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Tag: automation

  • Take These 5 Steps to Future-Proof Your Business | Entrepreneur

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    Small businesses are facing strong headwinds in today’s dynamic business environment. Technology is evolving faster than entrepreneurs can keep up with, market and consumer demands are constantly changing, and there seems to be a new economic or geopolitical disruption every week. Surviving in this landscape requires businesses to have robust strategies and systems in place while simultaneously remaining nimble. This pressure is exceedingly difficult to tackle as the business grows.

    To thrive in this volatile business landscape, a comprehensive and resilient strategy is absolutely essential. This involves establishing robust frameworks that allow your business to absorb shocks and swiftly recover from constant change. With technological advancements, particularly AI, businesses must proactively adapt their operations and integrate new tools to avoid being outpaced by agile competitors. Developing a strategy that ensures core functions remain stable under pressure while aligning with your personal and professional vision is paramount for long-term success.

    Related: Follow These 7 Business Strategies to Future-Proof Your Business

    1. Audit and streamline operational processes

    The foundational step to future-proofing your business is to have a deep understanding of your business’s operational processes. The good news here is that for startup entrepreneurs, you were likely involved in their creation. The bad news is that it can be difficult to spot inefficiencies because of internal biases, which is why it’s important to engage other members of your team to participate in the process.

    Start by mapping out all of your critical business processes. Having clearly documented processes allows your business to function like a well-oiled machine. It ensures that everyone is on the same page and working together. As you go through this exercise, look for opportunities to improve tasks that are repetitive, time-consuming and prone to human error. By formalizing your processes, you are future-proofing from the standpoint of reducing dependency on the founder and ensuring critical operations aren’t reliant on a single person.

    2. Leverage technology for automation

    Once you have clearly documented processes, you can strategically leverage technology, including AI, to automate repetitive tasks and drive efficiency. This entails developing a technology roadmap to identify gaps, research emerging solutions and plan seamless integration.

    It’s important to prioritize solutions that solve specific problems and integrate smoothly, such as AI-powered chatbots for customer interactions, predictive analytics for inventory and automation for administrative tasks. Thoughtful implementation can boost efficiency, minimize errors and free your team for strategic work.

    In addition, automation should generate actionable data, allowing your team to identify areas for continuous improvement and proactively spot future disruptions.

    Related: 90% of Your Business Could Be Automated With Just These 4 Tools

    3. Build a culture of delegation

    While technology provides powerful tools, a business cannot truly scale if decisions and critical tasks consistently bottleneck with the business owner. This is why a pivotal step in future-proofing involves actively building a culture of delegation and empowerment within your team. As a business owner, it’s critical to start systematically delegating tasks and responsibilities by providing clear guidelines, comprehensive training and the necessary authority for team members to succeed independently.

    The ultimate goal is to foster an environment where employees are encouraged to take ownership, proactively solve problems and contribute ideas. From a future-proofing perspective, a strong, empowered team is fully capable of adapting and performing effectively even in your absence.

    4. Develop a talent strategy

    Your team is your greatest asset. A solid future-proofing strategy involves more than just hiring. It means actively attracting, developing and retaining adaptable talent, skilled in new technologies. For your existing team, be sure to invest in ongoing training and skill development to ensure their capabilities keep pace with technological advancements and market demands.

    A skilled and adaptable workforce is essential for navigating change, implementing new strategies and embracing new tools. A proactive talent strategy ensures that your team is prepared to meet future demands and leverage emerging technologies effectively.

    5. Foster a mindset of continuous innovation

    To truly future-proof your business, entrepreneurs should encourage a mindset of continuous improvement and innovation. You can do this by encouraging experimentation and allowing your team to make small mistakes and learn from failures. By building agility into your operational planning and decision-making, you are setting up the team to be nimble when unforeseen market challenges arise. Having a culture that embraces change and actively seeks new ideas will enable you to better identify and capitalize on future trends, rather than being overwhelmed.

    Related: The Power of Continuous Innovation — and 3 Easy Ways Your Company Can Achieve It

    There is a lot of uncertainty about the future. With rapid changes due to technology and other factors, it’s impossible to predict the resources, skills and strategies businesses will need to survive. It’s critical for every entrepreneur to take the time to carefully consider what they can do to strengthen the resilience of their businesses and position themselves to take advantage of new and emerging opportunities.

    Small businesses are facing strong headwinds in today’s dynamic business environment. Technology is evolving faster than entrepreneurs can keep up with, market and consumer demands are constantly changing, and there seems to be a new economic or geopolitical disruption every week. Surviving in this landscape requires businesses to have robust strategies and systems in place while simultaneously remaining nimble. This pressure is exceedingly difficult to tackle as the business grows.

    To thrive in this volatile business landscape, a comprehensive and resilient strategy is absolutely essential. This involves establishing robust frameworks that allow your business to absorb shocks and swiftly recover from constant change. With technological advancements, particularly AI, businesses must proactively adapt their operations and integrate new tools to avoid being outpaced by agile competitors. Developing a strategy that ensures core functions remain stable under pressure while aligning with your personal and professional vision is paramount for long-term success.

    Related: Follow These 7 Business Strategies to Future-Proof Your Business

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    Nicholas Leighton

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  • Gant Interactive Assistant (GIA) Redefines Email Support for Corporate Travelers

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    BLOOMINGTON, Ind., August 12, 2025 (Newswire.com)
    –
    Gant Travel unveiled its newest AI-powered innovation, Gant Interactive Assistant (GIA), designed to transform email-based travel support. GIA delivers near real-time responses-often in under three minutes-while ensuring every interaction meets corporate travel policy and reflects each traveler’s personal preferences.

    Faster, Smarter, and Always Compliant
    With GIA, travelers can email requests for flights, hotels, or past invoices and receive a complete, compliant response almost instantly. GIA’s booking recommendations automatically align with corporate travel policies, removing compliance headaches without limiting choice. For invoice requests, GIA pulls records directly from past transactions – eliminating the back-and-forth of traditional processes.

    “With GIA, we’re not just meeting the needs of today’s business travelers, we’re setting a new benchmark for fast, policy-safe service in our industry,” said Jim Conner, Gant’s Director of Operations. “It’s a win for travelers, travel managers, and the teams supporting them.”

    Backed by New Distribution Capability (NDC) content from 20 airlines, GIA delivers rich booking options and seamless fulfillment. Over 400 Gant accounts currently have access to GIA, with full rollout expected by the end of September. All new accounts will have GIA enabled at implementation, and bookings made via GIA are priced at the same rate as online transactions.

    A Step Toward the Future of Corporate Travel
    GIA is part of Gant Travel’s larger vision to elevate the corporate travel experience through automation and AI. Alongside the TripCircuit booking platform, NDC-enabled air content, Email Buddy, and Hotel Concierge, Gant is building an intelligent, connected travel ecosystem from start to finish.

    No humans were replaced in the making of GIA – but thanks to it, a few now have time for a second cup of coffee.

    About Gant Travel
    Gant Travel is a forward-thinking travel management company that blends personalized service with cutting-edge technology to create smarter travel solutions for modern businesses. Learn more at www.ganttravel.com or email sales@ganttravel.com.

    Contact Information

    Sales Team
    sales@ganttravel.com

    Ellie Seybold
    Digital Content and Marketing Specialist
    ellie.seybold@ganttravel.com

    Source: Gant Travel

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  • Gant Travel Unveils Hotel Personalization Platform to Maximize Traveler Relevance and Revenue Recovery

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    BLOOMINGTON, Ind., July 17, 2025 (Newswire.com)
    –
    Gant Travel, a trailblazer in modern corporate travel solutions, has launched a powerful new automated personalization tool designed to enhance the traveler experience and capture unrealized hotel bookings. By analyzing transactional and behavioral data across the individual, company, and broader client base, Gant now delivers hyper-targeted hotel offers with perfect timing and precision.

    “Too often, hotel options are served generically,” said Patrick Linnihan, CEO of Gant Travel. “We’ve built a system that speaks to the traveler’s history, their company’s travel patterns and behavior. It’s personalization with purpose. Travelers are responding positively, since we launched this automation last year we have seen an 2% increase in hotel attachments.”

    This innovation from Gant, named simply “Hotel Concierge,” addresses a long-standing challenge in the travel industry: the lost opportunity when travelers skip hotel bookings at the point of sale. Gant’s new solution leverages personal history, organizational preferences and policy, and peer behavior to drive intelligent hotel recommendations.

    By meeting travelers with relevant options at the right moment-after flights are booked but before the trip is finalized-Hotel Concierge enables companies to increase hotel attachment rates without relying on generic reminders or static content. Right now, for hundreds of Gant accounts, when a traveler books a flight on an online booking tool without a hotel, Gant automatically offers five personalized hotel recommendations to match their trip via email.

    With this system, travel managers gain improved hotel compliance and supplier utilization, while travelers enjoy smarter, more relevant suggestions-without the clutter. The result is a more intuitive, conversion-optimized booking experience that feels effortless yet personal.

    Gant’s approach integrates seamlessly into existing workflows, requiring no new app downloads or user behaviors.

    About Gant Travel

    Gant Travel is a forward-thinking travel management company that blends personalized service with cutting-edge technology to create smarter travel solutions for modern businesses. Learn more at www.ganttravel.com.

    Source: Gant Travel

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  • Upgrade Your ChatGPT and Automation Skill Set | Entrepreneur

    Upgrade Your ChatGPT and Automation Skill Set | Entrepreneur

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    Disclosure: Our goal is to feature products and services that we think you’ll find interesting and useful. If you purchase them, Entrepreneur may get a small share of the revenue from the sale from our commerce partners.

    Understanding and leveraging AI can be a game-changer for almost any career. If you’d like to tug that line, learning from home can be a game changer.

    For a limited time, this ChatGPT & Automation E-Degree is available for just $24.97—a fraction of the usual $790 price tag. With 25 hours of immersive content across 12 expert-led courses, this e-degree will help you master powerful AI tools, boost efficiency, and gain valuable insights that can be applied directly to your work.

    The course content is tailored specifically for business professionals who want to enhance their AI skills. Through hands-on modules, you’ll explore real-world applications, learn to streamline business processes and discover how to automate tasks to save time and resources.

    In addition, you’ll gain experience using more than 20 essential AI tools that can be customized to fit unique industry demands, making this course invaluable for professionals in marketing, business, and coding.

    Each course within this e-degree offers tools and techniques that can be applied immediately to improve productivity and effectiveness. You’ll explore data visualization techniques, learn to build engaging, AI-powered narratives, and enhance your communication skills by mastering ChatGPT’s conversational abilities. By the end, you’ll be well-versed in using automation to streamline workflows, making a real impact on your daily tasks and projects.

    AI and automation are shaping the future of business, and understanding these technologies is quickly becoming essential. This e-degree provides knowledge of AI fundamentals and offers useful insight into customization, allowing you to tailor AI tools like ChatGPT to meet your specific professional needs.

    Whether you want to improve client communication, drive innovation, or streamline creativity or data handling, this e-degree provides a foundation to thrive in a digitally advanced world.

    Don’t miss the ChatGPT & Automation E-Degree while it’s available for just $24.97 (reg. $790) through November 3.

    ChatGPT & Automation E-Degree – $24.97

    Get It Here

    StackSocial prices subject to change.

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    StackCommerce

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  • 2 million license plates scanned monthly by Denver’s new police cameras Denver’s new Flock cameras scan 2 million license plates a month

    2 million license plates scanned monthly by Denver’s new police cameras Denver’s new Flock cameras scan 2 million license plates a month

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    West Colfax Avenue at Irving Street, July 12, 2023.

    Kevin J. Beaty/Denverite

    Denver Police Department’s new network of license plate readers scanned vehicles more than 2 million times in the last month, according to new data from the department.

    DPD launched the system of 95 surveillance cameras throughout the city in May 2024. Today, the department published a dashboard with basic data on the system for the public.

    Among the 2,072,000 vehicles detected in the last 30 days, the system reported about 86,000 hits to a “hotlist,” often because the plate was for a stolen car. The system looks for vehicles tagged in national and state-level crime databases, as well as the Amber Alert system for missing and exploited children.

    Law enforcement officers ran about 1,400 searches on the Denver system in the last month.

    The system used by DPD is made by Flock Safety, a technology company that has become one of the most popular in the niche for both police departments and private homeowners associations. The company describes its technology as a “holistic solution to crime.” It has drawn criticism from civil rights and anti-surveillance advocates.

    DPD says that the system has been effective. Officers have used the system in the arrests of 142 crime suspects and the recovery of about 100 stolen vehicles, as well as some weapons.

    This year has seen a significant decrease of motor vehicle thefts, which police attributed in part to the system — but that trend also began before the system was installed in May.

    Eventually, the number of cameras could grow to 111 around Denver. The system photographs license plates but doesn’t produce any information about drivers, passengers, or other people, according to Flock. The data is “never sold to 3rd parties” and is “used for law enforcement purposes only,” according to Flock.

    The cameras were planned for some of the city’s busiest roads, like  Federal Boulevard, Alameda Avenue and Speer Boulevard — and especially Colfax Avenue, 9News reported.

    DPD didn’t immediately respond to questions about the cost of the system.

    Cities including Arvada, Aurora, Brighton, Castle Rock, Commerce City, Edgewater, Erie, Glendale, Lakewood, Northglenn, Thornton and Wheat Ridge have installed (or plan to install) similar systems, according to Denver7. 

    The American Civil Liberties Union has raised concerns about the scanners, saying that they were contributing to a “giant surveillance network” that centralizes data and could enable “abuse by government,” including tracking political dissidents.

    “We have long had concerns about the dangers posed by hybrid public-private surveillance practices — but Flock threatens to take that to a new level,” the ACLU wrote in 2022.

    Those kinds of surveillance concerns led Elbert County to cancel its contract with Flock, the Elbert County News reported.

    Numerous other law-enforcement agencies around Colorado have access to the Denver system’s data. But the system is prohibited for use in immigrant enforcement, traffic enforcement, personal use, and more, according to Flock.

    Questions or comments? Let us know at [email protected].

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  • Business Owners are Batting 1,000 With This All-in-One Management Hub | Entrepreneur

    Business Owners are Batting 1,000 With This All-in-One Management Hub | Entrepreneur

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    Disclosure: Our goal is to feature products and services that we think you’ll find interesting and useful. If you purchase them, Entrepreneur may get a small share of the revenue from the sale from our commerce partners.

    Running a small business is no small feat. As a business owner, you’re not just wearing one hat—you’re wearing all of them. You’re the HR department, the payroll processor, the scheduler, and often the team motivator. It’s a lot of work that’s bound to be stressful. Each day brings a new challenge, whether it’s dealing with last-minute schedule changes, tracking employee hours, or ensuring payroll is accurate and on time, and it’s all on your shoulders. It’s a small wonder that 20% of new business owners quit in their first year.

    Managing these tasks manually can quickly become overwhelming, leaving little room for focusing on what truly matters: growing your business, supporting your team, and supporting yourself. It’s why more than half of all business owners end up working more than 50 hours a week.

    Scheduling is one of the most complex puzzles you have to solve. It’s the much-maligned gritty everyday task of an entrepreneur, but it’s also one of your most direct ways of supporting and managing your team and your time. Spreadsheets and paper schedules might work at first, but as your team grows, so does the chaos.

    Tracking employee hours is another time-consuming task. If you rely on paper timesheets or old-fashioned punch clocks, mistakes are bound to happen, leading to payroll discrepancies that frustrate your employees and eat into your profits.

    Communication within your team is yet another hurdle. With everyone juggling different schedules and responsibilities, keeping everyone informed and engaged is easier said than done. Group texts and emails can easily get lost in the shuffle, especially when you’re trying to communicate important updates to a team that’s always on the move.

    It’s in the face of these daily challenges that many small business owners begin to seek out solutions—tools that can simplify their workload and give them back some of the time they desperately need. That’s where Homebase steps up to bat. Designed specifically for small businesses, Homebase addresses these pain points by bringing everything you need to manage your team into one intuitive app.

    What does Homebase do?

    Homebase is designed to tackle the everyday challenges that small business owners face, turning what can often feel like an overwhelming workload into a streamlined, manageable process that still leaves you plenty of room for your own individual management style.

    Simplified Scheduling

    Homebase centralizes scheduling, allowing you to build, adjust, and share schedules effortlessly. It also handles shift swaps and time-off requests, keeping everyone informed and reducing last-minute chaos.

    Accurate Time Tracking

    Turn any device into a time clock with Homebase, which automatically tracks hours, breaks, and overtime for smoother payroll processing and fewer errors.

    Streamlined Payroll

    Homebase automates payroll by converting timesheets into wages and taxes, handling direct deposits, and filing taxes, saving you time and ensuring timely, accurate payments.

    Efficient Team Communication

    Homebase unifies team communication, making it easy to send messages, share updates, and set reminders—all in one place, fostering a connected, efficient workforce.

    Enhanced Employee Management

    Beyond scheduling and payroll, Homebase supports hiring, onboarding, and performance tracking while offering perks like early wage access and financial planning tools.

    Compliance and HR Support

    Homebase simplifies compliance with labor laws, providing HR tools and access to certified advisors to help manage regulatory requirements and protect your business.

    In essence, Homebase is designed to put routine tasks on autopilot, allowing you to focus on what really matters: growing your business and supporting your team. And with less time spent on administrative tasks, you can get back to doing what you love: running your business, watching it thrive, and going home at a reasonable hour. That’s why it’s worth it to sign up for a 14-day trial at joinhomebase.com.

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    StackCommerce

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  • 3 Steps to Unlock Value Through Automation in Cannabis Operations – Cannabis Business Executive – Cannabis and Marijuana industry news

    3 Steps to Unlock Value Through Automation in Cannabis Operations – Cannabis Business Executive – Cannabis and Marijuana industry news

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    3 Steps to Unlock Value Through Automation in Cannabis Operations – Cannabis Business Executive – Cannabis and Marijuana industry news





























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    Andrew Wells

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  • 70% of Citizens applications will be cloud-based by 2024 | Bank Automation News

    70% of Citizens applications will be cloud-based by 2024 | Bank Automation News

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    Citizens Bank is deploying generative AI and migrating operations to the cloud as part of its cost-saving and efficiency measures.  The bank reported that 70% of its applications will be on the cloud by the end of 2024 and it aims to deploy generative AI to increase efficiencies at its call centers. “We have launched […]

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    Vaidik Trivedi

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  • Citi streamlines commercial lending with the help of AI

    Citi streamlines commercial lending with the help of AI

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    The partnership between Citigroup and Numerated will help automate transferring important financial data from borrowers to the bank’s own systems. The transition should make the underwriting and data analysis process more efficient.

    David Paul Morris/Bloomberg

    Citigroup is partnering with the Boston-based digital lending fintech Numerated to help streamline the document organization process across the megabank’s enterprise lending operations.

    Financial spreading is the process of transferring information from a borrower’s balance sheet into an institution’s financial analysis spreadsheet to spot trends and better predict future financial statements. It’s a critical part of any underwriting decision — and why Citi has been exploring the addition of technology to assist with this for many years. 

    “In a way, it’s a giant mapping exercise to ingest all the historical financial data on thousands of companies and automate future updates as they become available,” said Katya Chupryna, a director at Citi. “Converting this tremendous trove of information from disparate sources in diverse formats from unstructured to structured creates uniformity and opens up endless opportunities for immediate and future interaction with the resulting datasets.”

    1/3

    Example of how Numerated’s platform can extract data from borrower documents and provide underwriters with summaries. (Numerated)

    2/3

    Multipage documents are stored in Numerated’s platform for underwriters to verify and review. (Numerated)

    3/3

    Numerated’s artificial intelligence-driven financial spreading automation tools can extract data from the documents and categorize it on the platform. (Numerated.)

    After Numerated’s commercial lending platform receives credit documents from Citi’s borrowers through the bank’s customer-facing systems, the fintech’s artificial intelligence-driven automation tools help compile the statements like tax filings and balance sheets into a singular dashboard accompanied with ratios on liquidity, credit and more. 

    Underwriters can conduct credit analyses and other reviews of their own within the platform after the data has been validated, before exporting the results to other departments within the bank.

    “Through digitization of labor-intensive processes with the help of machine learning, financial institutions can augment manual processes to complete tasks more efficiently and make faster and more accurate decisions with better insights,” Chupryna said. The bank also invested in Numerated through its Markets Strategic Investments division.

    This initiative is the latest in a wave of tech adoptions by Citi, which has invested in firms like the California-based real-time analytics platform StarTree and Ateria AI‘s digital documentation platform for drafting and negotiation of financial contracts.

    AI adoption within the financial services space has been gearing up in 2024. According to research released in March by Arizent, American Banker’s parent company, 36% of respondents said they were exploring tech providers throughout the industry and 34% held that they were attending industry conferences or events on AI to better understand different use cases.

    One such institution that has built out new tools is the Royal Bank of Canada. RBC has been working with the AI-powered wealth management platform TIFIN AG through its U.S. wealth management division since last August to outfit its advisors with an AI-powered insights tool for identifying client leads.

    Other examples include the $3.8 billion-asset Citizens First Bank in The Villages, Florida, which has partnered with the Tennessee-based risk management software firm Ncontracts for more than five years and is exploring the firm’s new Ntelligent Contracts Assistant.

    Experts say the growing interest among banks and credit unions in lending technology is largely “driven by the integration of diverse alternative data into their decision-making processes,” according to David Donovan, head of financial services at Publicis Sapient, a global digital consultancy firm.

    “Lenders now consider a variety of data sources such as payment history, bank account data, educational and employment backgrounds,” and more, Donovan said. “These alternative data points complement traditional metrics like credit scores and income, providing a more comprehensive and real-time understanding of an individual’s financial habits.”

    But not all executives are eager to jump into the AI ecosystem. Further findings in the March Arizent report showed that 61% of respondents felt that the technology is evolving too quickly to keep pace with, in addition to a separate 57% saying AI could introduce new ethical concerns or biases into their businesses.

    Ian Benton, senior analyst in digital banking at Javelin Strategy & Research, said that while generative AI used internally for assistance with lending is poised for rapid adoption, consumer-facing applications are less abundant.

    “Hallucinated data and insights, biases, legal compliance and customer expectations of interacting with a human [all] add up to reasons providers should exercise extreme caution before rolling out customer-facing tools using generative AI,” Benton said.

    Other hurdles involve data privacy and security restrictions, legacy system inadequacies and the regulatory differences at the state and federal levels over AI usage, said Rajul Sood, global head of banking at the global research and analytics firm Acuity Knowledge Partners.

    As Citi’s commercial lending experts use the Numerated platform, the bank will continue rolling out the product across its footprint.

    “To see a bank like Citi making a global, very significant investment in automating the ingestion of financial statements using AI is a big deal. … Front office automation using AI is going to change it,” said David O’Malley, president of Numerated.

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    Frank Gargano

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  • Salem students ‘lead the way’ at robotics showcase

    Salem students ‘lead the way’ at robotics showcase

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    SALEM — Collins Middle School seventh-grade robotics students Amelia Meegan and Sam Vietzke captured the Middle School Project Lead the Way Division at the One8 Applied Learning Showcase Friday, May 10, at the Track at New Balance.

    The feat was especially meaningful since the school’s entry into the One8 Showcase, spearheaded by science educator/Robotics Club advisor Gregg Beach, was its first-ever appearance.

    “I just thought it was important that we showed up,” said Beach in a news release. “The process of building, doing the work and showing up was reward enough. I’m not surprised (that we won) because we have so many great students and projects in this school.”

    The One8 Showcase, which included more than 300 schools, is a year-end student STEM showcase for Project Lead The Way, OpenSciEd, PBLWorks, and ST Math schools in Massachusetts for students in grades 5-12. Students shared their applied learning projects with industry professionals and had an opportunity to present to an audience.

    Student teams each had a table and display board on which they described their projects as industry professionals circulated and engaged students, offering verbal and written feedback.

    The Salem robotics students received commemorative One8 Showcase jackets as well as an invitation to the Philips Research Institute in Cambridge for a field trip.

    Amelia and Sam presented their robot MrukBot 9000, named after their beloved assistant principal Shamus Mruk, which was capable of 360 turns and was equipped with a bluetooth speaker, comically playing loops of Mruk’s favorite lines:

    – “What are you doing here?”

    – “Are you supposed to be here?”

    – “Where’s your pass?”

    – “Get back to class!”

    According to Sam, Amelia builds while he codes. “It took me about two days to code,” he said. “We know there were going to be other robots, but we were actually one of very few.”

    Success at the One8 Showcase has inspired the two to keep tweaking the MrukBot 9000.

    “Our next step is to put a camera on it so we can watch a live feed, basically making it a Roomba,” said Amelia.

    “We want to install an AI vision sensor,” Sam added, something Beach plans to introduce to his robotics class and the after-school Robotics Club.

    Beach noted that Amelia and Sam are also both drama students, which was key to their presentation.

    Seventh-grader Edward Castillo Mesa also attended the One8 Showcase to present his robot, EndGame Chupacabra 3.1, named after the mythical Mexican creature, which he built to battle other robots.

    His robot earned “terrific” feedback from several industry professionals in attendance and he has designs on a new project for the 2025 One8 Showcase: A robot to locate lost hikers.

    “I want to build something that can actually help people,” he said.

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    By News Staff

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  • 5/3rd controlling costs with automation|Bank Automation News

    5/3rd controlling costs with automation|Bank Automation News

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    Fifth Third Bank saved $15 million in the first quarter, partly driven by deploying automation throughout its operations.  “Expenses are well controlled … driven by savings realized through process automation and our focus on value streams,” Chief Executive Tim Spence said during the bank’s first-quarter earnings today. The bank reported noninterest expense, which includes tech […]

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    Vaidik Trivedi

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  • Amazon says a whopping 140 third-party stores in four countries use its Just Walk Out tech

    Amazon says a whopping 140 third-party stores in four countries use its Just Walk Out tech

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    Amazon published a blog post on Wednesday providing an update about its Just Walk Out technology, which it reportedly pulled from its Fresh grocery stores earlier this month. While extolling Just Walk Out’s virtues as a sales pitch to potential retail partners, the article lists a startlingly minuscule number of (non-Amazon) stores using the tech. There are now “more than 140 third-party locations with Just Walk Out technology in the U.S., UK, Australia, and Canada.”

    Mind you, that isn’t the number of companies or retail chains licensing the tech; that’s the total number of locations. Nor is that the tally in one state or even one country. In four countries combined — with a total population of about 465 million — Just Walk Out is being used in “more than 140 third-party locations.”

    On average, that means there’s one third-party Just Walk Out store for every 3.3 million people in those four countries. (They must be busy!) By contrast, there are over one million retail locations in the US, and, as of 2019, Starbucks had 241 locations in New York City alone, and there are over one million

    Amazon had reportedly already planned to remove Just Walk Out tech from its Fresh grocery stores for roughly a year because it was too expensive and complicated for larger retail spaces to run and maintain. The company now pitches its tech as ideal for smaller convenience stores with fewer customers and products — like its own Amazon Go stores, which it has been busy shutting down over the last couple of years.

    A medical workers scans a badge at an Amazon-powered Just Walk Out kiosk in a hospital.

    Amazon

    The company reportedly gutted the team of developers working on Just Walk Out tech earlier this month. (You get one guess as to how the laid-off workers were instructed to leave the office.) As part of recent layoffs from Amazon’s AWS unit and Physical Stores Team, the company allegedly left only “a skeleton crew” to work on the tech moving forward. A skeleton crew to maintain a skeleton sounds about right.

    In fairness, some of those locations are at high-traffic venues. That includes nine merch stores at Seattle’s Lumen Field (home to the Seahawks and Sounders), near Amazon’s headquarters. Delaware North, a large hospitality and entertainment company, has opened “more than a dozen” stores using the tech. Amazon says stores adopting Just Walk Out have reported increased transactions, sales and customer satisfaction.

    Despite the reported gutting of Just Walk Out’s development team, Amazon says it “continues to invent the next generation of this technology to improve the checkout experience for large-format stores.” Its next steps include improving latency for “faster and more reliable receipts,” new algorithms to recognize customer actions and new sensors better.

    If the reports about layoffs are accurate, the handful of remaining Just Walk Out developers will have their work cut out for them.

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    Will Shanklin

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  • Use Apple Shortcuts to Build the Ultimate Daily Digital Journal

    Use Apple Shortcuts to Build the Ultimate Daily Digital Journal

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    I started journaling in 2019. It’s not that I love keeping a journal, exactly. It’s more that I find my brain works better if I spend a little time dumping its contents onto paper every morning. This practice got me through 2020, an extremely difficult year, and I’ve kept it up ever since.

    My journal isn’t advanced. I’ve got a few sections recommended by my therapist from around the time I started—there’s a section I fill in every day with things I’m looking forward to, for example. I use another section to think through what I’m going to eat and other things I’m going to do that day. All of this is straightforward; I just use a template that includes headers for those things.

    But there’s a bit of information I like to gather and include. Each day’s weather, for example. I’ve noticed that I’m often in a bad mood on rainy, gray days, so recording the weather along with my thoughts gives me some helpful context when I’m reviewing entries later. I also like to know what time I wrote my entry, where I was when I wrote it, and—if possible—include a quote of the day or something else to reflect on.

    I could gather all of the above information myself manually, every morning. But I’ve found it’s a lot faster to use Apple Shortcuts for the job. This application, which comes preinstalled on every Mac, iPhone, and iPad, can automatically pull in all kinds of information and format it nicely for my journal. I run a custom automation every morning. Here’s how I built it.

    The Date, Weather, and Location

    Apple via Justin Pot

    Fire up Apple Shortcuts on your device of choice and make a new shortcut. This software can be a little confusing, but don’t worry, I’m going to talk you through everything. In the right column you will see a number of different tiny automations you can run. Drag as many of these as you want to the main column, which is on the left. I like to search for what I’m looking for, but if you prefer, you can manually explore the options to get a sense of what Shortcuts can do.

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  • 60% of KeyBank automation team targets risk | Bank Automation News

    60% of KeyBank automation team targets risk | Bank Automation News

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    NASHVILLE, Tenn. — KeyBank is working to automate as many risk controls as possible as threats continue to tick up.  “Over the last year, we shifted to looking at all of our controls in seeing how many of the controls we can automate or streamline,” Dominic Cugini, chief transformation officer at KeyBank, said at Bank […]

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    Whitney McDonald

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  • Academy Bank’s AI playbook | Bank Automation News

    Academy Bank’s AI playbook | Bank Automation News

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    Academy Bank is investing in AI this year to ensure that its operations are more efficient and more useful for the end user.  “Our top goal for the year is to innovate for success, and AI is really at the center of that,” Chief Executive Paul Holewinski told Bank Automation News.  Academy is owned by […]

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    Whitney McDonald

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  • Driving the Future: AI, Ethics and Jobs in the Age of Automation | Entrepreneur

    Driving the Future: AI, Ethics and Jobs in the Age of Automation | Entrepreneur

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    Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

    In an era when technology dominates the landscape, algorithms wield power far beyond mere computation. The transformative promise of artificial intelligence (AI) lies not solely in its ability to enhance products or streamline services. Of far greater significance is its capacity to deepen our understanding of ourselves as a society and highlight the necessary moral compass amid this transition.

    Related: The Top 4 Most Bankable AI Skills You Need to Succeed in 2024

    AI is a catalyst — orchestrating pivotal revolutions across diverse industries — and the advent of driverless cars stands as a testament. Although autonomous vehicles foretell a future of unprecedented convenience and security, they also unravel a host of societal and ethical dilemmas. Can these machines make morally weighted decisions? And more pressingly, how can we program those decisions in a manner that upholds our collective ethical norms?

    This episode of the Beyond Impossible podcast, with special guest Jonathan Campos of Alto, isn’t just another fireside chat about emerging tech. Instead, Campos unravels the societal and ethical layers evolving alongside driverless technology. However, the realm of AI isn’t merely altering our roadways — it’s reshaping our workplaces. The transformation accentuates another driving concern: jobs. The futuristic promise of AI comes with an undercurrent of anxiety about job losses. In a world preoccupied with competitiveness, AI advancements can appear a double-edged sword. And Campos tackles this challenge head-on.

    Related: This Retiree’s ‘No-Brainer’ Side Hustle Makes More Than $1,000 a Month — and Is About to Grant Him Another Life-Changing Perk

    If Ben Angel’s Beyond Unstoppable lights up your day, please take a moment to rate and review the podcast! This is a great way to support our mission of empowering more individuals like you to supercharge their lives and businesses. What’s more, don’t forget to follow the podcast if you haven’t already. We’re spicing things up with lots of bonus episodes.

    Related: How to Start a ‘Million Dollar’ Morning Routine

    About Beyond Unstoppable

    Hosted by bestselling author Ben Angel, Beyond Unstoppable is a transformative exploration of biology, psychology and technology. Learn from world-renowned experts like Jim Kwik, Amy Porterfield, Mari Smith and Jason Feifer. Dive into advanced AI tools, biohacking, and strategies to make you unstoppable.

    Subscribe to Beyond Unstoppable: Entrepreneur | Apple | Spotify | Google

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  • Citizens’ payments leader to speak at Bank Automation Summit U.S. 2024 | Bank Automation News

    Citizens’ payments leader to speak at Bank Automation Summit U.S. 2024 | Bank Automation News

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    Maria Mason, enterprise product manager at Citizens Bank, will speak at Bank Automation Summit U.S. 2024 about strategies for automating real-time payments (RTP). 

    Bank Automation Summit U.S. 2024 takes place March 18-19 at the Omni Nashville in Nashville, Tenn., and brings together industry experts to discuss innovation in real-time payments, AI, RPA and more. 

    View the full agenda for Bank Automation Summit U.S. 2024 here.  

    Mason will speak Tuesday, March 19, at 3 p.m. CT on the panel, “Strategies for automating real-time payment processes.”

    Courtesy/Citizens

    She joins Minal Gupta, senior vice president of operations at $10.7 billion Star One Credit Union, to discuss how financial institutions can innovate in RTP and select the right technology provider.  

    The $222 billion Citizens Bank continues to innovate within its payment business — including with Citizens Pay, the payments arm of Citizens Bank; it expects to add features such as contactless payments, digital wallets and buy now, pay later capabilities, Christine Roberts, president of Citizens Pay and executive vice president of the bank, previously told BAN. 

    The bank is also looking toward AI to enhance customer experience and drive efficiency, the bank said in its fourth-quarter earnings call last month. 

    In Q4, Citizens reported total revenue of $2 billion, down 10% year over year, and 17,570 full-time employees, down 7% YoY, according to its earnings reports.  

    Learn more and register here for Bank Automation Summit U.S. 2024.



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    Vaidik Trivedi

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  • Get This ChatGPT and Automation E-Degree for $30 | Entrepreneur

    Get This ChatGPT and Automation E-Degree for $30 | Entrepreneur

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    Disclosure: Our goal is to feature products and services that we think you’ll find interesting and useful. If you purchase them, Entrepreneur may get a small share of the revenue from the sale from our commerce partners.

    If you’re not already, it’s important that you learn to leverage the power of ChatGPT, automation, and AI for your business. According to Content at Scale, studies say that more than 80 percent of companies have already adopted AI into their operations. If you are ready to join the masses but unsure how, then this affordable e-learning experience is just for you.

    This ChatGPT & Automation E-Degree is on sale for just $29.99 (reg. $790). This collection of 12 courses and more than 25 hours of content features lectures and breakdowns on how to apply the power of ChatGPT and other automation tools to real-world scenarios.

    These courses are led by instructors from Eduonix Learning Solutions, which has earned a 4/5 star average rating for its high-end tech training experiences.

    This bundle has a ton of useful tips and lectures to help you elevate your business and operations with the tools newly available online. For example, it goes in-depth on how to master conversations with ChatGPT, which you could use to streamline industry research, keep your writing shipshape, and automate costly services like SEO consulting and copyediting.

    The bundle also features lectures that look at where AI can support and improve the world of data visualization, including breakdowns on how to transform raw data into telling and effective visual narratives.

    Businesses that fall behind in sales often don’t keep up with the revolutions in technology and the culture of their market. Since most businesses thrive on efficient and cost-effective communications, learning to master these tools is a must for today’s business folks.

    This ChatGPT & Automation E-Degree is on sale for just $29.99 (reg. $790).

    StackSocial prices subject to change.

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    Entrepreneur Store

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  • PNC tech leaders join Bank Automation Summit U.S. 2024 | Bank Automation News

    PNC tech leaders join Bank Automation Summit U.S. 2024 | Bank Automation News

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    Technology leaders from PNC Financial Services will speak at Bank Automation Summit U.S. 2024 to discuss automation and creating a culture for AI.  

    The speakers are Scott Kinross, senior vice president and software engineering director, and Anuj Shah, head of intelligent automation.

    • Kinross will speak Monday, March 18, at 4 p.m. CT on the panel “Creating a culture of AI adoption”; and 
    • Shah will speak Tuesday, March 18, at 9:10 a.m. CT on the panel “Automation and the pursuit of efficiency: A frank discussion on costs and benefits.” 

    View the full agenda for Bank Automation Summit U.S. 2024 here. 

    PNC started to explore generative AI last year, looking to partners like cash management platform Trovata to enhance payments capabilities, and prioritizing expense discipline. 

    Read more on PNC’s Q4 earnings  

    The summit takes place March 18-19 at the Omni Nashville in Nashville, Tenn., and brings together industry experts to discuss innovation in AI and banking automation.  

    Discussing technologies like RPA, machine learning and AI rapidly evolving, Bank Automation Summit U.S. 2024 strives to be the epicenter for discourse and insights to better prepare industry professionals. 

    Learn more and register here for Bank Automation Summit U.S. 2024. 

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    Whitney McDonald

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  • Citi to lay off 10% of workforce through 2026 | Bank Automation News

    Citi to lay off 10% of workforce through 2026 | Bank Automation News

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    Citigroup’s restructuring efforts, investment in technology and reduction of overhead costs will result in a loss of 20,000 jobs, or 10% of its workforce, through 2026, the bank said today in its fourth-quarter earnings report.  Total headcount at Citi as of the fourth quarter of 2023 was 239,000, down from 240,000 during the corresponding period […]

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    Vaidik Trivedi

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