Xerox’s strategic transformation: 8 things you don’t know

By Cathy Nadeau

If I’ve learned one thing, it’s that real, lasting transformation is not going to come from four to five big ideas spearheaded by management; it’s  a thousand decisions made differently every day by thousands of our colleagues — their ideas, their passion, and their leadership. My job is to enable that.

8 things you didn’t know about @Xerox’s strategic transformation: http://ctt.ec/a0A_U+

Click To Tweet

“We have the opportunity to … chase what’s possible.” – Cathy Nadeau, chief transformation officer, Xerox

Without a doubt, Xerox has been in “productivity mode” for years. It may be our most commonly used word. And we’re good at cost cutting in response to market conditions that have challenged our business but we now have the opportunity to shift from just enough to chase what’s possible.

When we first started down the strategic transformation path, I was one of the biggest skeptics. That said, I truly believe now that what we’re doing is fundamentally different than anything we’ve ever attempted. Here’s why:

1. We know how we’re going to get there (no “tasks”): We have over 1,500 initiatives, each with a business plan and detailed milestones.
2. We execute on a relentless cadence: Every week I meet with people who own more than 15 workstreams and discuss their initiatives in detail. This is tough, but I’m convinced that the clarity of thought around “what does success look like by next week” has taken us to new heights in terms of execution pace.
3. It’s not just about cost: We will capture value, wherever we find it. We take the same diligence to growth, pricing and margin management.
4. It’s not just about the “what;” it’s also about the “how”: Many of the ideas that will deliver our targets have existed in the business for years. That being said, “how” we’re executing on them is completely different. We’re focused on removing the barriers (some self-inflicted) to get these done once and for all.
5. We’re all-in: We’re not treating this as a “project.” It’s the new way we operate the business. This is not the flavor of the month.
6. We have a partner that we trust who has done this many times: McKinsey is our partner in this effort; not just our “consultant.” They have expertise, processes and resources that have successfully led many, very large transformation/turnaround efforts, and we are working as a unified team to get this done. This is not a made-up process; we’re going with what works.
7. We have one source of truth and one process: We have adopted an online tool that gives us a level of transparency that I’ve never seen. It allows us to talk in the same language and track our progress week to week.
8. Xerox employees are engaged to own this transformation: We want to know what they are doing to help Xerox reach its full potential More important, we ask how we can help them succeed – and they’re telling us!

I’ll leave you with an example from our Xerox Print Services Operations team in Guatemala. In less than 6 months, through their willingness to challenge long-held paradigms, we have increased revenue, decreased costs, and most important, improved client satisfaction (including some cool YouTube videos!) for 814 client accounts. This team shows that we can do it all (cost, revenue, satisfaction), but we have to be willing to re-think “business as usual.”

I’m looking forward to sharing additional change stories that highlight how we are reimagining our business one initiative at a time.

from Simplify Work http://ift.tt/2ilNrxO
via https://ifttt.com/ IFTTT

Get stronger in a global economy

By Hervé Tessler

Xerox values a workplace environment that encourages all employees to bring their hearts, minds, intellect and passion to work. We are honored to be one of the original 13 companies to earn a perfect 100 percent ranking on the Corporate Equality Index back in 2002, and to retain that ranking continuously every year since. Xerox is proud to lead as we continue to work along this journey.

“These businesses know that LGBTQ equality makes them stronger in the global economy.” — Hervé Tessler, president of Corporate Operations for Xerox.

Since our earliest days, Xerox embarked on a never-ending work to demonstrate that good business and diversity are not only compatible, but synergistic. At our company, diversity is not viewed as a mandate, but as an essential part of our corporate culture. We are committed to an inclusive workplace, and recognize that our LGBT employees and Allies are a key to delivering innovation for our customers, a winning business culture and strong connections to the communities in which we live and serve.

So it is with a great sense of pride that we note that for the 15^th consecutive year, the Human Rights Campaign Foundation (HRCF) has named Xerox to the 2017 Best Places to Work for LGBT Equality, once again earning a 100 percent ranking on their Corporate Equality Index. Human Rights Campaign Foundation’s Corporate Equality Index is the national benchmarking tool on corporate policies and practices pertinent to lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender employees.

.@Xerox is named to @HRC’s Best Places to Work for LGBT Equality for the 15th consecutive year. http://ctt.ec/w7rb5+ #diversity

In this 15th edition of the Corporate Equality Index, the HRCF reports the largest increase in top-rated businesses in the history of their survey — 517 employers, spanning nearly every industry and geography. Each have earned perfect 100 percent scores. In addition, 2016 saw the Corporate Equality Index’ largest jump ever in businesses offering transgender-inclusive healthcare coverage — from 511 last year to 647 this year. These businesses know that LGBTQ equality makes them stronger in the global economy.

At Xerox, we recognize that LGBT inclusion and workplace equality is critical to create innovative solutions that achieve business goals and improve bottom-line results. Because we focus on diversity, we are able to hire, promote and retain the best people who are well-suited for our business. Our commitment to diversity in the workplace, and equal opportunity for all, will never waver. It’s who we are at Xerox.

from Simplify Work http://ift.tt/2hYigYN
via https://ifttt.com/ IFTTT

Cities can change commuters’ behavior

By Matt Darst

Did you drive to work today?

According to a recent survey by Xerox Services, 65 percent of respondents who drive to work don’t necessarily mind their daily commute. While you might think it’s good news people aren’t complaining about their drive to work, it’s not.

“Changing behavior can be difficult, but [these] suggestions… are a good start.” – Matt Darst, vice president of Parking and Mobility Solutions for Xerox

Take a look at this series of videos created by traffic planning software company PTV Vision Traffic, highlighting the inefficiency of cars compared to other forms of transit. One video shows how long it takes various modes of transport (cars, buses, bikes, trams and walking) to move 200 people each across a stop line. Buses and trams come in first, followed by walking and biking. Cars fare the worst, taking over four minutes to shift the 200 people in a single lane over the line.

In a subsequent video, traffic lanes are widened allowing each mode to move 200 people in the same amount of time. In this model, cars require eight lanes to keep up with a bus or tram, which only need one lane.

Personal vehicle use takes up too much time and too much space. Commuter perception and behavior must change. Fortunately, cities have an opportunity to direct modal shifts and encourage people to think differently and travel more efficiently.

Incentivize employers

The majority of people who drive to work do so alone, but since many are commuting to common destinations, it makes sense for employers to encourage employees to use ridesharing or public transit as alternative ways to get to the office. Transportation agencies can incentivize employers by offering municipal tax breaks or regulatory perks. Employers may want to consider the following actions to encourage behavior change:

1. Subsidize public transportation and shared use commutes (such as carpooling, Lyft Line) and better market existing transit benefits;
2. “Hire local,” or employ neighborhood residents, to reduce commute time and encourage cycling and walking;
3. Launch on-demand, shared use car and shuttle service for commuters;

Promote multi-modal travel planning apps

Multi-modal trip planning apps can help change behavior by allowing users to compare a variety of ways to reach a destination, including a combination of public and private transportation options. Users are less likely to feel tied to their cars when they’re aware of the variety of available trip options.

We currently support trip planning apps in Los Angeles and Denver – two congested cities – to encourage commuters to take alternative modes of transportation by providing several route options. Modal options can be prioritized by the shortest, cheapest, healthiest, and most sustainable ways to get from point A to point B.

Regulation and partnerships

In addition to incentivizing employers and offering multi-modal trip planning apps, cities can consider new regulations, such as allowing shared use vehicles access to bus-only lanes or create new dedicated lanes, similar to high occupancy vehicle (HOV) lanes but on main arteries leading to a city center. Additionally, cities can implement a congestion charge for single occupant vehicles, excluding HOVs and shared use.

Cities have an opportunity to encourage more efficient travel: http://ctt.ec/bMe8T+ via @XeroxTransport

Click To Tweet

Cities are reexamining the philosophy behind public transit and are taking advantage of private shared use providers to help solve first/last mile problems. For example, the city of Centennial, Colo. and the Denver South Transportation Management Association are working together to connect people to the Dry Creek Light Rail Station. Commuters can get free Lyft rides to and from their homes to the station by booking through the Go Denver or Lyft apps.

Despite these incentives, some will continue to default to driving a car. Consequently, cities must also implement smarter parking solutions. Demand pricing at parking meters can get people parked faster and modify driving behavior, thereby reducing congestion. Consistent parking enforcement also ensures there’s more parking supply. Finally, reexamining the hours of operation and time limits at meters can help shift demand to underutilized spaces. Smart parking solutions reduce distractions and improve bicyclist and pedestrian safety as well, helping to further shift commuters to alternative modes.

Cities are getting creative to push drivers from their cars and to public transit and more efficient forms of transportation. Changing behavior can be difficult, but some of the thoughts and practices noted above can be a good start.

Please share your ideas for how cities can get people out of their cars in the comments below.

from Simplify Work http://ift.tt/2hDr6hN
via https://ifttt.com/ IFTTT

3 reasons why tolling agencies should bundle contracts

By Marc Deflin

The success of any government agency depends on the seamless communication between two very important components – the back-office systems and the operational support staff. When there is a disruption in communication between these two entities for whatever reason, the negative impacts will be immediate and unyielding until the problem is resolved. While many organizations tend to believe that separately procuring back-office systems and front-line staff reduces costs and instills a sense of competition, bundling the contract is usually the better choice for maximized productivity and best-in-class customer service.

Unbundled contracts are messy

Both back-office systems and operational support are essential to an agency’s success. When you have two separate contractors, you also have two potential sources for difficulties or delays, as well as good reason for finger-pointing between your vendors. By bundling the contract, there is never an issue of assigning blame. The resolution process is streamlined, and a single contractor can better ensure that the disruption never occurs again in the future.

Furthermore, bundled contracts are the better choice when transitioning from an incumbent system. In Electronic Toll Collection, for example, the transition to a new system must occur instantaneously to ensure that no transactions, statements or customer data are lost. The transition must be seamless to guarantee that the toll-paying public receives optimum customer service at all times. Having only one contractor allows for the necessary simultaneous coordination of multiple events to occur without negative impacts on revenue collection or the quality of customer service.

Bundled contracts are the better choice for tolling agencies.

Click To Tweet

Bundled contracts save money

When the back-office systems and front-line operations are procured and managed separately, the Agency must manage two contracts instead of one.  That means double the project managers, double the consultant oversight, and double the implementation and management teams. What results is often a chaotic mess of duplicated milestones with added contractor contingencies to address potential uncertainties of the unknown third party. Meanwhile, the individual contractors usually bulk up their respective fees to account for the possible unforeseen scopes of work.

The bundled approach saves the agency time and money because there is only one contract to manage. The operations team can be trained better, faster, and more efficiently when they are fully aware of the back-office system’s functionality, systems and protocols. When agencies allow the providers to make the teaming decisions about systems and operations, they reap the benefits produced by a free market.

Bundled contracts offer better customer service

When an agency forces two contractors to work together through the unbundled approach, each party faces a lengthy learning curve and other pain points that can easily be avoided.  Through a bundled delivery, the systems provider and operations provider are working together by choice – as teammates.  The result is a free-flowing interaction between the system platform and the operations staff creating better alignment between system features and customer preferences. Customer feedback is implemented more quickly and efficiently when the entire team fully understands the need for a revision in protocol. With dual contractors, you have a greater chance that the changes will ultimately be out-of-sync.

Providing best-in-class customer service not only means responding to customer demands but responding to them quickly. True best-in-class service comes when the operations staff become an automatic extension of the back office system.

Learn more
Read our white paper: “The Benefits of Bundling: Back Office Software Systems and Operations Staffing.”

Bundled contracts offer numerous benefits

The process of procuring a tolling system is complex and time-consuming.  Save time, money, and frustration by hiring a single contractor instead of two. Why double the effort with an unbundled approach?

• Bundling the back-office systems with the front-line services enables operational efficiencies that lower overall costs and improve the overall customer experience.
• Unbundled programs are messy to manage.  When there are two separate contractors, the agency and their hired consultants must constantly intervene to mitigate differences of opinion and manage the finger-pointing.
• Bundled contracts are the better choice for a smooth and seamless transition from an incumbent system. They allow for the necessary simultaneous coordination of multiple events without negative impacts.
• Free market forces will present the best solution under a bundled approach. When agencies allow the providers to make the teaming decisions about systems and operations, they reap the benefits produced by a free market.
• Through a bundled delivery, the agency streamlines the communication between the system platform and the operations staff.  True best-in-class customer service comes when the back-office system becomes an extension of the staff.

When agencies hire contractors through the unbundled approach, everyone is essentially looking out for themselves. Each contractor spends more time and energy worrying about compliance issues rather than focusing on what’s really important, best-in-class customer service. When the back-office systems and operational support staff are bundled into a single contract, the entire process runs more smoothly and efficiently. Everybody wins.

from Simplify Work http://ift.tt/2gs27fA
via https://ifttt.com/ IFTTT

From Ideation to Implementation: The Road to an Industry-Defining Product

By Terry Antinora, Vice President, Office and Solutions Business Group, Xerox

All great partnerships are an evolution that take time and commitment to develop. We have been working with Staples for nearly 20 years as a retail location for our customers to purchase Xerox printing solutions. We also provide a fleet of Xerox production devices to support their Print & Marketing Service Centers across the country. Our services help customers and small businesses work better and be more productive.

Today, we’re continuing to serve customers in new, innovative ways with the introduction of the Staples self-serve kiosk. The new kiosk, built by Staples, Xerox and EFI, gives customers greater control over their time and production through independent scanning, printing, emailing or faxing.

This level of #innovation doesn’t happen overnight. http://ctt.ec/bZK4b+ via @xerox

Click To Tweet

The Staples self-serve kiosk is a custom-built device for Staples in-store customers and is unlike anything else on the market. It offers the printing capabilities of the Xerox WorkCentre 7800 Series Multifunction Printer (MFP) and a new Android-based, easy-to-use interface that runs on a standard tablet attached to the MFP. Payment, usage and receipt functionality works seamlessly at the device and also includes the option to scan in coupons or a Staples customer loyalty card during a transaction.

The Staples self-serve kiosk offers the printing capabilities of the Xerox WorkCentre 7800 Series Multifunction Printer and a new Android-based, easy-to-use interface that runs on a standard tablet.

This level of innovation doesn’t happen overnight. In fact, it took nearly two years to bring this device to market. But through the persistence of committed partners with a shared vision we created a breakthrough product that helps customers be more productive. Countless setbacks, surprises and disappointments make innovation difficult but also rewarding. Each partner brought a unique passion to development that helped to overcome every obstacle and bring an industry-defining product to market.

In August, nearly 3,000 devices were placed in Staples stores across the country, and although the new self-service fleet is less than three months old, Staples is already seeing a positive response from customers and associates. Jose Bernal, Vice President of Production and Operations for Staples said, “The growth of traditional services like printing and copying has exceeded our expectations and new services like scanning and emailing are growing at a surprising clip.”

The development team recently received the Staples Innovation Award at the annual Staples Supplier Summit. The Innovation Award is given to projects that are breakthrough technologies that significantly improve Staples workflows and the customer experience. The development team was awarded the honor for their unlimited commitment to the successful execution of a bold vision.

The Staples self-serve kiosk was a labor of love and we’re proud of what we have built together. If partnerships are an evolution, innovation is a journey that we are honored to walk with Staples and EFI.

from Simplify Work http://ift.tt/2hjtjuB
via https://ifttt.com/ IFTTT

Half-Human, Half-Computer? Meet the Modern Centaur

By Mark Stefik

The public reporting on artificial intelligence (AI) systems is usually about their increasing capabilities. A less reported trend is that many of the most powerful systems being developed today combine artificial and human intelligence. Such systems are called Centaurs – after the half-human, half-horse creatures of Greek mythology.

“People draw on a lifetime of experience and the common sense and bring that to the centaur team.” – Mark Stefik, research fellow at Palo Alto Research Center (PARC)

Within the AI research community the significance of centaur systems — or human-machine teams — came to international attention a few years after World Chess champion Gary Kasparov’s review of human-computer teams playing chess. His review started a considered examination about the different cognitive capabilities of humans and machines and why the combination of both sometimes led to performance that beat not only people but also the most powerful artificial intelligence systems.

Most people expect that today’s computer systems are faster than human thinking, especially for working through vast amounts of information or for rapidly carrying out repetitious tasks. But there are also recognizable limitations of computer thinking. Many of today’s challenges take place in “open worlds,” situations where unexpected and new kinds of things can happen, in contrast to the “closed worlds” that characterize situations such as a chess game. On examination, the reasons for the dominance of centaurs is not mysterious. The chart summarizes differences and advantages in human and computer cognition on open world problems.

 

Entity	Advantage	Explanation	However …
Computer	Speed	Fast generation and testing in big search space of solutions. Fast processing over big data	Solution generator is incomplete in the open world. Data not a full representation of the open world.
Human Team	Knowledge and human perception.	Life experience in the open world. Diverse experience of cross-disciplinary teams in multiple domains.	There are coordination costs.
Human-Computer Team	Highest performance.	Complementary kinds of cognition compensate for each other’s failure modes and enhance performance.	We need a better theory and practice for building Human-Computer teams.

 

Subscribe to “Innovator’s Brief for the Transportation Industry,” a periodic eNewsletter with the latest news about innovation in transportation.

Computers are less capable than people when life experience matters. Typically, computer programming reflects a fixed set of assumptions about the world. Even with today’s powerful and deep machine learning approaches, computers typically react poorly in situations different from those where they have been trained. People draw on a lifetime of experience and the common sense and bring that to the centaur team.

Human-computer teaming has attracted the attention of the U.S. military, both in research programs at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency and the Pentagon’s third-offset strategy for military advantage.

In our research, several applications have been prototyped or delivered to our customers that enable human-computer teaming – drawing on the complementary strengths of human and computer teaming. Examples include systems supporting overworked and multi-tasking nurses in hospitals, systems for spotting anomalies and preventing cyber-attacks, and systems to help design components in manufacturing systems. In transportation, centaurs are being developed for systems that team up with traffic enforcement officers helping them to balance their workloads, making enforcement more effective and helping agencies better accomplish their primary mission – ensuring public safety.

For the rest of us, you can expect to see artificial intelligence systems showing up on the job to enable teams to perform better than they ever did before. You may not need to take a computer to lunch any time soon, but the odds are that many people will find themselves working closely with computers as partners on the job in the next few years.

This article was originally published in “Innovator’s Brief for the Transportation Industry.”

from Simplify Work http://ift.tt/2guHUGk
via https://ifttt.com/ IFTTT

These two healthcare leaders are forging connections to build a healthy future

By Tamara StClaire

If one thing is clear, it’s that the healthcare industry is undergoing a seismic shift – one that promises a healthier future for all its stakeholders.

I’m excited to launch a podcast that seeks to catalog and trace our progress in that endeavor. Our first episode features two people who have more in common than they may have realized; they’re both in the business of making connections.

Six months to go 100 yards

Lisa Maki was confronted with a dire situation in 2010. Diagnosed with a synovial cyst, she searched high and low for a remedy that didn’t involve a spine fusion.

When she found that alternative six months later, it came with a twist of un-imaginable irony and coincidence. Dr. Dubick was running a study using human growth hormone to treat Lisa’s condition, and he just happened to be located in the same hospital as the doctor who had originally told her to have spine fusion surgery – all about a mile from her home.

Lisa likes to say that it “took [her] six months to go 100 yards.”

Tamara StClaire hosts the Healthy Future podcast, a show about the incredible transformation happening in healthcare today and the progress we’re looking forward to seeing tomorrow.

Lisa is now the CEO of PokitDok, a company working to connect people with the healthcare information they seek. The company aims to enable the patient experiences, business models and security healthcare deserves through fluid data exchange. APIs – a fast, cheap and reliable way of bridging information between different services and software – are central to enabling this “API Economy” in healthcare.

Today, it doesn’t take 6 months for someone to find their Dr. Dubick; it takes less than 6 seconds.

These two healthcare leaders are forging connections to build a healthy future.

Click To Tweet

Dialogues and introductions

In November of 2010, when Lisa was searching for Dr. Dubick, Andre Blackman had already been blogging at Pulse + Signal for over three years. He closely followed the intersection of healthcare and technology and broadcasted it to the world.

Coupled with his outgoing personality, the platform allowed Andre to meet and network with all kinds of different influencers in the healthcare world, like Susannah Fox – now the chief technology officer for the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services. And after building a vast Rolodex of relationships, today he helps healthcare organizations build strategy guides and playbooks to connect with their relevant stakeholders and audiences. He ensures that the people who should know each other do know each other.

One forum that Andre uses to connect people is the annual Health:Further conference. It’s a gathering of more than 1,000 of the nation’s leading minds to further the dialogue on healthcare innovation. Providers, payers, practitioners, investors, employers and entrepreneurs come together to learn, collaborate and – of course – connect around a common goal.

And it’s working. In August a partnership was announced with the Global Market Development Center to advance consumer health and wellness innovations by combining Health:Further and Retail Tomorrow initiatives.

In different capacities, Lisa and Andre are both in the business of making connections, and both are making an enormous, positive impact in healthcare.

This article was originally published in LinkedIn Pulse.

from Simplify Work http://ift.tt/2gzbI1b
via https://ifttt.com/ IFTTT

Holiday cheer for retailers depends on customers’ happiness

By Catherine Walsh, senior vice president and general manager for Retail and Consumer Goods

We’re only two days away from sinking into a tryptophan-induced Thursday evening on the couch with the Steelers and Colts. But many retailers have their focus glued on the day after Thanksgiving: Black Friday, the official kick off to the holiday buying season.

According to the National Retail Federation, sales in November and December are expected to increase by 3.6 percent, reaching $655.8 billion this year. Retailers—in store and online alike—are taking notice. Amazon’s already made a wave by “redefining” Black Friday, presenting deals as frequently as every five minutes through Dec. 22.

Sure, this may not be a surprise to many, but you be may alarmed by how much customer buying habits have changed, tipping a hat to the need for businesses to have reliable and secure customer service practices in place. Retailers be warned: “customer experience” extends well beyond the time spent purchasing a gift, and into navigating post-holiday returns.

A recent Xerox survey found that 71 percent of respondents plan to conduct the majority of their holiday shopping this year online. A far cry from a decade ago when nearly 93 percent of respondents agreed that in-store shopping was preferred.

But we’re not yet prepared to altogether abandon the ways of brick and mortar shopping. That’s why the ability to deliver a cohesive customer experience, regardless of touchpoint or channel, is critical in terms of business processes and systems. It’s more than person-to-person: it’s the combination of all in-store experiences. The servers, peripherals, wireless, tablets, electronic shelf labels, beacons, digital signage and even digital mirrors. One glitch sends a consumer walking, along with the sale.

For those who live dangerously—the 35 percent who admit to not starting shopping until the week before Christmas (let alone Christmas Eve…)—how does customer service need to shift to meet their (potentially panicked) demands? Consumers expect retailers, online or freestanding, to invest in solutions that simplify process, from the moment they start browsing, all the way through the moment they potentially return for a… return.

When 26 percent of respondents say they would rather visit the DMV than deal with customer service at a retailer during the holidays, it’s time to take action. And action can often mean automation. Retailers are discovering that if they can automate the collection of information throughout the store, they get a full picture of what’s working and what’s not.

So with that, I bid you all a Happy Thanksgiving, and a happier, pain-free holiday shopping season. Drop us a line in the comments section below and express your concerns or expectations heading into this holiday season.

from Simplify Work http://ift.tt/2gcgPo6
via https://ifttt.com/ IFTTT

Create a learning program your employees will want to use

By Phil Antonelli

Jack Welch, former CEO of General Electric, once said: “An organization’s ability to learn, and translate that learning into action rapidly, is the ultimate competitive advantage.”

“Simply reading articles and viewing videos won’t always achieve desired results for your business.” – Phil Antonelli, Director, Business Strategy and Innovation

He’s absolutely right. Businesses around the world are always looking to define their competitive advantage. I believe a company’s ability to stay competitive and be an industry leader ties directly to their learning leaders’ ability to continually produce better and more effective learning initiatives. When you are able to arm your employees with the knowledge and skills they need to succeed in their job – and do it in an innovative and experiential way – it translates to more engaged and committed employees, a culture of continuous learning and, ultimately, a boost to the bottom line.

At Xerox, we recognized the need to provide a comprehensive learning ecosystem that inspires our global workforce to engage, connect and grow on a daily basis. This led us to create Xerox Services University, a learning system that builds expertise and fuels career growth; we offer content in a variety of ways for every type of learner. We’ve seen great success with the program, including national recognition through two 2016 Brandon Hall Group Human Capital Management Excellence Awards – one for Best Advance in Learning Technology Implementation and one for Best Use of Social Collaborative Learning.

A successful learning program enables employees to apply their newly-gained knowledge directly to their job. In other words, content should be crafted to transfer knowledge. It sounds obvious and simple, but that’s increasingly challenging in an age where employees are only a few keystrokes away from a Google search for information they need. However, simply reading articles and viewing videos won’t always achieve desired results for your business.

Six tips to create your company’s award-winning learning program.

Click To Tweet

6 insights to an award-winning learning program

So what should you keep in mind when creating a learning program at your company? Let me share some insight with you:

• Set program goals: How often would you like your employees to engage in learning? Is it a monthly, weekly or daily habit that you’d like them to form? Focus on providing learning experiences that not only engage employees, but also create habits of learning.
• Address organizational culture: Too often, learning is deemed secondary to completing the work itself; one is more conventionally tied to business results. If you want business results to change or improve, encourage and provide time for employees to innovate, get creative and pursue individual development.
• Provide a unified point of access and ease search for learning content: Developing learning habits is easier when content can found easily. Therefore, learning content should be programmed into a single platform with a dedicated point of entry. Having the corporate learning program in one place is key for continuous learning. This includes videos and articles, virtual learning events, and internal social networks that allow colleagues exchange ideas. This gives employees the freedom to learn at their own pace, in their own time and with the experience that best resonates with their learning style. Employees should be equipped with specific steps on how they can begin accessing and searching the learning platform – this is step one in forming the learning habit.
• Personalize the experience: Not all employees learn the same way, nor do they have the same learning needs. Companies should incorporate analytics in their learning platforms to track and learn what type of content employees gravitate to. This helps better recommend content that matches employees’ interests.
• Incorporate proof of learning into your program: A learning program should provide opportunities for reflection and collaboration. This helps employees “consume” their learning, rather than merely completing a series of learning activities. Reflection and collaboration encourages them to take notes on what they learn, think through how they can apply the knowledge to their unique situation, and share their challenges and successes with colleagues.
• Curate some content: You shouldn’t expect to create all your learning materials from scratch. Set up areas within your platform that feature curated collections of materials from external sources that give employees deeper insights on topics of interest.

Encouraging people to take time out of a busy work day to learn and invest in their career and themselves seems like a difficult task, but it is not impossible if you can equip them with a program that is easy to access, offers interesting material, and allows for a personalized yet collaborative experience.

What other features would you look to include in your learning program?

from Simplify Work http://ift.tt/2guR7iJ
via https://ifttt.com/ IFTTT

Are you a last minute holiday shopper?

By Catherine Walsh, senior vice president and general manager for Retail and Consumer Goods

The holiday shopping season is once again upon us. Thanksgiving is next week; Black Friday looms a mere 10 days out. And most of us feel a tinge of worry—unless you’re the over-achieving type who has not only bought all gifts, but wrapped them.

Would you rather have a root canal than deal with customer service at a retailer during the holidays?

Tell us “yes” or “no” and answer a few other quick questions about your holiday shopping habits in our 2016 holiday shopping survey!

Every shopper has a plan for how to handle Black Friday, but do retailers? Sure, they’ve got the goods. But are they delivering a good customer experience? Long lines in the stores and on the phone lines are commonplace complaints among consumers.

A quick, fun survey: Tell us what you really think about holiday shopping.   

Click To Tweet

Not to mention, the real fun begins after the gifts have been unwrapped. Does anything make your head spin more than the thought of trying to decipher return policies or waiting in line at the customer service desk? We won’t know unless you take the 2016 Xerox Holiday Shopping Survey.

The holiday shopping season is indeed upon us, for better or worse.

from Simplify Work http://ift.tt/2f087rK
via https://ifttt.com/ IFTTT

Nine requirements for a successful private ridesharing system

By James Glasnapp, Senior User Experience Researcher, PARC

Mobility is rapidly changing as people look for alternatives to getting in their cars to drive solo from point A to point B. Especially in urban areas, there are a lot of factors that detract from this option: cost, parking, convenience. Experience and research has proven that public transportation options don’t work for everyone, and even for the people who use them, they’re often far from perfect.

The alternatives started with Uber and Lyft, but now those ride-hailing services are becoming more and more saturated. It’s also simply too expensive for employees with long commutes to take advantage of these ride-hailing services, even if they’re pooled with multiple people in the car.

This brings us to the new mobility frontier: Getting drivers of single-occupancy cars to accept rides from other people along their commute. Of course, the idea of carpooling is not a new one. But the idea of using technology to enable carpooling is.

I’ve spent the past four years here at PARC studying user needs in the area of mobility. Based on work done with transit riders in Los Angeles and Denver, cities where Xerox Mobility Marketplace has been introduced, and direct experience as a rider and driver for three different carpooling offerings being piloted in the Bay Area, I’ve developed a set of requirements that a successful carpooling offering will need to incorporate in order to be successful. Here they are:

A mobility expert shares 9 requirements of a successful carpooling offering.

Click To Tweet

1. The offering must be equally rider- and driver-centric. Some offerings cater more to one or the other, but both riders and drivers must experience a version of the system that makes them feel as though the system was built for them.

2. The price must be enough to incentivize the driver but not too much that the rider won’t want to pay. From my perspective, the right amount is less than competing alternatives like Uberpool or LYFT Line. Additionally, even if the mileage rate is attractive, the length of the ride must also match driver expectations for compensation.

3. The routes must be in the sweet zone. The length of the ride-share is important and so is the distance drivers have to go out of their way to pick up the rider in the first place. Routes must be in what I call the sweet zone: the distance one must deviate from a usual journey in order to pick up riders.

4. The system must be able to learn and improve. Riders and drivers should be able to give feedback on quality of routes and riders, for instance. A mechanism to gather that feedback should be built into the app.

5. The drivers should have moderate insight and control into how and when they receive ride requests. Basic permissions and notification settings are necessary.

6. Drivers and riders should feel safe and comfortable. With carpooling, drivers and riders are both concerned about safety, privacy, and comfort. People care who they are going to spend time with in close quarters for the longer periods of time that characterize a carpool.

7. The carpool culture should be determined. Although the driver often dictates the culture, it would be great for systems to publish their own suggested etiquette for both riders and drivers.

8. Customization options should increase as usage grows. Giving riders and drivers the ability to drill down to more specific requests— a quieter car, a limited number of pickups, and smoking and eating options – will be possible as the number of riders and drivers expands in a system.

9. The option for drivers to take multiple riders should be available. Riders may in the end be willing to pay more for a solo ride, but allowing for multiple riders would bring costs down for the riders, while the driver could earn more—even more of a win if the riders live or work in close geographic proximity to each other.

This is an exciting time for mobility. We’re launching into an era where we’ll have multiple affordable options for daily transport. As we research adding private ridesharing to our mobility solution, Xerox stands to create one of the first one-stop travel experiences that’s meticulously designed for the best user experience, whether that user is a driver or a rider.

This article was first published in “Innovator’s Brief for the Transportation Industry,” a periodic eNewsletter with the latest news about innovation in transportation.

Click here to subscribe to the Innovator’s Brief.

from Simplify Work http://ift.tt/2fqPrFE
via https://ifttt.com/ IFTTT

Customer service in high tech needs to be high impact

By Elena Christopher

Some of the highest stakes in customer service sit in the high tech and communications sectors, where a company’s livelihood depends on staying ahead of the curve with new products and services. Most of these companies are prepared to keep up with highly competitive market, the leading edge innovation, and the Mach pace. But are they equipped to handle the tenuous battleground of winning and keeping fickle customers?

“More than 30 percent of our customer care interactions are delivered through digital, multichannel, self-service and automated channels. “ – Elena Christopher, vice president, Strategy & Portfolio, Commercial Business Group

Many of the largest and most well-known high tech and telecommunications companies trust us to accelerate their business processes and innovate their customer experience. Our customer experience for this segment has to be as compelling and leading edge as the high tech products themselves. This gives us an expert perspective on what consumers expect today, and fuels our innovation efforts behind the customer experience of the future.

Here’s what we’ve learned:

Simplify across the experience: Many of our largest commercial clients use two or more services from the Xerox portfolio. For example, they’ve digitized or automated processes in the back office to support the customer touch points in the front office. By combining our transaction processing and customer care offerings, they simplify the complexity that surrounds the customer experience, which allows for additional improvement and innovation.

Establish the right mix: Companies in high tech and telecom need a hybrid approach to customer care – mixing global, multi-lingual, high touch, and self-service support. While voice or agent-based customer service is still important, the future of customer service for high tech and telecoms – and other progressive, consumer-oriented industry sectors for that matter – is in enabling (and excelling at) alternative channels to voice.

Three things companies need to know about their customer service.

Adapt to customer choice: Some customers want to engage in online-only communications, while others just want pick up the phone and talk to someone. Some want new information texted to them, while some prefer a paper trail. To help our clients respond to these changing expectations, we invented the Next Generation of Customer Care. We spend a lot of time creating reliable self-service solutions that reduce incoming calls and increase satisfaction for the growing number of customers who don’t necessarily want to talk to an agent. We also automate functions to make them simple, quick and cost-efficient to obtain an answer to a question or resolve a problem. Voice alternatives such as chat and video chat help personalize the experience.

The next generation of customer care is about gaining a 360-degree view of your customers, and connecting with them seamlessly via the communication channel of their choice. Customer care analytics and automation will help you get there.

Digital business transformation services help you transition key communications and processes from paper to digital. Our expertise in transaction-intensive processing, analytics and automation allows us to work at a massive scale while still making each of your transactions personal and secure.

Today, more than 30 percent of our customer care interactions are delivered through digital, multichannel, self-service and automated channels.

Some examples of our work:

• One of the largest mobile providers in Europe sought our help and experience with live customer chat. They wondered if it was possible to use this online interaction to convert interest into sales. With call volumes of 40,000 per month and website traffic of 350,000 visitors per week, this proved to be a smart strategy. Within three months, our client experienced increased sales, high conversion rates and improved customer reach. The numbers include 53 percent more sales compared to call agents in one year, and 70 percent more chats per hour than calls per hour by call agents.

•  A growing wireless provider wanted to reduce the cost and complexity of its billing processes, so they outsourced bill creation and dispatch to our Transaction Processing The resulting solution supports all stages of customer interaction and can adapt to support growth of the customer base. Not only did this simplify the billing process, it increased customer engagement with personalized messages to customer bills, and added options for paperless billing, archiving of electronic bills and customer notification via e-mail and SMS. The company saved over $2.5 million through paperless billing, now accounting for 40 percent of bills.

Taking care of customers today is more complicated and more important than ever. We’re honored that so many companies – high tech and telecommunications, banks, auto manufacturers, airlines, and retail chains (to name a few) – trust Xerox to take care of their customers.

from Simplify Work https://simplifywork.blogs.xerox.com/2016/11/09/customer-service-in-high-tech-needs-to-be-high-impact/
via https://ifttt.com/ IFTTT

Health IT security in the age of criminal cyber hacking

By Ken Bradberry

Electronic healthcare systems today are under constant assault from hackers and other cyber criminals. A new study from the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) shows that in 2015 there were 56 reported hacks and data breaches affecting the healthcare records of more than 500 individuals, up from 23 in 2013 and zero in 2009.

“Unfortunately, most providers and payers still adopt a traditional approach to security.” – Ken Bradberry chief technology officer for Commercial Healthcare

The number of patient records compromised from those 56 breaches in 2015 totaled more than 113 million, exponentially larger than the 6.9 million breaches in 2013 and 135,000 in 2009. It’s an alarming trend, and the inability of providers to protect patient data from increasingly frequent attacks on healthcare databases and networks is exposing millions of people to fraud, identity theft, and other crimes.

A data-rich target

Along with the financial services industry, healthcare is a top target of cybercriminals primarily because hospitals and other healthcare stakeholders – including payers, pharmacies, clinics, and data clearinghouses – are rich repositories of highly sensitive personal and financial data.

But there are other factors that make healthcare a tempting target for data thieves. The move toward value-based care is triggering changes in how providers are paid, while federal mandates for interoperability are putting pressure on providers to make their IT systems more accessible and able to share data.

The result is a complex and shifting ecosystem of providers, payers, and other stakeholders sharing electronic data, an ecosystem that requires an equally sophisticated approach to security. Unfortunately, most providers and payers still adopt a traditional approach to security, focusing on basics such as firewalls and intrusion detection.

Learn more
Our healthcare provider solutions can help improve operations and clinical care. We help you streamline your business processes and maximize the value of your technology investments.

Move beyond information security basics

Such a myopic view of security — combined with a general lack of awareness and coordination, best practices, and education about threats such as malware, phishing and ransomware — leaves dangerous gaps in security that can be exploited. With the advent of the Internet of Things and a variety of wearables and sensors – all of which can collect and transmit data – the number of potential security gaps within the healthcare industry will only grow.

Health IT security in the age of criminal cyber hacking.

Click To Tweet

Another source of security gaps are the fine lines between HIPAA, HITRUST, the International Organization for Standardization (ISO), privacy and security frameworks. These expanding challenges present a clear and present danger to any organization participating in the delivery of healthcare services. This includes service providers responsible for business process outsourcing and IT service delivery.

The time has come for an overarching healthcare initiative focused on health and regulated industry cyber threat management. This initiative would involve healthcare providers, payers, technology vendors, pharmaceutical companies, standards bodies, and the government.

Such an initiative could unify industry and security expertise to build a framework and best practices for industry-focused cyber threat analysis that would include:

• Threat assessments unique to industry specific challenges.
• Risk analytics.
• Big data focus on security threat detection and prevention.
• Cloud security services by industry.
• Block chain technologies.

Safeguarding protected health information with clinical and financial services that focus on maintaining the integrity of customers, providers, payers and pharma clients is essential in an industry targeted by cyber criminals and other threats. An alliance of healthcare stakeholders and members of other regulated industries could be an important first step.

This is the first of an occasional series of articles on health IT security from Ken Bradberry. Ken will examine individual elements of the framework and best practices for an effective cyber threat analysis in the healthcare industry.

from Simplify Work http://ift.tt/2feYxpn
via https://ifttt.com/ IFTTT

Technology and traveler-centric transportation

By Scott Silence

When we think about innovation in transportation systems that move hundreds of thousands of people every day, we must start with the individual traveler:

“Putting the traveler at the center of the solution doesn’t just change the offering; it also may change the business model for the offering.” – Scott Silence, chief innovation officer for Public Sector

• What do they want to do?
• What information and options do they have?
• How do they access that information or see those options?
• How do they decide on an option and take action?

Most transportation solutions focus on what a traveler wants to do from the system point of view. They might want to find a parking space, or use a toll road, or determine the best commute on a Monday morning. A traditional parking solution might offer more parking spaces, for example, optimized through studies of existing parking usage patterns with, perhaps, dynamic pricing to incentivize optimal occupancy. But the focus remains on the parking system.

Instead, let’s consider what happens when we put the traveler at the center of the solution. A traveler wants to know where open parking spots are, or even better, where parking spots that are currently occupied will open up. He accesses that information immediately (and conveniently) on a system he already uses – perhaps in his connected vehicle. He then navigates to the open spot and parks. The parking system that supports this option, but now that system is organized around the traveler.

Subscribe to “Innovator’s Brief for the Transportation Industry,” a periodic eNewsletter with the latest news about innovation in transportation.

This isn’t science fiction. Solutions that have elements of this are becoming available today. (Here’s an example.)

Again, the focus isn’t on the system, but the traveler. The Xerox Mobility Marketplace Platform is another example of the traveler at the center. It combines modes of transit that best accomplishes the traveler’s goal, provides the options, and enables the trip. This is “traveler-centric transportation.”  To understand this, I’ll use an analogy with patient-centric healthcare, which is defined by the National Institutes of Health as “health care that establishes a partnership among practitioners, patients, and their families (when appropriate) to ensure that decisions respect patients’ wants, needs and preferences,” rather than the patient responding to the systems requirements and preferences.

How can transportation in your community become traveler-centric?

Click To Tweet

Back to transportation, traveler-centric transportation solutions are enabled by emerging technologies like ubiquitous computing and communications (such as smartphones and 4G or 5G networks), which can provide the information and big data analytics to determine the best transportation options in real time. The rise of the sharing economy also enables this model. Options are determined based on information shared by others in the system and flexibility and efficiency are optimized through shared resources, such as ride-sharing services.

Putting the traveler at the center of the solution doesn’t just change the offering; it also may change the business model for the offering. For a service provider such as Xerox, it becomes not Business-to-Government (B2G) but Business-to-Government-to-Consumer (B2G2C). Governments that provide services to consumers need to be clear about the value they provide or enable since both government and the end user must realize the value from the offering in order for it to be successful

Just as for healthcare, traveler-centric transportation will be an increasingly important part of the transportation industry going forward.

This article was excerpted from the Summer 2016 issue of “Innovator’s Brief for the Transportation Industry.”

from Simplify Work http://ift.tt/2f62rAz
via https://ifttt.com/ IFTTT

How do you beat LeBron James?

By Mike Zimmer, President, U.S. Large Enterprise Operations

(From the editor: In the photo above, second graders from Brooklyn’s P.S. 38 participate in drills during a recent Xerox Fantasy Camp on the Barclays Center practice court.)

Second graders from P.S. 38 in Boerum Hill neighborhood of Brooklyn pose with former NBA star Albert King during a recent Xerox Fantasy Camp on the Barclays Center practice court.

When you open up a discussion with second graders, you never know where it will go. And when the discussion is with Albert King, former basketball star with the New Jersey (now Brooklyn) Nets of the National Basketball Association (NBA), the adult side of the conversation may follow an unexpected path as well.

That’s where we found ourselves on a recent Monday morning at the Barclays Center, the home of the Brooklyn Nets and the New York Islanders professional hockey team. Xerox and the Nets were hosting a Xerox Fantasy Camp on the Nets practice court for about 30 second graders from P.S. 38, which is about five blocks from the arena.

Former NBA star Albert King speaks to second graders from P.S. 38 in Brooklyn during a recent Xerox Fantasy Camp on the Barclays Center practice court.

The students were participating in a series of activities to teach them about health, fitness, good nutrition, teamwork and academic excellence. A healthy breakfast was served, and later a healthy lunch. In between they participated in a series of stretching exercises, relay races, basketball drills and pep talks led by Nets trainers, coaches from Unity Sports, Xerox volunteers—and Albert King.

King had a 10-year career in the NBA and also starred at the University of Maryland and Fort Hamilton High School in Brooklyn. He is still considered one of the best high school basketball players of all time. And he grew up in the Fort Greene neighborhood of Brooklyn, which borders the Boerum Hill neighborhood where the students attend P.S. 38. So his talk was especially relevant.

He told the students that they are fortunate to live at a time when people pay more attention to how diet affects performance than in his day—and that they should take advantage of it. He told them that they will grow old faster than they think, and that one day they won’t be as pretty and handsome as they are today or as able to play basketball. Making healthy choices now will put them in a better position to adjust to their changing circumstances—as King adjusted after retiring from basketball by entering a second career as the owner of several area restaurants.

Brooklyn 2nd graders get a Fantasy Camp day with NBA alumnus Albert King.

Click To Tweet

And King took questions.

“How do you beat LeBron James?” one student asked.

Of course, Albert King never played against King James. But he did face off many times against Michael Jordan.

“Let me tell you a quick story,” King began. “You’ve heard of Michael Jordan?” The students screamed that they had.

“One day I was playing against Michael Jordan, alright? I think the score was 96 to 95. Five seconds were on the clock. I had the ball on the right side. I’m telling you, Michael Jordan. You remember how tall he was and how high he jumps? I took off. Right here by the foul line.” King pointed to the spot on the court.  “And Michael was under the basket. He jumped. You know what I did? I dunked on him.”

“Awesome!” shouted one student.

“After it happened,” King continued, “I took my PlayStation—because I was playing on a PlayStation—and I just went to do something else. I never dunked on Michael Jordan. Michael Jordan was a great player, and LeBron James is a great player, too.”

At an event that many of those second graders will remember for a lifetime, that was another healthy choice they learned about: You don’t try to dunk on Michael Jordan or LeBron James.

from Simplify Work http://ift.tt/2eXzjrN
via https://ifttt.com/ IFTTT

It’s not a transaction, it’s an experience

By Sumeet Sanghani

Remember when a smile and a thank you right after the business transaction were the sole requirements of a customer service strategy? It’s no secret that winning and keeping customers today requires impact beyond the transaction, no matter how bright the smile or sincere the thank you. It’s about providing an experience – not just one, but repeated, meaningful and memorable experiences.

“You don’t have to be in banking to appreciate these lessons – all businesses should take a second look at the collective processes that impact each customer’s journey.” – Sumeet Sanghani, Industry Leader, Commercial Business Group

As a result, businesses are augmenting that smile/thank you transactional approach at a dizzying pace – with relevant, timely, personalized interactions across a widening array of channels. Here are three ways the banking industry – arguably one of the most transaction intensive businesses – is turning transactions into experiences, and succeeding:

Make compliance a differentiator, not a burden

If you think about customers’ basic needs from banks or any business – they want value and fairness, and they want to feel safe and secure. Much of this is foundational – but could be enhanced and accelerated. Banks have had to take a deep look at these foundational aspects to fulfill compliance mandates, and many are turning to automation to help, often viewed as an onerous and costly burden of being in business in this new normal.

One of our clients—a financial services giant—uses a cloud-based Know Your Customer (KYC) solution to automate data capture, document recognition, classification and inspection. Customers benefit from improved transparency, additional security, and consistency and accuracy that now spans every experience they have with the bank. Furthermore, the bank benefits from archiving and verification and avoids the reputational and financial risks typically associated with ineffective KYC practices.

3 lessons your business can learn from banks.

Click To Tweet

Use back-office efficiency to drive front-office impact

Front-office innovations such as online banking and mobile payments have radically improved the customer experience. They are also largely still supported by manual back-office processes that are often plagued by a high rate of inconsistency and errors, large expenditures and slow response time to customers. In fact, 60 percent of customer dissatisfaction can be traced to back-office inefficiencies. 1

One of our consumer credit card clients accelerated the time it takes to process customer requests, forms and claims by 40 percent when they solved these back-office inefficiencies. By centralizing disparate back-office processes inherited through mergers and acquisitions, they reduced processing time from five days to three. Customer data is also more accessible and traceable now that it has been archived and integrated into a customer relationship management system.

Visit our Digital Business Transformation webpage and learn how we help our clients improve their customers’ experiences.

Know your audience

While the transformation to digital and mobile applications is disrupting traditional banking (and other business transactions) at a breakneck pace, you might be surprised to learn that even the millennial generation is not yet digital-only. They still want the option for a human connection. Banks and businesses need to strike the right balance for each customer, while learning from every interaction, to enhance and tailor delivery of services.

For example, when U.K.-based Atom Bank launched the first mobile-only bank, their leaders had to be able to offer all the services a customer might need via a mobile app. Incorporating WDS Virtual Agent software from into the app, the solution guides the consumer through the process of identifying and solving his or her request quickly and accurately, while continually learning through each interaction.

“One of our core design principles was to enable the customer to do everything within the app,” says Stewart Bromley, Atom Bank’s chief operating officer. “This means not only that our customers can get support without leaving their banking app, but when they need support, we already know who they are, where they are, and what device they are using. Hence, the support can be more exacting to that customer in that moment. But it would be wrong to assume that every the customer wants to use it. The customer will be able to use self-support, but can equally use assisted channels, such as chat, secure messaging, voice, and video.”

You don’t have to be in banking to appreciate these lessons – all businesses should take a second look at the collective processes that impact each customer’s journey. Making changes to leverage analytics and automation is the quickest way to ensure efficiency, accuracy and continuity of information across all touch points and deliver a secure, personal and effective experience to go with the smile and thank you.

1 Quote is attributed to John Goodman, co-founder of TARP, at SpeechTek 2006; found in document copyrighted in 2008: 

from Simplify Work http://ift.tt/2eQy0vI
via https://ifttt.com/ IFTTT

One sure way to get millennials to work for you

By Bala V. Sathyanarayanan

It is simple really. If you put a child in a room full of adults with no other child in sight, sooner or later that child will do one of the following things:

“I have been privileged to experience first-hand the strength and relevance of community for our new hires.“ – Bala V Sathyanarayanan, chief HR officer for Xerox Technology

1. Get bored; fall asleep.
2. Throw a tantrum; demand more attention.
3. Leave the room

Put a senior citizen in a room full of teenagers and you will probably get the same effect, excluding maybe the tantrum.

In the same way, engaging millennials is best done by other millennials.

Let me share an example with you. Tom joined Company A four years ago. He had just earned his MBA and after a few months of interviewing, he settled for Company A because he felt the company reflected his values and he could work toward his goals there. Tom was 27 then. He is 31 now and a senior manager. He has risen through the ranks and is being touted as one of the young people expected to take an executive position in the very near future.

Recently, the university recruiting team started asking Tom and a couple of people with similar histories to go with them when they visit business schools and other graduate programs. This team is made up of Sally who is 23 years old and two years fresh from college and Mike, an experienced recruiter with more than 20 years under his belt recruiting the best talent for Company A. Sally was responsible for suggesting the inclusion of Mike on these recruitment exercises. Hear her:

“I think students will be drawn to Tom because he represents something they can identify with and measure their growth by. Mike and I each have a different sort of experience that might be tougher for the people we speak to at these events to identify with but with someone like Tom, who is closer in age and has been where they were, I think it might be easier for the students to see themselves at our organization.” 

How to get millennials to work for you.

Click To Tweet

Sally’s suggestion was pure genius. Since Tom, and others like him, started attending these events with the team, Company A has seen a 40 percent increase in number of applications, and a 20 percent rise in the number of graduate hires.

Attracting and recruiting millennials using millennials is just the first step. Onboarding processes should include a step that pairs up a new employee to someone with a similar background. At Xerox, our Young Professionals at Xerox (YP NEXUS) organization is an active affinity group that ensures our young professionals are engaged and building relationships. As the executive champion of the Norwalk arm of this organization, I have been privileged to experience first-hand the strength and relevance of community for our new hires.

After all is said and done, we (millennials, baby boomers, Generation X), are all human. “Belongingness,” which includes love, friendship and family, is one of our basic fundamental needs. Companies will do well to find ingenious ways to meet this critical need.

How is your company attracting, retaining and engaging millennials? Tell me in the comments.

from Simplify Work http://ift.tt/2e9esmQ
via https://ifttt.com/ IFTTT

Natively digital experiences are the future of work

By Steve Hoover

The Future of Work. Digital Transformation. Digitization. Workplace of the Future.

We’ve all heard the buzzwords, but what does this actually mean? And how does this translate to the organizations we lead or support?

I hosted a panel on this exact topic at the Gartner Symposium on Monday, accompanied by my colleague, Victoria Bellotti, a research fellow and social scientist at PARC; Gytis Barzdukas, head of product management for Predix at GE Digital; and Gillis Jonk a partner alumnus and independent strategy consultant for A.T. Kearney.

The future of our organizations and a growing percentage of our customer bases are considered digital natives – those born or brought up during the age of digital technology, individuals who are comfortable with technology and who expect businesses to evolve with technology capabilities and trends. And these digital natives expect businesses to be natively digital, where services are mobile first, always connected, context-aware and personalized.

“Many legacy companies that have been around for decades are now standing still amidst new competition from natively digital startups that seem more relevant to digital natives – but you don’t have to.” – Steve Hoover, CEO, PARC – a Xerox Company

However, creating a natively digital experience for your company isn’t about taking an old process and digitizing it. It’s about observing your business, evaluating it and looking at the whole thing differently. CIOs need to look at technology through a different lens and adapt a new mindset.

How to transform your legacy business and attract digitally native customers and workers.

Click To Tweet

Think back to the days before Uber. This company completely shifted the approach to transportation. They started by taking a look at the whole problem of mobility and completely restructured it. Businesses that are born natively digital – like Airbnb, Netflix, Amazon and Square – have been able to completely revolutionize the industries they play in. That’s because they encourage interaction with customers in a way that’s easy to understand and navigate, personal, and in tune with their needs and interests.

But how do legacy companies approach digitization? Gytis discussed how GE, a company with a stake in the ground for a variety of industries — including oil and gas — is using sensor technology to turn information from industrial machines into actionable insight. This then improves business operations and allows the company to adjust, innovate and predict.

Xerox researchers create the future today. Learn more about innovation at Xerox.

Many legacy companies that have been around for decades are now standing still amidst new competition from natively digital startups that seem more relevant to digital natives – but you don’t have to.

Ford, for example, is a company in transformation from auto manufacturer to urban mobility supplier. While Ford is still trying to make the best cars in the world, they are not just selling cars, but also offering mobility as a service. This is a new frontier for Ford. They are running experiments in lease-sharing, autonomous vehicles and apps to learn about mobility and transportation needs. They also recognize they need new talent, so they are hiring people from outside the auto industry, and they recently opened an innovation center in Palo Alto, just down the street from us at PARC.

When we think about digital natives as employees in our businesses, they expect to work with natively digital tools, which have the same capabilities as the tools in their personal lives. They bring their own devices to work, and use instant message tools like Facebook Messenger and Slack to communicate instead of picking up the phone. Touchpoints and experiences outside of work are now expected by these digital natives inside the four walls of the office.

Gillis chimed in with one of the most important discussions in our whole panel: When building a digital plan, leaders should build this plan with their people, not for their people.

We’re at the cusp of a set of radical changes in how technology can make a huge difference in how work gets done. And our job is to envision what’s possible in the future and create it, enabling organizations to get the job done in the easiest, most seamless way.

from Simplify Work http://ift.tt/2eoqdJm
via https://ifttt.com/ IFTTT

Turning good ideas into customer advantages

By RG Conlee, chief innovation officer for Xerox Services

At Xerox, innovation is in our DNA. But innovation that never leaves the design table is not innovation at all. Our aim is to redesign business processes and augment them with analytics and automation to unlock real value for our clients.

Woo-hoo! We're honored to be recognized as the Outstanding Corporate Innovator of 2016. Here's how we do it: https://t.co/ye3MHA1KGQ http://pic.twitter.com/OTXLkasfJw

— Xerox (@Xerox) October 6, 2016

With over $1.2 billion invested in R&D each year, Xerox is behind major breakthroughs that transform how work gets done. We work with our clients to innovate, incubate, and explore new solutions to critical business challenges.

This relentless pursuit gained attention when word spread that we’ve been named the “Outstanding Corporate Innovator” (OCI) for 2016 by the Product Development and Management Association (PDMA), a global community representing more than 2,000 professionals representing some of the most  recognized and respected innovative companies around the world. PDMA cited Xerox Services’ use of automation, analytics, and personalization to provide innovative business process solutions for customers in a wide range of industries.

Innovation that never leaves the design table is not innovation at all.

Click To Tweet

More than 25 Xerox innovations were considered by PDMA, spanning the transportation, healthcare, and customer care industries, including:

• Xerox Vehicle Passenger Detection System (VPDS): The camera-based system uses video analytics to identify the number of vehicle occupants in a high-occupancy vehicle lane at speeds ranging from stop and go to 100 mph. Live testing on our system showed a 95 percent accuracy rate.
• Xerox Automation Suite: Robotic Process Automation (RPA) is built into everything we do at Xerox, enabling our customers to achieve greater operational efficiency, faster time to market and improved quality. The Xerox Automation Suite include Xerox Case Management, which orchestrates all of the software ‘bots,’ and Xerox Automated Intelligence, which mimics human actions by routing or processing data based on specific rules.
• Juvo Care Performance Platform: An advanced healthcare analytics and workflow software package that collects and analyzes patient-care data to deliver detailed recommendations for better healthcare.

The OCI Award is the only innovation award that recognizes sustained and quantifiable business results from new products and services, and Xerox is the only company to receive the award twice – also winning in 2006 for the use of innovation in our printing business. Fifty-three other organizations have received the award, including BMW, Clorox, Corning and Dow Chemical.

Our continued focus on best-in-class innovation embracing ingenuity will ensure that Xerox remains in the vanguard of innovation and digital business transformation.

from Simplify Work http://ift.tt/2dXrbc5
via https://ifttt.com/ IFTTT

Opioid abuse-deterrent formulations: A public health priority

By Larry Dent

Forty-four people across the United States die each day from overdosing on prescription painkillers, or opioids, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. An estimated 20 percent of patients with non-cancer pain symptoms or pain-related diagnoses are prescribed opioids for pain management. However, abuse and misuse of these products have created a serious public health problem.

“Abuse-deterrent technologies are designed to target known or expected routes of abuse.” – Larry Dent, PharmD, BCPS

Look at the stats:

• Deaths from prescription opioid pain medication overdose in the United States more than quadrupled from 1999 to 2011.
• From 1999 to 2014, more than 165,000 people died from an opioid-related overdose in the United States.
• Of the 43,982 drug overdose deaths in 2013, 37 percent were associated with prescription opioid analgesics such as oxycodone, hydrocodone and methadone.
• The 2013 National Survey on Drug Use and Health reported that 67.6percent of people who used prescription painkiller for non-medical use got them from a friend or relative by stealing them, buying them or getting them for free.

These technologies can’t prevent opioid abuse, but they can deter it.

Click To Tweet

Because opioid products must be able to deliver pain relief to the patient, there may always be some potential for abuse. However, the severity of the opioid problem has made the development of opioid abuse-deterrent formulations a public health priority.

The Food and Drug Administration believes it is critical to address the problem of opioid abuse while ensuring that patients in pain have appropriate access to opioid products. Moreover, it is important that opioids without abuse-deterrent properties remain available for use in some clinical settings. For example, patients in hospice care who have difficulty swallowing may need opioid products that are in solution or that can be crushed.

Subscribe to HealthFocus and learn new ways government healthcare programs can improve health outcomes. Email govhealthcare@xerox.com for details.

Abuse-deterrent technologies

There are numerous ways that opioid products can be abused. They can be swallowed whole, crushed and swallowed, crushed and snorted, crushed and smoked or crushed, dissolved and injected.

Abuse-deterrent technologies are designed to target known or expected routes of abuse. Examples include:

• Physical/chemical barriers: Physical barriers prevent chewing, crushing, cutting, grating or grinding of the dosage form. Chemical barriers resist extraction of the opioid using common solvents like water, simulated biological media, alcohol or other organic solvents. Physical and chemical barriers work by limiting drug release following mechanical manipulation of the product or change the physical form of a drug, making it harder to abuse.

• Agonist/antagonist combinations: An opioid antagonist can be added to the formulation to reverse the pharmacologic effects of the drug, including euphoria. The antagonist is not clinically active when swallowed but becomes active when crushed, injected or snorted.

• Aversion: Substances can be added to the product to produce an unpleasant effect if the dosage form is manipulated or exceeds the directed dosage. For example, the formulation can include a substance irritating to the nasal mucosa if ground and snorted.

Xerox’s prescription clinical authorization tool gives physicians and pharmacists real-time insight into recent prescriptions received and filled by a patient

Pre-marketing and post- marketing assessments

The FDA requires that pharmaceutical manufacturers conduct pre- and post-marketing assessments for claims of abuse deterrence to be included in the labeling of an opioid formulation. Premarketing studies are primarily expected to characterize the abuse-resistance properties of a product under controlled conditions.

Post-marketing epidemiological studies determine whether the formulation results in meaningful decreases in adverse clinical outcomes related to abuse in real world settings. One study evaluating changes in drug abuse patterns found that when OxyContin was reformulated:

• A 32percent reduction in the rate of ER oxycodone-related poison control abuse cases.
• A 15percent reduction in the rate of poisonings related to therapeutic ER oxycodone use.
• The rate of ER oxycodone diversion declined by 50percent.
• The street price of ER oxycodone declined by 22percent.

Generic abuse-deterrent formulations

Although no generic formulations are commercially available, it is important that generic versions of opioids are developed to ensure widespread access to safe and effective painkillers for patients who need them. The availability of such generics must not exacerbate the public health problems associated with prescription opioid abuse. If the generic formulation is less abuse-deterrent, it could lead opioid abusers to preferentially seek out and use this easier-to-abuse version.

Conclusion

Post-marketing epidemiologic studies of opioid abuse-deterrent formulations show declines in abuse patterns, therapeutic errors, accidental exposures and diversion of prescription opioids. The evidence indicates that reformulating abused prescription opioids to include abuse-resistant properties may be an effective approach to reducing opioid abuse. However, a major observation from these studies shows that these formulations were associated with increased abuse of other opioids and illicit drugs.

Current methodologies alone will not likely be adequate to curb nonmedical opioid use. However, they may be effective as part of a comprehensive effort that includes other interventional strategies such as state prescription monitoring and overdose prevention programs. Xerox’s prescription clinical authorization tool gives physicians and pharmacists real-time insight into recent prescriptions received and filled by a patient. As a pharmacist fills a prescription, the tool investigates whether the patient has recently received another opioid. If so, the pharmacist receives a notification that prior authorization is required to verify the medication is correctly prescribed and necessary for the treatment plan. Xerox software then streamlines the prior authorization process by managing coordination between the patient’s physician, a state’s health network and the pharmacist. The increased communication between these groups helps manage a patient’s opioid dosage over a set period of time, which helps prevent abuse.

from Simplify Work http://ift.tt/2dhduHa
via https://ifttt.com/ IFTTT