Bret Greenstein, SVP and Global Head of AI & Analytics at Cognizant, talks artificial intelligence with Infinia ML’s James Kotecki.

The overarching agenda for organisations to achieve success is highly susceptible to change. Decades’ worth of IT innovation has led to continually shifting priorities for organisations, and cost-optimisation or speed can no longer be the sole focus for companies.

Employee safety is a major concern for Australian mining corporations. Even today, with arguably the best mining safety regulations in the world, there continues to be serious injuries and sometimes fatalities. Fortunately, the industry is in a good position to address these concerns with the help of technological advancements in automation.

Since the start of the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic, technology has played a vital role in ensuring retailers survive a low footfall and a drop in sales. Even beforehand, solutions like e-commerce and augmented reality (AR) were becoming increasingly popular, while high street shops saw fewer visitors.

We are now all involuntary participants in the seismic disruption shaking the foundations of society, technology, economics, healthcare and more.

The guest experience has always been at the heart of the hospitality industry. As new technology becomes available, we are already seeing hotels across the world embrace innovation to further enhance and personalize that experience, for example, hotels in Singapore are trialling facial recognition for faster check-ins.

No one could have predicted the global coronavirus pandemic or its impact on business and everyday life. The COVID-19 crisis changed how people work, study, shop and make decisions, affecting every business sector.

The COVID-19 crisis represents perhaps the greatest challenge to the way companies operate in living memory. Almost literally overnight, entire industries were shut down and production abruptly halted or curtailed, as governments across the world implemented "social distancing" rules that limited the number of people who could be together in a single place.

Predict and prevent– that’s what back-office operations managers at buy and sell-side firms preparing for Europe’s Central Securities Depositories Regulation (CSDR) settlement discipline regime are starting to think about so they won’t have to pay hefty financial penalties or endure buy-in requirements if they fail to settle their European trades on time.

Massive change produced by the #COVID19 recession will drive renewed double-digit growth for certain firms and send others to irrelevance says Malcolm Frank via Business Today.

One of the biggest expectations we have of digital transformation is the hope that it will bring fresh impetus, particularly for the industrial sectors. Internet of Things (IoT) or Industrial internet of things (IIoT) is the pillar on which these hopes are built.

Think about this: for decades now, some of the most innovative and game-changing organizations on the planet have operated completely remotely and virtually from day one, releasing product after product, without even paying their participants.

With Industry 4.0 embraced at scale over the past few years, COVID-19 has only accelerated its influence in the manufacturing space.

Manufacturing stands to make considerable progress through Big Data and AI, but the complex challenges of the industry have slowed uptake.

COVID-19 has taken a dramatic toll on many industries, most notably retail. Up until now, the retail industry flourished by ensuring higher footfall to boost sales. Today, however, retailers need to tackle the epic challenge of working — within curbs — to manage footfall, while meeting changing consumer demands. Will we ever again look at increasing footfall as a measure to boost sales?

Finding new ways to boost supply chain management efficiency is more critical than it's ever been. Robotic process automation -- or RPA -- is one technology that may help.

Jason Oxman is joined on the Download On Tech podcast by Cognizant’s Global SVP Head of Artificial Intelligence Bret Greenstein and Vice President of Government Affairs & Legal Tobi Young. Bret and Tobi cover how Cognizant is responding to the COVID-19 crisis for their employees and for their customers, as well as the ways that technology is being utilized to combat the effects of COVID-19 and ways that the use of technology by individuals, companies, and governments might be different moving forward.

One of the expectations we have of digital transformation is the hope that it will bring fresh impetus, particularly for the industrial sectors. Internet of Things (IoT) or Industrial internet of things (IIoT) is the pillar on which these hopes are built, says Andreas Golze, senior vice president at Cognizant.

On this episode of IT Visionaries, Allen Shaheen talks about his evolving relationship with technology, how companies are adapting to and embracing technology more than ever, and why reinvesting in STEM programs is the only way to ensure a prosperous future.

The world of work is changing faster than ever, and machine intelligence is at the centre of this change. Most recently, artificial intelligence (AI) has played a leading role in the fight against Covid-19. Scientists have used AI to help predict future outbreak zones, sift through research, and even run simulations on drugs to determine their efficacy.

Having visibility of your own skills, including level of expertise allows you to be aware of your evolution and measure your growth, your professional profile. You set your goals to develop autonomy, and measure… While making constant, incremental improvements.

“5G will help realise the benefits from the evolving IoT environment, including the development in endpoint devices such as environmental and situational sensors, vehicles, wearables, drones, robots, and virtual reality equipment,” says Rohit Gupta, vice president and head of manufacturing, logistics, energy and utilities, Europe at Cognizant.

Cognizant CEO Brian Humphries says the restructuring done last year has helped the company lay the path for M&As and a better standing in the cloud technology market, despite a difficult business climate this year due to Covid-19. Edited excerpts of an interview with ET.

When it comes to the 5G roll-out, AI will definitely be supercharged. Smart, AI-based devices that operate at the edge for buildings, cities, and vehicles, can make complex decisions in real-time based on the data they see.

Just as Y2K served as an inflection point for the IT services industry, businesses are now going through another period of significant change and opportunity, says Cognizant’s Humphries, in an interview with Forbes India.

AI driven solutions are becoming a competitive differentiator for banks and other financial services — delivering a hyper-personalised customer experience, improving decision-making and boosting operational efficiency. Yet, many financial services institutions (FIs) remain in an experimental phase and will need to accelerate actual AI deployment. Otherwise, they risk being left behind by digitally native players.

The rollout of 5G has been met with an element of scepticism. There are questions around whether the technology will deliver on expectations, concerns around security for both businesses and consumers and, although not proven, worries about potential health risks. Whatever reservations people may have, the fifth generation of cellular technology is upon us, bringing with it an abundance of opportunity for businesses to capitalise on increased data speed and potential new revenue-generating models as well as benefits for society at large.

Many banks and other financial services institutions (FIs) are beginning to recognise the benefits of AI-driven solutions as a way to get ahead in the market and challenge the competition. Amongst many other benefits, the technology enables organisations to offer hyper-personalised customer experience, dramatically improve internal decision making, and drive operational efficiency. However, many businesses are struggling to move beyond the experimental phase and reach actual AI deployment. It is those organisations that are at risk of being left behind.

This month, some of the world’s largest interdealer brokers, who negotiate OTC trades between the big banks, have seen record trading volumes as sudden changes in interest rates, coupled with the plummeting oil price, trigger a whirlwind of global price volatility.

The Internet of Things is now powering industries but we have only scratched the surface of what’s possible. The advent of 5G will enable enterprise companies to have unprecedented insight into the digitization of almost everything. As 5G rolls out nationally and offers more reliable connectivity, the manufacturing companies that forego increased digitization within their plants will be left behind financially. Especially with the rise of smart factories – digitally connected production facilities that improve processes through automation and self-optimization, traditional manufacturing operations will be at a disadvantage.

It takes a lot to lead a business. And while there are several things you can do to ensure you’re being the best leader, other rules may best thrown out.

To provide a positive experience at a stressful time requires insurers to rethink how they approach customer service and explore how AI can improve communications and accelerate claims handling.

The Central Securities Depositories Regime (CSDR) has been at the top of many agendas in the asset servicing industry for some time now. The regulation addresses Europe’s settlement systems, to create a smarter and more efficient industry best practice.

Cognizant has witnessed a slew of changes in terms of its strategy, spearheaded by Brian Humphries who took charge as CEO on 1 April, 2019. Mr. Humphries talks about the company’s strategy and hiring plans.

Software services exporter Cognizant will double investments in building cloud capabilities this year, CEO Brian Humphries told ET, as the company pushes to grow faster in digital technologies and regain its bellwether status.

The science of applied artificial intelligence doesn't get the same kinds of headlines as the pure research efforts of Google or Facebook or others. Mostly that's because what gets built by companies is obfuscated by those same companies, either for proprietary reasons or because the companies actually have nothing much to speak of.

In the race to the top with technology adoption, the industry has reached an inflection point where businesses are arguably becoming too obsessed with their technology prowess. However, in the rush to innovate, the industry may have missed a step in translating technology investments into true business impact.

The National Broadcast Network has been a hot talking point across the corporate and technology sectors for more than a decade, with everything from timing and logistics to the underlying technology and rollout drawing a lot of attention.

The future of work is always in the future, but it is approaching much faster than ever before. We believe 2020 will be the year of realisation for many organisations and leaders. Here are our top five predictions of how the way we work, live and play will change in 2020.

Customer satisfaction is not just a measure of how well a company’s products or services meet or exceed customer expectations, but also a critical determinant of overall business success. In this article, we explore customer satisfaction and its importance through selected quotes from leading industry experts.

The US$8.8 trillion industry is growing at 3.9 per cent ― ahead of the global economy for the eighth consecutive year ― and continues to be one of the most dynamic industries. In this day and age of selfies and social media, travel industry providers must distinguish themselves in providing “Insta-worthy” experiences.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) has the power to completely transform the way we do things, personally and in business. We have seen many cases of small businesses that have used AI to deliver exceptional services and products that go on to outshine the competition, or examples where businesses have completely revolutionised an internal process.

Hollywood film-making is a boom-bust business. But might fast evolving technologies like AI improve the odds?

Perhaps so.

The digital era is catalysing business; it is unleashing technological change that may appear chaotic on the surface, but is resulting in massively powerful systems of intelligence that enable humans and machines to collaborate securely. By opening up newer means of communication with large data exchanges, new, connected ecosystems are changing the way people, devices and organizations exist, work and interact.

Would you buy a product or service from a company you have not heard of but was recommended by your voice-based personal assistant? Well, 46% of consumers in Southeast Asia recently surveyed said they would.

If you have been exploring blockchains and distributed ledger technology (DLT), you know it’s a noisy and confusing space. As with any early tech, very smart people disagree about what the future will look like. Fueled by open source tools, innovation has dispersed and accelerated to a pace at which no organization on their own can keep up. Throw in a steep learning curve, and it’s really hard to know if you are making the right move. So what can you do?

As we look ahead to the trends and technologies that will likely dominate this next year and decade, it makes sense to begin by unpacking how AI might continue its march forward and the opportunities it will create for female entrepreneurs, engineers, marketers, and others.

“The pace of business change has intensified dramatically as the fruits of digital technologies expand to the entire economy in the Fourth Industrial Revolution. In 2020, I hope to see the transformative potential of technologies such as artificial intelligence and automation reach the next level in helping businesses solve bigger challenges and invent entirely new products, services and experiences.”

In mid December, LinkedIn revealed that Artificial Intelligence (AI) Specialist was the top emerging job for 2020; this may not be of much surprise but it does beg the question of what AI specialists actually do, and what the job entails. What are the exact skills and knowledge businesses need from AI Specialists?

(First published in The Business Times, Singapore, on January 3.) If we were to think of digital networking as vehicles, 3G would now seem like riding a cart, 4G like driving an economy car with decent mileage, and 5G would be like breaking the sound barrier with an F-16 fighter jet. Put simply, speed is the benchmark for network connectivity, and 5G is set to be more than 30 times faster than the fastest available option.

Cognizant’s Bret Greenstein, global head of artificial intelligence and analytics, and Matt O’Kane, head of artificial intelligence and analytics for Europe discuss how organizations can approach implementing evolutionary AI.

There are legitimate questions about the ethics of employing AI in place of human workers. But what about when there's a moral imperative to automate?

Ramkumar Ramamoorthy was recently appointed as Chairman and Managing Director of tech major Cognizant’s India operations. With new CEO Brian Humphries taking charge at the global level, Cognizant has brought about changes to its strategy and operations.

David Ingham, digital partner in media and entertainment, explores the various ways in which AI is changing the entertainment industry.

“The lesson here is that business leaders need to be AI-aware,” says Jeff Olson, Head of Applied AI & Analytics for ANZ. “To do this, they must embrace data as the source of wisdom and value for their business. They need to ask better questions and expect more ― don’t ask for another report or spreadsheet, ask ‘Why?’ until you understand the root causes.”

To “beat the robots,” we shall need to join them. Robotic personal assistants will help buy back at least that 15 percent capacity (or more) needed for the skills of tomorrow. And that is nothing to be afraid of.

Smart devices, powered by the hyper-connected Internet of Things (IoT), are becoming ever more prevalent and pervasive in our lives, and the trend will only continue. With a growing number of devices, the opportunities to use IoT to reshape industries and societies are also increasing.

“Conversational AI is the next stage, and it is what is making voice way more popular than it was before,” explains Philippe Dintrans, Chief Digital Officer, Banking and Financial Services, Cognizant.

For those living with chronic conditions, clothing can serve as a frictionless digital Sherpa leveraging biometrics, environmental data, and feedback mechanisms to guide the wearer toward better managing their disease and medication.

We are already witnessing the infiltration of healthcare and healthcare delivery by robots. In the next few years this infiltration will become a full-on assault on the traditional apprenticeship nature of medical training and care delivery. The reasons for this are simple: demand for care exceeds capacity; our clinical knowledge base is expanding at unprecedented rates that make it impossible for any clinician to keep abreast; cost of care is too high; access to care has been constrained by physical barriers – the location of a facility or the hours of its operation.

Like it or not, AI will soon infiltrate every aspect of our society from our refrigerators to autonomous cars and everything in between. Combined with data and data science, AI offers new, smart ways to solve existing problems and create fresh and exciting opportunities. But how do you determine the importance of an AI initiative for your organization and how do you ensure you derive the maximum benefit from implementing such projects?

Intelligent process automation is increasingly seen as a complement to robotic process automation, extending the scope of robotic process automation with AI technologies. CIOs and other IT leaders should consider some of the important distinctions between the two automation technologies as part of their technology roadmaps.

A global survey of more than 2,500 business and technology leaders conducted by the research firm ESI ThoughtLab, on behalf of Cognizant, a provider of IT services, suggests that the amount of money organizations are willing to invest in IT as a percentage of revenues has substantially increased. This is mainly thanks to the rise of various digital business transformation initiatives.

“Whether new advances in technology fill us with excitement or dread, the fact is that the physical aspects of our lives are only going to become more integrated into the virtual world. With the likes of swarm intelligence, the tactile internet and edge computing becoming increasingly advanced, the technology around us is simply becoming smarter and significantly more insightful.”

While most executives at financial institutions agree that artificial intelligence (AI) is important to their organization’s success, few have fully implemented AI projects.

Excerpts from Business Insider Australia’s article: “2020 is almost upon us. As this year winds to a close, we took a look at some of the big tech trends business executives predict will take...

“Organisations must conduct a rigorous ‘needs’ assessment and carefully plan their roadmap to deliver a flexible, secure and scalable IoT solution,” writes Muthu Kumaran, Global Delivery...

“Trying to influence humans alone won’t be enough in the future; brands will also need to influence algorithms,” says Manish Bahl, VP & head of the Centre for the Future of Work. “Every...

Excerpts from Forbes’ article: “Recent surveys, studies, forecasts and other quantitative assessments of the progress of AI highlighted workers’ positive attitudes toward AI and robots,...

Excerpts from Silicon’s article: “The smart city has been in development for the past decade. Smart City 1.0 consisted of sensor components including smart meters and intelligent lighting...

“It is safe to say that humans are facing a long-standing period of disruption. There is no denying or avoiding the growing concern on how this could ultimately affect our lives,” writes Vivek...

"Companies that have been investing in AI are investing in both learning about the technology and applying it to their business, which is a real competitive advantage,” said Bret Greenstein,...

“Even more pressure is now on enterprises, particularly those selling to and supporting consumers, to evolve their customer experience and brand differentiation strategies for these...

“In the end, transformations start with small, quick wins and cheap, quick failures,” says Andres Angelani, CEO, Cognizant Softvision. “By working through quick wins or failures with a...

“There are a great deal of things to consider when looking to next-generation technologies to solve today’s challenges,” says Narayan Iyer, Country Manager ANZ. “It is important to...

“The new digital era calls for a different mind-set and for many companies, the practical approach to innovation is to engage an experienced partner with the ability to quickly ramp up a...

Excerpts from The AI Eye: “‘According to IDC, much of the $3.3 billion is being spent around automated threat intelligence and prevention systems,’ said Babak Hodjat. ‘Fraud analysis,...

“By using AI to unlock data and harness it through a sophisticated data platform, hotels can leverage predictive insight to drive curated, highly personalized connected guest experiences and...

Excerpts: “Andres is the Chief Executive Officer of Cognizant Softvision (a division of Cognizant Digital Business), a digital services company that sits at the intersection of strategy, design...

Excerpts from AdAge’s article: “It all started with a nap. Meet Yawn Yawnson: the first-ever hype man for sleep. Silk-pajama-wearing Yawn contrasts the serenity that is typical in sleep...

“Contextual voice solutions is a new way for engagement, and many of the leading health care organizations are thinking about how to strategically implement these technologies to enhance...

“From determining why and where to implement AI, to addressing bias and ethical considerations, companies need to be prepared to think very differently when it comes to AI,” writes Poornima...

Excerpts from Manufacturing Today’s article: “The top 10 technologies at the heart of smart manufacturing that are gaining maturity include Internet of Things (IoT), smart sensors, cloud, big...

“The new digital theater of interacting with customers and engaging them confounded businesses that had been prospering for more than fifty years,” writes Andres Angelani, CEO, Cognizant...

“Businesses have historically been built around three key goals: the drive to increase productivity and efficiency, the need to deliver better experiences to users (customers, partners and...

"By focusing on uncovering the human problem behind the business problem, the human-centered organization analyzes the experiences offered on the market and seeks to understand what the customers...

“The tools of the future are close, and it’s time for businesses to get ready to harness them,” writes Ben Pring, Founder and Managing Director, Cognizant’s Center for the Future of Work....

Excerpts from Information Age’s article, reproduced with permission: “Augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR), although limited at the moment, will be a vital technology in improving...

“Just as microscopes changed medicine, artificial intelligence is a ‘datascope’ that will give new insight to solutions previously thought unimaginable,” writes Ben Pring, Founder and...

With customers constantly shifting between online and physical stores, retailers have an amazing opportunity to make their purchase experience memorable when they step into the store,” writes...

“Don’t let yourself get caught off guard by thinking conversational AI is just a toy for younger generations to check the weather or play music,” writes Matt Smith, Associate Vice President,...

“Swarm intelligence, applied to robotics, is an emerging field of AI inspired by the behavioural models of social insects (ants, bees, wasps),” Ann Chauhan writes. “A swarm combines the...

Excerpts from CMSWire’s article: “Andres Angelani, CEO of Cognizant Softvision, said maintaining an agile culture can be boiled down into four key tenets: Fail fast, cheaply and learn as you...

“The region is at the forefront of adopting newer technologies,” says Srikanth Venkatesan. “Asian insurers don’t have to deal with debilitating legacy environments, or are more willing to...

“Regardless of the application of AI, businesses should act proactively when it comes to considering the full end-to-end impact of any product or service,” writes David Ingham. “Companies...

“Conversational AI is changing fast and is imperative for brand differentiation,” writes Matt Smith. “As these technologies spur new business models and market expansion, don’t be caught...

"Investment in digital and mobile-first products is an essential step to compete for new business and maintain an existing customer base that expects convenience, security and innovative...

“If you want to beat the bot, you should be a better human,” says Paul Roehrig. “The idea is to double down on skills that humans do really well, that bots or silicon doesn't do really well....