As the preferred partner for window and door automation, Somfy is committed to inspiring new and better ways of living for all. Better ways of producing, consuming, and housing that we must imagine together around the world in order to inhabit our planet in a more virtuous and permanent way. Acting for better ways of living means fostering the alliance of a sustainable economic model with environmental protection and self-fulfillment for everyone. As a French, family-owned, and independent group, in continuous growth since our creation, we have been world leaders for 50 years and pioneers in home automation. We are present in 59 countries, with eight production sites and 17 R&D centers.

Compared with industries such as consumer packaged goods, retail, media, and entertainment, insurance companies worldwide have relatively limited direct contact and engagement with their customers. Paying premiums and submitting claims is still the extent of most customers' interactions with companies after they purchase a policy. Insurers have improved and broadened their digital capabilities in engagement platforms, marketing programs, advisory tools for agents, and more. Our analysis of Asian insurers' current digital capabilities finds that most have moved past initial investments that enabled them to execute mass campaigns online. The majority have created large grouping segments or customer profiles based on demographics, life stages, or measures of customer value.

Digital transformation is the megatrend driving billions in investment across the corporate world to reinvent the way they do business. In the enterprise digital transformation guide, we will address the following topics to help you master the art and science of digitalization. "When digital transformation is done right, it's like a caterpillar turning into a butterfly, but when done wrong, all you have is a really fast caterpillar." Digital transformation is a customer-centric reimagination of the future of an enterprise and subsequently rethinking the business model. Reshaping the product/service portfolio, restructuring the processes, re-platforming technologies, reskilling the workforce, and instilling a new culture to get to the end goal. That definition of what is digital transformation packs a lot of punch.

The disparity between digital transformation leaders and laggards stems from a complex web of overlapping factors -- which often speak more to organizational issues than technical difficulties. Considerations in play include corporate history, IT philosophy, the ability to deliver on customer experience and a product vs. project mindset. A particularly important element separating a successful digital business from its competitors is a knack for translating small successes into enterprise-wide benefits. Indeed, overcoming digital transformation challenges at scale is crucial for realizing the promise of technology-infused business models, according to CIOs and industry analysts. Companies playing catch-up in the digital race must first focus on the essentials, such as customer experience, before moving on to more innovative pursuits.

While digital technologies have continued to evolve, certain industries have had to adapt their cultures to continue innovating successfully. Financial institutions, insurers, real estate companies and regulators have found themselves playing catchup, as skill sets and mindsets have proved insufficient for getting the best out of the cloud, data science, AI and other capabilities. But the emergence and evolution of disruptive innovation sectors have enabled companies to leverage digital to keep up with competition. Many of the use cases present in these industries were especially prominent at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, as people worked remotely, as well as obtaining services from home. Below is a guide to some of the most prominent emerging sectors of disruptive innovation, exploring how they came about and some of the biggest trends in each space.

CPOs and their teams can take a page from this book and set themselves up for success going forward. Here's what they can consider: Focus on relationships and influence across functions and supply markets: Our research found that high performers and agility masters perform better on a higher "quality of [stakeholder] influence" rather than just the "quantity of sourcing-centric [spend] influence." Procurement organizations need to think of managed service providers and ecosystem partners as their extended enterprise and put stakeholder/customer management at the center of their strategy. They can build collaborative muscle by flipping their linear sourcing-centric approach to third-party/partner management and developing a holistic supplier management approach. Define a truly balanced scorecard: CPOs have generally done well in terms of achieving their savings targets.

Companies around the world are adapting to new ways of doing business, with automation and artificial intelligence playing an important role amid the ongoing pandemic. These insights from MIT Sloan Management Review can help ensure digital transformation initiatives are successful while also resilient in the face of new disruption. As enterprises consider what digital transformation will look like after the pandemic, MIT Sloan senior lecturerGeorge Westermanencourages business leaders to leave behind their pre-pandemic assumptions about innovation. Instead, he said in a recent webinar, lean into how COVID-19 forced enterprises to change for the better. The collective response to the pandemic challenged longstanding notions about the efficiency of remote work, the agility of corporate IT departments, the rigidity of government regulators, and the willingness of customers to embrace (and pay for) digital interactions.

Technologies like artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML), and automation in all of its forms can augment human workers and enable them to pivot to more valuable work, and perform their jobs with more efficiency, safety, and ease. Yet there's justifiable concerns emerging regarding the potential of these technologies to displace human workers. Ronald van Loon is working in partnership with Protiviti, and was able to examine their recent study, Future of Work Top Risks Survey brief, which was conducted as a joint effort with NC State University, and lend his point of view as an industry analyst about the evolving dynamic between technology and the future of work. How we work changed dramatically over the course of the past year, leading to new remote and hybrid work models, changing workforce and employment trends, and ubiquitous technology adoption to accelerate the necessary transformation to sustain operations. Protiviti's findings indicate that the future of work is shaping up to be one of the most disruptive and definitive business challenges of the next decade.

Technologies like artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML), and automation in all of its forms can augment human workers and enable them to pivot to more valuable work, and perform their jobs with more efficiency, safety, and ease. Yet there's justifiable concerns emerging regarding the potential of these technologies to displace human workers. Ronald van Loon is working in partnership with Protiviti, and was able to examine their recent study, Future of Work Top Risks Survey brief, which was conducted as a joint effort with NC State University, and lend his point of view as an industry analyst about the evolving dynamic between technology and the future of work. How we work changed dramatically over the course of the past year, leading to new remote and hybrid work models, changing workforce and employment trends, and ubiquitous technology adoption to accelerate the necessary transformation to sustain operations. Protiviti's findings indicate that the future of work is shaping up to be one of the most disruptive and definitive business challenges of the next decade.

MIT researchers have created the first fabric-fiber to have digital capabilities, ready to collect, store and analyze data using a neural network. In a first, the digital fiber contains memory, temperature sensors, and a trained neural network program for inferring physical activity. MIT researchers have created the first fiber with digital capabilities, able to sense, store, analyze, and infer activity after being sewn into a shirt. Yoel Fink, who is a professor of material sciences and electrical engineering, a Research Laboratory of Electronics principal investigator, and the senior author on the study, says digital fibers expand the possibilities for fabrics to uncover the context of hidden patterns in the human body that could be used for physical performance monitoring, medical inference, and early disease detection. Or, you might someday store your wedding music in the gown you wore on the big day -- more on that later.