The road to maturity for any technology in the enterprise is long and arduous. Take data and analytics platforms as an example. Data from 451 Research's Voice of the Enterprise series in March found a third of companies surveyed were still yet to fully embrace a data-driven approach to strategic decision making. If that is the case, whither artificial intelligence? Writing for Enterprise Talk earlier this month, Swapnil Mishra notes of businesses still being in the'AI adolescence' phase, citing research from Accenture which found 63% of 1,200 companies polled were still experimenting with projects.

With AskSid's retail AI brain serving business innovation, we have supported a host of global brands including AkzoNobel, Danone, Wolford, Akris, and Himalaya in improving marketing efficacy, launching new product lines, and expanding to new markets, all led by actionable insights. With live implementations across 23 countries and supporting 100 international languages, AskSid embodies the essence of the retail industry and is driving change in the way brands meet their customers going forward. This infographic brings together every milestone, every AI advancement, and piece of news that kept us going in 2021. AskSid is a global conversational solutions company that partners with retail brands to elevate shopping experiences by leveraging the power of Artificial Intelligence. Our capabilities extend beyond support automation, extending to insight extraction, analysis, and business opportunity generation, all by leveraging the power of conversational data.

Breed Reply, a European investor in early-stage Internet of Things (IoT) businesses, has increased its investment in Dutch agritech company, Connecterra. As part of its Series B funding round, Connecterra has secured €7.8 million from existing investors, Breed Reply and Sistema, alongside new investors including AgTech specialists ADM Capital, French food safety enterprise Kersia Group and Dutch impact investor, Pymwymic. The Series B funding round completed by Connecterra is the largest ever Series B investment raised by a European livestock tech company. The funding will be used to accelerate the development of Connecterra's predictive artificial intelligence (AI) platform, Ida. Ida is the first digital assistant for the dairy farmer, based on sensor technology, cloud computing and machine learning.

The AI Factory for AgriFood is the third class of the Microsoft AI factory, which aims to support start-ups specialising in artificial intelligence. The programme is organised around five major economic and societal challenges: health, environment & energy, transportation, financial services and agrifood. The AI Factory for Agrifood aims to accelerate the digital transformation of the food sector by helping start-ups to continue their development in artificial intelligence and cloud computing. Specifically, Danone and Microsoft said they hope to encourage projects serving regenerative agriculture (soil health, animal welfare, support for farmers), sustainable food, waste minimisation and optimisation of supply chains. The accelerator will take a'full ecosystem' approach, reflecting Danone's'One Planet, One Health' vision, which links human and planetary health across the venue chain.

The past two decades have seen the workplace transformed by digital advances. Gone are many traditional structures and practices, replaced with new ways of doing business, designed to support collaboration and digitally-enabled remote and flexible working. As the technology behind AI and robotics becomes more sophisticated, the number of jobs that remain untouched by automation will decrease. "To keep pace, businesses must rethink how they organise work, reinvent jobs, redeploy staff and implement robust plans for the future," says Lynda Gratton, professor of management practice at London Business School (LBS). There are also emerging social trends and shifting demographics to consider.