars spent that never turn into sales. It’s time to enable media to be not only focused on accountability but also ensuring that ads are delivered to real consumers on real Web sites who drive real purchases. [...]
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Modernizing The Marketing Mix: Meet The New 4 PsNovember 14, 2014Originally published at CMO.com November 14, 2014
Whatever happened to the “4 Ps” of the marketing mix? Though still popular on college syllabi, they’re becoming less and less relevant for professional marketers.
That’s because in a real-time, digital world, the intersection of the 4 Ps–price, product, promotion, and place–is constantly changing. New technologies allow (and even require) marketers and advertisers to understand consumer preferences and environment in real time to get the media exposure they desire. Although the core concepts of the 4 Ps are still essential, it’s clear that the marketing industry needs a new guide to develop strategy and measure outcomes in the digital world.
In fact, relevancy, not reach, is the new name of the game. Yet marketers have the same need that the original 4 Ps addressed: identifying the core elements and principles that must be managed and optimized in order to drive a core success factor: relevancy.
With that in mind, I’d like to suggest an upgrade to the 4 Ps–version 2.0, if you will.
1. Preference: Modern marketing practices are founded on the belief that preferences matter–that what a consumer cares about has a noticeable impact on their attitude and activities. Only by understanding and acting on these preferences will it become possible to ensure relevancy for any given viewer. For instance, if I learn that Consumer A prefers to view videos rather than read email, is primarily active at night versus the day, likes electronic products, and enjoys visiting stores over purchasing online, I’ve developed a dataset that will allow me to communicate with A in the right way, at the right time, about the right product, and help guide them toward his desired purchasing method.
2. Programmatic: If preference speaks to why relevancy equals results, programmatic speaks to how relevancy can be accomplished in a cost-effective manner. Designing individual campaigns for individual customers one at a time would be crushingly expensive and time-consuming–which is why no one had previously been able to pursue true one-to-one customer relationships on a large scale. Now programmatic technologies allow each impression to be evaluated and delivered based on consumer relevancy. Algorithms combine data about frequency, the user, the user’s environment, and the content itself in real time to select the best ad to play. This not only benefits the advertiser by reducing media waste and exposures to irrelevant users, but also increases the user’s ad experience by showing him products and services he is really interested in.
3. Pervasiveness: When it comes to how we speak with target customers, invasiveness is a very bad thing, but pervasiveness is a very good thing. Keep in mind that our goal here has always been about relevancy–which means being able to send the right message to the right user when and where it will be most effective. It means truly understanding a consumer across all of the media they consume and keeping interactions with these consumers consistent to their preferences no matter where or how they come into contact with your brand.
4. Post-impression activity: Finally, we can only know if our content was truly relevant if we know its ultimate result. The biggest disparity between traditional and digital advertising is in measurement. Where TV and other traditional media advertisers have to “back in” to advertising performance using offline surveys and disconnected market research, digital can look at the entirety of the customer’s journey, all the way to the brand’s site and, ultimately, to purchase behavior.
As an industry that is becoming hyperdependent on real-time technology and data-driven solutions, marketing can be challenging. The New 4 Ps is meant to give marketers a simple mnemonic device to evaluate whether a marketing strategy is really leveraging the capabilities of digital and creating campaigns relevant to the consumer.
When choosing platforms, tools, partners, and processes, marketers who can say their strategy has “ticked” these four boxes will be well on the way to more effective advertising and better consumer experiences. [...]
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Hello world!July 28, 2013Welcome to WordPress. This is your first post. Edit or delete it, then start writing! [...]
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