In today’s intensely competitive global business arena, every edge is critical—and for most companies, there is no greater edge than a talented, motivated, and creative workforce.

A high level of interaction with technology has changed the perception of work for millennials in a way that it did not amongst the current c-suite generation. From work styles to information security and onto advanced technologies, younger workers have very dierent expectations about how technology will be used to help them complete their work. Such perceptions must sponsor a wakeup call amongst senior executives. Business decision makers who fail to notice the change could miss out on great talent. Here, we summarise five key ways in which technology has changed the working lives of millennials.

Explore the latest technology trends and insights to keep you ahead of the curve. Click here to find out more about building the workforce of tomorrow, today.

Mark Samuels

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Tags: Future Ready, Workforce Transformation

The future-ready worker often adopts one of four personas but each of these characterisations is by no means exclusive. Workers will use one of these personas – such as on-the-go, desk-centric, corridor warrior and remote employee – depending on the nature of work that needs to be completed during the day. Here, we show the transition of a modern oMce worker and discuss how IT decision makers can support the changes that staV need to make.

Explore the latest technology trends and insights to keep you ahead of the curve. Click here to find out more about building the workforce of tomorrow, today.

Mark Samuels

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Tags: Future Ready, Workforce Transformation

Anything is possible in virtual reality (VR). Just as Niantic, Inc. brought Pokémon to life for users in the real world, a business can now bring to life ideations that were previously unattainable. The potential for business applications with augmented reality (AR) and VR technologies is limitless, especially as engineers continue to improve AR/VR design and usability. In all my years as a tech analyst/junkie, I’ve never been more excited about the potential of technology than I am now about AR and VR in the workplace.

Achieve a Smart, Modern Workplace

Data from the Dell Future Workforce Global study shows that millennials expect to work in a smart office in the near or immediate future. Today’s workers don’t think the workplace is smart or digitally connected enough and believe this inhibits productivity, collaboration, and efficiency. While only 47 percent of the baby boomer generation reported they were willing to use AR/VR in their professional lives, 77 percent of millennials state they are willing to use these products in the workplace. Even more professionals in developing countries are willing to use AR/VR products–87 percent, to be exact.

When it comes to workplace productivity, 52 percent of millennials believe augmented and virtual reality applications would increase productivity, compared to only 35 percent of baby boomer professionals. Brazil reported the highest belief in AR/VR improving productivity in the workplace at 74 percent, followed by China at 69 percent. On the flip side, India expressed the greatest concern that AR and VR would reduce workplace productivity (22 percent).

Global businesses may have mixed feelings about this technology, but one thing is certain – businesses are seeing returns on workplace AR and VR investments. Market leaders across a variety of industries are seeing positive ROIs from using AR and VR tools to:

• Make hands-free data more accessible to employees
• Design immersive training and educational experiences
• Improve teamwork and collaboration (between both in-house and remote workers)
• Reward employees for completing tasks using gamification
• Visualize repair and construction in VR jobs ahead of time
• Build and test new products virtually
• Give consumers virtual test drives and trial runs

Virtual, augmented, and mixed-reality applications have the power to improve business on both the company’s end and the user’s end. There is no cap on the creative ways brands can benefit from AR and VR – from dynamic real-time collaborations on projects to consumers touring virtual retail outlets from the comfort of their homes.

Explore Current Virtual Reality Innovations

As AR and VR come into their own with technological advances, every industry is coming up with exciting ways to integrate virtual reality using both smartphones and VR headsets. Health care, construction, automotive, aerospace, real estate, entertainment, tourism, and retail industries are all beginning to use AR and VR to transform the workplace. Here’s an overview of some of my favorite ways businesses use AR and VR to improve the workplace and the consumer experience:

• Give real estate tours. Real estate companies can cut transportation costs, the inconvenience of travel, and time-consuming open houses by giving prospective buyers a virtual tour of a property instead. Prospects can explore a home or commercial property from the comfort of a real estate office, touring as many properties as they want in a matter of minutes. They can take their time and revisit favorite sites without time constraints. Plus, more than one prospect can enjoy a private property tour at the same time.
• Design without limitations. The construction industry is using VR to aid in the design and building phases, creating three-dimensional mockups of what the property will look like and get a feel for the building before the construction company ever breaks ground. VR can eliminate the need for intricate, expensive, and time-consuming physical models.
• Take a virtual drive around the block. Don’t want to wait to test-drive the 2017 Ford GT? Thanks to savvy car dealerships, you may not have to. Many dealerships are using VR to allow customers to test drive vehicles before they even hit the market. VR and AR enable many trial-related applications in the auto industry and beyond. VR lets businesses give consumers a more hands-on testing experience in less time without wasting resources.
• Organize your data. In a data-driven business sphere, organization is key. Invest in a mixed-reality (MR) room in which employees can manipulate data with their hands on a touch screen interface. If you can’t afford an entire MR room, AR/VR headsets will work as well to populate charts and images to manipulate data. Integrating AR and VR with company data can improve collaboration, eliminate wasted time, and immerse employees in the information – not to mention you can cut paper and printing costs from your budget.
• Fundraise with VR. I’ve talked about Amnesty International’s use of a VR campaign to boost fundraising before, but I’m mentioning it again because its innovative strategy. Amnesty used a VR pilot to show people real images of a bombing in Syria, connecting people to an issue happening thousands of miles away. This garnered a strong emotional response from passerby, leading to an increase in donations.

• Learn new surgeries without the risk. The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) began using virtual reality with the Oculus Rift headsets in 2015 to teach sensitive new surgeries. UCLA uses VR in its surgical theater with a device called SNAP, using a VR environment based on real brain scans. Students can enter a virtual brain and take operative steps without risking lives or wasting surgical time. VR enables surgeons to practice these surgeries and improve their precision.
• Change lives. Surgery isn’t the only health care application for VR. This industry is capitalizing on virtual tech for a host of other uses, including fear exposure therapy, physical rehabilitation for stroke and paralysis patients, posttraumatic stress disorder treatment, and pain management. One of my favorite examples of VR in health care is when Expedia and St. Jude’s Children’s Research Hospital teamed up to send terminally ill children on VR adventures of a lifetime. VR is literally changing lives.

AR and VR have the power to streamline the workplace, optimize education and training, and connect people to what matters. From engineering and design to gaming and entertainment, augmented and virtual realities are taking the business world by storm. My advice is to learn as much as you can about AR and VR in your industry, and invest in these technologies ahead of your competition.

Daniel Newman

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Tags: Technology, Workforce Transformation

Things change fast in the modern financial world. Just yesterday contactless cards payments were the hot new thing in financial services. However, across the media, reports are stating that contactless payments have had their day. Many claim in-app payments will be the next big thing and make contactless payments obsolete. It is important to note, contactless payments really cover everything from a tap-and-go debit/credit card to your Near Field Communication enabled mobile. It is the same technology stack and payment workflow behind services such as Apple Pay as it is for contactless EMV plastic they give you in a bank.

While it is always tempting to predict the next development in financial technology, is the death of contactless payments really true? Or, alternatively, is this new technology just the next one in a long line of attempts to revolutionize the world that now subsist in their own small niche?

Evangelists of in-app payments say they are going to replace contactless in daily activities. For example rather than tapping in a store, the purchase will be made on your phone and the product simply picked up. For example, ordering a drink in a bar or a meal from a restaurant, using the app to select your choice and paying before arrival. Imagine getting to a restaurant and your favorite steak and drink are already waiting for you when you arrive.

Equally, in-app payments are working for products such as Uber. You setup it once and use it each time you travel with their service. An app provides you not just payment here, but all the additional services – ordering a taxi, tracking availability and others.

However, just one small step aside from these scenarios makes use of in-app payments inconvenient and annoying. Imagine, it’s not your favorite restaurant, serving your favorite steak, but one you’ve found on the roadside during a trip. A chain or restaurant whose app you do not have. In such an instance downloading an app, setting it up and making an order with it gives you zero benefit, while creating a headache and introducing time-consuming clicks. Here rather than making life easier, in app purchases are just annoying. In this scenario a regular order with a waiter and a contactless payment makes for more sense. Alternatively imagine you come across a wonderful shop while on holiday, go inside and fall in love with a product. Making an impulse decision to purchase it. Do you really want to download this little shop’s app, log in, set up an account and then buy the item? Instead, it is quicker and more convenient to take it off the shelf, bring it to the counter and use your contactless payment card or NFC-enabled mobile.

To summarise, in-app purchasing technology only makes sense when ordering goods or services from the same provider on regular basis or as part of a wider service. Be it ordering a steak or booking a cab. However, if the service comes from an occasional provider, or where it makes little sense to order in advance, like paying for public transport, classic contactless will easily win. It is the easier, faster and more convenient way to pay.

Vasily Bernstein

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Tags: Downtime, Mobile Apps

Mobile commerce continues to grow at a prolific rate and has become a top boardroom topic. Why? The sheer growth opportunity that mobile e-commerce has to offer. In fact, when it comes to customer touch points, mobile traffic is starting to exceed desktop traffic. This year alone, global sales on mobile devices are expected to grow to over $280 billion (from $150B in 2014.)

Due to limitations in mobile web, many companies are seizing the opportunity by developing native mobile shopping apps. Companies across all industries are coming out with native shopping apps to create a more social and personalized experience for customers.

According to a recent Forbes article, mobile shopping app usage is growing faster than any other category of app. But how are millennials responding to the influx of mobile shopping apps? With the help of a few Stanford students, we surveyed over 1,600 millennials on their usage of native mobile apps. Here’s what we learned.

1 in every 2 millennials has downloaded a mobile shopping app

Out of the survey respondents, 47 percent claimed to have downloaded a mobile shopping app on their phone. Females were slightly more likely to have downloaded a mobile shopping than males and a majority of those polled were on iOS.

Retailers have an early adopter advantage: Amazon, Etsy, and Forever 21 are some of the most popular native apps with millennials

But it isn’t just with millennials. Retailers dominate most of the mobile shopping app usage across all age groups. Similar to the early growth of brick and mortar stores and desktop e-commerce sites, multi-brand retailers have a head start over single branded apps due to their large inventories. The one major exception is Forever 21, which might have strong usage because it’s a fast fashion brand with high inventory and sell-through.

Millennials download mobile shopping apps for a better user experience

What value do apps provide to millennials? Of the respondents that download a mobile shopping app, over half of them say they did so because the experience was better than the company’s mobile site.

A brand’s mobile shopping app must add value to the end consumer . For multi-brand retailers with lots of new product inventory—the value is an easy on-demand shopping experience. But every brand is unique in that there is no one size fit all solution. For instance, for some companies they might want to use their mobile apps to increase customer engagement, customer loyalty, or the in-store experience.

If building mobile shopping app is within your company’s mobile strategy, you should ask yourself what value you are looking to provide to your customer. While millennials may download your app, it will have to prove its value if you want them to actually use it.

Author’s note: Special thanks to Scott Kazmierowicz for his help compiling the data.

Kyle Wong is the founder and CEO of Pixlee, a visual marketing startup in San Francisco. Follow him on Twitter  at @kwong47. 

This article was written by Kyle Wong from Forbes and was legally licensed through the NewsCred publisher network.

Kyle Wong

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Tags: Downtime, Mobile Apps

For thousands of years, human society recognised four basic human needs: food, water, air and shelter. But in less than a decade, a fifth basic human need has emerged – data.

Not a believer? …then just consider the following statistics:

• The number of connected devices globally is expected to nearly triple from 13.4 billion in 2015 to 38.5 billion in 2020 (Juniper Research);
• As of May 2016, there are 7.8 billion active mobile phone subscriptions, compared with a population of 7.4 billion (www.gsmaintelligence.com).
• Three quarters of all online adults use social media.

Still not persuaded? Ask yourself how you would feel if you had no access to non-physical data for the next week. I get nervous just thinking about it. The 50th anniversary of the first moon landing is just a few years away. We all know that computing power has increased, however we don’t usually realise how much. If you own an iPhone 6, it’s 120 million times faster than the Apollo guidance computers.

This computing power combined with near ubiquitous access is driving the growth of meta trends, including: the sharing economy; instant messengers; automated education; automated healthcare; and automated government. Modern life would be impossible without the ability to instantly access and process your data.

It’s not just people who are creating and using data; the Internet of Things including Machine-to-Machine communications (M2M) mean objects are now generating, sharing and using data.

A significant and growing proportion of the 7.8 billion active phone accounts the GSMA references actually belong to machines, which are using them to talk to other machines. Think of your car. It can now tell the mechanic if something is wrong. It can tell you if someone is trying to steal it. It can play your favourite music. It can even take dictation.

Then there are robots. Perhaps the most interesting manifestation of the growth in robots is the use of robotic ‘avatars’ in place of real people, in areas as diverse as customer service, healthcare and education. Some of these are proper robots, with no guiding human intelligence; others are telepresence devices, with a real person controlling them, seeing and hearing what the robot can sense, and being able to interact with people around the robot.

Of course there are many more examples like drones, self-driving cars and 3D printing; all driving an increase in the volume of data created and used.

We are now in a world where individuals must have the inalienable right not just to food, water, air and shelter, but to data as well. And that means they have the right to expect that data to be protected, secure and available to them if and when they need it, and on any device and in any location. They also need to be able to have full control and ownership of their data but that’s for another time…

John Zanni

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Tags: Downtime, Tech Culture