In our latest TI:TALKS episode, we had the pleasure of speaking with Christopher Danvers from VISA about the rapidly evolving landscape of digital payments.

We delved into innovations and trends that are shaping the future of how we transact, such as the rise of E-commerce and M-commerce. Danvers explains how the COVID-19 pandemic was a significant catalyst for e-commerce, with Visa reporting a 65% increase in non-travel e-commerce transactions between 2020 and 2022.

This shift has not only persisted but has also led to a remarkable 43% of e-commerce transactions now being conducted via mobile devices.

Danvers also touches on security innovations and digital payments. With the increase in online transactions, consumer expectations for security have never been higher.

He highlights the importance of tokenisation, which protects sensitive card information by converting it into a unique token that can only be used by a specific device or merchant.

Watch the full episode below.

To find out more, check out VISA’s Digital Enablement campaign here.

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The “data fabric” revolution brought new buzzwords like “big data” and, “predictive analytics” but the reality was that the most competitive companies in the world were increasingly differentiating their ability to serve their customers by collecting, managing and utilizing their data.

By eliminating data silos, these leaders consolidated data from multiple sources to capture a unified customer view and gain a competitive advantage in responding to customer needs.

The inevitable domino effect

Today, the use cases and benefits of a modern data fabric architecture are apparent. And now, this revolutionary interwoven approach is happening in the automation industry.

The result of this will be a requirement for every modern enterprise to build automation fabric to effectively compete and profitably grow.

What is an ‘Automation Fabric’?

An automation fabric is a cohesive and integrated framework that seamlessly connects various automation tools, processes and data sources.

It acts as a central nervous system, enabling seamless communication and collaboration among disparate business activities, applications and environments, driving mission-critical business processes across any tech stack. Think things like procure-to-pay, just-in-time delivery, record-to-report.

The core market change driving this revolution and the need for automation fabrics isn’t rocket science. It’s simply a number of market shifts that we have all been investing in for some time.

For starters, IT is no longer relegated to being a simple enabler of the back office. Lines of business leaders expect their technology investments to drive core business outcomes with delivering a superior customer and employee experience being the new competitive battleground.

For example, how do I close the books in record time? How do I translate an online order into cash collections without error? Or how do I massively improve the resilience of my supply chain? Each of these business outcomes starts with some kind of end-to-end business process transformation.

Navigating the complexities of end-to-end process transformation

However, achieving that end-to-end business process transformation is now quite complicated.

As best-of-breed products replaced business suites for more superior, targeted functionality, the number of applications that house these business processes, and their underlying transaction data, has absolutely exploded.

The good news is these highly specialized, process-oriented applications have made many individual tasks easier and more forgettable. But the bad news is they’ve created an endless sea of silos that do everything incredibly efficiently alone but do virtually nothing together.

The orchestration problem

Today, almost no business outcome—including mission-critical ones—is accomplished with just one application. Furthermore, most mission-critical business outcomes still require working with established transaction systems of record, like your ERP system.

As a result, the transaction data and business processes needed to come together to drive these business outcomes require coordination across multiple applications—cloud, on-premises or hybrid—working in an orchestrated fashion.

The need to modernize tech stacks

These bespoke applications often run on changing tech infrastructure. Enterprise modernization now involves reassessing tech stacks, refactoring to microservices, and containerizing applications, including modernizing CI/CD and DevOps pipelines.

When companies start refactoring their entire tech stack into microservices and containers spinning up and down on this massive a scale, you need an immense amount of automation because human beings cannot handle this manually, as it’s an n-dimensional problem.

Automation platforms and their limitations

This great replatforming has created a real problem for enterprises as their legacy automation platforms simply do not have the ability to automate business processes end-to-end across this full stack of mission-critical applications and underlying, ever-changing tech infrastructure.

This n-dimensional complexity requires a new approach to automation. One that’s purpose-built for a best-of-breed application world but also provides the flexibility to work across any IT infrastructure you may encounter.

Its why automation will become the pervasive operation system fabric powering today’s modern enterprises.

Automation fabric solutions

In the same way data fabrics revolutionized our ability to make more informed decisions for our companies, customers and employees, automation fabrics will now revolutionize our ability to deliver superior customer and employee experiences.

Like building data fabrics, building your automation fabric requires making critical decisions around your automation platform and software partner.

You need to consider things like:

Connecting applications and systems

Can I connect deeply to all the applications and systems I need to connect to ensure seamless end-to-end business process automation?

Does this include connections to my ERP system and my SaaS and legacy applications?

Composability

Can I create new automation quickly and at scale without extensive programming resources?

Can I easily create a new automation with a drag-n-drop approach and pre-built components rather than creating code?

Monitoring and control

Can I monitor and control the myriad of processes in real time and have confidence that the processes will run to completion?

Can I predict, manage and take action on SLA performance?

Confidence

How confident am I in the platform’s ability to scale its performance in a highly secure manner?

Does it come with global 24/7 support?

How will automation fabrics re-shape the future?

The rise of automation fabrics is set to redefine how enterprises operate, paving the way for seamless business processes and an enhanced customer experience, making automation the true backbone of modern business success.

To learn more, don’t miss “The rise of automation fabrics” session during Redwood Software’s two-day virtual Automation Summit on October 30-31.

Explore the future of automation with sessions covering end-to-end IT and business process automation, data management automation and the role of AI, along with real-world use cases and expert panel discussions.

The post The Rise of Automation Fabrics appeared first on TechInformed.

This is creating an ecosystem where, according to Gallup, just 21% of employees are engaged at work while HubSpot reports that sales teams have a 35% churn rate. But, if you work in sales, it’s not hard to understand why – with the reality being a high-stress, high-target environment often driven by incentives that encourage individualism, not teamwork.

But one thing that can change all this is dedication. And, for sales leaders today, the opportunity of returning it to the sales function is closer than ever.

Why sales needs dedication

To change the face of sales and bring dedication more into the fold, we need to return the function to its roots. Salespeople are ambitious communicators who thrive off human interaction. Therefore, if we want to drive dedication, we must empower them to explore these strengths and appetites, instead of discouraging them. Otherwise they risk growing sick of the daily list of calls, and looking elsewhere for a job that gives them more.

How we do this comes down to having the right tools. And, when choosing them, our North Star should be our customer expectations. With customers craving the human touch, what’s needed is a solution that can surgically preserve human input, while automating the admin and busywork that often dents workplace motivation. This might sound like a fantasy, but the solution is one we’ve all seen plenty of headlines about over the course of the past 12 months – artificial intelligence.

With the help of AI, we can return customer sales to the glory days – informatively pitching prospects and creating meaningful customer connections; understanding the person, the business and the need – and not just selling ‘at someone’. However, when turning to AI to bring dedication back to your sales operations, there are some key things to keep in mind.

Debunk the replacement theory

A common misunderstanding is that AI is here to take our jobs. This isn’t helped by Goldman Sachs saying 300 million jobs will be disrupted by it globally. To counter this though, LinkedIn reports that 84% of global professionals believe AI will help their career progression. This highlights how we must not think so black and white about AI’s negative disruption, and embrace how the technology can bring some positive shifts.

For sales departments, AI offers the chance to improve workflows and automation. For instance, listening back to customer calls and voicemails is a hugely time-consuming activity, but with AI-supported tools such as transcription, these hours can be clawed back. Further, accessing the key topics and summaries of these calls is another ace up AI’s sleeve. But if sales reps are worried that the next thing AI will do is take their headset from them, then this is where leaders need to step in.

By pushing the idea of enablement, not replacement, sales leaders can paint an encouraging future for their sales teams that shows them (a) that they are not set to be replaced, and (b) that they’ll be getting a lot more meaning from their roles.

Enhance the human connection

Nurturing great connections with customers isn’t easy. The human touch takes research, empathy and the ability to make someone feel heard. It’s a skill! But even if we find sales reps capable of delivering it, our processes are set up to keep meaningful conversations at arm’s length.

Within sales is a rising amount of busywork – something Aircall found customer-facing teams are spending 20.8 hours a week doing. In a role where time equals money, having to complete unintuitive admin processes can keep someone from delivering their best work, and does nothing for job satisfaction.

Yet they still have the same pressures and OKRs hovering over them. This is where AI comes in – to become your sales team’s ultimate sidekick. In an ideal sales environment there will be a seamless hand-off between data insights and the human touch of a sales rep. AI does the grunt work, and your reps don’t feel threatened, but supported, in how they deliver their people power.

This drives dedication, not just through returning sales teams the key reasons they signed up to work in sales, but giving them access to data they’ve never had before.

Making up for lost time

Investing in technologies such as AI is only half the battle to make your sales strategy a success. In today’s business environment, a great dedication-driver is coaching, training and upskilling. According to PwC, 74% of the workforce is keen to learn new skills to remain employable in the future – which could be why 76% of employees are more likely to stay at a company that offers continuous training.

Arguably, for sales, this has always been something out of reach, but now, with AI, teams suddenly have the time and metrics to assess and develop their teams. And to avoid the great employee exodus that typically coincides with the New Year, business leaders must implement these strategies sooner rather than later.

The future of SMBs depends on dedication

We want our teams to flourish. If they’re succeeding, growing, and feeling fulfilled, chances are the business is doing well and our people are happy.

But making this a reality requires investment, measurement, optimisation and communication. If businesses get this right, they can set themselves on a sales path that can build an incredible future. A future that, contrary to all the AI headlines, is defined by human connections.

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