Category: Tech

Flight Center Travel Group has updated its customer experience (CX) to improve operational efficiency with Nintex’s K2 cloud.

The Flight Center Travel Group, which has a large global sales network, received an overwhelming number of cancellation requests in 2020 as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The company needed to find a quick and efficient way to support more than 800 customers, especially when the US-Canada border was closed for the first time this year.

Organizations leverage K2Cloud to automatically route changes to a single, expert FlightCenter team with all the tools and policies they need to handle changes quickly and improve the customer experience. I developed and started a form process.

To date, the form has been used more than 60,000 times, helping to reduce customer downtime and potential frustration, the company said.

Josh Waldo, Chief Customer Officer of Nintex, said:

“By using easy-to-use and powerful digital process automation software like K2Cloud to automate repetitive and time-consuming tasks, the Flight Center Travel Group is quickly digitized for a better experience for corporate travelers. Provided. “

The Flight Center Travel Group has modernized its operations to improve the consistency and transparency of the entire process to enhance the corporate travel customer experience.

In the past, like most companies, information was tracked and shared between spreadsheets, forms, and third-party tools, and there was no single source of truth.

As a result, team members spend time managing repetitive and complex processes, delaying a good customer experience, the company said.

Shaun Clear, Head of Global Operations at FCM Travel Solutions, said: “I wanted to improve the process efficiency of the entire organization.

“For better standardization and transparency, we needed a consistent and streamlined way to accurately capture all the information in a sharable way.

“The K2 Cloud gives us the ability to quickly and quickly address many operational issues that help us focus on the most important parts of our business and the travel customers that are why we exist. Gave me. “

The company previously used an internal technology called “HUB” to build corporate travel client sites to profile individual travelers such as mileage information, seat and dining preferences, credit card numbers, and ID cards. I kept it safe.

This process worked for travelers, but it was difficult to build and maintain because the Flight Center Travel Group team needed a 100% manual process to build all the new sites.

Nick Williams, Head of Digital Workplace for Flight Center Travel Group, said: “For example, we currently have one customer who needs 400 sites. This is a huge task if one build usually takes about 30-45 minutes.

“To meet the demand, we needed to add an intelligent automation layer to the process, so we decided to use K2 software.

“K2Cloud allows you to collect customer information, configure it with RPA, and build your site automatically without human supervision.

“This is truly transformative for the team and helps them focus on more strategic projects such as improving the customer experience and improving the business potential.”

LG will be coming out of the gate at full speed in 2021 when it unveiled its first QNED mini LED TV at the Virtual Consumer Electronics Show starting January 11.

This is LG’s premier product in the premium LCD TV lineup, combining quantum dot and NanoCell technology with a mini LED as a light source.

Along with advanced local dimming technology, there are up to 30,000 small LEDs that provide a 1,000,000: 1 contrast ratio in approximately 2,500 dimming zones.

The result is superior brightness, contrast and black levels that completely exceed the quality of traditional LG LCD TVs.

LG’s new mini LED TV also offers even higher HDR (High Dynamic Range) image quality and color accuracy, thanks to its excellent contrast and wide color gamut.

LG will release 10 new 4K and 8K QNED mini LED TVs in 2021 with screen sizes up to 86 inches.

The OLED will continue to be at the top end of LG’s TV range in 2021, thanks to its self-illuminating pixels and independent dimming control.

However, the LG QNED mini LED TV is another attractive option for customers.

The new panel construction, reinforced by a mini LED backlight, provides a truly immersive viewing experience within the LCD space.

In addition to the technology that combines quantum dots and NanoCell technology, advanced LED backlights provide crisp, bright images and deep black for incredible realism.

The new LGTV has a refresh rate of 120Hz for smooth and accurate rendering of movement.

Nam Ho Jun, Senior Vice President of R & D, LG’s Home Entertainment Company, said:

“These TVs offer an experience that sets them apart from other LCD TVs, demonstrating our commitment to innovation and the promotion of standards.”

The LG QNED Mini LED TV will be on display at LG’s virtual exhibition booth during CES2021.

Stay tuned to TechGuide for the latest news and announcements at the Virtual Consumer Electronics Show starting January 11th.

Tesla is pulling new demand levers towards the end of the quarter and the end of the year. Elon Musk announces on Twitter that anyone who buys a car in the last three days of the year will get a fully autonomous driving package for three months free of charge, with a major milestone of 500,000 deliveries per year. Did.

I’ve seen a free supercharger offered as an incentive during the end-of-quarter push, but this is the first time FSD has been offered as a carrot.

All Tesla vehicles delivered during the last three days of the year will have three months of fully autonomous driving options free of charge. Delivery and documentation must be fully completed by midnight on December 31st.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 29, 2020

FSD packages typically cost A $ 10,100 to be purchased by a new owner at the time of purchase, or the same A $ 10,100 to unlock after the vehicle is purchased. Until now, there were only two ways to get an FSD.

We know that Tesla will offer an FSD subscription in early 2021, but there are no monthly or annual details. Dividing the cost of today’s FSD by the average 36-month lease cycle yields a monthly cost of A $ 280 per month. This can be equivalent to about A $ 199 per month in the United States.

definitely. The FSD subscription will be released early next year.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 20, 2020

With today’s offer from Elon, it creates a lot of speculation about what will happen after a three-month free trial. Are you turning off FSD and returning to Autopilot, or does this time frame indicate that you are ready to start a subscription offering and that users can move to a monthly fee to keep it?

Currently, Tesla’s website lists the following features of fully autonomous driving:

• Navigate with autopilot: Autonomous driving from on-ramp to off-ramp on highways (including interchanges and overtaking low-speed vehicles).
• Car line change: Change lane while driving on the highway.
• Auto park: Both parallel and vertical spaces.
• Summon: Parked cars will come to find you anywhere in the parking lot. Really.
• Control of traffic lights and stop signs: Assist stop at traffic-controlled intersections.

Future plans:

• Autonomous driving on the streets of the city.

Some things like Summon are still in the very early stages of development, but once you get the FSD you will be able to use the high speed internet. Going back is not an entertaining prospect.

As we know, people in the FSD beta program also have that last one. When that feature is released to anyone with FSD, the price of the FSD package will undoubtedly rise again to match the new feature.

Here is a big dilemma for those on the fence about FSD. In the future, if you want to drive a car and be able to register with Tesla’s robotaxi network, we recommend fixing the price now.

“Fully autonomous driving features can be purchased after delivery. With the release of new features, prices may rise over time.”

Palo Alto Networks has announced its intention to acquire the attack surface management company The Expanse.

Under the terms of the agreement, Palo Alto Networks will acquire Expansion for a total purchase price of approximately $ 670 million paid in cash and shares and approximately $ 130 million in exchange share incentives, each subject to adjustment. It becomes.

The proposed acquisition is expected to close during the second quarter of Palo Alto Networks, subject to regulatory approval and other customary closing conditions.

As for the reasons behind the acquisition, Palo Alto Networks states that when companies embark on digital transformation, they keep their critical IT assets exposed to the Internet, creating vulnerable points that attackers can exploit.

This exposure was accelerated only by the rapid migration to the cloud and remote work.

Expanse’s Internet collection and attribution platform constantly monitors the global Internet to map, publicly track, and untracked assets that make up a customer’s attack surface, assessing, prioritizing, and mitigating risks. To provide.

Expanse data provides the CISO with an external view of the company and represents the view that an attacker sees when investigating weaknesses.

Combined, the Expanse platform enriches the Cortex product suite with the ability to stitch together external, internal, and threat data to give your organization a fully integrated view of your enterprise.

A wide range of customers include Fortune 500 organizations in the financial, healthcare, entertainment and technology industries, and government organizations including the US military.

The company said in a statement that extensive co-founders Dr. Tim Junio ​​and Dr. Matt Cranning will join Palo Alto Networks.

Nikesh Arora, CEO and Chairman of Palo Alto Networks, said: “We are excited to add the Expansion Platform to the Cortex product suite.

“By integrating Expand’s attack surface management capabilities into Cortex after closure, we combine the outer and inner views of an organization’s attack surface to provide the first solution to proactively address all security threats. You will be able to provide it.

“I believe this will be a security-based game changer.”

Tim Junio, CEO and co-founder of Expanse, said: “Expanse’s mission is to discover and mitigate the risks of our customers that no one else can find.

“The world’s largest and most complex organizations rely on Expanse for continuous detection, inventory, monitoring, and reporting on dynamically changing attack surfaces.

“Matt and I look forward to working with Palo Alto Networks to protect the Internet for businesses and governments around the world.”

Palo Alto Networks is a multinational cybersecurity company specializing in advanced firewall and cloud-based products.

…

Today is a wonderful day. Due to the wonderful summer day in Wodonga, Victoria and the shining sun, the 6.5kW solar system is collecting 5kW of hard power limited by SolarEdge inverters (and limited by energy distributors).

This spill is a great opportunity to run the washing machine, turn on the dishwasher, and charge the electric car. The electricity used at home during these times is basically free.

Free power is usually considered when you are not paying after using solar power, as in most cases, but you get it through a feed-in tariff to feed back the power to the grid. Credit will be reduced. So it’s not a cost, it’s a lost opportunity.

Thanks to the latest solar inverters connected to the internet today, you can see and monitor this energy usage over the phone or the web.

In an ideal world, you can have a connected car, talk to a connected home, and start charging when power is released, as in the situation described above.

Cars like the Tesla Model 3 have a SIM card, but they also connect to your home WiFi (updates, etc.). If Tesla enables the API, developers can create an interface that connects to the solar system (SolarEdge already has an API). This will give you an idea of ​​when you are free to power your car.

Currently, the only charging options in the car are “Scheduled Departure” and “Scheduled Charging”.

The first option of these options works by ensuring the required charge by a certain time, such as 7 am, getting ready for the morning commute, and charging during off-peak hours. This means coming home at 6pm and connecting the car, charging doesn’t start during these expensive afternoon / evening hours, but to charge at the lowest possible off-peak rate Can be configured to.

The second option is Scheduled Charging. This is a very basic time scheduler, with the option to select all days or only weekdays. Given the variety of sun behaviors, this doesn’t really work when trying to achieve the billing for the free scenario mentioned above.

Through the API, the car can communicate with the inverter to know that the maximum feed-in rate has been achieved while maintaining the excess power collected by the panel.

A 6.5kW system will not be 100% efficient, but at peak times of the day it is possible to get 6kW. That is, you can approach 1kW for free or choose the amount. Feed-in tariff that I’m willing to eat.

When charging, Model 3 charging consumes just under 2kW of energy. The rest of my house uses about 1kW per hour during the day, so there’s plenty of room to play.

From a standard 240v outlet, the car can add a range of 11km per hour. In other words, in just four hours, the car should have returned above an average usage of about 40km per day.

To achieve this level of flexibility, Tesla and other connected car manufacturers need to enable a charging API that integrates with solar inverters. Currently, the two big names in this area are SolarEdge and Fronius, both of which have existing APIs.

Of course, once the connected car begins to be open to third parties, the table has a lot of options. Imagine ordering food from a McDonald’s or KFC from a car display during an expedition. This may ask you to register your license plate, and when you arrive at the store there is no discussion of order numbers etc, you simply paid already through your Tesla account, you Just go through and collect food.

I would like to hear your thoughts in the comments below.

As businesses become more digital and contactless, global companies are eager to connect with their customers in real time, says User Testing, a user insights platform for businesses.

“To understand customer behavior, companies start investing in research and big data analytics. Big data may reveal some of it, but not overall. “The company says.

“In 2020, the CX industry felt the need for sick data along with big data analytics. Using only big data or using only sick data should opt out of one of the five senses. It’s something. “

According to UserTesting, there are five new era features that have transformed the CX industry, benefiting global brands and enhancing product experience and marketing campaign insights.

1. Live conversation:
Due to the limited work and travel caused by the onset of COVID-19, the UserTesting platform increased live conversation tests by 40% and completed the session. This is an almost double increase in usage compared to the same period a year ago.

This feature allows moderators to connect with customers in real time for insights by blocking appointments on the platform. In addition, time-synchronized notes can help you be more productive during your session by taking notes of important moments during your interview.

2. My Panel: Allows companies to test with their own audience and provides an easy and secure way to collect feedback. Companies can create and connect panels for their customers, partners, employees, and more. Start testing quickly and target the ideal participants with custom filters built from attributes that are unique to each business. UserTesting handles test distribution and live conversation scheduling, as well as notification and incentive payments.

3. Participant View: This feature deepens the customer’s understanding by remotely capturing facial expressions as the customer answers questions, completes tasks, and reacts to assets and experiences. ..

4. Interactive Path Flow: Interactive Path Flow aggregates interaction data across multiple participant sessions into a flow visualization that reveals unexpected behavior and links to the corresponding video segment. Instead of watching the videos in sequence, researchers can use flow visualization to navigate directly to moments worth watching and speed up their insights. The interactive pathflow interface automatically identifies outliers, such as participants who used unusual paths, who spent the most time on tasks, or who spent the most effort.

5. Quick Answer Builder: The new Quick Answer Builder allows researchers to scale, design, and deploy customer insights within their organization. With Builder, you can create a fixed test plan to ensure that the teams that use it get fair feedback, introduce flexibility to placeholders, and adapt and re-adapt your tests in different situations. Make it available and customize the results page to make it easier and faster to understand. feedback. It also has template access control. This does not sacrifice the accuracy and reliability of the scaling feature.

UserTesting is the first user insight platform for enterprises that integrates big and thick data to help organizations express their customers’ needs more comprehensively. The UserTesting Human Insight Platform enables businesses to see, hear, and discuss a variety of consumer, customer, and customizable panels, and audio, video, and text to facilitate informed and rapid decision making. Collect the response of. UserTesting has helped companies such as Adobe improve their iconic Photoshop products. Expedia saved more than seven digits a year with quick customer feedback, and Subway increased its loyalty program subscriptions, including customer insights on menus. Microsoft, Indeed, Lenovo, Go Daddy and Walmart are also included in the panel of many other customers.

Australians are afraid that unchecked and false information online could upset the country’s COVID-19 vaccination efforts and want to be more transparent about the scope of the problem.

Reset Australia, an affiliate of a global initiative working to combat digital threats to democracy, has commissioned a YouGov poll to establish a level of Australian concern about false alarms on vaccines.

The results are overwhelming-85% of respondents agreed that misleading claims about the COVID-19 vaccine on social media discouraged Australian vaccination. Meanwhile, 65% of those surveyed want to be more transparent from social media platforms about the degree of misinformation.

“You can’t start planning a vaccine deployment without addressing the false information about the vaccine online,” said Chris Cooper, executive director of Reset Australia.

“During the pandemic, false information about COVID-19 was amplified by social media algorithms, but public health officials had little visibility into the extent of the problem due to the online echo chamber,” he says. ..

“Social media is supercharging conspiracy theories and false information, pushing some of us into the echo chamber where only false information is displayed. The algorithm amplifies the most sensational or conspiracy content. It keeps us involved and online longer, but it is often not factual or accurate information. “Cooper explains.

“We all know that the wrong information is there, but we can’t get a bird’s eye view of the scale of the problem. Only the platform does, so the most shared content about COVID-19. You need to force it to list. “He says.

Reset Australia has a live list campaign. This requires the digital platform to maintain a list of the most viral URLs shared on the platform.

This list can be used by public health authorities, journalists, and scholars to effectively track and track false information online and better target public health messages.

“Australian authorities and Australians should be able to answer questions such as what content is amplified by these platforms, who created it, and what demographics are consuming it.” Says Cooper.

“To do that, we need a live list of the most controversial issues facing our society, so that we can begin to tackle false information collectively and transparently.” He says.

“Technology giants have created platforms that generate both huge profits and serious social problems. If they accept profits, they must also accept surveillance,” Cooper adds.

Reset Australia says a poll was conducted in mid-December this year.

Star Scientific, an Australian hydrogen research and development company, was awarded the Emerging Technology of the Year at the 2020 Global Energy Awards.

Andrew Holbus, Chairman of Star Scientific Limited’s Global Group, said this was a proud moment for the entire Star Scientific Limited team, who have been working hard to develop their heroes into what they are today. Said.

“We were selected as a finalist from about 300 entries from more than 36 countries, recognizing our ingenuity and potential for commercialization,” he says.

“This award recognizes that HERO has created its own category in the energy sector and has been prepared to address the gap that will significantly change the world’s hydrogen use.”

According to Horvath, Star Scientific is an Australian company with global reach and aspirations.

“Our technology will bring about an seismic shift to hydrogen as a future energy choice. Currently, green hydrogen is receiving a lot of attention worldwide, but there are gaps in its deployment for industrial purposes,” he said. Explains.

“We believe this is where HERO appears as the last link in the hydrogen chain.

“The world is watching how Australia takes advantage of its unique benefits to develop a large hydrogen industry,” says Horvath.

“This award further emphasizes Australia’s global interest in hydrogen production and capacity. We are pleased that the future of hydrogen is very exciting and we are part of it.”

Horvath added that the award is “a testament to the efforts and dedication of everyone at Star Scientific Limited.”

“Everyone, from our amazing engineering and science team to our shareholders, finance and administration departments, has been enthusiastic about the progress of HERO®. Today, we are globally recognized for our work.” He says.

Martin Frenkel, President of S & P Global Platts, said: “Congratulations to Star Scientific for receiving the Emerging Technology of the Year award.

“In a very turbulent year, this year’s group of winners will reorganize around obstacles, drive breakthrough technology, complete transformative deals and focus on long-term energy sustainability. It was particularly impressive and encouraging to see how he continued to match. “He says.

“Tonight’s winners, and finalists, are to celebrate their personal and collective achievements as well.”

The S & P Global Platts Global Energy Awards is an annual award sponsored by S & P Global Platts, an independent provider of commodity and energy market information and benchmark prices.

Founded in 1999, the S & P Global Platts Global Energy Awards highlights achievements in 21 categories across the energy sector.

According to Optiseller, e-commerce accounted for more than one-third of total retail revenue in 2020 as the ongoing Covid-19 crisis changed the way consumers buy goods and services.

According to the company, the use of AI support has expanded, mobile phone shopping will increase significantly next year, and the online shopping boom will continue for some time.

“The Covid-19 pandemic will affect every aspect of our lives during 2020, and e-commerce is no exception,” said Richard Falconer, Chief Operating Officer of Optiseller.

“Some estimates show that daily global online shopping is up 66%. In the UK alone, e-commerce will account for more than one-third of total retail sales in 2020,” he says. ..

Consumer behavior has undergone major changes in e-commerce, according to Falconer.

“The closure of High Street has accelerated online shopping due to blockades around the world. People who have never bought online have been forced to venture online,” he says.

“A Black Friday analysis reveals that the types of products purchased online are shaped by a pandemic. Smart clothes and dresses come out, slippers, comfortable clothes, and game consoles. “He adds.

“Outdoor household items such as barbecues, fire pits, patio heaters and furniture are also doing very well, forcing people to stay at home, while people are increasing their disposable income due to savings in commuting costs and more. Others are nervous about their employment security, “Falconer explains.

“It’s important for sellers to properly optimize their data for markets where item details are critical to visibility on the platform, such as eBay,” he says.

“Filters are very important in all markets because people don’t want to waste time looking for products. Shoppers literally demand results in seconds and use filters to drill down into specific options. I am. “

Falconer says it depends heavily on the success of the vaccine and its pandemic and economic implications.

“But as people’s shopping habits change irreversibly, we anticipate that the online boom will continue, and we’re looking to expand the use of AI assistance, improve site search, personalize the shopping experience, and mobile phone shopping. A big shift is also expected. “He says.

Optiseller is an e-commerce data platform for over 35,000 online retailers in more than 40 countries.