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Enterprises have to constantly decide, at every step in their digital journey, should they build or buy. This question often is posed as a critical, do or die decision and the answer varies on a case by case basis. Building can be expensive, take longer but offers future proofing and more dependability whereas buying offers a faster time to market, less risk and accountability forced through contractual terms. However, a key point often overlooked is the cost of integration. Integration can be required at multiple levels. Vendor Applications Vendor applications typically require a two-way connection between the enterprise systems and the vendor application. The application requires incoming data and information from somewhere in the enterprise technology stack and an output stream of information back into the enterprise at one or more points in the stack or workflow. Vendor Platforms Vendor provided platforms typically have similar integration requirements as Vendor applications requiring an incoming data & information connection and an outgoing information connection into the enterprise process, workflow, platform or product. Application-To-Application Application to Application integrations where an application needs to be connected to another application to either provide data or signals to enable the downstream application to create value can be seemingly deceptive. Application-To-Application integration costs can grow at O(n^2) as potentially, worst case, each application could be connected with every other application. Enterprise Stack Fragmentation The problem of integration is exacerbated by the fragmentation of the enterprise at the organization level. This problem is also known as "Shadow IT" is driven by superficially differing needs of multiple lines of businesses in an enterprise. Shadow IT typically leads to multiple instances of similar technology stacks that cause data, compute and information to be silo'd. Stack fragmentation and its

Technology Congestion is a not a recent phenomenon but the urgency around Digital Innovation and Digital Transformation has brought it front and center. Technology Congestion is a point in the Digital Journey where multiple technology initiatives, executed in parallel become entangled with each in a state where none of the initiatives, hampered by inter dependencies, prioritization, and cost, is able to complete, make progress and deliver business value. Modern Experiences Require Multiple Technologies Building a consumer driven, customer centric experience that truly delights and moves business KPIs requires several technologies to come together in almost a magical experience. This means that not on boarding and deploying multiple technologies is not an option or possibility. Enterprises have to build competencies in multiple technologies (and they have multiple strategic options to do so) and this can be a daunting task. Managing Technology Dependencies Often, an app-centric methodology requires a complete focus on the user and customer's experience. Delivering that experience can requires technologies that leverage each other or are inter-dependent on each other. Inter-dependencies can be sequential i.e. Technology A is required to be installed and operational before Technology B can be initialized. Inter-dependencies can also be matrixed i.e. a service X might require service Y to be complete and Service Y requires Technology B. Inter-dependencies can also be circular where System M feeds information into System N and System N, in turn, provides feedback to enable System M to iterate and improve. Innovation To A Screeching Halt Technology congestion can stall innovation. Sorting out dependencies can delay innovation and new product development and cause the enterprise to become anti-app-centric. The net impact is lost time and energy in technology installation and deployment with less than ideal focus and attention on customer value and user experience.

The quality or the lack thereof can be a huge contributing factor to a fractured and sluggish digital journey where ROI is hard to achieve and results come in short supply. The quality of data has a direct impact on the ability of the enterprise to be aware of relevant events, its reaction time, the decision time and its action time. A clear and concerted effort is required to measure and improve the data quality to drive better decisions and actions. Common Quality Issues The following are the most common quality issues Comprehensiveness Comprehensiveness quality issues refer to key attributes or data points missing from the data collected by the enterprise. This can occur when the data producing systems or the data delivery networks have glitches or malfunction or are incorrectly configured to miss entire rows of data or attributes of the data. Integrity Integrity quality issues refer to the corruption of the values of key attributes to contain unidentifiable or unreadable data. When key attributes are empty or null when they are by design, not allowed to be empty/null or when an attribute contains a value that does not meet the specifications of the type of the attribute for example, a string column contains an integer or a timestamp column contains a string not parse-able into a timestamp. Integrity of data is important before data can be included in the data set to drive analysis, decisions and actions. Sampling Sampling quality issues refer to the inclusion or exclusion of a certain percentage of the records in a data set with the assumption that the remainder records are good, representative sample of the original data set. Bad or inaccurate sampling can lead to a distorted view of reality and that can lead to bad decisions. In addition, sampling itself can make the data set inappropriate for certain types of analysis that require the entire dat set to be utilized for training. Filtering An upstream filtering scheme can end up removing too many or

Google Maps integration is consistently one of the most popular features of mobile applications.

Modern, RESTful APIs are not considered standard, table stakes and expected out of any new project, effort, application, system, service or product. It has become so normal to talk about developer interfaces, developer adoption, application development and innovation in the same breath as APIs that a distinct effort to build APIs for a new product or service seems out of place and abnormal. APIs are the defacto standard of app development. So where do we go from here? We believe that APIs are about to enter the second growth spurt. APIs will evolve from not just interfaces and integration enablers into the rockets that propel enterprises towards innovation and market dominance. Here are three key trajectories that will lead the next API evolution and revolution. Innovation - Starts, and Ends with APIs All modern technologies such as Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, ChatBots, Analytics, BlockChain etc. begin and end their stories with APIs. APIs are what enables the communication between front-end user interfaces and the backend technology services. All new machine learning capabilities offered out of the big four tech companies have seen the light of day through APIs. Intent & Sentiment extraction, Topics, Categories, Summarization, Image Recognition, Entity Extraction etc. are all capabilities powered by Machine Learning, Natural Language Processing that is ultimately being delivered as APIs to application developers. Similarly, ChatBots are typically designed to get the user entered text, use an intent API to determine intent and then use a service API to respond to the user conversationally or with a service. Clouds - Multi-Cloud, Hybrid Cloud As the big three cloud providers grow their market share and attempt to attract attention, increasingly, enterprises need to think about how they minimize their risk by building in the flexibility to switch their cloud provider if and when they need. In addition, hybrid architectures or a cloud migration

Digital Transformation is tough, even for seasoned technologists. This is because it is a transformation of an organization at its core. Everything from culture, technology, ideation, development, integration, delivery, and support needs to fundamentally shift to be more customer-centric, service driven, automation first and experimental in nature. No wonder that a lot of organizations take a long time and a lot of investment to see ROI from their digital transformations. Here are 5 signs that your digital transformation might be in trouble. Culture mistrusts the core digital transformation team You are spawning new initiatives before completing previous ones Decisions are top down with low accountability at the leaf nodes You tend to focus on technology stacks with little focus on customer value Inter-organization politics stifles cross-organization scenarios Culture mistrusts the core digital transformation team It is almost impossible to make an entire organization aware and participate in digital transformation at the same time. There are exceptions but in our experience, starting out with a core digital transformation team is a much better strategy than otherwise. This team should be enabled to attack a limited set of important and business relevant problems, build cutting-edge solutions and use them as examples to train and evangelize digital transformation strategies to the rest of the organization. However, the more entrenched an organization in the old way of doing things, the harder they might this central team. Resistance can be active and passive such as refusal to share data or provide the relevant context of the problem. An organization that does not set up the early crusaders for success almost always has a much harder time showing value from their digital transformation activities. You are spawning new initiatives before completing previous ones Executing on a digital transformation strategy is much harder than defining the strategy especially fo

One of the most common misconceptions out there is the belief that technology equates innovation. Innovation is the creation of new value through a better solution for a problem that either does a better job in solving the problem or does so in a manner that the solution is accessible in a larger set of circumstances by a larger number of people. On the other hand, technology is simply the tooling that holds the promise of new solutions but by itself, is meaningless. Enterprises can become enamored by the promise and hype about technology and go down long, complex journeys, invest millions in upgrading technology and still come out empty on the other side because they built technology for technology's sake. Even in well intention boards and C-suite, industry peer pressure and hype around technologies can force action that ultimately leads to massive investments in people, software, technology, and vendors but does not yield the ROI promised by the technology. Leadership The problem can be accentuated when not enough due diligence is done on the applicability of the technology to the enterprise given the current state i.e. the point in time when the technology is being introduced, the customer's propensity to accept the technology-driven solution i.e. are the users ready to embrace, adopt, learn and utilize new solutions and burning problems that necessitate the adoption of new technology to better solve the problem. When the timing of new technology introduction is gotten wrong, it almost always fails to deliver on its promised ROI. Leaders need to rise above the hype and peer pressure and ensure that they understand, first and foremost, the burning problems that plague their customers or make the bedrock of their future strategy. Next, leaders need to ensure and validate that the technology in mind can actually be used to solve the problem through rapid prototyping and minimal investment. Once customer feedback on the prototype has been validated, then only

Occupational Safety and Health Administration or OSHA is a body created in the year 1970 by the American Congress in order to protect the workers from being harmed or injured in the workplace. This entity implements rules and standards that will enforce health and safety of the workers. With this, working in companies that are OSHA compliant can give you that sense of security. But what are these standards and how they are implemented? OSHA Regulations There are two kinds of regulations being handled by OSHA and these are health standards and safety. The former deals with toxins exposure and the outcomes of other hazards while, the latter deals accident prevention. Some of the rules being implemented by this organization were actually adopted from private agencies. OSHA was supported by other bodies such as the NIOSH or National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health in the creation of the laws. OSHA compliance can be very advantageous since it boosts workers productivity knowing that the company can provide better care. With this, employers must devote time to come up with a safer work area. OSHA - Protection to Workers Employees have the right to work in a safe workplace regardless of the industry they work in. Hence, if you think that the company you are working with has violated the rules you have the option to file a complaint at to OSHA. With your report, they can conduct inspection on your workplace to determine whether your employer is OSHA compliant. In essence, OSHA gives employees the following rights: Request OSHA to inspect the work area - This can be done if your employer has violated the laws on operating heavy machineries such as forklifts and failed to provide an area such as eyewash facilities for employees who are working with corrosive substances. Even the failure to comply with the safety floor markings is subject to OSHA's investigation. Practice their rights - OSHA safeguard the right of workers so that they can exercise the

Tips & Tricks for Efficiently Tracking Lean Projects Recently, we wrote about a couple of problems facing many Lean practitioners. These were problems that hindered their learning process and often caused overconfidence. Amongst the advice to help combat these problems arose the need for detailed tracking and note taking with regards to practice and progress. Being able to accurately track not only the effects but also the process of a Lean project is critical to ongoing success, and is a key to stimulating growth amongst not only the receiving end of your project objectives, but also amongst the employees and Lean practitioners themselves. To start off, let's take a look at the current state of Lean project tracking for many Lean practitioners. A recent LinkedIn discussion posed the very question of project tracking, and sought to understand a few different distinct metrics. In addition to measuring the effectiveness of any program when it comes to completion, tracking can also be about measuring the scope of your projects, so that you can accurately project what the effects will be before you actually reach the stage at which you expect them. Part of this "scope" involves tracking exactly who is involved with your project, who is affected, and how they are progressing in their respective tasks. Where we are now First of all, it's important to evaluate the current methods that are prevalent in Lean record keeping. The LinkedIn discussion starter, self-identified as Ian R., mentions in his opening post that, when he last posed the question about a year ago, the consensus was that most practitioners were simply using excel spreadsheets for their tracking needs. While there's nothing wrong with relying on Excel for the basics, other users were quick to offer up some slicker alternatives, signaling a sharp (and welcomed, in our book) departure from some of the more basic methods. Unsurprisingly, there exist several specialist software applications whose n

Farmingdale, NY based risk management company, EtQ, and moderator Quality Digest are presenting a risk management webinar on October 10, 2012 episode of Quality Digest Live at 11:00 a.m. Pacific Daylight Time. EtQ's company website is dedicated to creating quality risk management solutions, and has this to say about its stance on its software products: EtQ's Quality Management Software is an integrated quality and compliance management software system that has been pre-configured to specifically address the needs of the Manufacturing industry and ISO 9000 processes. The webinar on Wednesday offers proactive information and ideas to professionals saddled with risk management duties in their company. The webinar is slated to tackle such lofty goals as to demonstrate how to successfully implement risk management as a strategy - not only as a "post-production event," in which best practices application risk factors can be assessed and targeted not only toward processes, but also to products.

Your facility probably has many written safety procedures-hazard communication or emergency response, for example-but do you have a comprehensive health and safety management system (HSMS)? OSHA mandates many kinds of safety plans, but there is no federal mandate regarding a health and safety system that covers all other safety plans (though some states do require one). This system governs how safety works in your facility and gets everyone involved. If OSHA doesn't require an HSMS system in your state, then why bother implementing one? While a safety system does require a lot of work, the benefits are numerous. Not only will employee morale improve, the number and severity of injuries will be reduced and production may actually increase. Safety, it turns out, is good for business. OSHA also recognizes businesses that have used effective HSMS to achieve lower-than-average injury and illness rates through their Voluntary Protection Programs. Data suggests companies that have developed these kinds of safety systems have seen positive results. According to OSHA: "Companies in OSHA's Voluntary Protection Program, VPP, all of whom have implemented comprehensive safety and health management systems, experience lost workday incidence rates that are 60% to 80% lower than their industry counterparts. They also experience reduced absenteeism and turnover, improved productivity, and lower Workers' Compensation costs. Safety and health management works and adds to the company's bottom line profits." Getting a health and safety system started at your workplace takes a lot of legwork, so let's take a look at how to begin and how to get everyone from management to employees on the work floor involved. Management Leadership Business-Meeting-1 For a health and safety system to be effective, it can't just be left entirely up to a safety manager. Management needs to set the tone for the program and demonstrate their commitment to it by providing necessary polic

Enterprises across the board have a lot of untapped potential in their data. The data is not only relevant and useful within the enterprise but can be a valuable source of insights for the enterprise partners and customers. In some cases, the value of this data can be high that partners and customers are willing to pay extra to get access to this information at a certain fidelity, freshness or scope. Enterprises that do not have a clear and coherent monetization strategy are leaving money on the table. In addition, they stand to lose customers to competitors who gain the first movers advantage by addressing this market need. The Value of Data The first step in determining a monetization strategy is an audit of the enterprise data assets and a determination of the customers who are interesting and willing to pay a premium for access to this data. The Value of Data is proportional to the following: Freshness The more "fresh" a dataset is higher its value typically. This is because there is an advantage in the early visibility provided by first access to new information. 'Freshness' is defined the latency between the creation of data and the delivery of the data to the consumer. Consumers of data will pay a premium for fresh data if it fits into their decision and action strategy. Fidelity Higher the "fidelity" of data i.e. how much detail a particular data point carries also increases the value of the data in the eyes of the data consumer. Higher fidelity data offers more information and detail enabling the consumer to design highly valuable analysis that leverages the additional details offering a deeper insight into the situation at the present or historically. Raw The more "raw" a data set, higher its value as it can support a much larger set of analysis scenarios that a processed data set could support. Data sets that are aggregated, sampled, filtered or transformed can have a lower value as they can severely limit the type of analysis. Raw

One of the biggest hurdles to Digital Transformation and Digital Innovation is the organization's inertia and tendency to optimize for self-preservation. Self-preservation can exist in the enterprise at the individual, team, divisional or the organizational level and can have a devastating impact on the organization's ability to innovate and grow. Self-preservation is not a new phenomenon however, it is more deadly for an enterprise now than ever. This is because the speed of technology change has increased geometrically. In the past, self-preservation would automatically get corrected as the technology was generally learned and adopted slowly with enough time for the enterprise to become aware of the change and implement it. However, the rate of technology change has magnified tremendously and the enterprises no longer have the luxury to take their time with the change. Inaction risks getting left behind and other competitors who leverage and change faster stand to capture the largest market shares and customer mind share. Self preservation is the tendency of the enterprise to ignore, undermine or postpone the adoption and integration of new technology in the enterprise to avoid a change in the status quo across technology, products, services and most importantly, day to day operations and organizational structure. Self-preservation can lead to what is termed as "politics" in an org, it can stifle innovation and innovative individuals & teams and it can favor business driver stagnation over risk taking. 5 Signs of Self-Preservation The following are signs of self-preservation Highlighting the Journey of Innovation as Failure Adversarial teams and individuals within an enterprise who are interested in self-preservation often go out of their way to highlight the tough, risky journey of true innovation as a failure citing the cost and the time being taken to address the real problems in a truly innovative manner. While the individuals and teams trying to

For many enterprises, transforming into a digital organization is a very big priority. Digitization is more than a passing fad; instead it almost is a precursor to survival in the next decade. Analog mechanisms of running businesses are no longer sustainable nor likely to give confidence to customers, employees, stakeholders and shareholders. Measuring Digital A digital organization is characterized by the following Time to Customer Insight The Time to Customer Insight in a digital organization is the time it takes to collect, process, analyze information to determine the health of a customer, their satisfaction with current products and services, their unmet, possibly unstated needs and the impact that external market events might have on the customer. Time to Reaction Time to Reaction is the time taken to react to a customer insight through the introduction of a new product/service to solve an existing or a new problem or through better packaging of existing solutions to address otherwise existing problems. Time to Market Time to Market is the time taken to bring a new capability, product or service to market often as reaction to a customer or market insight or feedback Time to Iteration Time to Iteration is the time taken to solicit, gather, process, analyze customer feedback and effect a change in existing products or services or bring new products and services to market to address the customer feedback. Digital Organizations Digital organizations are characterized with minimal Time to Customer Insight, Time to Reaction, Time to Market, Time to Iteration and a constant effort and investment into further optimizing and minimizing these metrics. Digital organizations focus on the flow of information through the organization and use of the information to generate and deliver more value for the customers. Key Characteristics of Digital Organizations Instrumentation of Interfaces, Products, Systems, Applications, Processes A digital organization ensures

Our customers have had great luck printing from SKM and we recommend SKM to anyone looking for arc flash software. SKM has a great support staff and they offer lots of training seminars to help their clients in using their software. After working with thousands of clients on arc flash, we have seen SKM grow to be a large company that have always put its customers first, if you have any questions please call 866-777-1360 or click on the links below. A Brief History of SKM Software: SKM Systems Analysis, Inc. is a California-based corporation founded in 1972. They originally developed the DAPPER power system analysis software on a mainframe at the UCLA Computer Center. By 1978, DAPPER was running in time-share mode on the Control Data Corporation mainframe, and being used by engineers both in the United States and internationally. The first PC version of DAPPER was released in 1981, followed in 1983 by the CAPTOR software. A_FAULT was developed in 1988 and IEC_FAULT in 1991, to provide ANSI and IEC-909 fault calculations. SKM released Power Tools in 1995, completely rebuilding it from ground up using the latest Arc Flash development tools. The new Windows PTW line of software offers the same powerful studies that have been available in DOS, but adds greater flexibility. No other software can match SKM's Power Tools for project analysis flexibility, speed, or database integration. With over 35,000 users worldwide, no other software package has the breadth of support from the professionals in the engineering community of SKM Power Tools for Windows. From industry leaders like Cutler-Hammer, GE, Square-D and Siemens Westinghouse, to independent contractors and leaders in every industry, Power Tools is the application of choice when it comes to electrical engineering software.

Lean Management - A Guide To Starting Out Right Much like anything over-used and spread before those singing praises have done a lot of research, Lean is a concept that sometimes, despite the best of intentions, misses its mark. Lean principles aren't particularly tricky, but with many offshoots and brands of the ideology, it can be easy for new Lean managers to get caught up in misinformation. At its core, lean is about eliminating all kinds of waste from your business. It sounds simple enough, but one of the biggest problems for many newbies is changing your concept of just what "waste" is. Once you've got a grasp on that, you need to move onto individual strategies that can help you eliminate that waste. In this article, we're going to go over how to accomplish both of these tasks as a manager who may be new to Lean by exploring unique facets of this management type and how they interact with elements of your business. One of the largest differences between Lean management and traditional styles of management is that in a traditional methodology your primary (and nearly sole) concern is the end of the line result. While Lean is of course concerned with achieving superior end results, its focus is on the processes that get you there. In this sense, what you learn and practice as a Lean manager is more about making individual pieces work together efficiently than having a tunnel-vision focus on numbers and figures at the end of the cycle. The Relationship Between Lean management, Waste Elimination, and Continual Improvement "If someone tells you that "lean management is this" and not something else, if someone puts it in a box and ties a bow around it and presents it in a neat package with four walls around it, then that someone knows not of what they speak. Why? Because it is in motion and not a framed picture hanging on the wall. It is a melody, a rhythm, and not a single note." - Lawrence M. Miller, Management Meditations While perhap

Improving and Implementing Safety Lean Manufacturing Safety Lean ManufacturingWhen people look at facility improvement opportunities they often look at process improvement methodologies, such as Lean Manufacturing. Another thing that is commonly reviewed is facility safety improvements. In many cases, however, they don't see that using lean manufacturing techniques can often also provide safety improvements. Thinking about safety lean manufacturing will allow you to make improvements throughout your facility in a way that will not only reduce waste and increase profitability, but also help improve safety at the same time. The following are five examples of how lean can directly improve safety within your facility. According to DesignSafe's document on, Integrating Safety and Lean Manufacturing Safety must not be viewed as a separate activity that is a non value-added effort with objectives contrary to lean concepts. Elimination of waste can also be interpreted as the elimination or minimization of risk that adversely affects wasted human resources and lost time from injuries. Lean imperatives of faster, better, and cheaper must encompass the issue of running safer as well. Safety Lean Manufacturing - Top 5 ways to Combine Them 1. Eliminate Overproduction to Reduce Unnecessary Interaction with Machines Safety Lean Manufacturing OverproductionOne important focus for lean manufacturing is the elimination of over production. While this is mainly done to help eliminate waste, it will also make for a safer facility because people won't be working on the machines as much. Any interaction with the machine is an opportunity for an accident, so this is a good move for safety too. Look also at the fact that when people are spending more hours working at a machine, they are likely to be more fatigued, which increases the risk for accidents and injuries. 2. Listening to Employees Improvement Ideas One of the trademarks of a good lean manufacturing program is t

To survive in the current competitive times, organizations must transform their cloud strategies to deliver actionable data in real-time and exceed customer expectations.

Animators follow a set of actions to engage the audience with their content and create impressive videos. Still, for this, they need detailed guidance on animation principles to integrate them into the videos they're making & animating. In this short blog, we will discuss the top 7 steps necessary for making an impressive animated video. If you wish to read more about the animation process in detail, we have a detailed guidance blog available on our website for you!