There are clear, actionable steps that every company can take to advance diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives.

The higher up the corporate ladder, the fewer women we see. That’s true in Canada and around the world.

Consider the data: in Canada, men continue to hold over 90 percent of C-level executive roles. In 2021, women were only 52 of the 533 named executive officers among Canada’s publicly-traded corporations.

Despite this, there have been some gains. In Canada, women accounted for slightly more than a third of all managers last year. The proportion of women in senior management roles globally grew to 31 percent, the highest number ever recorded.

That’s meaningful progress, but there’s still a lot of work left to do to reach gender equity in leadership, especially at the highest ranks.

Here’s where companies can start:

Secure commitment at the top

Ensure that senior leaders, including the CEO, are committed to the intentional and hard work it takes to close equity gaps.

Measure what matters

Commit to diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) measurement and transparency. Measure employees’ experience of inclusion. Measure and track board diversity, workforce diversity by employee level, and gender pay equality. Establish DEI targets and mechanisms for holding senior leaders accountable for progress.

Create equitable pathways

Develop fair and transparent talent management systems and procedures to mitigate unconscious bias, including objective advancement criteria, specific and constructive feedback, and equitable allocation of high-visibility jobs associated with leadership positions.

Prioritize sponsorship

Sponsorship is an important career accelerator for women, particularly women from underrepresented ethnic or racial groups. Sponsorship programs can help build an inclusive leadership pipeline for organizations.

Be flexible and practise empathy

Make empathy a management practice. Empathic leadership improves inclusion, engagement, and retention and decreases burnout, particularly for women of colour. Understand what your employees need and design inclusive, flexible work options and hybrid work models to meet those needs.

As we enter year three of the pandemic, I’m optimistic that we have an opportunity to reimagine the workplace and reimagine leadership. Let’s use this moment to drive equity for women.

The post How Companies Can Reimagine Leadership for Women appeared first on HiveInnovates.

Over the last couple of years, the pace of change has increased, especially for consumer shopping, selling and payment habits. Businesses are in the midst of a shift in overall methods of commerce. If the steps taken are done right, it bodes well for businesses in the future.

Despite recent challenges, some businesses hit the ground running at the onset of the pandemic and thrived. What’s the secret to their success? Square, a global technology leader providing tools and financial services for businesses, collaborated with Wakefield Research to find the answers. They conducted a survey of 1,000 customers and 500 retail businesses in Canada to gather their insights for the Future of Retail 2022. From this report, businesses can learn what it takes to evolve successfully in a changing world.

Keeping pace in a changing retail world

Automation is one area that is receiving plenty of attention. While companies are seeing it as a possible solution to ongoing labour shortages, it doesn’t mean replacing employees with robots. Automation allows staff to focus on more meaningful work. It’s a big trend with an estimated 93 percent of Canadian companies saying they use, or plan to use, automation technology to decrease the hands-on time of staff.

Consumers are turning to alternative ways of shopping beyond just online, including buying through live streaming and social media. During the pandemic, they’ve been accustomed to alternate channels and want options available to them. These seamless and easy-to-use omnichannel buying experiences are expected to grow in scale in the upcoming years.

It’s a win for businesses, too. Omnichannel commerce builds customer loyalty and provides multiple touchpoints for maintaining contact with consumers. The barrier for some retailers is a lack of knowledge about technology that prevents them from selling goods via newer online or social channels.

As Darryl Julott, Managing Lead at Digital Main Street, explains: “If you’re a smaller business, you need to look holistically at your business, your customers and your current omnichannel marketing strategy to see where you have gaps and where you can actually begin implementing a full-fledged strategy. You don’t want to get so far down the road and into the weeds with no direction. Pull back before you jump in — figure out how you’d be able to correct things and make adjustments on the fly.”

Consumers seek alternative shopping channels

Even as in-person shopping rebounds, the demand for e-commerce isn’t going anywhere. Retailers will have to adapt as consumers change how they want to buy and pay. The report findings show 61 percent of consumers prefer contactless payment, while 36 percent of retailers say they no longer accept cash. That makes adopting other payment solutions like mobile wallet apps, touchless card payments and QR payments a smart move.

Though consumers say they want contactless shopping, they still want connection, which is why conversational commerce is emerging as a leading trend for retailers. It allows businesses to meet their customers where they are. The data shows 47 percent of retailers reported they currently sell or plan to implement selling via text or chat. Customers are already embracing alternate channels with 23 percent buying retail items from salons and spas through social media channels.

Social media isn’t just about connecting, the report states. It’s about customer demand and translating it into sales. “By fine-tuning their message on all social channels available, retailers have a unique opportunity to meet millions of potential new customers and reach existing ones to help drive additional sales,” explains Brandon Levy, Square’s general manager, inventory, fulfillment and merchandising.

With change comes opportunity. Businesses can stand out by offering interactive, memorable retail experiences. Stores can break out of the box and experiment with inventive ways to keep customers engaged and spending more time with their favourite brands.

The post Top Trends Impacting Retail in 2022 appeared first on HiveInnovates.

The pace that commerce has accelerated during the pandemic has changed the way businesses and consumers transact. With no sign of slowing, the continued reliance on digital payment technologies has been a keyfocus among businesses. Consumers have embraced new shopping and payment behaviours in a significant way and have come to depend on them.

Adopting digital payments has played a vital role for businesses of all sizes and in all industries. According to leading payments technology company, Global Payments, key trends have emerged and are explored in detail in their 2022 Commerce and Payment Trends Report. Payment experts, global businesses and issuers weighed in to provide their insights about which trends businesses should pay attention to this year.

Digital technology gains momentum in a post-pandemic world 

The results, presented as five key trends, are shaking up commerce in a positive way. For businesses, these insights are invaluable for evaluating current strategies and ensuring they are prepared to meet the needs of customers and partners.

1. Buy now, pay later means higher conversions

Businesses selling big-ticket items are accustomed to offering customers installment plans. This year, offering tailored and flexible buy now, pay later (BNPL) plans on smaller purchases is on track to be a top payment trend. Though primarily limited to in-store transactions in the past, the availability of BNPL has now expanded to online purchases.

An estimated 65% of merchants plan to adopt this payment option, according to Global Payments. Consumers have shown they are comfortable making larger purchases when they have the option of BNPL. Features like opt-in payment plans and BNPL plans can be offered at check-out to split their payments and set-up installment plans.

2. Adapting to changing customer expectations is key

Meeting a customer’s expectations these days should include the ways they prefer to pay at checkout. The pandemic amplified the need for businesses to allow customers to pay digitally, both online and in-person. As such, the acceptance of digital wallets, QR-code payments, payment links, and online invoicing have proven to meet the needs of digital-savvy consumers and businesses alike—addressing concerns for safety and expectations of convenience.

As online shopping habits continue to form, businesses should also review their ecommerce platforms, ensuring their product pages are optimized and the checkout process is frictionless.

3. Customers expect a connected buying experience

When mapping a customer’s buying journey, businesses should aim to look at the bigger picture–from beginning to end. Connecting every point of the buying process to support a strategic commerce ecosystem has been shown to deliver better outcomes. Integrating gift and loyalty programs, for example, help attract new customers, retain existing customers and drive revenue.

Brand affinity and familiarity are driving factors for many purchase decisions. That’s why digital commerce strategy should focus on adopting ways to create a superior experience for customers while also providing key metrics and analytics to help run and grow business. Often, businesses rely on many different providers to deliver what they need which can be inefficient–a better option is to choose a single-source provider that can provide a robust suite of options at the start.

4. Data security remains a priority

Handling customer data means businesses should adhere to the latest guidance and follow proper protocols for data security. It’s a topic that will drive some of the greatest challenges for businesses this year.

Cybersecurity Involves ensuring data privacy policies, procedures, and protections are met. Technology Can help protect data. For example, tokenization—where sensitive data is modified and stored with “tokens” which have no real relationship between the token and the original card number–provides an added layer of security to protect data.

It’s recommended that businesses re-evaluate their policies and procedures at least once per year and consult with a payments partner for recommendations and solutions.

5. B2B payments get digitized

Businesses transacting with other businesses are continuing to see the reciprocal role that digital commerce plays. With more of the workforce remote, businesses need to ensure payment obligations are being met with suppliers, driving the need to digitize B2B payments. It’s estimated that digital B2B payments are expected to increase from 121.5 billion in 2020 to 200 billion transactions by 2025, according to Capgemini.

The benefits of a streamlined digital B2B payments approach includes better cash flow management, greater efficiency and less money spent on paper supplies and postage to name a few.

The post Businesses and Consumers Embrace Digital Payment Technology appeared first on HiveInnovates.

In Canada’s saturated BNPL ecosystem, Zip stands out by putting customers at the centre and helping retailers increase conversions.

Consumer financing tools like Buy Now, Pay Later (BNPL) have traditionally been a way to help customers fit purchases into their budget and for retailers to boost their sales. “What’s new is the digital aspect which lets people get the approval and do the purchase instantly through their phone,” says Steve Croth, Managing Director in Canada for Zip, a payments and consumer financing firm founded in Australia eight years ago that recently expanded into Canada. 

Providing a superior experience 

Using Zip’s BNPL technology purchasers can break a payment into four equal interest-free instalments spaced two weeks apart. “It kind of hits the sweet spot of that millennial shopper who doesn’t have a credit card or doesn’t want to use one because of the high fees, but is comfortable using a phone or shopping online,” says Croth.

With a consistently high Net Promotor Score (NPS), Zip is managing to not only satisfy but also delight its customers, something Croth attributes to three core pillars of its market approach — an obsession with customer experience, a customer-first mindset, and constant measurement. 

“Keeping customers delighted really starts with the experience, so ours includes an easy-to-use product that provides a frictionless transaction backed up by great customer support, with no late fees or penalties,” says Croth. 

Zip’s customer-first mindset views customers as brand ambassadors, rather than simply people transacting using the technology. “As brand ambassadors we know they’re going to go spread the word about us good or bad, so our customer-first mindset focuses on customer satisfaction, resolving their issues quickly, and being empathetic,” says Croth.  

Finally, the company constantly measures and monitors its customer feedback. “We dissect all the reviews and comments and use that data to improve our service model,” says Croth.

Helping retailers convert budding shoppers into repeat customers

These three core pillars are also integrated with Zip’s merchant experience. “It’s about being a steward of their brand by representing their brand values and upholding the highest standard in customer experience because their customers are our customers,” says Croth. 

The strong customer experience focus extends to helping retailers struggling with low customer conversion rates. “I find many e-commerce merchants tend to focus at the top of the funnel, but you need to focus at the bottom. It’s kind of like a leaky bucket. You need to plug the leaks first and our technology, tools and processes can give retailers certain efficiencies to do that and get people to successfully transact,” says Croth. 

With improved efficiencies, it’s easier for retailers to convert the casual shopper, the shopper on a tight budget or the shopper without a credit card. “We help retailers sell more stuff to more people by getting customers for them online, in-store, and in their sales funnel,” says Croth. The increased transaction volume in turn helps to improve the retailer’s efficiencies in key performance indicators like customer acquisition costs, return on marketing costs, and average order value. 

With about ten million users of its app in 14 markets, Zip services 82,000 retailers globally. “I think by having one of the best products in the market from an experience and technology perspective really lets us deliver on our promise to retailers to drive top line, increase order values, and improve conversion rates,” says Croth.

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As digital payments increase, potential fraudsters get sharper and smarter. Visa is helping to protect Canadian businesses and consumers through technology and education.

The exponential growth of e-commerce during the pandemic saved many small businesses and gave consumers a safer way to shop.

As we enter a new phase of the pandemic, this trend is expected to continue growing. “In Visa’s Summer 2021 Installments Pulse Survey, 55 percent of Canadians said they will stay with e-commerce habits adopted in the pandemic, and we see that trend reflected in the payments ecosystem,” says Maryam Saeed, Head of Risk, Visa Canada. However, with the rise in e-commerce, fraudsters are shifting their focus to take advantage of this accelerated digitization. Saeed says there are three core components as we think about threats: data, consumers, and infrastructure.

“We’ve seen an increase in account takeover activities due to weak security hygiene by consumers, such as clicking on links in unsolicited emails, using the same password for multiple accounts, and falling victim to romance and phishing scams,” she explains.

Fraudsters continue to target e-commerce websites with digital skimming, using malicious code or enumeration attacks to gain access to payment information as well as ransomware — where fraudsters hold data and systems hostage for ransom. These activities remain a global threat with no signs of slowing down.

A trusted partner with the right solutions to minimize risk

Despite the complexity of this rapidly changing payment landscape, Visa’s payment ecosystem remains strong. Over the past five years, Visa has invested roughly nine  billion dollars ($9B USD) globally in multiple fraud detection systems to help protect cardholders and the payment ecosystem. As a global leader in security and fraud prevention, Visa vigilantly monitors this ecosystem for a wide variety of threats and applies a three-pillar approach of people, technology, and process to assist the ecosystem participants in identifying, mitigating, and preventing these threats.

As a global network of networks with access to insight on global trends, Visa is committed to sharing this knowledge and expertise with Canadian businesses and consumers. Visa also works as a partner within the payment ecosystem, communicating fraud events and recommendations to its issuers and acquirers to help protect cardholders. “We have a suite of products and services for our clients to help reduce fraud and prevent it before it even happens, and to combat against increasingly sophisticated fraudsters,” says Saeed. 

Take steps to keep your financial information safe

According to the 2022 Visa Fraud Prevention Survey, Canadians aged 55 and above are the most vigilant in their financial transactions, with 55 percent reporting that they’re more cautious than they were pre-pandemic.  

“Be cautiously suspicious when giving out personal information. It’s also very important to never disclose your PIN, banking login credentials or passwords. Common red flags in email phishing schemes are inaccuracies, spelling errors or missing information,” says Saeed. “Similarly, if someone calls you claiming to be your financial institution asking you to share personal financial information, either call your financial institution or ask questions to determine whether the caller is legitimate. By protecting themselves, Canadian consumers can continue being our partners in helping to protect the payment ecosystem,” says Saeed. 

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To a modern shopper, a paper label raises many questions. Danavation’s Digital Smart Labels are smart enough to provide answers.

What a strange time it is to be a retailer. Just a decade ago, with online shopping on a steep ascent, everywhere you looked it seemed there was another breathless article foretelling the death of brick-and-mortar retail. Soon, they proclaimed, we would buy everything on the web and never step foot in another actual store. Today, coming off two years of intermittent lockdowns, it’s clearer than ever that no one actually wants that. We crave the human connection, the social interaction, the simple sneakers to floorboards experience of in-person shopping.

At the same time, consumers have grown accustomed to the convenience, the personalization, the agility, and the flexibility of digital storefronts, so their expectations of the shopping experience have shifted and grown more discerning. And, in an era of aggressive online price-matching and personal financial uncertainty, they aren’t willing to compromise on the sticker either, putting pressure on the already thin margins of many stores. All this while the cost of labour is skyrocketing and retailers are still struggling to make up revenue lost during the pandemic.

In short, customers demand that the doors stay open and the prices stay low while the shopping journey undergoes a thorough digital transformation. Simple, right?

In fact, it can be.

Where we’re going, the old maps won’t take us 

Surely it would be too much to ask that a single unobtrusive technology could lay the foundation for a complete revamp of the retail experience, meeting all the expectations of the modern digital shopper without obstructing the charm (or hurting the bottom line) of even the coziest shop. Right? Well, let’s talk about Digital Smart Labels, the technology that strikes at the heart of retail’s hidden engagement problem.

The labels in the store, whether they’re price tags or sales announcements or in-store navigation aids, are the informational hooks of the retail voyage, and comparing Canadian innovator Danavation’s micro e-paper Digital Smart Labels to traditional labelling is like comparing a full-featured modern internet-enabled GPS navigation system to a torn and coffee-stained folding roadmap bought at a gas station in 1992. Either might get you there, if there aren’t any unexpected surprises, but one is going to have you in a very different mood when (and if) you arrive.

The way information is packaged and delivered matters. Danavation’s Digital Smart Labels ensure that prices are always accurate with instantaneous point-of-sale synchronizing. They create an environment where the right information can always be presented in the right place at the right moment. They provide a context-appropriate gateway to remote resources like product reviews, inventory updates, and loyalty programs. But it’s not just the content they display. To quote Marshall McLuhan for a moment, the Digital Smart Labels are the message. They tell the customer by their very presence that this is an environment where information is vibrant and reliable. This is a store they can engage with on their terms.

“Today’s customers are getting younger, smarter, and faster,” says Danavation’s founder and CEO John Ricci. “They rely a lot on technology, and they’re very sharp and price-sensitive. As a retailer, you have to find a way to impress and engage them.”

An engaged customer is an empowered consumer

The little things make a big difference. And, though most labels are small, they play an outsized role as conduits of information. Out of date flyers, incorrect prices, mislabelled shelves, missing product information. Any one of these things can break the flow of shopping and send the customer to their phone, or to another store. Digital Smart Labels remove all these stumbling blocks in one fell swoop, while simultaneously cutting costs by easing the workload of employees, shrinking the carbon footprint of the store, and increasing the agility of operations. And interactions that were once a point of frustration and uncertainty become an opportunity for engagement, right there at the shelf.

“Engage customers at the shelf and they will buy more,” notes Ricci. And that’s not a trick. It’s what people want. They have spent enough time in their homes, shopping online. They’re getting back out into the world and going into stores now very much on purpose. People are there to shop, to engage, to buy. They just want it to be easy.

Technologies like Digital Smart Labels make the little things easy, so that your business can focus on the big things. Because that’s where you shine.

The post How Retail Can Step into the Future Without Leaving the Best of Itself in the Past appeared first on HiveInnovates.

As the payments landscape evolves, financial institutions and other organizations must strive to stay consumer-centric and competitive.

The payments industry is currently undergoing significant disruption. Financial institutions, fintechs, and other organizations are all competing to keep up with customer expectations and to make payments faster, easier, and more convenient. This requires core infrastructure transformation, new product innovation, and adhering to the new regulations and legislations popping up to accommodate the industry’s transformation. Payments modernization has never been more important or diverse in strategic opportunity, choice for participation, and positioning organizations for the future.

Industry-wide disruption

“If you look back 10 or more years, the payments experience was characterized by quite a bit of friction for the end-user,” says Geoff Rush, Partner and National Industry Leader of Financial Services at KPMG in Canada, a leader in financial and payments services. “It took a lot of effort to complete a payment and often a lot of time for it to clear. What we’re seeing now is a lot of innovation to take that friction out of the process.”

Higher customer expectations are driving the trend. “Customers are expecting more on the service level, which includes the cost, efficiency, and visibility of their payments,” says Edwin Isted, Senior Manager at KPMG in Canada. And the non-traditional entrants into the payments ecosystem, big tech or fintechs, are shaking up the ecosystem significantly, forcing incumbent financial institutions to evolve and innovate.

Full-service payments support 

With organizations striving to meet customer expectations, stay competitive, and future-proof their businesses, they’re also now having to contend with new regulations and legislative changes around payment service providers, new digital currencies like crypto, and other disruptions. These compounding factors are driving an accelerated pace of innovation in payments, says Rush. That’s where KPMG comes in.

“We’re one of Canada’s largest professional services providers,” says Rush. “We’re well-known for our advisory, technology, and analytical services.”

Included in KPMG’s financial services management consulting business is its payments practice, which helps organizations manage risk, enhance regulatory compliance, optimize customer and digital strategies, and improve operations.

“Our payments team is industry-agnostic,” says Cody Greer, Senior Manager at KPMG in Canada. “We help both traditional payment clients — such as wholesale banks, commercial banks, investment banks, retail banks, central banks, card associations, and payment market infrastructures — as well as non-financial institutions like retailers, technology companies, fintechs, transit providers, and governments with payments transformation.

Embracing open banking

“One of the trends we’ve seen and which the Canadian market is about to embark on is open banking,” says Isted. Open banking refers to banking that provides third-party financial service providers open access to consumer banking, transaction, and other financial data from banks and non-bank financial institutions through the use of application programming interfaces (APIs). 

“Open banking is very interesting because we’ve seen a variety of models to enable it,” says Isted. “On the one end of the spectrum, you’ve got a pure legislative requirements-driven approach, while on the other end, you’ve got a purely market forces driven approach,  and then you have something in the middle which is sort of a hybrid of both. Open banking isn’t just about payments. It’s a fundamental change to many organizations in terms of how they view their data assets internally.”

“This is again about reducing friction and making lives easier for the end-customer,” says Rush.

What really separates us is the calibre of our people on an individual level. We’re the friendly firm and not only do we bring really great insights and help our clients achieve great results, we’re also great people to work with, and that’s hard to replicate.

Encouraging innovation   

“Modernizing the Canadian payments infrastructure can have enormous benefits to all Canadians, and other countries are already there,” says Rush. “At the core, what we’re trying to do with open data sharing is to create a more innovative and competitive payments landscape.”

“Open banking and payments modernization aren’t separate things,” adds Isted. “They’re both bringing more efficiency, lower costs, and require greater integration than before.”

From enabling real-time payments for both businesses and consumers to increasing operational efficiencies and boosting revenue for financial institutions, there are many benefits to open banking and payments modernization.

Open banking adds complexity, however, which the Canadian market is currently grappling with. “There are things that need to be in place to enable open banking, such as the surety of the actors involved,” explains Paul Jackson, Director of Payments Modernization at KPMG in Canada. “Being able to verify their digital identity becomes key.”

“To put this in place therefore requires some massive changes — changes to regulation, changes to incumbent players, technology infrastructure and processes, and even education and changes to consumer behaviour,” says Rush. 

Prioritizing payments modernization   

Payments modernization is therefore a critical priority, and organizations must work quickly to evolve their payment models and core infrastructure, adopt digital channel experiences, and innovate.

“We focus on three primary areas: payments modernization, getting financial institutions ready for the SWIFT mandates around ISO compliance, and strategy around payments across multiple industries,” says Isted.

“The new international data standard (ISO 20022) and open banking aren’t small transformations that organizations can just plug into,” says Greer. “These often require years of planning, testing and execution to ensure that they are ready on time. And compliance is only one half of the journey. At the same time, they need to consider the competitive and customer impacts in their new reality.”

KPMG assists its clients with a broad range of services related to payments transformation, from payments strategy and implementation to process reviews, automation and digitization, payment products, market research, risk assessments, and more.

Leading the way 

For organizations looking to tackle these changes and thrive in the payments landscape of the future, turning to a leader in financial and payments services like KMPG is a smart move.

“As a national industry leader, we’ve got some extremely talented professionals who are very deep in their areas of expertise,” says Rush. “But what really separates us is the calibre of our people on an individual level. We’re the friendly firm and not only do we bring really great insights and help our clients achieve great results, we’re also great people to work with, and that’s hard to replicate.”

The post Embracing Payments Modernization and Open Banking Is Good for Business appeared first on HiveInnovates.

It is imperative that Canada develops a national strategy for IoT, in consultation with business, industry, policymakers, and academics. Canada cannot afford to stay behind in this sector, given the pervasiveness of the technology and the economic stakes.

The Internet of Things is the latest evolution of the “web”. In 1969 ARPAnet was born when a message was exchanged between the computers of two research teams at Stanford and at UCLA. In 1989, Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web, as a network of HTML pages accessible through the HTTP protocol. These technologies launched a race, among existing bricks-and-mortar companies, to establish a “presence” on the Internet to advertise their products to a broader audience of potential clients. The mid-90s saw an explosion of eCommerce websites, eBay and Amazon being just two notable examples, selling products and services online without a real-world store. The launch of Facebook in 2004 brought about Web2.0, offering every individual on the planet the opportunity to connect with each other. The Internet of Things, first mentioned in 1999 to promote RFID technology,  is the natural evolution of this increasingly expanded “connectivity” and promises to seamlessly connect the physical world to the Internet, to enable the “sensing” the natural and built environment, the analysis of the collected data at the edge, where it is first collected and on the cloud where it is eventually aggregated, and the optimization of the activities and systems that impact them.

The Opportunity and The Challenge

IDC predicts that the value of the global IoT market will be 1T by 2022. Solid numbers on how much Canada will contribute to this economic activity are not available but unfortunately, there is some evidence that Canada may be lagging behind other countries in taking advantage of this family of technologies. In 2015, there were 363 million visible devices online with some 84 million recorded in China and 78 million in the US. When computing the number of online devices per 100 inhabitants, Canada does not make the list of the top 10 Countries. 

Use Cases for the Canadian Economy

The top five economic sectors in Canada, i.e., Real Estate, Manufacturing, Mining, Construction, and Health, can be substantially amplified by IoT. Modern buildings are equipped with sensors that monitor their indoor environment and building usage; this data can be used to fine-tune the HVAC systems’ parameters to improve comfort and reduce energy consumption and maintenance costs, amplifying the return on real-estate investment. IoT can optimize manufacturing processes through robotic control and automation; the reduction of manual effort and risk can boost productivity and quality. The mining and extraction industries have potentially the most to gain from IoT-enabled innovation: environmental sensing can help to precisely identify mining opportunities, and reduce environmental impacts. Construction projects often suffer from cost overruns that could be avoided if the progress of the work on construction sites was better monitored through cameras and sensors embedded in the machines and materials involved. Finally, health care costs could be reduced, and citizen health could be improved, if the variety of data emitted by the devices worn by consumers was analyzed and considered at the point of care.

Recommendation

It is imperative that Canada develops a national strategy for IoT, in consultation with business, industry, policymakers, and academics. This national strategy should include a framework (and incentives) for public-private partnerships to build the necessary IoT infrastructure and deliver demonstrator projects in all major sectors of the Canadian economy, including the Government itself. Canada cannot afford to stay behind in this sector, given the pervasiveness of the technology and the economic stakes.

The post Internet of Things: Opportunities and Challenges appeared first on HiveInnovates.

Cheryl McGrath

Area VP & Country General Manager, Optiv Canada

The art of balancing innovation and risk management in the world of IoT

As organizations continue to digitally transform, Internet of Things (IoT) devices such as cell phones, tablets, watches, refrigerators, medical devices, vehicles and many more, are becoming critical components to enable companies to act quickly on information to increase competitive advantages and operational efficiencies. 

The addition of these devices to IT environments allows for improved data utilization to better manage technology, increase output and reduce costs and downtime. However, the effort to utilize these new data sources significantly alters an organization’s threat landscape, opening up vulnerabilities that previously couldn’t be exploited. In many instances, network security is unable to detect IoT connections or provide visibility into the extent of an organization’s expanded threat landscape.

Organizational goals are often focused on accelerating time to market. As such, much of the attention and celebration goes to the developers and pioneers who create these IoT tools. In the rush to market, many companies’ security programs are not optimized or utilized at all.  

In conversation with Cheryl McGrath, Area VP & Country General Manager at Optiv, Ulrike Bahr-Gedalia, Senior Director of Digital Economy, of Technology & Innovation at the Canadian Chamber of Commerce, takes a closer look at some of the key concerns around IoT security. As the discussion demonstrates, the importance of this issue is pressing, as the trail of technological innovation, especially over the last five years, has also served as a pathway for threat actors to target what they should go after next. 

The term IoT is increasingly being used, and yet, the risks of its real use and application aren’t necessarily well understood. How can this discrepancy be explained?

Companies are looking to unlock data from the next asset class to consume and monetize   —   and that’s IoT.  

The physical interface to digital systems is changing along with everything else. Developers have unlocked tools and gadgets for a wide range of applications   —   machines that don’t run off of regular user laptops or standard servers. Keyboards and mice are being replaced with voice commands and VR.  And that is just the beginning. The development of this is still in its infancy and is guaranteed to create vast issues for security teams during this evolution.  

For critical infrastructure, let’s face it   —   IoT devices control most of the physical world. Everything from the gas in the pumps to our cars, medical devices, the temperature in food processing plants and nuclear facilities. Devices that operate without standard operating procedures are everywhere. 

You can’t secure what you can’t see and most organizations don’t have complete visibility to all of the devices on their networks. If threat actors exploit these IoT vulnerabilities, it can be disastrous. Look at Log4j.

The physical interface to digital systems is changing along with everything else.

How will security be knitted into these new environments? 

These devices are becoming integrated into many new forms of data. For example, consider modern distribution centers, where product is moved from one side of a factory to another via conveyer belt. Once these facilities had just a few sensors used for measurements for the whole facility. Now, more than a hundred sensors are used   —   per foot. We’re livestreaming terabytes of data regarding destination, package shape and weight and much more, but not securing the system any differently. Some security teams are still assuming that one external firewall will secure the facility. Contrast this with the cathedrals of defense implemented on the IT side. The rate of data creation is outstripping our ability to use and secure it.

As we look ahead to the next three years, what should people and businesses be considering with regard to IoT?

There are “three wants” that need to be considered.

Uptime: Many facilities care more about the ability to operate than they do about security. We are replacing aged digital infrastructure with modem cloud networks. A shift of this scale requires people to change their mentality and that can sometimes be a big ask. We also know that people are often wary of new business practices, so that needs to be thought through and immediately actioned.

Digital tools: Think of something as ubiquitous as temperature controls. Many automation systems are trained and honed to regulate small bands of temperature constraints. This plays out in many environments in varying degrees of criticality, ranging from data centers to food storage. All of these facilities have their own digital record, which will need to be extracted, centralized and made tamper-proof.

Security: In many organizations, these new data paths and devices have not been fully monitored or assessed against company risk thresholds. It took us 15 years to secure the modern ATM. These new IoT devices can be larger and closer to more valuable data (yes, more valuable than an ATM full of cash). With information this valuable and technology this new and vulnerable, security and risk mitigation have to be at the forefront of all organizations.

What can companies do to mitigate IoT risks?  

To be proactive, businesses can: 

1. Tap into their production networks to identify all IoT-connected devices and identify the most vulnerable assets.  Then assess devices for vulnerabilities and mitigate outstanding security issues.

2. Understand security in relation to new IoT devices that an organization is looking to purchase and how they may affect their network.  Companies may want to hire a trusted security provider with IoT labs to test devices before they’re implemented on company networks. This is done in order to ensure third party devices aren’t erroneously capturing private data via back door portals and to test integrations with their other technologies end-to-end.

3. Adopt a policy-driven, risk framework based on the organization’s business needs. These policies should include a baseline platform for the development of automated vulnerability management and incident response solutions for IoT.

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Tracy Fleming

Advanced Solutions, Avaya

The link between company and customer is built on experiences. It might be products and services that bring people to engage with a company in the first place, but it’s the quality of the interaction that retains customers, or loses them. Wherever and whenever that point of contact occurs, there’s a need to deliver an experience that’s welcoming, useful, appropriate, and enjoyable. With more than seven billion people on this planet, however, each with their own needs and desires, it’s simply impossible to curate a single experience that will suit them all. What one customer loves, another will hate.

And that really matters. People are no longer willing to accept friction in their interactions with companies. They know that there’s a better way and they expect it. The data is quite clear that customers are more than willing to walk away from a company after a bad experience. But how can you consistently create a good one for an audience with infinite variety?

The augmented human experience

In today’s era of cloud AI, the golden prize of a truly personalized experience for each customer is finally within reach. The answer is not, however, replacing agents with computers. Instead, we can augment the capabilities of the agents with AI, blending the human and the digital to create a seamlessly personal experience. “The human piece of this isn’t going away,” says Tracy Fleming, Practice Leader for AI at Avaya, a multinational technology company that specializes in cloud communications and workstream collaboration solutions. “Human interaction is still the gold standard. What you’re seeing is AI enabling that human to provide a better experience.”

Artificial intelligence is by no means a new area of exploration within the customer experience field, but as the capabilities of modern AI continue to grow exponentially, the implementation is taking on a whole new character. “The cloud is really the accelerator for the applied use of AI,” says Fleming. “It allows the technology to be applied seamlessly across an entire business model, and so we’re certainly seeing it being deployed in a much broader range of applications. But the core capabilities in this space have been executed in the Avaya world for years.”

Human interaction is still the gold standard. What you’re seeing is AI enabling that human to provide a better experience.

The angel on the shoulder

One of the major new developments is the ever-increasing speed and flexibility with which these AI solutions can be integrated into ongoing interactions. Gone is the time of AI systems facilitating the start of an interaction and then analyzing it afterwards. Whereas it used to be the norm for something like five percent of daily calls to be thoroughly analyzed after hours, now one hundred percent of calls can be analyzed as they’re happening.

AI still plays an integral role in directing the right customer to the right agent, not only for their needs, but also for their personality, demographics, and mood. But then it stays on the line. “What’s been really interesting due to the amount of computing and storage in the cloud today is the way we can provide outcome and input to agents in real time,” says Fleming. “We can have the AI acting as the front door concierge and also sitting on the shoulder of the agent as they’re talking. The AI hears what the customer is saying, finds the relevant data, and then renders it out to the agent on the fly. And it can prompt the agent before the call is over if they forget something, so you never have these incomplete experiences.”

The end result is an experience that is even more human. This is the real arc of the AI transformation, as it allows us to rehumanize our interactions. After decades of digitization and depersonalization, technology is building us a bridge back to genuine human connection.

Let’s see how your company scores on the total experience self-assessment?

There’s nothing artificial about an experience

When implemented properly to build dynamic experiences, artificial intelligence creates an environment where the humanity of both the agent and the customer is able to shine. The Avaya Experience Builders ecosystem leverages all the power of this technology to customize customization itself, so that the experience can be refined down to the essential of the business and then broadened again to fit the rich diversity of its customers. When done right, the most diligent AI experience work renders itself almost invisible.

“When a customer gets off a call thinking that, for 10 minutes, they were the only thing in that person’s world, they may not think to themselves, that was an incredible use of artificial intelligence,” says Fleming. “I would argue that’s the point. I think artificial intelligence is at its best when you don’t know it’s there.”

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