Monthly Archives: January 2021

Global Cognitive Robotic Process Automation Market Research Report Covers, Future Trends, Past, Present Data and Deep Analysis 2020-2026 – KSU | The…

Posted: January 19, 2021 at 8:57 am

Global Cognitive Robotic Process Automation Market Research Report Along with Leading Players, Revenue, Production Techniques, Business Overview, Forecasted to 2026

TheCognitive Robotic Process Automation Market reportoffers a plethora of essential components such as the size of the market as well as its share along with forecast trends, specifications, and applications. The report clarifies the summary of present innovations, specifications, parameters, and creation in a detailed manner. The Cognitive Robotic Process Automation industry report also provides a complete abstract of the economic fluctuations in terms of fulfillment ratios and demand rates.

The global market is a broad field for playersAutomation Anywhere Inc, Verint System Inc, Arago, Pegasystems Inc, WorkFusion, UiPath, IBM Corporation, Blue Prism, NICE Systems Ltd, IPsoft Inc.

The COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated the strengthen of multinational companies with a powerful sense of purpose.

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Segments [Product Types:Hardware, Software, Service;End-User Applications:Retail, Transportation, BFSI, Healthcare, Manufacturing, IT & Telecom, Others] are broadly divided based on the constant upgrades in the development parameters, reliability parameters, quality parameters, applications, and end-user demand. The report for the global Cognitive Robotic Process Automation market also verifies a series of factors comprising manufacture CAGR, size, share, forecast trends, sales, supply, production, demands, industry, and analysis.

The slight modification in the product profile results in a major alteration in the product prototype, development platforms, and production methods. These overall factors are associated with manufacturing and are very well enlightened in the Cognitive Robotic Process Automation report. The Cognitive Robotic Process Automation market research report also offers a forecast on the basis of the present analytical techniques and business trends. It also offers a detailed examination of the important growth factors that are verified on the basis of end-user demands, restraining elements, regulatory compliance, and variable market changes.

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The players are analyzed through:

Company ProfileBusiness Segments AnalysisFinancial AnalysisSWOT analysis & Porters Five Forces AnalysisPossible Impact of COVID- 19 on Latest Market Conditions

Geographical Segments:

The primary geographical areas North America(U.S., Canada, Rest of North America), Europe(UK, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Rest of Europe), Asia Pacific(China, Japan, India, Southeast Asia, Rest of Asia Pacific), Latin America (Brazil, Argentina, Rest of Latin America), Middle East and Africa(GCC Countries, South Africa, Rest of Middle East & Africa) are also examined in this report.

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Global Cognitive Robotic Process Automation Market Research Report Covers, Future Trends, Past, Present Data and Deep Analysis 2020-2026 - KSU | The...

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The Movement to Defund the Police Won’t Go Away When Biden Takes… – Truthout

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The past year saw a major uprising across the United States as people mobilized against racist state violence in the wake of George Floyds killing by police in Minneapolis in May. Drawing on a divest/invest framework that abolitionists have been using for years, defund the police became a common demand at protests. The demand is a first step toward abolishing the prison-industrial complex by dismantling its infrastructure and shifting resources toward things people need like food, housing and community-based safety practices. From an abolitionist perspective, the events in the U.S. Capitol on January 6th have only made it clearer why more policing does not equate to more security: From their foundation, the police have always been on the side of white supremacy.

Woods Ervin, communications director of Critical Resistance, a nationwide abolitionist organization founded in 1997 by a group that included Angela Davis and Ruth Wilson Gilmore, put it this way: The way that the prison industrial complex (PIC) is pitched is a one-size-fits-all model to address a variety of kinds of concerns that actually require specialized attention attention that doesnt involve bringing in more punishment, more violence, or removing people from those communities, which is what the PIC does.

Abolition is not about standardizing, points out Miski Noor, co-director of Black Visions in Minneapolis. Abolition is liberating precisely because it is not homogenous and is not a pre-designed program. Imagination plays a big role and therefore is not necessarily easily mass marketed.

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But abolition is also a broader concept, encompassing the abolition of borders and imperialism, systems of social control including foster care and many kinds of social work, and the erasure of the concept of criminality itself. Everything has to change in order for us to actually realize abolition because so much of how we live is embedded in punishment systems, says PG Watkins with 313Liberation Zone and the Green Light Black Futures coalition in Detroit.

Recent comments made by former president Barack Obama and other Democrats claim that the call to defund the police does not have enough appeal or power. Speaking to activists reveals how much these comments miss the point. The movement to defund the police is making a constant and explicit commitment to center the people who are most impacted by policing and, in particular, those who Noor refers to as having been failed over and over again. The movements approach brings the margin to the center, putting into practice threads of Black feminist theory and traditions of Black liberation in which the abolitionist movement is rooted.

Unfazed by establishment Democrats opposition, organizers in cities across the country are working actively on a wide variety of abolitionist projects. Some are experimental, like Black Visions Transformative Black-led Movement Fund, which is redistributing resources they received after the uprising in Minneapolis. Noor sees the fund as a way to till the soil and invest in an ecosystem of arts and culture and organizing and power-building to recover from the divestment that has harmed Black communities and Black people. Money is being distributed to healers, organizers, artists, Black businesses building community wealth, and mutual and legal aid initiatives, to name a few. In Minneapolis and other cities, projects include defunding the police, working on emergency releases from COVID-infested prisons, taking chunks out of the prison-industrial complex like life sentences without parole, creating cop-free zones, and embodying and building up other practices of abolition in their communities, including critically centering voices usually left out of political conversations.

Although organizers have been working on divestment campaigns for years, there is new energy behind efforts to reduce policing budgets. Noor characterizes the difference as exciting because all of this years proposed budgets in the city are more than what activists felt they could demand just two years ago.

In Chicago, the city just wrapped up its budget process with the mayors budget which did not substantially shift funding away from the police passing by only a small margin, thanks to the efforts of the defund movement. This is historic, because the budget vote is typically a process of rubber stamping the mayors agenda, according to Asha Ransby-Sporn, a member of the Black Abolitionist Network and the steering committee of Defund CPD.

What we certainly have won is a great deal of people over to our side when it comes to not just defunding the police, but also connecting that to other issues that affect Black and Brown, and poor and working people in the city, Ransby-Sporn says, citing a recent city-sponsored survey where an overwhelming 87 percent of Chicago residents said they wanted to reallocate money away from the police and move it to other city services. Highlighting that its not all about austerity, Ransby-Sporn says Democratic mayor Lori Lightfoot has threatened council members with divesting from city services in wards where council members voted to divest from the police.

Meanwhile, in Washington, D.C., organizers aim to cut the citys policing budget in half over the next three years, while looking to increase taxes on the rich.

Our agenda for next year is really going to be about ways to make sure that our state governments and our social safety nets do not go bankrupt and that were not tightening budgets in ways that are going to hurt the Black people in the working class, Makia Green, an organizer with an autonomous chapter of Black Lives Matter and the Working Families Party, says. Black Lives Matter DC is also focused on supporting public campaign financing so that regular people can run for office, like Janeese Lewis George, who just won a seat on the D.C. city council on a defund platform.

In Detroit, the budget cycle is coming up in 2021 and a major goal, according to PG Watkins, will be to make the defund demand real. Organizers are targeting not only the police themselves but also the surveillance program Project Greenlight, which has posted cameras at just under 700 local businesses, residential buildings, clinics, and other places in the community. The program provides real-time camera surveillance to the Detroit police department in exchange for preferential police response time.

Kamau Walton, a member of Critical Resistance, says its clear that defunding will be a multi-year push in most places. Walton says Critical Resistances role is to support strategic planning and other needs as activists continue to push for defunding nationally.

Divestment, Walton says, is about chipping away at the reach of the PIC in communities. Abolitionists sometimes refer to practices of chipping away as non-reformist reforms, or changes that get the movement closer to abolition instead of reforms that simply make policing seem more palatable to those who are not really affected by it.

Ervin with Critical Resistance highlights that organizing for releases is at the top of the list for 2021, because its such a red alarm emergency. COVID, of course, makes the already toxic conditions in the prison even more dangerous. They point out that theres been a surprising lack of releases, even from high-powered Democratic governors like Gavin Newsom (California), Andrew Cuomo (New York) and Gretchen Whitmer (Michigan) who have received a lot of praise for how they have handled the pandemic.

In California, Aminah Elster with the California Coalition for Women Prisoners (CCWP) says the group is engaged in this urgent effort to push for releases as well as several efforts to change sentencing and improve conditions within prisons. One key effort is ending life without parole which in the state of California is essentially a death sentence.

At the national level, the Peoples Coalition for Safety and Freedom seeks to repeal the 1994 Crime Bill, co-written by President-elect Joe Biden, and to replace it with legislation written by people in communities most directly affected by the bill. They describe this as a revolutionary process of peoples movement assemblies through which people will propose and implement their own solutions at the policy level rather than having legislative solutions prescribed by those who sit outside of their (harmful) impacts, including an acknowledgement of wrongdoing in the original 94 Crime Bill.

Watkins from Green Light Black Futures says that for organizers, a major goal for 2021 is to normalize abolition. Defund the police is a launching point to discuss and deepen organizing against all the ways that the prison industrial complex organizes and targets people on the street, in the prisons, in social services, and through the very ways our lives our organized.

Abolitionists often thread their policy proposals, plans and analyses with the principles of care and love. When Makia Green talked about defunding police in D.C. the city with the highest police per capita they talked about how such a change would decrease the number of interactions their younger cousins have with police and stop them from being pushed into the prison system. In particular, abolitionists prioritize deep care and respect for the people who are often forgotten, marginalized, invisible and most directly harmed by the police and the prison industrial complex.

The core of Black Visions mission is to show this love by making Black queer and trans people and their experiences visible so they can receive the care they need and deserve. The organization actively holds space for queerness, for family, and for joy in the fullness of our humanity. Its about practicing the love and care now so that we can actually be in practice of it, so that we can create a world in which all of us can be free, Noor says.

Elster says CCWP is also working to wrap up our efforts to maintain communication with folks on the inside, and also fighting to make sure that they are not overlooked in this pandemic. The group is growing their pen pal training program since there is currently no in-person visitation, continuing their survival and release advocacy work, and raising money in response to COVID to help currently and formerly incarcerated people with their necessities.

We need to double up, on taking care of each other and creating things, says Watkins in Detroit, especially with the pandemic. They continue, I think part of the fight for abolition is showing people in real time, what types of systems of care we can create, and actually doing that experimentation in small- and large-scale ways. As an example, Watkins describes the 313Liberation Zone project, which has set up several police-free liberation zones in the middle of the city for several hours or days with music, cookouts, arts and crafts, community meetings, free stores and political education. They describe the 313Liberation Zone project as a way for Detroiters to be embodying liberation and practicing liberation in our spaces.

Abolitionist organizers want to turn this spark from last year into a fire, Ervin says. From California to Detroit, people are refocusing on the importance of political education as a tool to keep the momentum going from this summers uprisings. In Minneapolis, Black Visions has been holding Sunday Salons to answer questions about abolition, while Elster says shes really excited about the possibilities that may grow from the new coalitions that have formed this year with the California Coalition for Women Prisoners.

Ransby-Sporn says she believes political education is fundamental to building a base and growing a movement, because thats where you get people on the same page about what were actually fighting for. In political education spaces, we can work together to build a new common sense of how we think the world should look.

One reason there is so much investment in political education as local campaigns transition into 2021 is because they fear cooptation as the new Democratic administration enters the White House. Biden and Harris are actually well versed at being able to absorb radical movements, says Ervin, and emphasizes that activists need to be aware of this in our organizing. The new administration is expected to present false alternatives of 21st century policing 2.0, as Walton put it. Examples of these include body cameras and bias trainings, which only expand the resources being given to the PIC rather than shift resources away into community-controlled, noncarceral alternatives. Meanwhile, these initiatives do not deter the very things they aim to prevent; chokeholds were already banned in New York City when Eric Garner was murdered by the NYPD. Organizers and scholars have repeatedly shown such reformist reforms are ineffective at best.

Abolitionists remind us that the Black Lives Matter movement itself became necessary and began under the Obama/Biden administration. These activists are skeptical about the Biden/Harris administrations openness to non-reformist reforms. Regardless, organizers will continue to target city and state budgets, to demand non-policing resources that support communities in flourishing, and refuse to shrink their political imaginations. This movement is not backing off once Trump leaves the White House.

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After years of dithering companies are embracing automation – The Economist

Posted: at 8:57 am

The pandemic has ushered more robots into factories, warehouses and back offices. They are here to stay

MARY BARRA, boss of GM, took to the virtual stage on January 12th to launch BrightDrop. The carmakers new logistics division will peddle such unsexy things as delivery vans and autonomous electric pallets for use in warehouses (see article). Hardly stuff to set pulses racing.

Suppress your yawn, for Ms Barras announcement is the latest sign of a quiet but powerful revolution. The convergence of software and hardware seen in the carpeted parts of enterprises is now seen on factory floors in every industry we serve, says Blake Moret, chief executive of Rockwell Automation, a giant of the industry. His firm runs a full-scale manufacturing facility at its Milwaukee headquarters, to prove that automation enables it to make competitive products despite Americas high labour costs. Its share price has risen by 28% in the past year, nearly twice as much as the S&P 500 index of big American firms. Other purveyors have done even better.

Bosses have boasted of automating their operations for years without an awful lot to show for it. Covid-19 has spurred them to put their money where their mouths are. Hernan Saenz of Bain, a consultancy, reckons that between now and 2030 American firms will invest $10trn in automation. Nigel Vaz, chief executive of Publicis Sapient, a big digital consultancy, says that the downturn offers bosses the perfect cover. The unrelenting pressure for short-term financial results from investors has temporarily been suspended, he says. Firms are not just going back pre-pandemic, but completely reimagining how they work, says Susan Lund, co-author of a forthcoming report from the McKinsey Global Institute, a think-tank. A recent survey by the institutes sister consultancy found that two-thirds of global firms are doubling down on automation.

Robots are the most prominent winner. Robo Global, a research firm, predicts that by the end of 2021 the worldwide installed base of factory robots will exceed 3.2m units, double the level in 2015. The global market for industrial robotics is forecast to rise from $45bn in 2020 to $73bn in 2025.

We have had a catbird seat during the pandemic, says Michael Cicco, the head of the American operations of Fanuc, a Japanese robot-maker. With supply chains whacked, manufacturers were forced to find ways to build flexibility, he says. Companies reshoring production have sought to offset the high cost of human labour with the engineered sort. And robots are becoming much more capable. The most dexterous can now pick delicate objects such as individual strawberries.

Fanuc has seen a surge in demand for material-handling equipment and collaborative robots, designed to interact with people. These cobots are particularly useful in e-commerce, which covid-19 has given a huge boost. The pandemic has, on one informed estimate, led consumer-goods firms to increase buffer stocks by around 5%. To counter this, firms are snapping up robots for use in warehouses, made by companies like GreyOrange and Kiva (which Amazon acquired in 2012 to assist its e-commerce fulfilment).

Right now cobots help with social distancing. But, says Dwight Klappich of Gartner, a research firm, robots that move goods to workers will be a boon for post-pandemic productivity, too (as well as for the morale of humans, by sparing their weary feet). Luke Jensen of Britains Ocado, an online grocer and robotics pioneer, insists that his low-margin industry must find ways of fulfilling the recent surge in online orders with less labour. His firm already serves the bulk of its British customers from just three highly automated sites. Kroger, a big American grocer, is now expanding its roll-out of Ocado equipment both in warehouses and at its retail outlets.

A survey of supply-chain executives published on January 13th by Blue Yonder, another consultancy, found that the share of firms with fully automated fulfilment centres may rise by 50% within a year. And, as Sudarshan Seshadri of Blue Yonder puts it, Automation is just the table stakes. The pandemics bigger long-term impact may be a fuller embrace by firms of data their operations generate, and predictive algorithms to help guide real-time decisions.

Stuart Harris of Americas Emerson, a big automation firm, says that pervasive sensingwhich combines AI and clever sensorshelped his companys revenues from remote monitoring grow by 25% last year. Emersons clients range from a Singaporean chemicals factory to a Latin American mine. Peter Terwiesch of ABB, a big Swiss-Swedish industrial-technology firm, also reports a boom in remote-operations systems, from marine vessels to paper mills. His firms annual sales of such products have doubled to $400m from pre-pandemic levels. Drishti, an American startup, has come up with a way to apply artificial intelligence (AI) and computer vision to analyse busy video streams of workers on assembly lines. Marco Marinucci of Hella, a big German car-parts supplier, says his firm used Drishtis kit to analyse and fix problems at a high-volume assembly line. This allowed its throughput to rise by 7% last year. Publicis Sapient automated the inventory forecasting of a division of a big European retailer which found itself repeatedly out of stock amid the change in consumption patterns during the pandemic. The consultancys software allowed its client to prevent shortages of its top 100 items 98% of the time.

It isnt just production floors and warehouses that are being automated. So are back offices. By one estimate, Americas health-care system could save $150bn a year thanks to automation of paper-pushing. Allied Market Research, a firm of analysts, predicts that the global sales of process-automation products will balloon from $1.6bn in 2019 to nearly $20bn in 2027. In December UI Path, a trailblazing Romanian startup in the area, filed for an initial public offering. It may start with a market value of $20bn. On January 12th Workato, an American rival, said it has raised $110m in fresh funding.

Last year Alibaba, Chinas biggest e-emporium, unveiled the results of a more ambitious project, code-named Xunxi (fast rhino). Alain Wu, who runs Xunxi, explains that this involved digitising and integrating whole value chainsfrom product design, parts procurement and manufacturing to logistics and after-sales service. This allowed merchants on Alibabas e-commerce platforms to fulfil customised orders within days while eliminating excess inventory. Time from production to delivery was reduced from several months to a fortnight.

Sceptics note that history is littered with examples of supposedly world-changing technologies that beguiled bosses, only to fail to live up to the promise. (Remember the blockchain?) Once covid-19 has been defeated, companies enthusiasm for new technologies may subside. Those that have missed the opportunity to automateas many have because they were busy trying merely to survive the pandemic recessionwill lose the cover that Mr Vaz speaks of.

Optimists counter that this time really may be different. In the past the biggest returns to automation accrued to giant, well-capitalised firms. Today advances in technology and business models allow smaller ones to enjoy similar benefits. That should increase demand for clever systemsand in time reduce their cost further. And so on, in a virtuous, fully automated circle.

This article appeared in the Business section of the print edition under the headline "Bearing fruit"

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After years of dithering companies are embracing automation - The Economist

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Microsoft, Yellow Messenger team up to transform voice automation solutions – HT Tech

Posted: at 8:57 am

Microsoft and Yellow Messenger have announced a collaboration that will work on transforming Yellow Messengers voice automation solution using Azure AI Speech Services and Natural Language Processing (NLP) tools. With this initiative, Yellow Messenger aims to increase the accuracy of its voice bot solutions and help enterprises across sectors enhance consumer experience automation.

Microsoft and Yellow Messenger's R&D team will be working on building a more human-like voice assistant platform that is capable of understanding and responding on the basis of sentiment, dialect and workflow.

According to industry estimates, 60-70% of overall business to customer interactions across the world take place over telephone calls today, while the rest is over chats and email. Conversational interfaces are changing how customers relate to brands and voice plays a key role in enabling smarter brand-to-consumer engagement.

Also Read: Noida Police ties up with Microsoft for tech support

In collaboration with Microsoft, Yellow Messenger is going to work on enabling brands to increase their sophistication and usage of automated voice assistants for regular use.

Yellow Messenger has natively integrated Azure Cognitive Services on its platform, for improved customer experience and operational efficiency without compromising on security. And this helps them with better understanding of conversations with customers, both voice and text, for more intuitive interactions. This also helps build custom voice bot models using Azure Speech stack for specific industry verticals like banking etc.

Some of Indias largest private banks are already using Yellow Messengers voice virtual assistants for inbound and outbound customer service and up to 65% support queries can be addressed and resolved by voice AI assistants so that customer care teams can focus on critical issues.

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Microsoft, Yellow Messenger team up to transform voice automation solutions - HT Tech

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Quali raises $54 million to expand cloud infrastructure automation at scale – CTech

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Israeli company Quali, which develops solutions for the automation of computing, communications and cloud infrastructure, announced on Tuesday that it has completed a $54 million series C funding round led by Greenfield Partners and JVP. Quali employs 130 people, 70 of them in Israel, with the company's headquarters being based out of Austin, Texas. Quali had previously raised a total of $60 million. Kreos Capital and Hamilton Lane also participated in the latest round.

"We are a cloud automation company that simplifies cloud infrastructure and makes it straightforward and secure," Quali CEO Lior Koriat told Calcalist. "We make working on the cloud, which is very complex, into something very simple. We have 150 big clients like Cisco, Microsoft, Dell, Verizon and Bank of America. All of these companies have tens of thousands of developers who need access to the infrastructure and the only way to do that at scale is by using tools like ours."

Quali, which was founded in 2004, intends to use the new funds to expand its client base, promote new partnerships, strengthen its position as a market leader, accelerate innovation in the company's flagship products and increase its staff to around 200 employees by the end of the year, with most of them to work out of Israel.

"We had really good support over the past couple of years and we want to accelerate that growth further and also sell to medium-sized companies and to become a better known solution. Greenfield is a new investor which joined in a significant way and Hamilton Lane have also joined. We will invest a lot over the coming year in raising awareness for our brand. Most of our clients don't know our story," added Koriat.

"Quali has proven itself as a leader in the public and private cloud sector among corporations and significant global companies in a range of industries," said Erel Margalit, founder and CEO of JVP. "Quali succeeds in simplifying the complexity of cloud infrastructure with its CloudShell platform."

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Quali raises $54 million to expand cloud infrastructure automation at scale - CTech

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Fixing FNOL: Claims automation the ‘Holy Grail’ – Insurance Business

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Claims automation is really the Holy Grail of insurance, said Lewis-Weber. Fundamentally, it works on the three most important metrics that insurance companies care about: retention, expenses, and loss ratio. If we can solve the common pain points in claims through automation, then we can improve all three metrics dramatically.

Read next: Telematics and vehicle build data the next frontier for auto claims

Lewis-Weber has experience in building out companies but Assured is the entrepreneurs first foray into insurance. Before this, he drew on his Bachelor of Science in Aeronautics and Astronautics from Stanford University to create two companies focused on autonomous aircraft and wireless energy beaming spaces, respectively.

The natural question is: why insurance? I wanted to work on something in software [] that I viewed as important and integral to the core functioning of society, he told Insurance Business. Obviously, fintech is working on core financial services that are very important and I believe insurance is the most important of the lot.

There are very few privatized products that are required by US law for consumers to own car insurance is one of them if you have a car. I think thats quite profound. I viewed insurance as this place that had been traditionally overlooked by really great software, and if we can bring great software to the space, then we could make improvements by leaps and bounds.

To wet his feet in the insurance claims space, Lewis-Weber spent a lot of time in the early days of Assured at claim centers across the country, observing common practices and listening to adjudication calls and FNOL intake. He quickly came to realize that incumbent insurers are attacking the FNOL problem the wrong way.

The problem lies in the underlying data, he said. Right now, FNOL is inexact and unstructured. Its generally done by phone agents in long phone calls spread over several days, with the adjuster asking really open-ended questions like: What happened? A normal person doesnt know exactly what the adjuster is looking for, so they offer a narrative-style speech to cover all their bases. That then results in FNOL specialists trying to paraphrase what the claimants said into empty text fields called claim notes, which are almost impossible to adjudicate accurately.

Whats needed, therefore, are structured, standardized and machine-readable data sets. How do you get there? We believe the only way to solve this problem is to ingest claims data from the onset in a structured and regimented way. Having deep, accurate and standardized data enables adjusters to compare apples to apples, which reveals meaningful differences and helps adjusters to provide the best possible customer experience at a really pivotal point in the claim cycle.

Read more: Three snagging points slowing the progression of telematics in insurance

Assureds digital FNOL point solution acts as a single touch point for the user via a seamless and slick web application. The web app interfaces directly with the consumer and then writes the data gathered directly via the carriers existing core platform records. Lewis-Weber describes the data input as intuitive and what you would expect in 2021, using tools like GPS location, image compression upload and optical character recognition to reduce the amount of workload on the user. The solution also uses data enrichment and augmented data, such as historical weather satellite data or roadway geometry, to influence FNOL decisions mid-flow.

The experience has a dynamic flow. There are a lot of different ways to crash a car, meaning that there are a lot of different pieces of information you have to gather depending on what happened, said Lewis-Weber. This often results in a really complex flow beneath the water line. Every single question we ask depends on previous answers, which means our questions are always relevant and the app is improving every day. Were currently at over 8.55 million permutations of the flow, which is huge - and its all of that complexity that gives rise to a really intuitive user experience.

Weve ended up improving FNOL conversion significantly. Weve been able to do that through our obsessive dedication to the user experience. There are no process edits, no confusing messages, really beautiful interfaces, and, most importantly, the process is easy and low touch for claimants.

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Fixing FNOL: Claims automation the 'Holy Grail' - Insurance Business

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Two Views: Critical race theory threatens what King achieved – Austin American-Statesman

Posted: at 8:57 am

By Richard A. Johnson III| Austin American-Statesman

Would the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. recognize the civil rights movement of today92 years after his birth, and more than 57 years after his famous I Have a Dream speech?

I dont believe he would. The just goals he fought for, equal opportunity for all and a color-blind society, have been set aside by modern critical race theorists, in favor of divisive identity politics and collective grievance.

The logical outcome of these progressive policies wont be the world King dreamed of where the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.

It will instead be a dystopia not far removed from the reality that so deeply disappointed King, with segregation that is at once educational, societal and economic.

Let me explain.

Kings calls were for integration and justice. Separate was never equal, he knew. He also knew that integration wouldnt be easy.Segregation is a cancer in the body politic which must be removed before our moral and democratic health can be realized, he said in a speech at SMU in 1966.

And its here he loses the critical race theorists. They are in fact, advocating a new segregation. At Rice University, for example, some students are demanding a designated space for Black students to hold gatherings. The National Association of Scholars has a report detailing 173 colleges and universities acquiescing to similar demands for segregated centers, spaces and programs.

The quality of education is also becoming resegregated.In the San Diego public school district, where three-quarters of the students are non-white, critical race theory and its nom de guerre, anti-racism, arelowering the expectations for a generation of young learners.

Students there will no longer see their academic grades penalized for disrupting class, turning in work late or not turning it in at all. Those issues are reflected, instead, in students' "citizenship grades." But the real world requires punctuality and efficiency. These requirements should be reflected in academic standards.Without them, I fear that students will be put at a severe disadvantage.

The civil rights movement of today is also out of touch with justice. While the theorists calls for defunding and the outright abolition of the police, Black families dont agree. A full 81% of Blacks surveyed say they dont want fewer cops; some want an increased police presence to make their neighborhoods safer.

And these two demands of the new civil rights movement a separate and unequal education system, along with lawless neighborhoods to grow up in will lead to my third point, worsening economic segregation. When children of color cant compete in the job market, when businesses fear opening and operating in lawless neighborhoods, we will be further than ever from the mountaintop that Kingenvisioned.

My own life has been spent in the arena of civil rights. Ive seen much progress, and Ive seen some setbacks. But Ive never lost sight of the true goal: equality. Critical race theory threatens all that leaders like King achieved.

Johnson is the director of the Texas Public Policy Foundations Booker T. Washington Initiative, which examines the effects of public policy on African American communities.

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Two Views: Critical race theory threatens what King achieved - Austin American-Statesman

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The Brazilian woman kept as a slave for 38 years – EL PAS in English

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Madalena Gordiano was just eight years old when she knocked on Maria das Graas Milagres Rigueiras door to beg for food in Minas Gerais, a state in southeastern Brazil. She was invited in and Maria, a white teacher, promised to adopt her. Gordianos mother, who had eight other children, one of whom was Madalenas twin, agreed.

But Gordiano was never adopted or allowed to go to school. For the next 38 years, she cooked, washed, scrubbed bathrooms, dusted and tidied for Maria das Graas Milagres Rigueiras family. A victim of racial exploitation, she became a 21st-century slave for a wealthy family in an apartment building in Patos de Minas, a town of 100,000 inhabitants. She was never paid nor allowed time off, according to prosecutors investigating the case. When Gordiano was rescued on November 27, she was 46 and had great difficulty in expressing herself.

I went to ask for bread because I was hungry, but she told me she wouldnt give me any if I didnt come and live with her, Gordiano told Fantstico, the Brazilian TV show that broke the story ahead of Christmas, while a news site called UOL revealed other alarming details of the story.

What Gordiano went through is an extreme example of the legacy of more than 300 years of slavery in Brazil. As one of the slave trades main destinations, it was the last American country to free the labor force forcibly brought from Africa; the so-called Golden Law forbade slavery in all its forms in 1888. Almost 133 years later, domestic work is still traditionally done by Black women.

I went to ask for bread because I was hungry, but she told me she wouldnt give me any if I didnt come and live with her

The ostensibly respectable Milagres Rigueira family not only took advantage of Gordianos services, they turned her into a source of income, arranging her marriage to an elderly relative when Gordiano was still in her twenties. The relative was 78 and had a military pension one of the best pensions in Brazil of more than 8,000 reais a month (1,300). Gordiano, who never actually lived with the Second World War veteran, inherited this pension upon his death, but she saw hardly any of the money it went almost entirely into the familys coffers. According to UOL, the family used the pension to cover the costs of one daughters medical degree.

At one point, in the tradition of past slave owners, Gordiano was given as a gift to Maria das Graas Milagres Rigueiras son, veterinary professor Dalton Milagres Rigueira. During the slavery era, it was common to donate slaves to children as a wedding gift or to include them in a will along with other assets. In fact, slaves were often the most valuable part of the estate.

Historian Claudielle Pavo considers the case of Gordiano to be an extreme incidence of structural racism forged by a system of slavery that exposes in a very instructive way what it is to be white in Brazil. Many people will say that taking in a girl to do household chores in exchange for food and a place to sleep is much better than leaving her on the street, adds Pavo. It is a social pact that is so commonplace that people do not find it offensive.

Investigative journalism has revealed that Gordianos twin sister, Filomena, also lived as a domestic worker with another branch of the same family, but received a salary. She left her employers 10 years ago.

After the abolition of slavery, the Brazilian state attracted European labor by granting land and promising other benefits with the explicit purpose of making Brazilian society whiter. Meanwhile, according to Pavo, the slaves who had been set free had no recourse to public aid and were left to fend for themselves. The deep-seated inequality that persists in Brazil in 2021 is a direct consequence of slavery and its aftermath.

Black and mixed-race Brazilians are far poorer than their white compatriots; while they make up 56% of the population, they account for 75% of those murdered, 64% of the unemployed, 60% of prisoners, but just 15% of judges and 1% of award-winning actors, according to data from fact-checking agency Lupa. Their families earn half as much money as their white counterparts and they have a shorter life expectancy.

Gordianos case has caused a stir in Brazil, as did the death of a Black supermarket customer a month earlier who was beaten by two white guards outside the shops doors.

More than 55,000 Brazilians working in slave-like conditions have been rescued in the last 25 years

The enslaved Gordiano was located by the authorities in the home that the professor of veterinary medicine Dalton Milagres Rigueira shared with his wife Valdirene Lopes in Patos de Minas. Gordiano had been kept in a small room with no window. She had no cell phone or television. Her only possessions were three T-shirts. Her only relief going to Mass in a Catholic Church where apparently nobody suspected what she was going through. Her rescue was due to a complaint filed by a neighbor living in the same building with whom she was forbidden to speak but who knew of her situation from the papers she pushed under their door, asking for money to buy soap and other toiletries. Authorities suspected there was something suspect about Gordianos widows pension years earlier, but the matter was shelved due to lack of evidence.

When questioned, Professor Dalton Milagres Rigueira, blamed his mother, Maria das Graas, for keeping Gordiano in slave-like conditions. He then argued that she was like family, explaining that he had not encouraged her to study because he did not think it would be to her benefit, according to Fantstico. The professor has been suspended from his post at the university where he teaches. Meanwhile, the familys lawyer considers the disclosure of the prosecutors case to be premature and irresponsible as there has been no conviction as yet and urges cautious reflection.

More than 55,000 Brazilians working in slave-like conditions have been rescued in the last 25 years, including 14 domestic workers last year.

Domestic workers, who are mostly Black women, are an integral part of Brazilian society. Recognition of their labor rights in 2013 was a celebrated milestone for millions but it provoked the indignation of a number of their employers. One of the first slaves known to denounce mistreatment was Esperana Garcia, who wrote in September 1770 to the governor of the Brazilian state Piau. Having been taught illegally by the Jesuits to read and write, Garcia complained of physical abuse and begged to be allowed to join her husband and baptize her daughter. She is believed to have succeeded.

Gordianos captivity ended thanks to an anonymous neighbor, allowing her to enjoy Christmas in a womens shelter while waiting to be reunited coronavirus restrictions permitting with some of the siblings she begged for something to eat with 38 years ago.

English version by Heather Galloway.

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How Much Is ATS Automation Tooling Systems’ (TSE:ATA) CEO Getting Paid? – Simply Wall St

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This article will reflect on the compensation paid to Andrew Hider who has served as CEO of ATS Automation Tooling Systems Inc. (TSE:ATA) since 2017. This analysis will also evaluate the appropriateness of CEO compensation when taking into account the earnings and shareholder returns of the company.

Check out our latest analysis for ATS Automation Tooling Systems

According to our data, ATS Automation Tooling Systems Inc. has a market capitalization of CA$2.2b, and paid its CEO total annual compensation worth CA$4.0m over the year to March 2020. We note that's a decrease of 21% compared to last year. While we always look at total compensation first, our analysis shows that the salary component is less, at CA$935k.

On comparing similar companies from the same industry with market caps ranging from CA$1.3b to CA$4.1b, we found that the median CEO total compensation was CA$5.0m. So it looks like ATS Automation Tooling Systems compensates Andrew Hider in line with the median for the industry. What's more, Andrew Hider holds CA$4.7m worth of shares in the company in their own name, indicating that they have a lot of skin in the game.

On an industry level, around 60% of total compensation represents salary and 40% is other remuneration. It's interesting to note that ATS Automation Tooling Systems allocates a smaller portion of compensation to salary in comparison to the broader industry. If non-salary compensation dominates total pay, it's an indicator that the executive's salary is tied to company performance.

Earnings per share at ATS Automation Tooling Systems Inc. are much the same as they were three years ago, albeit slightly lower. In the last year, its revenue is up 4.4%.

A lack of EPS improvement is not good to see. The fairly low revenue growth fails to impress given that the EPS is down. It's hard to argue the company is firing on all cylinders, so shareholders might be averse to high CEO remuneration. Looking ahead, you might want to check this free visual report on analyst forecasts for the company's future earnings..

We think that the total shareholder return of 40%, over three years, would leave most ATS Automation Tooling Systems Inc. shareholders smiling. As a result, some may believe the CEO should be paid more than is normal for companies of similar size.

As we touched on above, ATS Automation Tooling Systems Inc. is currently paying a compensation that's close to the median pay for CEOs of companies belonging to the same industry and with similar market capitalizations. Some investors may take issue with this, especially considering shrinking EPS for the past three years. On the other hand, shareholder returns are showing positive trends over the same time frame. We do not think CEO compensation is a problem, but shrinking EPS is undoubtedly an issue that will have to be addressed.

While CEO pay is an important factor to be aware of, there are other areas that investors should be mindful of as well. That's why we did some digging and identified 3 warning signs for ATS Automation Tooling Systems that you should be aware of before investing.

Switching gears from ATS Automation Tooling Systems, if you're hunting for a pristine balance sheet and premium returns, this free list of high return, low debt companies is a great place to look.

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This article by Simply Wall St is general in nature. It does not constitute a recommendation to buy or sell any stock, and does not take account of your objectives, or your financial situation. We aim to bring you long-term focused analysis driven by fundamental data. Note that our analysis may not factor in the latest price-sensitive company announcements or qualitative material. Simply Wall St has no position in any stocks mentioned. *Interactive Brokers Rated Lowest Cost Broker by StockBrokers.com Annual Online Review 2020

Have feedback on this article? Concerned about the content? Get in touch with us directly. Alternatively, email editorial-team (at) simplywallst.com.

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How Much Is ATS Automation Tooling Systems' (TSE:ATA) CEO Getting Paid? - Simply Wall St

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Automating your way out of disruption – Global Banking And Finance Review

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By David Brightman, Director of Product Marketing at BlackLine

The coronavirus pandemic has underlined the vital role that automation plays in the finance function. Manual tasks, inefficient processes and a lack of data insight are holding back finance functions that have not yet automated and preventing them from competing effectively in a tumultuous market. For these organisations, the ongoing business challenges caused by the pandemic should be seen as an opportunity to ensure future projects have the best chance of success. This means facilitating standardisation and planning, as well as redesigning processes so that the same inefficiencies are not perpetuated.

Unfortunately, the finance function, like most aspects of business, are facing severe disruption as a result of the pandemic. Numerous projects relating to implementing or scaling automation have been delayed or cancelled, and many distributed teams are battling with an over-reliance on paper-based documents or office-bound tasks that are no longer feasible. Many of these issues would have been softened had companies already completed the move to digitise their processes before the pandemic, but research suggests that very few companies have fully addressed the automation gap.

The automation gap

In fact, a survey commissioned by BlackLine and conducted by FSN suggests that only 9% of organisations managed to completely transform their finance function through automation before the pandemic. This is despite the fact that digitally transformed companies are two and a half times less likely to report delays in their existing project timescales compared to companies that have not invested in finance automation and 20% are less likely to report delays to future automation projects.

Having already experienced the benefits of automation, these companies are also less likely to have reduced their budgets for finance automation projects. Furthermore, the research found that finance and accounting (F&A) teams that entered this crisis further down the automation path were better positioned to weather the pandemic. This is because automation enabled these finance professionals to spend a greater amount of time on valuable, strategic tasks that could help guide the organisation through the changing business landscape. And when business was in flux, and teams had to transition to remote-working with little time to prepare, they had more resiliency to ensure the financial close ran like clockwork, without compromising financial statement integrity.

With such a strong case for automating, what is holding finance teams back?

Challenges to effective finance transformation

The majority of organisations are yet to jump on the automation bandwagon and there are a number of reasons why. Challenges include a lack of commitment to fully instigate automation across the business, a lack of resources, short timeframes for implementation, and pressure from executives who want to see a faster ROI, to name a few. With pandemic-related issues added to the mix, its understandable that there is some hesitancy when it comes to investing in automation.

However, from managing data, assessing risk factors, stress testing, to uncovering inefficiencies and budgeting, automation can and has been proven to help. For those organisations that still have reservations, looking at existing automation successes and learning from their peers is an excellent way to kick-start your own business automation strategy.

David Brightman

Its important to remember that modernising your finance function can have a huge impact on business outcomes, producing real-time updates that can be used to guide decision making and risk management. However, moving to modern accounting means taking a unified approach. Integrating systems and data for a single source of truth, so you can standardise and control processes for consistency, efficiency, visibility, and change management is the only sustainable path forward.

Tips for initiating automation within your business

To begin with, businesses must have a clear understanding of the current state of their finances and where they stand within the industry landscape. What are the challenges? Where are the potential bottlenecks and opportunities for efficiencies to be created? This is a vital step in improving transparency. If businesses dont have a clear view over what is happening within their own organisation, how can they expect to make important decisions that will improve business outcomes?

To achieve this, finance teams should look to migrate any on-premise applications to the cloud. This will enable easier access and control over how and where data is stored, while also integrating applications to function as one whole system that communicates with all necessary business departments. This will give a clearer, real-time overview of where the business is at and where necessary changes are most critical.

Next, CFOs need to look at simplifying and streamlining some of the tasks F&A teams face day-to-day. For example, when automating financial close and reconciliation processes, its essential that process owners, not technical staff, can make changes quickly. Updates like adding or changing accounts for reconciliation automation, or applying technology like artificial intelligence to transactional matching, modifying variance exception thresholds, changing standard or custom report fields, should all be within accountings span of control. Ensuring the right people have access to the right data and reports, as and when these are needed, reduces bottlenecks considerably. This in turn leaves more time for making sure reports are up to the highest possible standard and insights are used to make any necessary adjustments fast.

Once transparency is instilled and time wasting bottlenecks are reduced, businesses can begin to regain control of their systems, through investing in new ERP systems and automating their budgeting, planning and forecasting (BPF) processes. Without transforming the BPF process that provide agility and insights, businesses would be forced to run in circles, producing forecasts that would become obsolete within days. In these uncertain times, companies need to be reforecasting daily and weekly, or at the very least monthly to have any sort of handle on the business. Where some organisations were getting by with minimal sophistication in their BPF, the unprecedented effects of lockdown have exposed significant weaknesses in these processes.

Finally, F&A teams should seek to connect with a community of experts dedicated to driving modern accounting and the automation journey, to achieve a more collaborative accounting experience. This could include networking, tapping into virtual best practices and finance transformation summits, and hearing from peers at other organisations about what has worked (or hasnt) on their modern accounting journey. For automation to succeed, its also critical that F&A control their destiny. Ownership means F&A can take charge of process automation themselves, without relying on IT or technical consultants. This ensures that technology can be confidently owned and managed by end-users those closest to reengineering the business processes themselves. If the technology creates friction to driving change, digitisation efforts will ultimately grind to a halt.

This has been a trying year, and businesses have a lot to learn from recent months successes and failures alike. Taking a holistic approach to automation, understanding the benefits of automating each process, and identifying the competitive insight that can be generated through new techniques and technologies will enable CFOs to work their investment in automation harder and smarter. If you havent already decided what your automation plans are for the upcoming year, this is the time to begin.

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Automating your way out of disruption - Global Banking And Finance Review

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