According to a new Gartner study, AI is the top priority for business leaders for the third year in a row. The AI market is now on its path to reaching $126 billion by 2025, with no signs of slowing down anytime soon. Hence it's critical for CEOs to grasp the reins and steer their companies into the digital age. Metaverse may be all the rage these days, fuelling popular imagination, taking over movies, games and other pop culture, but when it comes down to the brass tacks, the top bosses at organisations worldwide continue to swear by Artificial Intelligence (AI) to drive global growth. AI has become an inseparable part of an organisation.

According to a new Gartner study, AI is the top priority for business leaders for the third year in a row. The AI market is now on its path to reaching $126 billion by 2025, with no signs of slowing down anytime soon. Hence it's critical for CEOs to grasp the reins and steer their companies into the digital age. Metaverse may be all the rage these days, fuelling popular imagination, taking over movies, games and other pop culture, but when it comes down to the brass tacks, the top bosses at organisations worldwide continue to swear by Artificial Intelligence (AI) to drive global growth. AI has become an inseparable part of an organisation.

Ivanti worked with global digital transformation experts and surveyed 10,000 office workers, IT professionals, and the C-Suite to evaluate the level of prioritization and adoption of DEX in organizations and how it shapes the daily working experiences for employees. The report revealed that 49% of employees are frustrated by the tech and tools their organization provides and 64% believe that the way they interact with technology directly impacts morale. Conflicting views remain between C-Suite, IT, and employees when it comes to the future of work and technology's role in enabling the culture of hybrid work. Just 13% of knowledge workers prefer to work exclusively from the office, yet 56% of CXOs still feel that employees need to be in the office to be productive, although 74% of the C-Suite report they are more productive since the start of the pandemic – showing a disconnect between what they have experienced and what they believe employees need to do to be productive. Globally the C-Suite's number one priority was employee productivity, with workplace culture and employee satisfaction falling further down the list.

In the span of a few years, artificial intelligence (AI) has evolved from an emerging technology to taking center stage in companies of all sizes. This has been a consistent trend across industries, and adoption will continue to accelerate. According to a recent study by IDC, "60% of Forbes' Global 2000 companies will expand the use of artificial intelligence across all business-critical horizontal functions like marketing, legal, HR, procurement, and supply chain logistics by 2024."* AI is at the heart of SAP's strategy to help customers become intelligent, sustainable enterprises. Bringing transformative intelligence to every aspect of their business through ready-to-use AI capabilities in SAP applications for all business processes, such as lead-to-cash, design-to-operate, recruit-to-retire, and source-to-pay.

The human race is evolving tenfold with regard to technological advancements. If you see the world as a whole, you may not realize the magnitude of those advancements per se. When we tell you, our jaws would have dropped down to the floor if you would have told us 15 years ago that we would experience an image recognition system that allows entry only when we smile! With the breakthrough of AI, Brands are venturing into plethora of tech opportunities to maximise their outputs. We at Apric use an integrated methodology with a prime focus on infusing innovation with technology and intelligence to enhance performance just like Canon does.

In a nutshell, any managers' value can be correlated to their team's efficiency and productivity. It can be argued that besides using sophisticated strategies, many managers also rely on their gut feeling to assess employees and treat them accordingly. With the pandemic forcing remote work upon the majority of businesses, this approach has become largely irrelevant. It has become increasingly hard for managers to monitor employee productivity without direct communication, which dramatically increased the demand for remote surveillance solutions. However, the notion of advanced employee monitoring has been around for ages.

Human Resources (HR) is a people profession. This industry that is known to be very human and personal, is accepting the digital transformation with ease. The new-age HR is adapting technology to attract and retain top talent. Technology has made its way to all HR operations resulting in a major shift in the way employers contact employees, store and analyse data, and evaluate employee performance. Organisations are increasingly using technology to liberate HR professionals from administrative burdens and help them recruit and engage quality employees, and boost their productivity.

Are you ready for 2021's opportunities? Are you ready for the new business models that will emerge once the COVID-19 coronavirus is behind us? What strategic technology moves will your organization make today to invest in the innovation to bring your enterprise out of the current crisis, stronger and better? CTOs and other senior technology leaders should now be focusing on these key questions as we enter the second half of 2020. Sure, it was critically important to pivot instantly to enable working from home in the first half of this year.

Robotic process automation (RPA) software company UiPath has announced that it has added conversational AI capabilities to the end-to-end hyperautomation platform. The capabilities will fuel UiPath Robots and industry-tailored chatbots, and new automation capabilities will enhance employee productivity and ensure always-on, scalable, best-in-class global support experiences. The company will also be deploying its powerful Robotic Process Automation (RPA) with Oracle cloud infrastructure and business application to streamline critical workflows and complex processes. "As a member of the Oracle Partner Network, combining our powerful RPA with Oracle's cloud infrastructure was a practical next step. As the COVID-19 pandemic continues, this collaboration allows users to quickly pivot and respond to the ongoing challenges today's environment presents," said Dhruv Asher, Senior Vice President of Alliances and Business Development at UiPath, speaking exclusively with Toolbox "Demand for quality digital customer service has increased greatly as the COVID-19 pandemic has unfolded. By combining Druid's chatbot platform with our Hyperautomation Platform, enterprises can truly achieve end-to-end automation for customers and employees – improving both customer self-service and employee productivity."

AI will fundamentally change the workplace. In the near future, AI enabled machines will be involved in everything from onboarding customers and employees, through to customer service. We are at the very beginning of this journey. The biggest changes are being felt at the largest companies. A 2019 report by Gartner revealed that enterprise use of AI has grown over 270 percent from 2014 to 2019.