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Beware the rise of ‘ghost jobs’ — fake job openings with no intent to hire

Publishing false information pays off A survey of more than 1,600 hiring managers conducted by ResumeBuilder this year shed further light on the ghost job phenomenon. According to the survey, more than 80% of recruiters said they posted jobs without intending to fill them, and 41% indicated that more than half of the jobs were fake. Of tech companies, 40% posted fake jobs in the past year, and 79% of those still had active ads. The fake ads cover all job levels: entry-level (63%), midlevel (68%), senior-level (53%), and executive (45%). The most common outlets for this disinformation are company websites (72%), LinkedIn (70%), ZipRecruiter (58%), Indeed (49%), and Glassdoor (48%). Most of the phantom listings remain active for a month (31%), a few weeks (28%), and in some cases, a year or more (9%). Recruiters also declared reasons for these actions, and the spectrum is much wider than one might assume: source

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Customer centricity: How Mashreq Bank is placing its customers at the forefront of its operations

As we expand our retail and corporate presence across the Middle East, Asia, and Africa, data residency compliance is a key focus. We are adopting Private Cloud Technology to meet these needs, with Oracle Exadata Cloud at Customer (ExaCC) being a pivotal technology solution for our database workload. At Mashreq, we are redefining traditional banking by always placing our customers at the forefront of our operations. Our commitment to being a challenger bank drives us to offer innovative, digital-first solutions like Mashreq Neo and Neo NXT, which provide unmatched convenience and efficiency. Moreover, our Wholesale Banking division is crucial in delivering customized solutions to our corporate clients, further establishing our position as a leading bank in the region. Q. What are the different kinds of technology that Mashreq has been investing in to upgrade its banking system and services in recent years? How is the progress of implementing a digital core banking system to accommodate Internet banking payment services and digital payments at Mashreq at the moment? source

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‘Tis the season to innovate: Optimizing your contact center for the holidays

Contact center traffic grows exponentially during the holidays, but not every customer interaction is great. Wait times become longer, agents get overwhelmed, seasonal hires are often undertrained, and overburdened systems slowdown, frustrating customers during an already hectic time.     Contact center innovation is crucial not just for succeeding during the holidays, converting new customers into loyal ones for the new year, but for ongoing success in a rapidly changing landscape. As your organization gears up for peak profit season, what kind of CX enhancements will boost performance and win customer loyalty?  Integrate digital channels to provide a seamless and consistent customer experience. Be honest: do your customers have to repeat themselves across multiple touchpoints and juggle different channels without clear direction?  Consider these service scenarios: A customer contacts support via chat about an issue. They follow up by calling the contact center only to find the agent has no record of the previous conversation, requiring them to repeat themselves. A customer orders a product online and receives an email confirmation. When the product is delayed, they receive no notification. They call the contact center only to find out the product has been on backorder, fueling frustration.  Fragmented digital experiences make customers run, whereas customers are willing to spend more with brands that provide a seamless experience across all points of contact. CX success hinges on connecting everything – voice, video, chat, messaging, and more – to deliver effortless experiences for customers and employees at every touchpoint.  Deepen your approach with customer journey orchestration. Customer journey orchestration goes beyond simply mapping touchpoints. It involves strategically coordinating every interaction a customer has with your brand to ensure consistency and relevance at every stage.  Empower agents with a single source of truth to improve and accelerate outcomes.  Outdated agent tools can’t meet the demands of today’s customer experience landscape, especially during the demanding holiday season.  What you need is a cutting-edge, unified WebRTC desktop. Accessible from anywhere, this intuitive desktop simplifies the recruitment, hiring, and training of seasonal staff all while ensuring a consistent and seamless user experience. Simplify information searching with the ability to aggregate data from various sources including CRM systems and third-party apps, streamlining interactions and making life easier for your agents. Empower your team to focus on what matters most. With a more efficient setup, they can significantly reduce call handling times and boost overall productivity. Enable your agents to juggle multiple interactions at once, directly improving KPIs with better service delivery. Equip your agents with a 360-degree view of all interactions across all systems – cloud and on-premises – for more informed responses (a.k.a. more satisfied customers). Design a desktop layout that fits your agents’ unique needs, optimizing their workflow. Unlock even more potential by fostering employee connectedness. Bring together teams, resources, and insights to supercharge contact center performance and even better customer experiences. Leverage AI to enhance call management and customer insights From workflow automation to performance monitoring and insights, AI is your not-so-secret weapon for streamlining operations and gaining a comprehensive customer view.  Here are four ways to put AI to work this holiday season: AI Noise Removal: Ensure crystal-clear communication regardless of where conversations take place. Deliver clear, crisp call recordings with near-perfect transcripts.  Elevate customers’ experiences by delivering outstanding call quality regardless of where agents are working.  Cut through the noise (literally) to resolve customer issues faster. AI-Powered Workforce Engagement: Enhance agent effectiveness and customer interactions from a single desktop view. Empower agents with tools for live monitoring, keyword spotting, sentiment analysis, and more to better assist customers. Monitor real-time call progress and step in when needed to provide support. Use AI-generated word clouds to identify hot topics, key trends, and customer sentiment insights. Virtual Agents: Scale your support capabilities effortlessly while maintaining quality service. Use natural language tools to replicate a live-agent experience; provide intelligent self-help and seamlessly escalate calls to live agents when needed. Send call context and history with all escalations, plus have your VA mine agent-led conversations – providing ongoing suggestions and fetching relevant information throughout. Make customers want to stick with your brand year-round Integrate these CX enhancements fast, securely, and cost-efficiently with Avaya Experience Platform. Harness innovation in time for the holidays without disrupting operations. See how. source

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Banks bet on AI to deliver digital efficiencies

Transactional use cases: Three out of five (61%) banks use the technology for transactional use cases such as credit analysis, portfolio management, risk assessment, legal contracts, offers, tenders, and pitch documents. Employee productivity: In 55% of banks, gen AI supports employees, for example in the form of assistants. Marketing and customer service: Nearly half (49%) of bankers surveyed said they use gen AI within their marketing or customer service operations. Digital transformation harder than ever Despite that emphasis on making the most of AI, banks continue to struggle with digital transformation. Depending on how far banks are developed in the areas of customer leadership and operational leadership, the study’s authors divided the banks surveyed into four groups. The proportion of “transformation leaders” — the most advanced group — has halved to 11% compared to 2022, while the proportion of “slow starters” has increased from 57% to 66% over that two-year period. Many banking executives said regulatory challenges, lack of operational flexibility, and outdated technologies were the biggest obstacles to their organization’s digital transformation over the past 12 months. In addition, budget constraints were cited as an obstacle by 32% of executives. That budget environment is not only influencing the progress of banks’ digital journeys, but even dictating their direction. According to the study’s authors, two years ago the most important goals of managers were: improving customer experience, increasing profits through new products and services, and increasing sales of existing products. source

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Microsoft and Atom Computing claim breakthrough in reliable quantum computing

However, physical qubits are prone to errors caused by environmental noise, hardware imperfections, and quantum decoherence. To address these challenges, multiple physical qubits are combined to form logical qubits, which leverage quantum error-correction techniques to detect and mitigate errors during computation. Logical qubits play a critical role in enabling reliable quantum computing, as they provide the stability and precision necessary for performing complex algorithms and achieving practical quantum advantage in real-world applications. “Error correction, stability, and scalability are crucial for reliable quantum computations to address real-world applications, and logical qubits are more stable and less error-prone than physical qubits,” said Charlie Dai, VP, principal analyst at Forrester. “This achievement demonstrates substantial progress in such direction towards quantum advantage.” Neutral-atom qubits as the foundation Atom Computing uses neutral atoms manipulated by laser pulses to store and process quantum information. According to the companies, this design provides advantages over other qubit technologies, including scalability and reduced noise sensitivity, which are critical for error correction. Microsoft’s qubit-virtualization system builds on these physical qubits to create logical ones, enabling more stable quantum operations. “Reliable quantum computing requires qubits that can detect and correct errors during computations,” the company noted in a blog post. source

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Map an AI strategy that’s yours, not SAP’s

As enthusiasm for AI and generative AI mounts, creating a winning AI strategy to help reduce operating costs and increase efficiency is easily topping the priority list for IT executives. There’s little question businesses are ready to reap the rewards of AI. Gartner projects that spending on AI software will grow to $297.9 billion by 2027, with overall market growth accelerating from 17.8% to 20.4% in the same timeframe. In particular, spending on generative AI will surge from 8% of all AI software spending in 2023 to 35% by 2027, Gartner predicts.1 No surprise then that SAP, along with other leading ERP vendors, is touting its AI capabilities. But many features — for example, the Joule AI copilot — are included only with the latest cloud solutions such as SAP S/4HANA Cloud and the RISE with SAP and GROW with SAP programs. Moreover, many current and future AI innovations will only be accessible with the premium plus package that incurs added fees. While the SAP S/4HANA Cloud premium plus package advertises AI innovations, they aren’t a precise match for all enterprises, much less reflective of AI needs outside of the core SAP digital backbone. The fact is, there are other options to consider — ones that better leverage AI investments across the enterprise, bridging applications, databases and broad business processes. Further, they don’t involve costly upgrades. “You don’t want to upgrade to SAP S/4HANA because AI is being dangled for the future,” says Scott Hays, senior director of product marketing at Rimini Street, a leading provider of third-party support programs for enterprise platforms like SAP. “You want to keep your options open to achieve innovation faster.” An alternative approach to innovation Rather than migrating to cloud platforms before there’s an ROI-based business justification, organizations are turning to third-party support by Rimini Street to keep their on-premises core ERP systems viable while accelerating innovation around the edges, particularly with AI. “Marching to the vendor’s AI beat can lead you to getting trapped on an upgrade treadmill where the vendor holds its hand on the speed button,” says Hays. “You may end up spending more cycles and resources upgrading rather than innovating. You may wind up far behind the competition because all you’ve been focusing on is upgrading rather than putting your people, time and money to work where it matters most for the business.” Nexen Corporation, a South Korea-based rubber products manufacturer, is one of Rimini Street’s SAP clients that has taken this strategy to heart — and is winning the AI game. Extending the life of its SAP ECC 6 platform by choosing Rimini Support™ for SAP, Nexen is taking the savings and team focus to new heights by investing in IoT and AI/ML projects for business growth. For IT leaders looking to achieve the same type of success, Hays has a few recommendations: Take an enterprise-wide approach to AI data, processes and tools. The primary ingredient of impactful AI is data, and not all relevant data will be found in the ERP platform. Organizations need a broader data strategy to fuel AI, which includes embracing holistic data hygiene and governance strategies. “You want AI to act on behalf of the enterprise, not just capabilities in a single ERP system,” Hays says. Don’t count on a single vendor to deliver the AI capabilities you need. A plethora of AI tools are already on the market, from open-source options to capabilities offered by internet giants like Amazon, Google and Microsoft. Don’t restrict your options to what’s offered in a single vendor ecosystem or, worse, to promises of what’s to come. Such an approach is limiting and increases the likelihood that crucial capabilities may be implemented too late to deliver maximum business impact. Beware of escalating AI costs for data storage and computing power. AI has an insatiable appetite for data, which means computing and data storage costs can escalate rapidly. By abdicating those decisions to the ERP vendor, enterprises essentially give up control over their own IT landscape and ongoing operational costs. “You need to take full ownership of the data you choose to include in your AI applications,” Hays advises. “It’s important to make ROI-based decisions on an individual feature basis and have full control over where AI is used.” To learn more about how Rimini Street can help you control your AI destiny, visit: https://www.riministreet.com/solutions/sap/ 1 Gartner – Invest Implications: Forecast Analysis: Artificial Intelligence Software, 2023-2027, Worldwide, 9 November 2023 – ID G00805570   source

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Microsoft partners with industry leaders to offer vertical SLMs

Microsoft will also be offering CaLLM Edge, an automotive-specific, embedded SLM developed by Cerence. CaLLM Edge enables drivers to control functions such as navigation and climate control, and is designed for use in conditions where vehicles might have limited or no cloud connectivity, like remote areas. Rockwell Automation is adding FT Optix Food & Beverage to the Azure AI catalog as well. This SLM helps frontline workers in manufacturing troubleshoot food and beverage assets. It provides factory floor workers and engineers with recommendations, explanations, and knowledge about specific manufacturing processes, machines, and inputs. Two addition manufacturing-aligned SLMs have also been announced, including a co-pilot for Siemens Digital Industries Software’s NX X industrial design software. The SLM enables users to ask natural language questions, access detailed technical insights, and streamline complex design tasks in an effort to streamline complex tasks prone to human error. source

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The convergence of tech and service: Are you ready for the next evolution in service supply chain management?

As industries continue to evolve, the integration of digital technologies to streamline service processes is no longer a luxury—it’s a necessity. In today’s digital age, automation, the Internet of Things (IoT), and artificial intelligence (AI) have moved from supporting roles to driving fundamental shifts across industries. In today’s hyper-competitive environment, organizations are harnessing technology to innovate and maintain relevance. A key advancement lies in the convergence of services and technology, designed to capture, organize, and share critical information in real time. This convergence enhances decision-making and sparks innovation across the enterprise. In this landscape, knowledge becomes a strategic asset, and with the right tools, it fuels continuous improvement and future-ready business strategies. Smart service transformation The future of the service supply chain lies at the intersection of technology, services, processes, and people, creating a connected environment where each element works together to drive greater value. At the heart of this transformation is data and analytics, enabling organizations to extract meaningful insights from vast amounts of information. By harnessing this data effectively, businesses can unlock new opportunities, drive innovation in service delivery, and enhance both operational efficiency and the customer experience. This shift goes beyond trend—it’s a reimagining of how business process’ function, with seamless collaboration and interconnected systems providing clear, actionable insights. With this connectivity, decision-makers can move from reactive problem-solving to proactive strategies—anticipating challenges, seizing opportunities, and consistently exceeding customer expectations. For tech-forward service supply chain influencers and innovation-driven service leaders, these insights are game-changers. The ability to leverage data, analytics, and automation is now essential to unlocking the full potential of their supply chains. A few key insights to keep in mind: Unlocking the power of data and analyticsThe potential of data and insights cannot be overstated. Access to previously unknown data, combined with advanced analytics, reshapes not only how we think but also how we act. Data becomes a strategic asset, driving innovation and continuous improvement. With real-time data sharing and decision-making enabled by converging services and technology, organizations can achieve proactive inventory reallocation strategies and reduce unnecessary touches, thereby driving proactive decision-making across the service supply chain ecosystem. Merging data and business-impacting insights for informed decision-makingWhen data and analytics are integrated across all business functions, momentum is created. This synergy, enriched by cohesive visibility across disparate and siloed processes and activities, drives informed decision-making that delivers impactful results and aligns with overarching business goals. The use of AI-based decision-making not only strengthens this combination but also ensures that strategic initiatives contribute to reducing supply chain vendors and enhancing overall operational efficiency. Leveraging digital technology and automation for long-term successDigital technology and automation are no longer optional; they are essential for businesses seeking to thrive in a fast-evolving marketplace. Purpose-driven solutions enable organizations to shape their long-term success by increasing efficiency and positioning themselves to meet future demands. By merging services and technology, businesses can ensure that data is continuously leveraged as a strategic asset to foster continuous improvement and innovation. This approach supports proactive, data-driven decisions that solidify the organization’s readiness for future challenges. As service supply chains evolve, organizations that embrace the right technologies and insights will be positioned not just to adapt but to lead—unlocking new opportunities, driving continuous improvement, and delivering lasting value in a dynamic, ever-changing market. To learn more, visit us here. source

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