The telecom giant CenturyLink created a federated program to scale automation efforts, where one dedicated team curated standards and best practices that were then rolled out across the company. CenturyLink -- a facilities-based communications company with 40,000 full-time employees, based out of Monroe, La. -- wanted to achieve automation at scale and blend the best characteristics of application development, scripting, and robotic process automation (RPA) tooling, said Troy Ferrence, senior manager of automation solutions architecture at CenturyLink. For the past several years, Ferrence's team has focused on scripting and application development, but its efforts accelerated when CenturyLink introduced RPA software that used the UiPath platform. CenturyLink expanded its work to more than 19 teams dedicated to this project, referred to as center of excellence teams, in the last year and developed over a thousand different automations. "We have a lot of legacy applications where we don't have any type of interface or availability for enhancement which are perfect candidates for RPA," Ferrence said.

The Covid-19 pandemic has clearly placed an extraordinary amount of pressure on businesses in practically every sector. Companies have had to pivot and adjust to a new way of working, with a rapid switch to remote teams and virtual workforces - many in a matter of days. The reality is, as we emerge from the current situation, it is inevitable that there will be a lasting impact from the changes that have had to be made. The landscape for business has been altered for good. We have already seen many businesses forced to cease all discretionary spending, pause recruitment plans indefinitely, cut marketing spend while still demonstrating a strong return on investment, and yet still make decisions on how best to drive and generate pipeline.

For CenturyLink, customer surveys play an important role in understanding the customer experience. But, in the past, without the ability to analyze the unstructured data in these surveys, customer service teams couldn't drill down to identify the nature and characteristics of issues. "Using unstructured data is really important for us because that's where the real detail -- the meat -- comes in," said Beth Ard, vice president of customer experience at the Louisiana-based network services provider. "When you do scoring, for example, you don't have enough actionable insight to make the changes that you need without it." Most business analytics processes require clean and well-structured data, but enterprises are increasingly managing unstructured data formats -- emails, chat transcripts, audio and video, and social media posts.

Verizon and NEC used artificial intelligence (AI)-infused software and sensors as part of a recent proof-of-concept (PoC) trial that allowed already installed fiber infrastructure to monitor traffic and road conditions. The PoC used NEC-developed optical sensor technology with the AI software running alongside existing wavelength division multiplexing (WDM) communication channels on the same fiber lines. The mixture turned the cables into distributed optical sensors that collected information on traffic patterns, road conditions, road capacity, and vehicle classification information. The AI tools used included convolutional neural networks (CNN) and software vector machines that were able to tap into distributed intelligent traffic informatics (DITI). Those tools were plugged into a single integrated monitor that was able to detect back-scattering light traveling through the fiber optic streams to detect static strain, dynamic strain, acoustics, vibrations, and temperatures for each fiber segment.

CenturyLink (NYSE: CTL) is the second largest U.S. communications provider to global enterprise customers. With customers in more than 60 countries and an intense focus on the customer experience, CenturyLink strives to be the world's best networking company by solving customers' increased demand for reliable and secure connections. The company also serves as its customers' trusted partner, helping them manage increased network and IT complexity and providing managed network and cyber security solutions that help protect their business. Key member of the Ops Transformation team who will support our Field Operations and Service Assurance teams with insights gained from analyzing company data. The ideal candidate must have strong experience using a variety of data mining/data analysis methods, using a variety of data tools, building and implementing models, using/creating algorithms and delivering solutions to drive KPI improvements.

CenturyLink (NYSE: CTL) is the second largest U.S. communications provider to global enterprise customers. With customers in more than 60 countries and an intense focus on the customer experience, CenturyLink strives to be the world's best networking company by solving customers' increased demand for reliable and secure connections. The company also serves as its customers' trusted partner, helping them manage increased network and IT complexity and providing managed network and cyber security solutions that help protect their business. The Data Scientist is a highly skilled individual contributor, under minimal supervision, who designs and develops programs, methods, processes, and systems to consolidate and analyze diverse, structured and unstructured "big data" sources to generate actionable insights and solutions using machine learning and advanced analytics. The Data Scientist proactively identifies meaningful insights by executing data discovery, exploratory data analysis, and iteratively developing predictive and prescriptive models to identify optimal solutions.

CenturyLink (NYSE: CTL) is the second largest U.S. communications provider to global enterprise customers. With customers in more than 60 countries and an intense focus on the customer experience, CenturyLink strives to be the world's best networking company by solving customers' increased demand for reliable and secure connections. The company also serves as its customers' trusted partner, helping them manage increased network and IT complexity and providing managed network and cyber security solutions that help protect their business. This Data Scientist role is within the Black Lotus Labs Threat Research Team. This security-focused advanced team utilizes a variety of methods to find malicious actors, botnets, and other risk types in the Internet.

CenturyLink (NYSE: CTL) is the second largest U.S. communications provider to global enterprise customers. With customers in more than 60 countries and an intense focus on the customer experience, CenturyLink strives to be the world's best networking company by solving customers' increased demand for reliable and secure connections. The company also serves as its customers' trusted partner, helping them manage increased network and IT complexity and providing managed network and cyber security solutions that help protect their business. Job Summary Designs, develops and programs methods, processes, and systems to consolidate and analyze unstructured, diverse "big data" sources to generate actionable insights and solutions for client services and product enhancement. Interacts with product and service teams to identify questions and issues for data analysis and experiments.

The field of Robotic Process Automation (RPA) has seen a major boom thanks to the use of AI tools that make it easier to streamline the development of software robots. At Transform 2019 this week, experts weighed in on what will be required to take RPA from a simple point solution to a robust digital factory. The goal is not so much to replace humans, but to find better ways to complement human workflows. Telecom giant CenturyLink discovered that scaling and managing a bot workforce required a thoughtful approach. Brian Bond, consumer vice president at CenturyLink, said things started changing when they got up to around 100 bots.

Artificial intelligence, or AI as it's called, has been a buzzword for nearly a decade already, yet sometimes it still feels as though we're just in the early stages of discovering what predictive analytics and machine learning can do for enterprises. Nowhere is this truer than in marketing and sales functions. According to Forrester, as of 2017 marketing and sales accounted for more than 50 percent of all AI investments. But when you look at investors who have already sunk serious money into AI projects, only 45 percent have seen any results at all. And among those who are seeing results, 25 percent agree that they've become more effective in their business processes.