The 10 Most Disruptive Companies to Watch in 2021

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Editorial

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isruptive innovation is the upside of digital transformation. Digital transformation has emerged as the catch-all phrase for companies wanting to evolve either their business model or operations to stay relevant in the digital age. While it offers the opportunity to join the digital race, it doesn’t say much about innovation nor disruption.

Digital disruption entails established companies and startups alike enlisting new technologies in the fight to dislodge incumbents, protect entrenched positions, or re-invent entire industries and business activities. And to remain disruptive in the market, it is important to keep innovating. This is crucial because, innovations occur now and then in every industry, however, to be truly disruptive, an innovation must entirely transform a product or solution that historically was so complicated only a few could access it.

On a minimum level, digital transformation enables an organization to address the needs of its customers more simply and directly. But through disruptive innovation, companies can offer a far better way to users of doing things that current incumbents simply cannot compete with.

For instance, UBER is one of the best examples of how disruptive innovation pays in the longer run. When UBER was launched in San Francisco, its customers were already using taxis, so it didn’t exactly target non-consumers. Also, Uber wasn’t a low-end alternative to a complicated, costly, inaccessible service. It actually originated in a mainstream market first (luxury black cars), and then increased overall demand and appealed to lower-end segments later with ridesharing options. Eventually, the taxi industry was genuinely disrupted because UBER offered its customers, a substantially greater value, without even being in the same industry.

Pursuing digital innovation also doesn’t mean overnight success. It requires consistent effort. To exemplify this, let’s consider how Wikipedia disrupted traditional encyclopedias such as the Encyclopedia Britannica. In case of traditional

Credits encyclopedias, people had to wait for a year or two for revised editions and the hardcover prints were quite expensive. On the contrary, Wikipedia had constantly updated content, that doesn’t require readers to wait and is cheaply accessible – factors which helped it win over an established and recognized incumbent.

Irrespective of the business domain, there will always be disruptors and the disrupted. The reason behind this distinction is opting to innovate. For instance, today, the music industry, the streaming, P2P and a host of different payment models are converging to create a new business paradigm. There will be niches like vinyl that can still be a profitable business opportunity e.g. revival of vinyl trend.

Meanwhile, streaming apps like Spotify have succeeded both as a brand and as a business model – highlighting the need to look at things from newer perspectives. Leverage disruptive technologies like big data, artificial intelligence if needed. But it is important to remember that not all innovations are disruptive.

Though disruptive innovation is about strategically allying with customers to introduce them to looking outside the product experience, there are few key characteristics that can help an organization have a leading edge. These are analyzing the competition, finding alternatives that connect with the downtrodden, ignored or non-customers, making appealing products, services and meticulously selecting the market battles. When the digital market becomes a high-growth industry built on the foundations of disruptive innovation, digital disruption is imminent and highly effective.

It is natural to feel left out amid the hype of missing the digital transformation wave. But focusing on bringing or encouraging a disruptive and innovative outlook can yield more profits when pursued side-by-side of digital transformation.

ASHISH SUKHADEVE Editor-in-chief

PRIYA DIALANI Senior Editor

APOORVA KOMARAJU Senior Analyst

VIVEK KUMAR Content Lead

PREETIPADMA K Content Analyst

ADILIN BEATRICE Content Analyst

MEENU EG Content Analyst

SHRUTHI TALLA Research Analyst

DHARMENDAR PASSI Sales Manager

ANUSHA POLNENI Marketing Analyst

RITESH RAJ Design Director

SUKHADA RAJ Creative Head

PRAVALLIKA THAMMANA Web Developer

AMIT KUMAR Web Developer

SACHIN WASNIK Marketing Executive

PREETIPADMA K Content Analyst

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March 2021 not be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means without the prior permission of Analytics Insight.

COMPANIES OF THE MONTH

14 Emonics

18 Eugenie.ai

24 Loamics

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32 Prepare Yourself For The Future Of Work In The Technology Industry

08 Cover Story

GROW

Intsite

OpsTree Solutions

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44 Tech Industry: The Lags and Leads

Predictive Black

Thinkers360

Disrupting the Market with Integrated Data Analytics and BI Platform

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Rob Nelson

row.com is a no-code full-stack business intelligence (BI) platform that empowers enterprises to make data-driven decisions.

By combining data integrations, data warehousing, and visualization in one easy-to-use platform, any organization can connect and explore its data. Further, Grow’s unlimited-user license gives everyone access to the answers they need without waiting for an analyst.

This enables department heads to make effective decisions in real-time to accelerate their growth.

Unlike other BI platforms, Grow offers to achieve business agility, excel at in-moment prioritisation, and share decision-making power with every employee. It uncovers data-based insights that allow users to tap the collective brainpower of the entire business. Grow’s easy-to-share metrics and dashboards enable business transformation and offers a company-wide license to disrupt.

Founder & CEO Grow.com 8

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Grow.com

You have to make datadriven decisions. BI software is becoming a first-tier technology, just like accounting or CRM software.

Rob Nelson

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Simplifying Data Collection Process

A Dynamic Business Leader

Making Better Decision Using Data Analytics

Grow was founded in 2014 to simplify the process of getting insights from a dataset.

Traditional business intelligence software requires long implementation times, is cost prohibited, and usually becomes so complicated that business users revert to using Excel. While traditional ETL (extract, transform, load) requires one to collect, transform, and normalize data to get it into a warehouse before one applies logic, filters, and joins, Grow enables users to

easily import and transform data from multiple sources to fuel powerful metrics and dashboards.

Grow’s mission is to empower everyone to make data-driven decisions. The company reinforces that mission with several unique differentiators. It simplifies the user experience to explore data and surface insights. Grow also provides an unlimited user model to empower everyone within an organization.

Rob Nelson is the Founder and CEO of Grow.

He started the company after experiencing data and analytics- related problems in his prior businesses. After receiving several bids of software, which were six-figure quotes and six months of implementation, Rob set out to build a solution that could be deployed in days and accessible for most businesses.

Rob realized that getting the best data in front of the right people at the right time

helps businesses disrupt the market. But many agile companies don’t have the budget to hire analysts or time to create reports when decision-making is needed.

With a graduation degree in Business Management from the University Of Utah, Rob is an entrepreneur at heart and a technology enthusiast. He sold his previous company Logica in 2012. During his leisure, Rob loves spending time in the mountains, mountain biking, hiking, or flies fishing.

Rob says that the job of data and analytics is to make better decisions. Grow is making data analytics accessible to all companies. As more companies use various web applications, data has become decentralized and scattered. The company enables users to centralize, store, clean and prep, explore, automate, and surface insights from the data. These core functions are the foundation and building blocks to AI and ML. Rob opines that most businesses have a dozen, or more, data sources from CRM, web analytics, advertising platforms, and financial reporting systems. But Grow imports business-critical data and keeps the most relevant and current data on hand, so the businesses don’t require a third-party data warehouse. It is because

the company stores an organisation’s data, dashboards that deliver transformative insights, consistently and reliably, every time the organisation needs to make a business decision.

Rob shares that Grow’s customers have built some amazing dashboards. The company believes that a chart is worth a thousand words and sophisticated visualisations shouldn’t be difficult and time-consuming to create. Moreover, Grow enables any business user to create metrics, unlike other BI tools that require technical resources.

It also allows to marry and transform disparate data sources easily, and then filter, slice, and explore different chart types as one navigates data to find the best way to surface insights for a business.

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Offering Seamless Services Leveraging Disruptive Technologies

Creating Analytics through Collaborations

Many emerging technologies, such as big data analytics, AI, ML, IoT, and others allow customers to reduce time to gain insights, a common term discussed in the analytics community.

Rob cites, “A CEO of a customer emailed me three weeks ago. He mentioned that

his company was losing US$ 5 million per month for a long time. Within a few months, they were now profitable.” He adds that he attributes all of that to the ability to have his entire team look, interact, and rally around the data they had in Grow.

Building analytics within a company with all data requires a stack of complicated and expensive software like ETL, Data Warehouse, and BI/Visualization. Grow combines all three functionalities into one

platform, calling it no-code, full-stack BI. The company has several key partners, including Hubspot (HUBS), which has also invested in Grow. Besides, Shopify and Salesforce are Grow’s key partners.

Grow.com Rob Nelson, Founder and CEO Grow.com is a no-code full-stack business intelligence (BI) platform that empowers enterprisesto make data-driven decisions.The company’s unlimited-user license gives everyone access to the answers they need without waiting for an analyst. Grow offers to achieve business agility, excel at in-moment prioritisation, and share decision-making power with every employee. It uncovers data-based insights that allow users to tap the collective brainpower of the entire business.

Remarkable Recognition and Achievements

Making Customers Happy with Services 12

Rob shares that Grow’s biggest challenge so far has been building a seamless product to handle all three functions of BI /Analytics in one platform. Each function is complex and requires vast development. This is the

primary reason that the majority of the team members at Grow.com look after software development. It has taken several years to develop on the promise of no-code, full-stack business intelligence software.

Grow has received several awards and achievements, including Top Business Intelligence software from Good Firms, Mountain West Top 100 fastest growing company awards, four years in a row, and Utah Valley’s Top Pick for companies to watch.

The platform has hundreds of 5-star customer reviews for Analytics Platforms, Business Intelligence, and Dashboard software.

Grow is in a strong position in the market.

It captures first time BI buyers under 500 employees. This is the fastest-growing segment of the US$20 billion business intelligence market. Grow’s value

proposition is unmatched in the industry.

The product is powerful, scales, and is currently serving hundreds of happy customers. The company aims to bring its solution to thousands more.

Brijesh Tripathi, Founder & CEO Emonics LLC is a Certified Minority Business Enterprise as designated by the National Minority Supplier Diversity Council. The company’s mission is to connect the right people that are the right fit for the cultures of its clients. Emonics has built its business organically with the breadth of services for the IT staffing industry. The company also creates enterprise solutions through the expertise, experience, and the power of our team.

grow.com

emonics.com

Eugenie.ai

Loamics

INTSITE

OpsTree Solutions

Hai Tran, CTO

Mor Ram-On, Co-Founder and CEO , Tzach Ram-On, Co-Founder and former CEO

Shankar Jha, CEO

LOAMICS specializes in data management, making data truly accessible for analytics and AI. Designed to evolve in complex environments, the company automates energy data management and interfaces with all data production systems. Data collection and crunching has always been Loamics’s field of focus and action.

The company wants to go further in data processing so that analysts and data scientists can do their work as efficiently as possible.

INTSITE utilizes AI and machine learning algorithms combined with off-the-shelf hardware on heavymachinery to improve efficiency and safety on construction job sites and mines. The company reveals that both machine operators, their surrounding counterparts, and site management teams benefit from real-time actionable insights about the onsite occurrences as well as a web-based platform for analytics, zoning applications, reports, live views and more.

OpsTree Solutions & OpsTree Labs has always focused extensively on delivering Cloud & DevSecOps-driven outcomes.

The company achieves this by empowering product & engineering teams with best of breed Cloud & DevOpSecOps platform implementations that enable getting to market faster, more securely and with ability to maintain the platform much more efficiently.

eugenie.ai

loamics.com

intsite.ai

opstree.com

Predictive Black

Thinkers360

Digitate

T-Systems

Zitah McMillan, Co-Founder and CEO

Yessi Sembergman, Head of Community Recognition and Development

Akhilesh Tripathi, CEO

Adel Al-Saleh, CEO

Soudip Roy Chowdhury, Founder and CEO

Developing A Powerful BI Platform

Emonics

Eugenie.ai was incepted with an intent to solve two of the biggest problems the process industry faces today. First is the democratization of datadriven insights to drive complex operational decisions with a bottom-line impact. And second, to build an eco-system that leverages both human and machine intelligence to improve reliability, efficiency, and sustainability of assets as well as processes.

Predictive Black offers transformational cash visibility, management and forecasting software that for the first time combines macro market and economic sector data with the client’s financial data to create machine learning-based predictive forecasts. The company’s clients can automate the management and forecasting of cash and liquidity in real-time using Predictive Black’s software.

Thinkers360 is the world’s first open platform for thought leaders and influencers to share opportunities, promote and advance their expertise. Organizations and agencies use the company’s tools for finding and working with the world’s premier thought leaders and authentic influencers as well as showcasing their own executives, thought leaders, and content among their opt-in B2B community that has over 25M followers on social media.

Digitate is a leading software provider that brings agility, assurance and resiliency to IT and business operations.

Digitate’s ignio, an awardwinning software suite, reimages the enterprise IT landscape with a unique and innovative design that blends artificial intelligence, machine learning and advanced software engineering.

T-Systems is one of the world’s leading IT service providers and suppliers of digital services. Spread across 20 countries with around 38,000 employees (2019), the company supports more than 1,000 clients, including all DAX 30 companies in Germany and 100 of the Fortune 500 companies globally. As a subsidiary of Deutsche Telekon, T-System provides all essential building blocks for innovative information technology and digitisation.

predictiveblack.com

thinkers360.com

digitate.com

t-systems.com

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Delivering Innovative and Tailored IT Staffing Solutions to Connect Talent

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Brijesh Tripathi Founder & CEO Emonics 14

monics LLC is an IT staffing and software development company.

Headquartered in Jersey City, New Jersey, the company delivers immediate access to top-notch talent. Emonics was founded on October 13, 2016, with the goal to keep its consultants and clients happy. The company acts as a bridge between consultations and clients, and tries to get the consultant jobs done and fulfill the clients’ requirements. Emonics operates across three locations in India: Mumbai, Hyderabad and Delhi, and has around 1150 employees globally.

Emonics focuses on placing IT consultants on jobs. The company has a growing number of IT consultants and places them on jobs in the various fortune 500 companies. It has consultants working at Apple, Facebook, Google, General Motors, and other top brands. Emonics understands that time is precious and it makes sure that when it assembles to its clients’ team, the best-suited individuals are selected. The company delivers its services to clients on time that differentiates it from its competitors. Emonics has a huge marketing team that promotes consultants daily. The company also has a large software development team that develops products and services. It delivers the most optimal IT staffing solutions by listening to clients’ needs.

Emonics has built its business organically with the breadth of services for the IT staffing industry. The company creates enterprise solutions through the expertise, experience, and capabilities of its team.

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emonics.com

Some of us are building from SCRATCH. No Inheritance, no connections, no backup. Just Blood, Sweat and Skills.

Brijesh Tripathi

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As a Certified Minority Business Enterprise designated by the National Minority Supplier Diversity Council, Emonics’ mission is to connect the right people who are the right fit for its clients’ business cultures. Recruiters from Emonics LLC help discover jobs that make people happy and the technical skills that make a company stronger. The company’s recruiters become the equivalent of clients’ corporate recruiting department. They continuously search for the qualified and suitable candidates that suit customers’ business. They identify, interview, screen and present the best candidates for their consideration.

Emonics provides its customers immediate and sustained value in data science, IoT, big data, analytics, information technology strategy and execution. The company’s services include IT services & solutions, business application development, web/mobile/cloud application development, consulting services, technology services and project staffing – contract staffing and placement services, IT – implementation consulting and custom development of IT solutions, big data and BI consulting.

A Dedicated Leader Brijesh Tripathi is the Founder and CEO of Emonics. He graduated from Mumbai University and then completed a two-week internship in the U.S. from the Top10 business schools for entrepreneurship. Brijesh came to the U.S. in 2010. He spent almost six years of his career in the hospitality industry, working as a General Manager at a big restaurant.

After his friend’s recommendations, Brijesh started doing his research and development on how most IT companies work.

Despite having a non-IT background, he was not discouraged and launched Emonics in 2016. Brijesh attributes his success to hard work, dedication, grit and passion.

A Strong Partner Network Emonics understands the significance of employee satisfaction. Higher levels of staff involvement lead to higher productivity. And employees who feel valued are motivated to make real and tangible contributions to the business.

Emonics also has a robust partner network, including Microsoft, Rackspace, Google, Adobe, Salesforce and many others that helps it on the technological front and keeps it abreast with the industry standards. With its vast international network, Emonics has the connections to get businesses’ IT staffing solutions in place without missing a beat.

Technology to Transform the Market of Tomorrow According to Brijesh, AI and ML are the new forces in the market to drive disruption. They have already started automating various things and will continue to enhance organizational functions. He emphasizes that being updated and understanding the ongoing trends in the market are the biggest factors businesses have to deal with on a daily basis, especially in today’s scenario where AI and ML are already going to revolutionize everything.

Apart from disrupting the market, automating a several key functions, machine learning is also going to automate manual work in the IoT space. Brijesh points out that technology advancements, especially in AI and ML, will make life easier for everyone not only in the IT Space but beyond that as well.

Winning Over Evolving Challenges Brijesh recalls that hiring the right talent, retaining them and building a business culture for Emonics was the biggest challenge. He believes that the company has done a pretty good job with that. “Everybody who has joined working with Emonics, maybe we have an attrition rate of less than 1%, are still working with us,” says Brijesh. Emonics has overcome such challenges effectively and in a better manner.

Noteworthy Business Achievements For his exceptional undertakings, Brijesh has been bestowed with numerous accolades throughout his successful career.

He has been recognized among the New Jersey Fast 50 list as well as the Fast 40 Under 40. Brijesh was also selected for inclusion in the INC 5000 List. Moreover, he was featured in the 2020 edition of Marquee Who’s Who cover story.

The Future of IT Staffing Industry Emonics targets to reach anywhere between US$300 million to US$400 million in revenue in the next ten years. The company believes artificial intelligence and machine learning are the future of the market. These technologies will create a competitive marketplace where large organizations will certainly harness their power and midsize organization as well as startups will come forward with disruptive solutions that will be adopted by big organizations. Many big organizations are already merging with smaller businesses, so they can come out with other synergic solutions. AI and ML also create a new credit market in the industry.

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Pioneering Innovations through Human-Centric and Sustainable AI

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Dr. Soudip Roy Chowdhury Founder & CEO Eugene.ai 18

ugenie was incepted with an intent to solve two of the biggest problems the process industry faces today.

First was the democratization of data-driven insights to drive complex operational decisions with a bottom-line impact. Second, to build an eco-system that leverages both human and machine intelligence to improve reliability, efficiency, and sustainability of assets as well as processes.

Eugenie’s unique decision intelligence and execution platform enables enterprises to make efficient and optimal operational decisions about their assets and processes.

The company addresses issues related to anomalies in operations such as unscheduled downtime detection, production quality issue detections, process-deviation detection, etc., using its descriptive, prescriptive, and predictive analytics products.

Eugenie believes in solving the unsolvable by bringing the best of AI, engineering, behavioural science, and design together in the company’s products and solutions. In terms of offerings, the company has two products (RayFinn and Papillon) that help the IT/OT teams find better answers to the industrial operational challenges.

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eugenie.ai

At Eugenie, we believe that technology would be the most influential agent of change in society. We aspire to use our innovative AI-products to create a global-scale impact by making the operation industry more economically and ecologically sustainable.

Dr. Soudip Roy Chowdhury

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An Initiative to Provide Reliable and Efficient Operational Framework Eugenie is on a mission to make operations more reliable by transforming people, processes, and assets in every enterprise to become more efficient using AI, engineering, and design.

The company aspires to create a world where technology plays an important role in transforming the operation industry to become more ecologically and economically sustainable. Eugenie wishes to play a pivotal role in bringing that change with the company’s products and solutions.

We consider reliability as the first step towards establishing sustainable operations. Ensuring reliable operations requires handling large data streams and drawing actionable conclusions from them, which includes considerable scaling efforts to ensure a seamless data-to-decision journey.

Eugenie presents complex data-driven insights in usercentric and diagnostic steps, which assist operational and maintenance staff in making quick, timely decisions. Insights also contain suggested operational procedures, consisting of past failures and subsequent actions performed. Eugenie brings traceability and transparency of insights to life, which are fundamental building blocks of its explainable AI framework.

Transforming Industrial Operations through UserFriendly Analytics Eugenie received the best AI innovation award from Microsoft in March 2020 for creating a business impact of more than US$2 billion for various customers in a short span. The company was featured in CIO Insider’s ‘Top 10 Analytics Company in India’. Eugenie has also been featured in various top-notch digital publications such as India.ai, Inside big data, Silicon angle, Gartner, and Forrester.

The accurate and relevant insights provided by Eugenie aided one of its major fortune 100 consumer packaged goods companies to transform the product marketing and distribution strategy. The CPG Corporation was facing problems in leveraging the available high-volume enterprise data, which caused considerable time loss and cost for manual analysis, and confusion. Eugenie’s user-friendly root-cause analysis helped the corporation to reduce the data-to-action time drastically by more than 95% and discovered hidden, uncovered patterns in data that revealed declining product performances. Later, the global director of the CPG company acknowledged Eugenie’s contribution in extracting knowledge from the data to form a new way of organizational thinking.

Eugenie’s diagnostic platform proactively diagnosed operational failures in the tank farms of a major Indian Oil and Gas company that led to massive hydrocarbon losses.

Eugenie’s subsequent data-driven actions resulted in an economic impact of US$2 billion across 5000 tank farms.

Eugenie also reduced their operational costs considerably by reducing detection-to-reaction time from several hours to few minutes.

The Powerhouse Leading the Squad Dr. Soudip Roy Chowdhury, the Founder and CEO of Eugenie.ai, is a passionate technology enthusiast with a doctorate from the University of Trento, Europe. Soudip is an accomplished entrepreneur and an esteemed member of the Forbes Technology Council. Being an ardent advocate of industrial sustainability, he likes to keep himself updated with various initiatives related to the burning issue of climate change. Soudip is armed with an assiduous vigour to solve complex problems using AI, Engineering, and Design. He zealously encounters various challenges in his entrepreneurial journey such as creating scalable and trustworthy products and responsible AI eco-systems.

Enabling Anomaly Detection across Major Industries Eugenie’s unique approach towards explainable AI, backed by scalable data engineering and intuitive UI/UX makes the company stand out against other solutions in the market. Eugenie uses unsupervised, supervised, and semisupervised genres of AI algorithms for curating insights from both stream and batch data. The company’s patented AI algorithms are designed to identify both unknown-unknowns and known-unknowns anomalies from high-volume and high-velocity data with very little or no human supervision.

Eugenie helps decision-makers detect anomalies that are hard to identify using traditional BI or statistical approaches.

Eugenie’s machine learning-driven algorithms learn about the utility and relevance of the solution’s insights from users’ feedback that helps the solution to continuously improves its efficacy. Further, Eugenie provides an end-to-end execution platform that helps detect anomalies along with enabling users to act on them using prescriptive analytics and past process information.

Eugenie is aiding major oil and gas companies in India and across the world to determine anomalies in their operations.

The company prepares its clients for any unanticipated downtime or incident in the operations that might lead to major disasters. Simultaneously, Eugenie supports

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other manufacturing companies to reduce operation and maintenance costs by improving process efficiency, product quality, and throughput.

Working Towards a Human-Centric and Progressive AI The pandemic has made many organizations rethink their digital transformation strategy and we have witnessed how the clients have fast-tracked a few of the operational transformation projects. As per Eugenie, most people within the client organizations have realized that enterprises which can operate and manage workforces remotely, would make a profit in the coming decade. Industry 4.0, IIoT, augmented reality-based operation interventions, etc., are becoming the need of the hour. Eugenie reckons that even with all the great progress in AI and IoT, the real industry adoption of such technologies is still very low - partly because AI is yet to prove great values for businesses and AI technology focuses less on explainability. Eugenie views this as an opportunity to progress the technology in a humanly interpretable and usable way and the company’s choice of technology and framework are inspired by this realization.

Eugenie intends to further the research in the areas of the human-AI cooperative system, explainable AI, bringing traceability, and trust in AI algorithms. Reliability and performance are driving forces that lead users to trust an AI system. Eugenie considers technology as an ally to augment human capability, especially around complex decision-making. The company aspires to shape industrial sustainability transformation through the power of Responsible AI. Eugenie expects that the industry and academia would do some seminal works in the aforementioned areas in the future.

Strengthening the AI-Human Partnership Eugenie’s innovative approach is manifested in the form of user-centric and explainable AI, which has resulted in the congruence between humans and machine learning algorithms. The company’s solution is equipped with clarity that can transform complex technical and business problems into rational insights.

Eugenie’s distinctive AI-backed algorithm suite consists of SEE (Spot, Explore, and Exploit) TM framework, which can detect and diagnose operational anomalies at scale. The solution can scan through vast amounts of data comprising of IoT sensor data, audio and video streams in real-time to stitch patterns for generating actionable insights with descriptive, predictive, and prescriptive analytics for

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discovering operational steps.

Eugenie’s strategic partners include Microsoft, SAP, AWS, Qualcomm, Intel, etc. Eugenie’s partner eco-system is a strong pillar of the entrepreneurial inclination of the company.

Eugenie believes in innovations with continuous learning through creative disruptions.

An Undertaking to Establish Data Quality in Business Eugenie understands that most of today’s industrial enterprises possess the required operational data, but an essential element of utilizing digital systems involve extracting data from organizational silos and collating them in an accessible format. Further, integrating the advanced analytics systems with the legacy OT sources poses challenges in data mining, data governance, and extensive standardization.

According to Eugenie, data quality is important, but often ignored as an obstacle for digital initiatives. For developing an AI-powered diagnostic framework, industrial companies need to identify processes to manage incorrect and missing data.

A Clear Vision Regarding the Future Eugenie perceives climate change as the biggest challenge of today that needs urgent actions and a shared vision of industries, government, and society. Recent advancements in technology are at the forefront of the measures being taken to tackle this humongous challenge. The company is of the opinion that reducing industrial carbon footprint will demand concrete investment in AI-enabled operational technology and achieving net-zero emission is still a distant dream. However, Eugenie believes that improving asset and process efficiency can lower carbon emissions by 15-20% and optimizing industrial operations is a requirement and an obligation from the standpoint of humanity. As stated

by Eugenie, the key to digital adoption includes including people, processes, and assets in building technical and operational resilience. The company is confident that it will strive to make AI the invisible force for building a better world with sustainable systems and processes.

Providing a Data Platform to Automate Real-time Control of Company’s Performance

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Thierry Chambon CEO Loamics 24

OAMICS specializes in data management, making data truly accessible for analytics and AI. ‘True access’ refers to those who need data for their algorithms, can automatically call it, and no longer need to constantly write scripts to retrieve the data they need. However, all the data before being processed must first be curated, made reliable and prepared to constitute the adequate datasets required. Designed to evolve in complex environments, the company automates energy data management and interfaces with all data production systems.

Data collection and crunching has always been Loamics’s field of focus and action. The company wants to go further in data processing so that analysts and data scientists can do their work as efficiently as possible without having to engage in tedious and repetitive tasks.

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loamics.com

Loamics’s technology enables a future where new limits will only be the creativity of innovative use cases.

Hai Tran CTO Loamics

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A Data-Driven Leader Hai Tran is the CTO of Loamics. He holds the position of Research & Development Manager at EDF (a major French electricity company). Hai has worked on mass data collection and processing from 24 million customers. He developed an architecture to analyze and personalize these massive data sets.

Democratizing Data by Transforming it into Datasets To enable AI, Loamics makes data easily available, dynamically and automatically, which naturally results in data becoming adapted to the needs of each business function.

The company ‘democratizes’ data by transforming it into datasets and saving data scientist’s time on no-added-value tasks, and then allowing them to focus their energy on more complex tasks.

With Loamics’s solution, customers who are not in the cloud can benefit from an immediate ‘Go to Cloud’ provision. The ‘Go to Cloud’ is truly immediate - all that customers have to do is subscribe to the Azure marketplace. The deployment of their solution is done in two hours.

For customers who are already in the Cloud with their own stack or infrastructure, Loamics provides an additional layer that is superimposed on the existing one and immediately facilitates real access to the data. Little by little, the legacy can eventually be decompartmentalized. The company’s solution generates efficiency, brings autonomy and huge time savings compared to other solutions available in the market.

Managing the Overwhelming Data with Technology For Loamics, disruptive technologies impact today’s innovation in a data-driven way. More and more analysis, more and more decision support, and shared knowledge lead to more and more exchange of calculated data, which implies efficient data governance. Plant 4.0 is not just a massive addition of sensors and data. It is above the sharing of data, especially, of calculated data. This calculated data must be automatically shared with other PLCs or third parties. But it must be continuously computed to be continuously exchanged. It is also necessary to master data and all its metadata, the contextual data in order to exchange only those parts of the data that are necessary and not beyond. This requires customers to have a robust data governance solution.

Loamics’s second contribution is interoperability. The company removes technical constraints and makes all models interoperable regardless of the language (SCADA,

python and R) that do not speak together. Therefore, data scientists can simply exploit the algorithm result(s) to develop their own algorithms even with different languages.

Innovating a Seamless Data Processing Model Loamics’s innovation lies in its unique expertise in end-toend, seamless data processing. Those who need the data no longer have to worry about collecting it, ingest it, digesting it, making it reliable, and then preparing it to create algorithms.

Loamics’s data processing also allows data-lineage, which implies the ability to trace the data path since its collection.

Thus, the result of an algorithm can be analyzed by knowing which algorithms have been used beforehand, the actual data used and its state (raw or reliable).

Loamics has created an ecosystem of best-in-class partners, each of which is a leader in its own field such as AI, security, cybersecurity, outsourcing, IoT manufacturers, and more. The company works in an ecosystem with all the people who work on various aspects of data today. Loamics’s solution enables data actors to enhance their added value and own solutions.

Vanquishing the Challenge of Changing Customer’s Habit Loamics is an AI accelerator. However, what is challenging for the company is to change the old habit of customers and make them adopt disruptions. Simplifying and making data available is so innovative that Loamics clients sometimes find it difficult to change their routine. The weight of legacy systems is much more important than how customers think.

Another trouble that Loamics went through was to meet the complete automation of data processing from collection to insights that the company offers. The elasticity of Loamics’s solution makes it possible to scale independently of volume or heterogeneous data sources. Confidentiality and transparency are also two key elements that the company has made possible, as customers stay in control of their data that is processed in their own cloud. Loamics puts intelligent data at the heart of its customers’ systems. For example, Loamics’s solution enables its customers to choose not to share a complete dataset, but only the parts, components or layers of a particular dataset that they wish to share with their own customer, service provider or technical partner. They can also share any other data that are shareable, accessible to all players in the organization and connectable to all the company’s systems. This makes its uses and sharing possible in complete freedom and security, without jeopardizing the customer’s know-how or intellectual property.

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Loamics’s customers can then focus on their core business: the analysis and optimization of their business operations, which they know better than anyone else. Customers can also integrate their intellectual property that is then protected in the customer’s own environment.

Notable Awards and Recognitions Energisme which is mother’s company of Loamics was gratified with several awards over time. Some of the notable recognitions are listed below, » Microsoft Partner of the Year for Data and AI– France, 2018 » Microsoft World Finalist IoT Partner, 2018 » The annual world awards in Las Vegas in the U.SThe award finalists and winners were selected from more than 2,600 nominations collected from 115 different countries worldwide based on their commitment to customers, solution’s impact on the market and exemplary use of Microsoft technologies. (Loamics’s solution is integrated into the Azure Marketplace from Microsoft.)

Several of Energisme’s customers have saved millions of euros in energy costs and process optimization using the company’s essentially rapid implementation of a ‘plug & play’ solution. It’s really a game-changer for businesses that generate a lot of data and want to accelerate their digital transformation with new, practical and effective customer or operational insights.

Orchestrating to be the Enabler of ‘Data-Driven’ Spirit Loamics plans to be the enabler of ‘data-driven’ spirit.

The increase in analysis needs and the massification of AI and IoT, which means that data access needs will multiply. If the progression of the IoT is an arithmetic process, the progression of the number of data and their analysis follows a geometric sequence.

Today, the main obstacle to Machine Learning is the access to and preparation of data as it is often generated ‘by hand.’ Loamics removes the bottleneck and frees data scientists from spending time on simple, boring and extremely time-consuming subjects. This helps them to refocus on complex subjects where they add the most value.

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Prepare Yourself For The T Future Of Work In The Technology Industry

he work as we know it today is not how it was a decade ago. We have computer systems and software making our jobs less labor-focused. Work after a decade from now won’t be the same either. Innovative technologies like artificial intelligence, machine learning, and robotics along with the disruption that came along with COVID-19 are reshaping the future of work.

The coronavirus pandemic changed the physical distribution of the workforce by making employees work remotely. This rapid restructuring of the workforce accelerated what was underway long before the pandemic at its own pace. In the past 10 years, the number of remote employees increased by 91% according to FlexJobs 2019 report.

The number of gig workers/ on-call workers/ temporary workers has also increased by 15% since 2020 according to the ADP 2020 report. Another growing trend aiding the first two is the adoption of artificial intelligence in the workplace.

Workplace Transformation Since evolution, the way humans worked has undergone several transformations.

The steady rise of technology, right from the invention of computers to digitization has not only reshaped how we work but also where we work from, the nature of the job roles, and the

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skills required for the role. At this rate, the industry leaders will be required to come up with innovative solutions that will support the evolution of work in the future.

Let’s deep dive into the catalysts of change.

How & Where We Work: When mobiles were invented, they were merely a device to make phone calls. Today, smartphones are used by employees as portals to advanced software and data management tools. A recent study showed that 87% of companies required employees to have access to mobile business apps from their smartphones.

Thanks to portable devices like laptops and tablets augmented with AI and other digital systems, employees became more distant from office desks.

They can now work from wherever they are and focus their minds on innovative solutions rather than mundane tasks.

Changing Job Roles: As more and more companies adopt AI for their business functions, demand for job roles that are knowledge-based and cognitive. While there are rumors going that AI will push humans towards unemployment, a 2018 WEF report

suggests that while AI is abolishing traditional job roles, digitization is creating up to 133 million new job roles by 2022.

Demand For New Skills: As workplaces are digitizing their operations, the need for knowledge-intensive tasks is increasing. From 2000 to 2019, the rate of employees with graduate-level education increased from 24% to 42% and the need for complex problem solving and innovative thinking skills rose to 20%. Of course, the need for knowledge of working around computer systems is obvious.

The reality of dynamic technology and market changes is becoming more evident than ever. Companies are increasingly prioritizing their functions in order of efficiency, personalization, and flexibility. Contract workers, remote workers, and consultants are becoming a significant segment of the workforce.

Instead of hiring employees with basic skills to be physically working out of a permanent office, the new trend is to form dynamic teams based on task-oriented skills that are capable of working with a less centralized and hierarchical structure.

Another trend that is already being adopted by companies but has a long way to go with further innovations in AI. By automating tasks and minimizing human errors, AI is taking over mundane repetitive tasks. This is allowing employees to focus on problem-solving and creative tasks. AI-powered systems can analyze and interpret big data and huge pools of datasets for accurate business decisions.

The Future Of Work Is Improving The Society With businesses across industries welcoming technology and making it an active part of the work, they are enabling employee upskilling which is empowering today’s society and reshaping the future. Integrating AI and digital solutions into the workplace requires companies to give specialized training to all its staff which improves employee satisfaction, reduces their work stress, and pressurizes academic institutions to revamp their syllabus to teach the future generation necessary skills to join the future workforce which, more likely than now, will involve coexisting with AI bots and machines.

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Pioneering Innovations through Smart and Connected Machines

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NTSITE utilizes AI and machine learning algorithms combined with off-the-shelf hardware on heavymachinery to improve efficiency and safety on construction job sites and mines. The company reveals that both machine operators, their surrounding counterparts, and site management teams benefit from real-time actionable insights about the onsite occurrences as well as a web-based platform for analytics, zoning applications, reports, live views and more. The services provided by INTSITE ensure an immediate ROI due to an increase in productivity, reduction of safety events, and continuous optimization of the workforce.

INTSITE works with a mission to make traditional industries such as construction more efficient and safe by using state-of-the-art technologies in the realms of machine learning, deep learning, computer vision and aerospace.

Mor Ram-On Co-Founder & CEO INTSITE 34

A Company with Consistent Excellence INTSITE has achieved sales of its products within two years of its inception. The company collaborates with global OEMs with the objective of implementing unique technologies on their machines. INTSITE has been awarded the Seal of Excellence by the EIC and the company is a member of the CEN’s technical committee for the development of the European standard for the mechanical design and theoretical verification of cranes to conform to the essential health and safety requirements of the modified Machinery Directive 2006/42/EC.

The European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program has bestowed INTSITE with funding under grant agreement No. 888926.

The company is a winner of the first Robot Union acceleration program in 2019 and is supported by the Israel Innovation Authority.

The Duo Behind the Innovation Twin-brothers Mor-Ram-On and Tzach Ram-On are the brains behind INTSITE and they raised the company with their extensive experience and talent. Both graduated as engineers from Technion, Israel Institute of Technology and have around 10 years of experience in the field.

Mor Ram-On, Co-Founder and CEO of the company is an Aerospace Engineer and has vast experience in the design and implementation of complex software architecture, and innovative usages in AI for navigation algorithms. Prior to co-founding the company, Mor served as a Guidance, Navigation and Control (GNC) Engineer in the Missilery and Control Department of the Missile Division at “Rafael Advanced Defense Systems” and as the Algorithms Group Leader at CNOGA Medical. Mor’s experience and knowledge in writing autopilots for missiles led him to explore the proprietary technologies used by INTSITE. Mor has won numerous entrepreneurial contests like the 2011 Technion’s Homeland Security Development Contest and the 2010 Biztec Entrepreneurship contest for the development of an emergency system for helicopters on behalf of The Marker, and a Construction

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The construction industry will be closing the gap with the other traditional industries that have undergone a process of digitization. We will witness organizations that begin to make datadriven decisions rather than go forward with gut feelings and emotions. These are extremely exciting days to work at INTSITE, a construction-tech startup disrupting and revolutionizing a huge traditional market.

Mor Ram-On

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Hackathon hosted by a large, global OEM in 2017.

The other half of the company’s strength comes from Tzach Ram-On, Co-Founder and former CEO, who is a Civil Engineer with wide expertise in construction site engineering of large projects as well as in Sales and Business Development of end-to-end solutions for the management in construction.

Working as a site engineer for Electra Construction, one of the largest general contractor companies in Israel, Tzach saw the potential for improving construction methods and safety issues by bringing advanced technologies used in other industries.

A New Generation Makeover for the Dreary Machines Bringing Dated Machines to the Next Century INTSITE’s technologies bring the outdated heavy machines that are by-products of a conservative industry, into the next century by equipping them with Artificial Intelligence, namely Deep Learning and Computer Vision algorithms in order to bring values such as real-time safety and efficiency notifications and BI for the company’s clients. The company places easily-installed cameras onto the heavy machines,allowing computer vision and deep learning algorithms to process the data for the client’s informatory needs, in a cost-efficient manner.

Leveraging Disruptive Technologies to Drive Innovation INTSITE’s innovation stems from the company’s application of advanced technologies on dated, old machinery. The company has a structured research team to deal with open challenges, allowing it to be a leader of innovation in the field. The company’s partnership with OEMS worldwide has driven new heights of innovation as it has led the company to a deep understanding of the industry and its needs.

Relationships with construction management teams and machine operators have also led INTSITE’s designs through a deep-rooted understanding of the customer needs and pains, which the company solves.

networking, meetings and business development, remote and less personal. The company is focused on improving its offerings and harnessing the benefits of INTSITE’s systems remote on-site presence during these challenging times.

Motivating Words from Clients INTSITE’s clients have valued it for the efficient and extensive services it offers. In the words of Zahy Kaufman, Senior Project Director, Mobileye HQ (Intel Company) “INSITE, contributes greatly to efficiency and control of heavy-machinery which are the main executioners on-site, all while increasing worker safety.”

Another valuable feedback by Ehud Danoch, CEO, Shikun and Binui Solel Boneh says, “The autonomous crane has huge potential in Israel and worldwide when it comes to issues such as safety and efficiency. It brings vast value addition to the world of construction.”

Towards a Revolutionizing Future INTSITE believes that the industry is advancing, albeit slowly, into technologically more advanced solutions and the benefits of such solutions are apparent in terms of efficiency, cost, time and in saving human lives, hence the company sees no other avenue for the industry to take. INTSITE is here to guide this transition, first by offering data analytics and real-time insights and then, in the near future, ensuring full automation of these machines.

Encountering Obstacles with Zeal The education of traditional markets is one of the significant challenges faced by INTSITE since these markets are not used to working with technologically advanced solutions. INTSITE has overcome this challenge by deeply understanding the customers’ needs and creating intuitive solutions with little to no overhead that have reduced the associated learning curve.

Another challenge to the company is the penetration to new markets during the current COVID scenario, which has made

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Transforming Businesses with Robust Cloud & DevSecOps Product & Solutions

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psTree Solutions & OpsTree Labs has always focused extensively on delivering Cloud & DevSecOps-driven outcomes. The company achieves this by empowering product & engineering teams with best of breed Cloud & DevOpSecOps platform implementations that enable getting to market faster, more securely and with ability to maintain the platform much more efficiently. OpsTree takes pride in being a boutique, highly specialized DevSecOps engineering company and Technology Transformation Partner that is expert in making the application delivery lean, agile and highly productive through the best in breed Cloud & DevSecOps platform and solutions.

It enables the delivery of Software-defined Infrastructure, with the right set of tools and processes, on a cloudagnostic platform with the ability to run zero-touch, fully automated continuous delivery pipelines.

With BuildPiper, the company has re-imagined the delivery of microservices-driven applications and brought more than 10X reduction in time & investments required to onboard & securely manage Kubernetes & microservices application setup and deployments!

Shankar Jha Co-Founder & CEO OpsTree Solutions 38

Sandeep Rawat Co-Founder & CTO OpsTree Solutions

Standing out with Customer-Centric Approach OpsTree Solutions’ Co-Founders, Sandeep and Shankar, share some rare complementary skill sets. They have always been true engineers at heart and have focused on how technology can be used to solve various problems during their entire careers. Together, they have built software products that have solved user problems.

In the past, they’ve worked with some great enterprises like Xebia and GlobalLogic, Snapdeal, and Naggaro before realizing their calling is slightly different. Then they charted on an entrepreneurial journey for solving Cloud

& DevSecOps related problems and today it has been more than six years since the establishment of OpsTree.

They have been constantly on the lookout for the pain points that customers of OpsTree face. With rapidly evolving technology, they realized that these problems are humongous! One such recent push is the OpsTree product – BuildPiper that completely simplifies the ‘microservices’ application journey for any organization. It’s a one-stop solution for the entire lifecycle of a containerized application – right from Infrastructure, cluster setup/onboarding & management to the environment set up, app configuration, to build and deployment, monitoring, logging & Security – everything is available as a plugand-play solution and is fully customizable.

Shankar adds, “We’re seeing huge interest and acceptance from the market and are excited to empower our customers across the globe with exceptional Cloud & DevSecOps outcomes with our Micro services Application Delivery Platform - BuidPiper and our niche DevSecOps services!”

Meet the Proactive Leader Shankar Jha is the CEO of OpsTree Solutions. He strongly believes that as an entrepreneur, it is his biggest responsibility to create an ecosystem that generates exceptional value for all stakeholders. This includes customers, employees, partners, and others.

He elaborates that this can happen if everybody in the team has that sense of ownership and faith. He also specifies that as a high-ranking leader in a company, an individual should be capable of generating that faith and ownership in all stakeholders.

According to Shankar, OpsTree is a shared ownership

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We are competing with our own limits so the challenge is ever-existent and fun to overcome.

Things are just getting started!

Team OpsTree Solutions

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concept where every employee is a contributor and an owner. This is because employees have complete freedom to express and choose their growth path in the organization.

He shares, “We have re-imagined the complete growth path of our people which can culminate into becoming an entrepreneur ultimately.”

Weaving Disruptive Technologies in Key Brand Offerings At OpsTree, because of its strong ethos of ‘Continuous Learning’ ‘Unwavering Ethics’ & ‘Focused Thought Leadership, the company has been able to establish itself as the niche Cloud & DevSecOps engineering partner for 100+ companies across the spectrum - from startups turned unicorns (& decacorns) to enterprises!

In its continuous attempt to empower the industry, OpsTree has made 100+ open-source contributions to its clients.

Because of its exceptional offerings, the company has earned huge appreciation from industry experts and thought leaders.

OpsTree is also bringing strong AI/ML-powered anomaly detection functionalities to its platform- BuildPiper, for organizations to work towards a highly robust & intuitive technology platform.

Bringing Cloud & MicroServices to Customers’ Driveway OpsTree continues to be innovative and experimental while evolving its technology capabilities. One such outcome as noted earlier, is the Microservices app delivery platform BuildPiper, which helps its customers reap huge value in terms of significantly reduced total cost of ownership with ability to bring a change in system extremely faster.

The company’s growth has always been proportional to the aggregate knowledge and ability acquired by its team.

Shankar asserts that OpsTree is a knowledge, competency and innovation-driven organization. He also adds that OpsTree has been keen on acquiring exclusive and deep competence, and this ideology has fueled the growth of the organization, consistently over the years.

Overcoming the Challenges of Right Skilling OpsTree has bootstrapped its way into a tremendously successful journey since 2014 and gradually built an organization centered on solving the problems that hinder every organization’s ability to deliver business value through new application functionalities. The key challenges have been usual around the availability of the right skills and talent – especially when the entire industry has a dearth of good engineering talent.

Shankar reveals that OpsTree is fixated on addressing such pain points by employing its ‘DevOps Ninja’ program. In this ‘Bake your Own Bread’ philosophy driven program, the company trains and develops a ‘Full Stack DevOps Engineer’ with hands-on knowledge and experience through a comprehensively and continuously evolving curriculum. This program’s objective is to ensure adherence of specific quality standards and deliver results that are above the customer expectations.

Invaluable Client Feedback as Insignia of Success OpsTree has been bestowed with awards and recognitions from several industry veterans and leading groups like Top DevOps Solution Provider by CIO Review, for its strong delivery capabilities. However, the company sees its biggest achievement in the ‘Trust’ it has been able to instill from its customers since the inception.

Shankar affirms that “At present, completing almost six years, we have many people, startups, unicorns and many large global organizations who totally ‘Rely on Us’ for any and all of their Cloud & DevSecOps led transformation initiatives. This ‘aggregate faith asset’ that we have been able to build and continuously maintain across our clients is our biggest achievement.”

Establishing Benchmarks for Future For Shankar, one of the most relevant graphs is the ability of the company to retain its patrons, over the years. In an industry that is marred by a very high churn/attrition, OpsTree has been able to keep it under 10%, where the industry sees it as high as ~40%. Shankar interprets that the primary reason behind such a low attrition rate is OpsTree’s people-centric approach, which drives its commitments to its employees and clients. OpsTree also consistently doubled its revenue growth year on year, during the last five years.

OpsTree gravitates its efforts and strategies in doing better every day, through constant evolution and overcoming its limitations – this also happens to be the company motto.

Shankar admits that following these two tenets of OpsTree’s motto has helped it flourish in challenging times. He concludes by saying, “We are competing with our own limits so the challenge is ever-existent and fun to overcome. Things are just getting started!”

Management Team: » Shankar Jha, Co-Founder & CEO » Sandeep Rawat, Co-Founder & CTO » Yogesh Batish, Director - Delivery & Operations » Arpit Jain, Director - Strategy & Business Growth

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Tech Industry: The Lags and Leads

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he technology sector has always been the disruptor by introducing new and capable advancements in the field. Although, the rapid digital transformation has effectively disrupted technology companies around the globe.

They have been revamping operational processes, creating value propositions for the customers, and innovating business models. Tech firms are strongly investing in cutting-edge technologies like AI and RPA to enhance productivity and minimize costs. According to research by Bain & Company, technology companies are 12% more likely to be disrupted than companies in retail and 25% more likely than those in financial services, two other industries that have historically gone through disruptions. But how much time can a tech company take to reach leadership positions and what are the challenges for this process? These are the concerns we will discuss in this article.

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Technology companies strive every day to establish their position and potential but many social hindrances pop-up in their way of success

What Holds Tech Companies Behind Tech companies are often perceived as a villain that takes advantage of human vulnerability to capitalize the business.

Thus, they face a lot of regulations and policies that can distract the companies from focusing on innovations and business growth. Apart from the usual laws, technology companies face more stringent regulations regarding their operations and people-engagement.

Usually, the demand for regulations appears from mere ‘what-ifs’ raised by people. What if technology threatens the human race? What if technology disruptions swipe away all jobs? These assumptions should be weighed with logic and reasoning to establish their truth.

Larry Downs in a Harvard Business Review article says, “In our research on wildly successful enterprises who fail to find a second act, Paul Nunes and I note that the average life span

of companies on the Standard & Poor’s 500 has fallen from 67 years in the 1920s to just 15 years today.”

There are many challenges that tech company leaders face to escalate their leadership positions and these are a few among them » Keeping pace with high-performing technology and competitors. » Being a woman in the industry is a big enough challenge that will stop you from reaching high the arc. » Focusing simultaneously on market values, growth standards, and technical developments. » The internal pressure for increasing productivity in a short time. » Tracing the voices of people and reaching out to the audience.

The pace with which the tech industry develops is faster than others and this will require the companies to maintain market position and value to stay in the game. Once a company lags in transition, it becomes difficult for them to recoup and reestablish its position. In such cases, the clients and employees will quickly find another leading tech giant to serve their purpose.

Recouping and Fighting the Odds Tech companies should keep innovating and focus on disruptions rather than regulations. Extending the capabilities

and services into new domains, accelerating growth by repositioning and reevaluating core business models, scaling up the business, and enhancing customer-engagement, are some ways to win the market value and leading position.

Amazon can be considered a good example of extending its strength into new domains like eCommerce, cloud services, media, etc.

Embracing automation through AI and robotics can increase the efficiency of business operations. Staying in the current technological phase and consistently adapting to new practices can ensure better growth and reach. Well, technology can be a savior for the technology industry. Another method for ensuring market value is by adopting Mergers and Acquisitions.

This way companies can increase profit margins and reduce competition. M&A is also done to survive in the industry and enhance the market value proposition.

According to the Technology Report by Bain & Company, the Covid-19 pandemic spurred technology companies to reshape their businesses, and Companies are accelerating and programmatically scaling up their experiments with robotic process automation, artificial intelligence, and other advanced automation tools. The technology companies have a lot of potential to rebuild their business and hence should focus on continuous innovation and improve relations with their audience.

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Delivering Data-Driven Insights to Help Organizations Make Smart Financial Decisions

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Zitah McMillan Co-Founder & CEO Predictive Black 46

redictive Black offers transformational cash visibility, management and forecasting software that for the first time combines macro market and economic sector data with the client’s financial data to create machine learning-based predictive forecasts. Thanks to its software services, the company’s clients can automate the management and forecasting of cash and liquidity in real-time.

Predictive Black works with larger SMEs and enterprises to transform their cash management through best-in-class automation, visibility and control. As a cloud-based solution, implementation is low-effort and does not interrupt core financial systems. The innovative solution facilitates the use of artificial intelligence and machine learning to turn cash management into a strategic function contributing to the success of the business.

building a comprehensive, market-leading Industry Analysis service which underpins its cash management software. She reveals that at present, there are over 3 billion points of data – a figure which is growing every day in the company’s Industry Analysis, just for the UK. Further, Predictive Black is constantly reviewing and sourcing new data streams which it deems would give greater accuracy for the predictive forecasts.

Journey through Excellence Predictive Black was established to leverage powerful data-driven technologies to help clients make better business decisions. For its team, that meant using both client’s data, macro market and economic data in a way that utilizes machine learning to provide the most useful predictive forecast of their cash position.

According to Zitah McMillan, Co-Founder and CEO of Predictive Black, the team had spent 18 months

Meeting User Expectations with Streamlined Efforts Zitah affirms that Predictive Black software was developed with a goal to learn, by utilizing machine learning and deep learning tools that constantly monitor and refine predictive forecasts. This enabled its clients to access and benefit from the technology and processes used by much larger firms, without the significant investment associated with those technologies.

An Experienced and Accomplished Leader Whilst this is her first fintech start-up, Zitah has been in financial services firstly as a regulator at the Financial Conduct Authority and then as the regional CEO of a European consumer and business lending company.

She is well-known in the fintech space, appearing on numerous panels and webinars in the industry, and leads the market engagement for Predictive Black.

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For our clients and partners, using Predictive Black software as an integral part of the financial management process will enable them to make better business decisions and we’re excited to go with them on that journey.

Zitah McMillan

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Leveraging Technology to Make Things Easy Predictive Black makes the assimilation and aggregation of vast amounts of data not only practically possible but also in a very short span of time. Typically, these tasks would take weeks, if not months, to complete, but Predictive Black can achieve them in seconds. For clients this means that they have access to complex data that would otherwise be a time intensive and manual process to search for and utilize.

Zitah believes that basing a service in the cloud is also a huge leap forward, not only for service providers like Predictive Black but also for its clients. They would no longer need to download huge software packages and then maintain them.

Instead, the service provider will look after the maintenance and improvements without any downside for the clients.

Zitah assures that this will make things significantly easier for the end-user.

Delivering Comprehensive Solutions to Anchor Market Demands Predictive Black’s approach to cash management and cash visibility is completely different from the other services on the market. Not only does it actually employ machine learning practices but also takes a sectoral-based approach. This means that the company’s forecasts are based on the reality of what the business and the sector are experiencing, not just the wishful thinking or +5% on actuals type mindset of old.

Rethinking New Solutions Amid the Pandemic Zitah admits that launching a machine learning predictive forecasting business in the middle of a global pandemic may not seem wise, especially on the economic front and it wasn’t always an easy road. However, they saw this as the perfect time to test recalibrating algorithms in the face of challenge and adversity to ensure that Predictive Black was considering the right data and was capable of predicting sector forecasts with a high degree of accuracy.

“Some people want to see what’s inside a cell formula and be able to manipulate it, which means not everyone wants to embrace the power of machine learning yet and that’s ok,” she explains.

In terms of working with clients, Predictive Black witnessed several companies retrenching and not wanting to bring on a new software solution whilst the future was so uncertain.

However, working with clients to support them as the economy starts to rebound is a perfect time to deploy the service. Clients need low risk solutions to high-risk problems, and as the software is cloud-based and can live easily

alongside a company’s other systems, it minimizes both the time to usefulness and the pain of implementation. At the same time clients are considering how to maximize and benefit from the pending recovery. The pace of growth during a recovery will strain cash resources so managing and forecasting cash and liquidity remain a top priority.

Winning Industry Approval with Notable Recognitions Predictive Black won an Innovate UK funding grant for its distinguished and outstanding contributions – one of 900 companies to do so out of 8,500 applicants. This grant enabled the company to build Covid-19 based data into the outlook for each sector.

Predictive Black has also earned itself a spot in the Microsoft for Startups program and is a part of Treasury Management International’s Innovation Labs. Besides, it has received FCA authorization and recently been nominated as one of the most influential tech companies of 2021 Envisioning a New Future Zitah is confident that 2021 will see companies who have survived the last 12 months will start to pull through into the economic recovery phase and start planning for growth.

At the same time, she is convinced that the Predictive Black software is perfectly placed to help support clients make that growth plan easier.

She reiterates that the company will continue to develop the service based on client feedback. Simultaneously the product development pipeline is brimming with potentially great ideas that align with the plans Predictive Black has for the future market. Zitah also anticipates that the adoption of Open Banking or similar sectors will continue and more services will hit the market.

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Connecting Global Brands with the World’s Premier Thought Leaders & Authentic Influencers

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Yessi Sembergman

Head of Community Recognition and Development Thinkers360 50

ounded in 2017, Thinkers360 is the world’s first open platform for thought leaders and influencers to share opportunities, promote and advance their expertise. Organizations and agencies use the company’s tools for finding and working with the world’s premier thought leaders and authentic influencers as well as showcasing their own executives, thought leaders, and content among their opt-in B2B community that has over 25M followers on social media combined.

Growing organically and focusing obsessively on the success and satisfaction of its members, it has already eclipsed many gig economy startups that have received millions of dollars in funding.

According to Thinkers360’s Head of Community Recognition and Development, Yessi Sembergman, “A unique aspect of our business model is that the Thinkers360 takes a cross-narrative approach, breaking the silos, with a holistic look across a thought leader’s collected works - across authoring, influencing, and speaking - not solely focused on social media alone. This provides brands who are looking to find and work with thought leaders and influencers far more analytics and insights, and more selection, so they can work with exactly the right experts for their niche.”

Striking the Right Chord By breaking down and working across the silos of thought leadership and democratizing to a broader base of experts, Thinkers360 hit the right chord to disrupt traditional business categories including gig economy marketplaces, influencer marketing, and speaker bureaus as well as research and advisory.

Many of these business categories are still high-cost, high-friction for enterprise buyers due to intermediaries who have been operating partially-digitized business models that are no longer sustainable.

Using Analytics for Good Thinkers360’s in-depth analytics are solving pressing issues for marketers. As an example, influencer marketing is projected to be a $15B market by 2022.

While this prediction holds on to its claims, influencer marketing fraud currently equates to 15% of the advertiser’s spending. Thinkers360 solves the “fake follower” problem so B2B brands can find and work with authentic thought leaders and influencers.

The company achieved this with a patent-pending algorithm measuring authentic thought leadership looking far beyond social media alone.

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Our mission is to disrupt the proprietary thought leadership “industry” and open it up to a diverse array of established and emerging academics, authors, entrepreneurs, investors, influencers and speakers - helping them succeed in making the world a better place.

Yessi Sembergman

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Leveraging Disruptive Technologies Thinkers360 focuses on cutting-edge business, technology, and sustainability topics. Some of their wide-ranging focus areas include business domains such as culture, innovation, leadership, management and strategy; industry domains such as EdTech, FinTech, GovTech, InsurTech, PropTech and Retail; technology domains such as 5G, AI, AR/VR, Autonomous Vehicles, Big Data, Blockchain, Cloud, IoT and Smart Cities; and sustainability domains such as corporate social responsibility, climate change and renewable energy.

With their freemium subscription models, member thought leaders can build their thought leadership profile, portfolio, and digital media kit, amplify their content on social media and participate in the popular Thinkers360 thought leadership leaderboards. Further, they can contribute to the Thinkers360 Member Blog, showcase their upcoming events and find opportunities.

B2B Thought Leadership Their clientele includes brands like BCW, CISCO, PROS, PwC, Qualcomm, and SAP, who are now able to showcase their own corporate executives, thought leaders and content to “influence the influencers.” They can also use Thinkers360’s extensive thought leader profiles, portfolios, media kits, analytics and reporting to find exactly the right experts for their niche.

Yessi Sembergman said, “Our primary research into B2B thought leadership, as well as B2B influencer marketing, has

told us that specialist communities like Thinkers360 are the tip of the spear for both sourcing and disseminating thought leadership content in 2021.”

Appreciating the Disruption Thinkers360 was awarded the Enterprise Software Innovation category of Compass Intelligence’s 2020 Tech Awards and pursues both incremental and disruptive innovation as a core part of its business model. One of the company’s latest features, “Ask A Question,” enables enterprise brands to conduct market research and inquiries by broadcasting strategic questions to the Thinkers360 community with private written and video responses.

Thomas Koulopoulos, Chairman at Delphi Group, said, “Trying to weed out thought leaders who actually have the ability and the knowledge to share and influence trends is always challenging. Thinkers360 finally has put in place the foundation for doing this in an objective, credibly, and thorough manner. For me, it’s the modern-day Who’s Who of thought leadership.”

Sailing Through the Pandemic With continued business disruption due to the effects and after-effects of the pandemic, fueling the remote work economy, as well as the inexorable shift of labor from regular employment to contract employment, Thinkers360 has the potential to become the de-facto platform and specialist community for business, technology and sustainability thought leaders and the brands who wish to work with them.

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