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Amid rapid technological, economic and social change, it is important for organizations to move beyond mission statements and social impact programs to put humans at the center of their business strategies.

In its “2019 Global Human Capital Trends” report, “Leading the social enterprise: Reinvent with a human focus,” Deloitte examines ways organizations can reinvent themselves on a broad scale, including interacting, motivating, and personalizing experiences with the workforce to help build identity and meaning for workers.

Completed by nearly 10,000 respondents in 119 countries, Deloitte’s ninth annual Global Human Capital Trends report is the largest longitudinal survey of its kind. In the report, respondents said the role of the social enterprise is more important now than ever and noted a positive link between leading the social enterprise and an organization’s financial performance. In fact, 73 percent of industry-leading social enterprises expect stronger business growth in 2019 than in 2018, compared to only 55 percent of those where the social enterprise is “not” a priority. However, only 19 percent of respondents reported being “industry leaders” in their organization’s maturity as a social enterprise.

Today, more than 4 in 10 (44 percent) of respondents said social enterprise issues are more important to their organization than they were three years ago, and 56 percent expect them to be even more important three years from now.

“There is a lot of discussion about organizational purpose and while I agree that it is important, what’s missing for many organizations is the focus on the individual and the day-to-day challenges that workers are facing,” said Erica Volini, principal, Deloitte Consulting LLP, U.S. human capital leader. “The reality is that while technology is helping organizations gain competitive advantage, if not managed appropriately, it can simultaneously mean that workers lose their identity in the workplace. We see a call to action for organizations to reinvent their approach to human capital with the worker in mind to create opportunities for continuous learning, accelerated development, and professional and personal growth.”

The future of the workforce
As organizations look to effectively lead the social enterprise, they must adapt to the forces restructuring work and the implications to the workforce – both in composition and capability – while embedding a meaningful experience for workers.

This focus on the workforce comes as more than 86 percent of respondents cited reinventing the way people learn as important or very important – the No. 1 trend for 2019. Leading organizations are empowering individuals’ need to continuously develop skills by investing in new tools to embed learning not only into the flow of work, but the flow of life. With the need to sustain 50-60 year careers as part of a 100-year life, lifelong learning has evolved from a matter of career advancement to workplace survival. However, even with this emphasis on learning, only 10 percent of respondents said their organizations are “very ready” to address this topic.

Amplifying the need for continuous learning is the ongoing adoption of automation technologies as 64 percent of respondents said that automation is important or very important. Yet even with these advancements, human skills remain critical to augmenting the value of this technology. In response, organizations should consider redesigning work into a new category of “superjobs,” which combine the work and skill sets across multiple domains, opening up opportunities for mobility, advancement and the rapid adoption of new skills desperately needed today.

But even as part of the workforce reorganizes into superjobs, Volini shared, lower-wage-work across service sectors continues to grow, along with non-traditional contract, freelance, and gig employment – and it is imperative that these jobs are not left behind. “There is no ‘one-size-fits-all’ when it comes to the workforce of the future. Organizations need to explore all options and create the culture and infrastructure where everyone has a place. That will be part of how organizational inclusion will be defined in the future,” said Volini.

The future of the organization
In the age of the social enterprise, organizations are being challenged to up their game when it comes to the employee experience. This emphasis comes as only 49 percent of respondents believed that their organizations’ workers were satisfied or very satisfied with their job design and only 42 percent thought that workers were satisfied or very satisfied with day-to-day work practices.

As organizations look to provide technology to support employees’ work, only 38 percent of respondents said that they were satisfied or very satisfied with the current work-related tools and technology available. Finally, only 38 percent of respondents thought that they have enough autonomy within their jobs to make good decisions, providing further evidence that significant reinvention is required.

“Over the last five years, issues related to productivity, well-being, overwork and burnout have grown,” said Jeff Schwartz, principal, Deloitte Consulting LLP, U.S. future of work leader. “As a result, organizations need to shift from the traditional employee experience to a new category we call ‘human experience,’ where relationships are enduring, learning is continuous, and work has meaning centered around human identity.”

Creating this human experience requires a different type of leader. Eighty-one percent of survey respondents believed that “21st-century leaders” face unique challenges and requirements, making it critical for organizations to extend leadership pipelines to find and build leaders from within the organization. Developing new leaders from within can help them hone critical skills, including managing through influence, promoting transparency, and thriving in a more collaborative and connected world.

Underlying this shift is the continued reinvention of the traditional hierarchical organizational model. One-third (31 percent) of survey respondents said their organizations now operate mostly in teams within a hierarchal framework and another 46 percent said that they are somewhat team-based. However, most C-suite leaders, tools, cultures and incentives are still struggling to adopt and support the team-based model. With the advent of new technology, organizations can use data and insights to complete this shift.

The future of HR
In this 10th year of the economic recovery, organizations are finding themselves in a job-seekers’ market as the war for talent rages on. “As organizations’ workforce needs drastically change, leaders should shift from focusing on acquiring talent to accessing capabilities. While the change may seem nuanced, taking a more expanded view of where skills can be found – whether it’s in automation, the gig economy or current employees – can pay dividends in today’s fast-paced and high-demand business environment,” said Volini.

As a result, the importance of internal, enterprise-wide talent mobility has become paramount. In 2019, three-quarters (76 percent) of survey respondents believed new tools and models for careers, and internal mobility are important or very important. Beyond mobility, organizations are finding that they need to look at the technology provided by the cloud as a launchpad, not a destination. But despite investing billions in HR technology, 65 percent of respondents report that this technology is inadequate or only fair at achieving its overall objectives.

With new talent approaches, the way many organizations compensate and reward workers has fallen out of date. Today, only 11 percent of respondents felt that their rewards systems are highly aligned with their organizational goals and nearly one-quarter (23 percent) do not feel they know what rewards their employees value.

“The combination of shifts in the work, the workforce, and the organization have created a new mandate for HR to shape the future,” said Heather Stockton, principal, Deloitte Global, global human capital leader. “But HR cannot do this alone. The entire organization, led by the symphonic C-suite, needs to come together to help organizations truly take the lead in the future of work.”

Access the “2019 Deloitte Global Human Capital Trends” report and gain further insights into the data via Deloitte’s digital-first trends research progressive web app. View a livestream presentation of the trends report from IMPACT, Deloitte’s industry-leading HR research conference, April 15 at 7 p.m. EDT via Twitter @DeloitteTalent.

About Deloitte
Deloitte provides industry-leading audit, consulting, tax and advisory services to many of the world’s most admired brands, including nearly 90 percent of the Fortune 500 and more than 5,000 private and middle market companies. Our people work across the industry sectors that drive and shape today’s marketplace to make an impact that matters — delivering measurable and lasting results that help reinforce public trust in our capital markets, inspire clients to see challenges as opportunities to transform and thrive, and help lead the way toward a stronger economy and a healthy society. Deloitte is proud to be part of the largest global professional services network serving our clients in the markets that are most important to them.

Deloitte refers to one or more of Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu Limited, a UK private company limited by guarantee (“DTTL”), its network of member firms, and their related entities. DTTL and each of its member firms are legally separate and independent entities. DTTL (also referred to as “Deloitte Global”) does not provide services to clients. In the United States, Deloitte refers to one or more of the US member firms of DTTL, their related entities that operate using the “Deloitte” name in the United States and their respective affiliates. Certain services may not be available to attest clients under the rules and regulations of public accounting. Please see www.deloitte.com/about to learn more about our global network of member firms.

SOURCE Deloitte

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Venture Capital (VC) investment in the U.S. continued performing at a high level during Q1 ’19 with $32.6 billion invested as the U.S. economy remained strong, and increased IPO activity set the stage for further investment at all points of the deal spectrum — from early stage to late stage, according to KPMG’s Venture Pulse Q1′ 2019 report.

The largest deals in Q1’19 included a $5 billion raise by shared-space provider The We Company (formerly WeWork), and a $1 billion raise by freight logistics company Flexport – earning that company coveted unicorn status.

“In the past five years, the number of U.S. unicorns has more than doubled to over 160 as private capital is readily available allowing companies to stay private longer,” said Brian Hughes, National Co-leader, KPMG Venture Capital practice in the U.S. “We finally saw some unicorns choosing to go public in late 2018, and this unicorn IPO trend is expected to continue well into this year, spurred by recent high profile offerings and the ongoing strength of the public markets.”

Lyft hosted a successful IPO on Nasdaq in late March, raising $2.3 billion to value the company at $24 billion. It is the first in a line of large IPO unicorns expected in 2019, with ride-hailing company Uber also expected to file publicly, amongst others. The good performance of these unicorn companies in the early part of 2019 will trigger more investor interest in mature unicorns later in the year, in addition to providing additional capital for early stage deals.

U.S. investors continued to invest in established verticals in Q1’19, including food-delivery, healthcare and transportation, while mega-funds gained a significant amount of attention, coupled with strong activity in smaller-size funds.

Growth and Innovation Occurring Beyond Silicon Valley
The report found a growing boom of VC investment outside of Silicon Valley and the West Coast. In 2018, while 39 percent of VC deals occurred on the West Coast, 20 percent occurred in the Mid-Atlantic region, 9 percent in New England, and 9 percent in the Great Lakes region. These numbers reflect the growing number of innovation hubs appearing in cities such as New York, Boston and others –a trend continuing this year.

In Q1’19, New York and New Jersey both attracted big deals, such as The We Company’s $5 billion raise, and Knock’s $400 million raise.

Among companies headquartered in Silicon Valley, there has been a shift toward scaling outside of the Valley in order to access or attract talent and better manage labor and space costs. Late in 2018, for example, Slack announced a new Denver Office, while other companies set up offices in Arizona, Salt Lake City and beyond. This trend is only expected to continue as companies look to balance a presence in the Valley with the need to scale and grow efficiently.

Digital Banking Heats Up
The digital banking space in the US continued to gain traction in Q1’19. Chime’s Q1’19 $200 million raise earned it unicorn status, with a number of non-U.S.-based banks voicing plans to raise capital to fund a U.S. expansion.

The U.S. is well positioned for growth
The maturing fintech sector is also expected to see more M&A activity as companies are looking for scale and consolidate market share. In Q1’19, FIS announced plans to acquire Worldplay in a $34 billion deal.

“The story in the U.S. continues to be very positive. The 2018 IPOs generally performed very well and the pre-public companies that have completed financings recently have been at high valuations,” said Conor Moore, National Co-Lead Partner, KPMG Venture Capital practice in the U.S. “This should encourage greater investment at all points on the investment spectrum from seed to late stage.”

SOURCE KPMG LLP
http://www.kpmg.com/us

McKinsey has released a comprehensive 191-page report on the Brazilian digital economy, including macroeconomic indicators, Internet trends, investment facts, and data on the overall entrepreneurship and innovation landscape. The report was developed in collaboration with [email protected], a student-led movement that started at Stanford University and whose mission is to improve Brazil’s competitiveness and global relevance through technology and innovation.

“Brazil is at an economic inflection point with GDP growing again, increased consumer and industry confidence, lower country risk, strong performance of capital markets, and highly encouraging consumer digital trends,” said Nicola Calicchio, senior partner at McKinsey. “While the startup ecosystem is showing strong signs of healthy growth, the country has not yet fulfilled its promise in the global scenario due to significant gaps in productivity and pro-business infrastructure.”

The Brazil Digital Report can be downloaded from: www.brazilatsiliconvalley.com/brazil-digital-report. Some of the key highlights from the report:

The Brazilian economy is growing again, with Real GDP growth projected at 2.7% in 2020, compared to -3.6% in 2015, 1.1% in 2017 and 1.2% in 2018. Interest and inflation rates, as well as country risk have created a favorable investment environment. However, Brazil has only seen productivity gains of 1.3% annually since 1990 (vs. 5% for India and 8.8% for China).

More than 2/3 of Brazilians have smartphones and spend on average 9 hours connected to the Internet each day (vs. 6 hours in the US), one of the highest in the world. However, Internet speeds at 13 Mbps are still much lower than developed economies and behind the global average of 31 Mbps.

Brazil has some of the most avid digital consumers globally. By number of users, Brazil ranks globally #2 for WhatsApp, #2 for Instagram, #3 for Facebook, #3 for LinkedIn, #2 for Pinterest, #1 for Waze. However, e-commerce is still lagging most developed nations with 6% of total retail sales (compared to 20% for China and 12% for the US).

Brazil’s overall startup ecosystem is growing at an accelerated pace with over 10,000 startups — 46% of which are less than 2 years old — and 30,000 jobs. Venture capital investments in Brazil amounted to $1.3 billion in 2018 (vs. $859 million in 2017) and account for 66% of all investments in Latin America. As of 2018, there are 8 startups with $1+ billion unicorn status (compared to 13 in India and 92 in China). However, Brazil still ranks 109th in ease of doing business globally — for example, it takes 79 days on average to open a company (vs. half a day in the UK).

The Brazilian financial system has been prime territory for innovation. More than half of the population are active online banking users, and 58% of all banking transactions are online. There are over 400 fintech startups, and more than 7 million customers have opened accounts at digital-only banks. However, compared to developed countries, Brazil still has low penetration of nearly all financial products.

The Brazilian healthcare system does not yet meet WHO standards even though mortality and other metrics have improved significantly. Brazil still lags in areas such as electronic records, with only 23% of healthcare units using electronic patient charts and 45% still entirely paper-based. Nearly 300 Brazilian startups have already risen to the challenge and are pushing the digital innovation agenda in the healthcare sector.

Despite recent record numbers of high school and college graduates, fewer than 40% of the Brazilian population has completed high school and more than 10% are illiterate. Over 250 startups in digital education are trying to achieve scale inside and outside classrooms — distance education companies are leading the way, with 25% of all applications for higher education.

The report is a curated compilation of public information and selected proprietary McKinsey data. We aspire to revise it annually with fresh data in order to tell the ongoing story of Brazil’s digital and innovation evolution.

SOURCE McKinsey & Company

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A new study from the Capgemini Research Institute has found that just 10 percent of major automotive companies are implementing artificial intelligence1 (AI) projects at scale, with many falling short of an opportunity that could increase operating profit by up to 16 percent. The research also shows that fewer automotive companies are implementing AI than in 2017, despite the cost, quality and productivity advantages.

The “Accelerating Automotive’s AI Transformation: How driving AI enterprise-wide can turbo-charge organizational value” study surveyed 500 executives from large automotive companies in eight countries, building on a comparable study from 2017, to establish recent trends in AI investment and deployment. The research highlighted the following potential reasons for the modest progress in relation to AI implementation:

The roadblocks to technology transformation are still significant, such as legacy IT systems, accuracy and data concerns, and lack of skills.
The hype and high expectations that initially came with AI may have turned into a more measured and pragmatic view as companies are confronted with the reality of implementation.
Key findings include:
Scaling of AI has seen a slow growth: Since 2017, the number of automotive companies that have successfully scaled AI implementation has increased only marginally (from seven percent to 10 percent). However, the increase in companies not using AI at all was more significant (from 26 percent to 39 percent). According to the report, just 26 percent of companies are now piloting AI projects (down from 41 percent in 2017). This is maybe due to companies finding it harder to realize a desired return on investment. The results also reveal a significant regional disparity, with 25 percent of U.S. firms delivering AI at scale, compared to nine percent in China.

Automotive organizations can drive significant reward from scaled AI: The modest progress in implementing AI projects at scale represents a major missed opportunity for the industry. Modelling in the report, based on one typical top 50 original equipment manufacturer (OEM), estimates that delivering AI at scale could achieve increases in operating profit ranging from five percent (or $232m) based on conservative estimates, to 16 percent (or $764m) in an optimistic scenario.

“With AI-empowered visual inspection we have sensibly reduced the ratio of false positives with respect to the previous systems,” said Demetrio Aiello, head of the AI & Robotics Labs at Continental. “I am very confident that if we can deploy AI to its fullest potential it would have an impact on performance equivalent to almost doubling our capacity today.”

AI is seen more as a job-creator than a job-replacer: The report showed that the industry has become more positive about AI’s job-creation potential – 100 percent of executives say that AI is creating new job roles, up from 84 percent in 2017.

Where AI is being deployed, it is achieving results: The survey found a consistent story of AI delivering benefits across every automotive business function. On average, it delivered a 16 percent increase in productivity across Research and Development (R&D), operational efficiency improvements of 15 percent in the supply chain and 16 percent in manufacturing/operations, reduced direct costs of 14 percent in customer experience and 17 percent in IT, and reduced time to market by 15 percent in R&D and 13 percent in marketing/sales.

Additionally, a number of successful AI projects are identified and detailed in the research report. One example is Continental generating 5,000 miles of vehicle test data an hour through an AI-powered simulation, compared to 6,500 miles a month it was getting through physical test driving.

Others include:

Volkswagen accurately modeling vehicle sales across 250 auto models in 120 countries using machine learning.2
Mercedes-Benz testing an AI-recognition system for parcel delivery that can reduce vehicle loading time by 15 percent.3
Markus Winkler, Executive Vice President, Global Head of Automotive at Capgemini concludes, “These findings show that the progress of AI in the automotive industry has hit a speedbump. Some companies are enjoying considerable success, but others have struggled to focus on the most effective use cases, vehicle manufacturers need to start seeing AI not as a standalone opportunity, but as a strategic capability required to shape the future which they must organize investment, talent and governance around.”

He continues, “As this research shows, AI can deliver a significant dividend for every automotive business, but only if it is implemented at scale. For AI to succeed, organizations will need to invest in the right skills, achieve the requisite quality of data, and have a management structure that provides both direction and executive support.”

To deliver at scale, companies must invest, upskill and create infrastructure: The report also examined the behaviors of the companies in the survey who have had the most success implementing AI at scale (‘Scale Champions’). It found they had typically,

invested much more in AI (more than $200m a year for 86 percent of Champions),
focused hiring and training efforts on AI skills (32 percent said hiring was relevant to their AI strategy, versus 14 percent of others; 25 percent said they proactively upskilled and re-skilled current employees, compared to eight percent of others); and
created a clear governance structure to prioritize and promote AI, with measures including a central steering to govern AI investment, and a cross-functional team of tech, business and operations experts.
Research Methodology
The Capgemini Research Institute conducted a primary survey of 500 automotive executives from large automotive organizations in eight countries: China, France, Germany, India, Italy, Sweden, United Kingdom and the United States. The research team then conducted in-depth interviews with a number of industry experts and entrepreneurs.

The report can be downloaded here https://www.capgemini.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/Ai-in-automotive-research-report.pdf.

About Capgemini
A global leader in consulting, technology services and digital transformation, Capgemini is at the forefront of innovation to address the entire breadth of clients’ opportunities in the evolving world of cloud, digital and platforms. Building on its strong 50-year heritage and deep industry-specific expertise, Capgemini enables organizations to realize their business ambitions through an array of services from strategy to operations. Capgemini is driven by the conviction that the business value of technology comes from and through people. It is a multicultural company of over 200,000 team members in more than 40 countries. The Group reported 2018 global revenues of EUR 13.2 billion (about $15.6 billion USD at 2018 average rate).
Visit us at www.capgemini.com. People matter, results count.

About the Capgemini Research Institute
The Capgemini Research Institute is Capgemini’s in-house research center. The Institute publishes research on the impact of digital technologies on large traditional businesses. The team draws on the worldwide network of Capgemini experts and works closely with academic and technology partners. The Institute has dedicated research centers in India, the United Kingdom and the United States. It was recently ranked #1 in the world for the quality of its research by independent analysts.
Visit us at https://www.capgemini.com/researchinstitute/

1 Artificial intelligence (AI) is a collective term for the capabilities shown by learning systems that are perceived by humans as representing ‘intelligence’. Today, typical AI capabilities include speech, image and video recognition, autonomous objects, natural language processing, conversational agents, prescriptive modeling, augmented creativity, smart automation, advanced simulation, as well as complex analytics and predictions.
2 Automotive World, “VW says OK to AI”, March 2018
3 Daimler website, “Vans as motherships”, September 2018

SOURCE Capgemini

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Training session curriculums and schedules have been announced for Analytics Summit 2019 presented by the University of Cincinnati Center for Business Analytics. The 8th annual event is being held April 1-3, 2019 at the Sharonville Convention Center in Cincinnati, Ohio.

All training sessions will be held April 1 and 2 from 8:30 a.m. until 5 p.m. (EST), with the exception of the Analytics for Executives session being held April 2nd from noon until 5 p.m. Hands-on, practical training techniques will give students the opportunity to interact directly with expert instructors and peers, and get immediate feedback along with answers to technical and business-related questions.

Sessions summaries follow. Prospective students are encouraged to visit the event website for a complete session outline, prerequisites, and details.

Advanced MS Power BI – This course takes a deep dive into advanced level Power BI skills, covering lesser-known but more advanced skills from the Power BI set of features. The session will be led by Geoff Marsh, BI Practice Leader from Amend Consulting, and Derek Sasthav, Project Leader at Amend.

Machine Learning with R – Learn the fundamentals and application of modern machine learning tasks. This course will cover unsupervised techniques to discover the hidden structure of datasets along with supervised techniques for predicting categorical and numeric responses via classification and regression. Session instructors will be Brad Boehmke, Director of Data Science at 84.51o, and Brandon Greenwell, Senior Data Scientist at Ascend Innovations.

Advanced Tableau Training – This two-day workshop on Tableau will cover intermediate and advanced topics. Attendees should have attended previous “Introduction to Tableau” training or have significant experience using Tableau in a professional environment. Course content will include advanced chart types and business dashboards, advanced calculations in Tableau, using calculations, parameters, and table calculations, and other topics. Jeff Shaffer, Tableau Zen Master, will lead this session.

Big Data with Hadoop & Spark – Attendees will learn how these powerful tools function and form the core of big data analytics systems. The emphasis of this course will be on understanding the fundamental principles of big data systems using Hadoop and Spark and will extend beyond basics to introduce some technical components. Andrew Harrison, Assistant Professor of Information Systems at the Lindner School of Business at UC, and Zhe (Jay) Shan, Assistant Professor in Dept. Information Systems and Analytics at Miami University Farmer School of Business will lead this session.

Analytics for Executives – This half-day session led by Glenn Wegryn, Executive Director at the UC Center for Business Analytics is intended for business leaders at the Director level and above. It will focus on providing a fundamental understanding of what analytics is, examples of successful applications in financial and other industries, how to get started, and what resources, skill sets, organization, and cultural elements need to be in place for long-term success.

Complete details and registration information can be found on the Analytics Summit 2019 event registration site.

About the University of Cincinnati’s Center for Business Analytics

The Center for Business Analytics at the University of Cincinnati’s Carl H. Lindner College of Business is a corporate-academic partnership that brings together a multidisciplinary group of businesses, organizations, faculty, and students to provide education and an exchange of ideas and best practices regarding the application of data-driven analytical methods for enhancing organizational performance.

In collaboration with its corporate sponsors, the center provides symposia, student projects, community training, and applied research focused on the use of techniques such as data visualization, data mining, predictive modeling, simulation, and optimization to solve important problems faced by businesses, government and non-profit organizations.

Tableau Software (NYSE: DATA), the leading analytics platform, today announced the general availability of Ask Data, which leverages the power of natural language processing to enable people to ask data questions in plain language and instantly get a visual response right in Tableau. This patent pending capability makes it easier for anyone, regardless of skill set, to engage deeply with data and produce analytical insights they can share with others without having to do any setup or programming. Ask Data is available at no extra charge as part Tableau’s newest release, Tableau 2019.1, which also launched today. For more information visit https://www.tableau.com/products/new-features.

In the same way Tableau first pioneered drag-and-drop functionality within analytics, Ask Data is the next stage in the evolution of self-service analytics. With Ask Data, customers can simply type a question such as, “What were my sales this month?” and Tableau will return an interactive data visualization that they can continue to explore, refine the question, and drill into further detail. There is no need to have a deep understanding of the data structure or programming skills. Whether they are a product manager, a manufacturing supervisor, a doctor, or a pizza shop owner, Ask Data enables anyone to have a conversation with their data. It uses sophisticated algorithms that are driven by an understanding of the person’s intent, not keywords, which helps Tableau return more relevant results. Because Ask Data is fully integrated into Tableau, people can then seamlessly and gracefully explore their data using Tableau’s full analytics capabilities.

“Now more than ever we need to connect our teams with self-service analytics that enable faster business insights. After a positive experience testing Ask Data with Tableau Online, we look forward to how this and other natural language models could support a wide spectrum of our analytics scenarios,” said Technical Account Manager, Scott Webber, from Expedia Group. “For example, sales managers could analyze performance by region around the globe simply by asking questions. Ask Data also supports our augmented analytics strategy, allowing non-technical users to automate data analysis and insights.”

Ask Data is available at no additional cost as part of Tableau Server and Tableau Online. Ask Data works with Tableau’s full range of supported data sources – both live and extract – allowing instant connection to any data source, without having to move the data or train the algorithm. And with no setup required, Ask Data integrates with Tableau Server’s existing security and governance capabilities, which makes it ready to use.

“With Ask Data, we’re helping make analytics ubiquitous by enabling anyone, regardless of expertise, to analyze data,” said Francois Ajenstat, Chief Product Officer at Tableau. “Our unique, conversational approach to natural language allows people to ask questions how they naturally think. Ask Data provides a more intuitive and natural way to interact with data, lowering the barrier to entry for analytics and allowing people to ask questions in plain language and get highly relevant insights faster.”

Patent Pending Technology Translates Simple Questions into Analytical Queries
Behind the scenes, Ask Data uses powerful algorithms to automatically profile and index data sources. Ask Data knows, for example, when someone types “American furniture” with their sales data, they need “Product Category” filtered to “Furniture,” and “Country” set to “United States.” It combines statistical knowledge about a data source with contextual knowledge about real-world concepts: “Furniture” is a common value for the “Product Category” field and “America” is a synonym of the country “United States.” This inherent support for synonyms allows people to generate insights while using different terms to represent the same field, such as “sales” and “bookings.”

Additionally, Ask Data’s innovative parser automatically cuts through ambiguous language and uses Tableau’s analytical depth to make it easy for people to ask sophisticated questions in a natural, colloquial way. This means, if a question could be interpreted multiple ways, Ask Data will combine knowledge about the data source with past user activity and present a number of valid options to choose from, with the ability to refine the results if needed. Fully integrated in the Tableau platform, Ask Data leverages Tableau’s patented Show Me technology and pioneering visual best practices to automatically represent the data in the best way possible.

Tableau 2019.1 Also Includes New Features like New Mobile App, Google Ad Connector and PowerPoint Export
In this first release of 2019, Tableau is also delivering new mobile capabilities and a completely redesigned mobile app for both iOS and Android. Automatic Mobile Layouts mean new dashboards will not only work great on phones, but will do so with the simple click of a button. With the new mobile app available in the next few weeks, customers can access their Tableau Server and Tableau Online vizzes wherever they are, whenever they need it, including interactivity when they are offline. The mobile app will also enable organizations to leverage existing Tableau security and governance features while scaling their analytics deployment.

Tableau 2019.1 also includes a Google Ads connector, which will help marketers analyze their website data more easily and blend it with other data sources across their organization. This connector adds to the more than 65 native connectors available today like Google BigQuery, Salesforce, Amazon Redshift, Snowflake and SAP Hana. And with the new Export to PowerPoint feature that optimizes visualizations and dashboards for slides, customers can present their analysis with the click of a button.

Also launching alongside Tableau 2019.1 is Tableau Data Management. The new subscription offering includes Tableau Prep Conductor to help customers better manage their data to ensure that trusted and timely data is being used to drive decisions across their organizations. Tableau will also expand the power of this offering with new native catalog capabilities coming later this year. Customers can add these capabilities to their existing environment by upgrading to Tableau Server 2019.1 and subscribing to the Tableau Data Management package. For more information, visit here.

About Tableau
Tableau (NYSE: DATA) helps people see and understand data. Tableau pioneered self-service analytics with the leading analytics platform that empowers people of any skill level to work with data. From individuals and non-profits to government agencies and the Fortune 500, more than 86,000 customer accounts around the world use Tableau to get rapid insights and make impactful, data-driven decisions. See how Tableau can help you by downloading the free trial at www.tableau.com/trial.

In a new report titled: The productivity agenda – moving beyond cost reduction in financial services, PwC sets out the important challenges and opportunities facing the financial services industry and the ways in which senior executives should respond if they wish to move beyond simple cost cutting and improve profitability in the long term.

With banks struggling to improve their return on capital, many institutions are being forced to restructure and cut costs. Even in the asset management industry, where ROE is higher than the financial services industry as a whole, there is downward pressure on margins and profitability. Cost cutting will only deliver so much. If financial institutions are to improve profitability in the long term they need to fundamentally improve the productivity of the enterprise.

John Garvey, Global Financial Services Leader for PwC stated that:

“The cost cutting agenda adopted by many institutions since the financial crisis has, in essence, de-globalised the industry to make it more local or national, shrunk global footprints, divested businesses, and shed clients. However, this process has run its course. If profitability is to get anywhere near the highs of fifteen years ago, what’s needed now is a fundamental focus on building a sustainable productive business model that can compete with both incumbent institutions and digital-only competitors.”

Based on a detailed survey of the global financial services industry, PwC has identified six areas where financial institutions can focus their productivity efforts to boost long term sustainable profitability:

1: Better understanding the workforce
Our experience indicates that by simply tracking hours by task, organisations can improve productivity by 15% to 20%, and the implementation of service catalogues and multi-tier sourcing can bring another 20% improvement.Of the organisations that didn’t track work by hours and tasks, 62% believed such tracking would yield productivity benefits.

2: Rethinking change functions
Forty per cent of financial institutions are spending 20% of their entire budget on so-called ‘change-the-institution’ efforts. However only 15% said they were satisfied with their ability to execute change.

3: Embracing the platform economy
Only 21% of financial institutions employ crowdsourcing tools today. Platforms can run challenges that tap the collective brainpower and resources of a crowd, driven by a sense of competition to develop the best response. We predict that gig employees will perform 15% to 20% of the work of a typical institution within five years. This translates into significant cost savings across the board, along with the potential to improve the level of talent and innovation delivered from the employee base.

4: Improving workforce digital IQ
As people live and work longer, and unemployment rates remain low, digital training and retraining of existing workforces is particularly crucial. Despite its importance, research shows that current efforts are not achieving the desired results. Of the financial-services leaders polled in PwC’s 2018 CEO Survey, 75% reported they were concerned about shortages of digital skills within the industry.

5: Bringing an agile mind-set to the mainstream
To keep up with digital-only competitors and rapidly deliver a seamless and instant customer experience, 77% of financial institutions are turning to agile somewhere in their organizations.

6: Mastering digital labour
Over 50% of CEOs believe artificial intelligence (AI) will have a bigger impact than the internet. Getting the balance right between tasks performed by AI and tasks performed by people will be key to future success for financial institutions.

“It is clear what financial institutions need to do to build future profitability and to remain competitive. However doing it and making the necessary changes will be a huge challenge. Very soon we will start to see which CEOs have taken the productivity agenda seriously”, added John Garvey.

Find the full report: https://www.pwc.com/fsproductivity

About the research
The report sets out the important challenges and opportunities facing the financial services industry and the ways in which senior executives should respond if they wish to move beyond simple cost cutting and improve profitability in the long term.

As a result of a detailed survey, it identifies six areas where financial institutions can focus their productivity efforts to boost long term sustainable profitability.

About PwC
At PwC, our purpose is to build trust in society and solve important problems. We’re a network of firms in 158 countries with over 250,000 people who are committed to delivering quality in assurance, advisory and tax services. Find out more and tell us what matters to you by visiting us at www.pwc.com.

PwC refers to the PwC network and/or one or more of its member firms, each of which is a separate legal entity. Please see www.pwc.com/structure for further details.

The National Retail Federation today forecast that retail sales during 2019 will increase between 3.8 percent and 4.4 percent to more than $3.8 trillion despite threats from an ongoing trade war, the volatile stock market and the effects of the government shutdown.

“We believe the underlying state of the economy is sound,” NRF President and CEO Matthew Shay said. “More people are working, they’re making more money, their taxes are lower and their confidence remains high. The biggest priority is to ensure that our economy continues to grow and to avoid self-inflicted wounds. It’s time for artificial problems like trade wars and shutdowns to end, and to focus on prosperity not politics.”

Preliminary estimates show that retail sales during 2018 grew 4.6 percent over 2017 to $3.68 trillion, exceeding NRF’s forecast of at least 4.5 percent growth. The number includes online and other non-store sales, which were up 10.4 percent at $682.8 billion. That met NRF’s forecast of 10-12 percent online growth, and online is expected to grow in the same 10-12 percent range again this year. The numbers exclude automobile dealers, gasoline stations and restaurants.

Growth of between 3.8 percent and 4.4 percent would result in total 2019 retail sales of between $3.82 trillion and $3.84 trillion. Based on growth of 10-12 percent, online sales would total between $751.1 billion and $764.8 billion, which are included in the total.

The 2018 results are based on Commerce Department data up through November but include NRF estimates for December because the agency was closed during the recent government shutdown and has not yet released December figures. The results are subject to revision once December numbers become available, and government numbers are revised again each spring regardless of the shutdown.

“We are not seeing any deterioration in the financial health of the consumer,” NRF Chief Economist Jack Kleinhenz said. “Consumers are in better shape than any time in the last few years. Most important for the year ahead will be the ongoing strength in the job market, which will support the consumer income and spending that are both key drivers of the economy. The bottom line is that the economy is in a good place despite the ups and downs of the stock market and other uncertainties. Growth remains solid.”

NRF expects the overall economy to gain an average of 170,000 jobs per month, down from 220,000 in 2018, and that unemployment – currently at 4 percent – will drop to 3.5 percent by the end of the year. Gross domestic product is likely to grow about 2.5 percent over 2018.

Kleinhenz said inflation and interest rates are expected to remain low this year and that retail sales have been helped by recent reductions in gasoline prices.

Retailers so far have been able to largely mitigate the impact of new tariffs on steel, aluminum and goods from China imposed in the past year. But tariffs could drive up the cost of consumer products and affect business direction and profits this year, particularly if tariffs on $200 billion in Chinese products rise from 10 percent to 25 percent as currently scheduled for March 1, he said.

It has been difficult to measure the impact of the recently ended government shutdown. Government workers will be paid retroactively but some spending and expenses such as dining out or entertaining have been lost and government contractors will not receive back pay, Kleinhenz said. A key issue is how quickly the Internal Revenue Service will be able to process a potential backlog of tax returns, which would affect first-quarter spending, he said.

About NRF
The National Retail Federation is the world’s largest retail trade association. Based in Washington, D.C., NRF represents discount and department stores, home goods and specialty stores, Main Street merchants, grocers, wholesalers, chain restaurants and internet retailers from the United States and more than 45 countries. Retail is the nation’s largest private-sector employer, supporting one in four U.S. jobs — 42 million working Americans. Contributing $2.6 trillion to annual GDP, retail is a daily barometer for the nation’s economy. NRF.com