Dress for Success Dublin has announced a collaboration with Oracle Women’s Leadership (OWL), aimed at encouraging more women to consider careers in IT and digital industries.
The partnership will focus on the #MentOr4Success programme which will pair people working in Oracle with clients from Dress for Success Dublin. Over a period of six months, Oracle volunteers will mentor candidates, equipping them with the confidence to secure employment and prepare them for the workplace.
Commenting on the partnership, Sonya Lennon designer, entrepreneur, and founder of Dress for Success Dublin said:
“Oracle sees the value of mentorship to Dress for Success clients: women looking to create economic sustainability for themselves and their families.
“The enthusiasm by the team at Oracle Women’s Leadership has meant that we can hit the ground running, building our clients’ confidence to build their career.”
Pictured at the launch of the #MentOr4Success programme were members of the Oracle team and founder of Dress for Success Dublin, Sonya Lennon.
Daniela Becker-Russell, Oracle Women’s Leadership Dublin Community Leader and Head of SMB Sales for SaaS Applications in Western Europe at Oracle also welcomed the partnership:
“We are delighted to further strengthen Oracle Women’s Leadership’s relationship with Dress for Success Dublin with the launch of this exciting new programme #MentOr4Success.
“We already have huge interest from possible mentors within Oracle and look forward to empowering women to launch into a career in the digital industries with a helping hand from Oracle Women’s Leadership.”
Oracle Women’s Leadership is a global leadership and professional development program to support the growth of current and emerging women leaders within Oracle.
TERMINALFOUR, the digital marketing and web content management platform for higher education, today announced the results of its 2017 ‘Global Higher Education Survey’. The results highlight significant concerns among higher education institutions about student recruitment targets due to proposed visa/travel restrictions.
In a survey of 391 higher education professionals from 333 unique higher education institutions, 56% stated that travel restrictions will directly impact their institution’s ability to meet recruitment targets.
The survey was carried out among web, marketing, recruitment and leadership professionals in higher education across the US, UK, Canada, Ireland, Australia and South Africa.
The survey also found that 37% of higher education professionals have high levels of job insecurity. When asked to rate their personal job security in the context of Government policy, student recruitment challenges and internal restructuring, just 28% of respondents stated that they feel highly secure in their current role.
Regarding how travel restrictions are likely to impact institutions, 11% of respondents stated that international students account for more than one-fifth of total recruitment numbers. A further 19% of those surveyed said that these students accounted for more than one-tenth of total student recruitment.
Piero Tintori, CEO and Founder, TERMINALFOUR, said: “There’s no doubting that Brexit and the election of President Trump has caused some rumblings in student recruitment teams across the globe. 56% said visa and travel restrictions would impact recruitment targets. Let that sink in. More than half of the participants think travel restrictions will effectively cost them millions in lost revenue.”
The survey sought to understand the current situation relating to vacant seats in universities and colleges and to investigate whether recruitment teams are hitting their targets. 42% of respondents (working in web, marketing or recruitment roles) were not sure of the situation regarding vacant seats in their institution. 20% surveyed stated they never have vacant seats; 12% have less than 2% vacant seats; 10% less than 5% vacant seats and 7% stated their institution averages above 11+% vacant seats every year.
Piero Tintori, CEO and Founder, TERMINALFOUR
Commenting on these results, Tintori said, “The results of this survey serve to illustrate the ever-present challenge of filling seats. The statistics reveal a mixed bag when it comes to vacant seats. What really causes alarm bells for me is the lack of awareness shown by many respondents when it comes to the percentage of vacant seats in their institutions, with many unable to even guess at the answer.
“This drives home the point that there’s a big disconnect between the organisational goals of the institution and the online goals. One informs the other; it’s unconscionable that these figures aren’t understood across an institution”, he continued.
The survey also attempted to reveal web priorities for marketing and digital teams in universities and colleges. A new question for the 2017 survey was the level of adoption or incorporation of web based personalisation on higher education websites. The results were surprisingly low. 79% of respondents said they did not incorporate website personalisation on their institution’s website; only 14% stated that they did but this figure included 6% that only had location based personalisation.
61% stated that web accessibility improvements were a top 3 website priority in 2017. 62% of this figure stated that ‘Legal & Policy’ forces were behind its prioritisation followed by social factors at 25%.
Piero Tintori commented: “We’re seeing lots of cases where higher education institutions, particularly in the US, are getting into real legal trouble by not meeting basic accessibility standards. As a result, digital transformation initiatives are sometimes being driven by or accelerated by the threat of litigation, with institutions now releasing funding to make sure their websites meet these standards to avoid stark financial penalties.”
“The other side of the debate is that accessibility opens the door to opportunity. 285 million people in the world are visually impaired, between 1% and 9% of the population have movement related disorders, and 15% of the US population has a learning related disability. These are potential and prospective students and a failure to address their needs is a failure to tap their potential to join your institution.”
Highly-skilled professionals from across the Western Region flocked to Career Zoo West at the Galway Racecourse this weekend, seeking opportunities in tech, biotech, finance and other professional services.
The event showcased the career opportunities on offer from 40 leading multinational and Irish employers, including STEM-sector leaders, professional and financial services, and biotech companies. Participating companies were hiring for a variety of highly-skilled roles across tech, pharma, medtech, finance, marketing, HR and sales.
The sponsors of Career Zoo West were: Ericsson, Pramerica, Medtronic, Cisco and FRS Recruitment, with the event’s line-up also including recruiters and speakers from: Abbott, Abbvie, BD Research Centre Ireland, BioMarin, BioNua, BNP Paribas, Cisco, Ericsson, Fintrax, FRS, Grifols, Innopharma Labs, the Institute of Project Management, the Irish Medtech Association, JFC, Medtronic, Merit, NIBRT, Ocuco, PPD, Pramerica, SAP, Sidero, SL Controls and Wayfair, amongst others.
The concept of self-driving cars has been mooted for quite some time and has been a feature of sci-fi TV shows or cartoons speculatively casting an eye to the future. In 2017, autonomous cars have become a distinct possibility, and while a fully autonomous vehicle is still a way off, we can now invest in cars which will let us kick back for most of a journey.
We’re also entering the area of holographic windscreens which can display key data that we would previously have needed to glance down at the dashboard to see. These advances are remarkable when you think that it wasn’t so long ago since power steering and remote locking were perceived as fantastic innovations.
Neil Tohill – Director of Southside Motor Factors in Dublin has sent us another visual asset for our readers to checkout..
Furniture giant Ikea have launced an app which will allows you to place furniture in your home via your smartphone or tablet. This is pretty cool and most likely will be adopted by other manufacturers or other retail outlets in the coming months ahead, This takes the stress out of pondering over items for your house and you can check out what they look like before you take a trip to a store. There is a problem though, It is only for iOS 11 and us Irish will get to try the app..
2000 products will be available at launch which is a decent portfolio of goods they have to offer.
“IKEA Place makes it easier to make buying decisions in your own place, to get inspired and try many different products, styles and colors in real-life settings with a swipe of your finger. Augmented reality and virtual reality will be a total game changer for retail in the same way as the internet. Only this time, much faster,” says Michael Valdsgaard, Leader Digital Transformation at Inter IKEA Systems.
How to use IKEA Place:
Make sure you have upgraded your device to iOS 11.
Download the IKEA Place app for free from the Apple App Store.
Scan the floor in your place.
Browse the list of products available in the app.
Select a product that you want to place.
Move and place the product into the space, it is as simple as that!
The service will see DiskShred return in excess of €250,000 to clients in the next 12 months. In many cases, the value that companies stand to recover from the service can render DiskShred’s services cost-neutral, allowing businesses to avail of its hard drive shredding and data destruction services free of charge.
DiskShred, Ireland’s leading on-site hard drive and media shredding provider, today announces the launch of a new service to help companies recover the value of their retired IT equipment. The company expects to return in excess of €250,000 to clients in the next 12 months.
DiskShred specialises in providing secure on-site shredding services to the most security conscious companies, including financial services, data centres and public bodies. While DiskShred previously focused solely on providing on-site data destruction services, the launch of the new service is a direct response to customer demand.
Jeremy Bryan, brand manager, DiskShred, said: “We approached a number of our customers to discuss their other equipment disposal requirements as well as hard drive shredding. Our clients have responded well to the opportunity to recover the value of their old IT assets. We have been able to help them to get cash back from their end-of-life assets, which often enables them to avail of our leading data destruction and shredding services free of charge.”
Used IT equipment can retain a considerable amount of its value, and this is often true for used equipment from data centres. Even without hard drives, servers and their parts can have value which Diskshred can help its customers to recover.
To establish where value can be returned, DiskShred’s knowledgeable team can conduct an audit of clients’ facilities and advise on equipment where residual value is recoverable. Where there is value, IT assets are transported to DiskShred’s secure facility in the provider’s purpose-built vehicles. DiskShred then assesses the equipment’s market value to find the channel that will capture the highest possible return, with the value passed back to customers.
Jeremy Bryan said: “The addition of this new service to our portfolio will make it even easier for companies to avail of DiskShred’s services and guarantee the lowest risk of a data breach. We provide a return on equipment that can be put towards shredding data bearing equipment. Having worked with companies throughout Ireland, the UK and Europe for the last number of years, we have found that companies are often not aware of the value of their old equipment. This service will help us to find the return on equipment for customers, enabling them to reinvest the value recovered or benefit from our secure shredding service at no cost.”
With the dark evenings and mornings now here safety is imperitive when it comes to our kids as some have a fair trek to school especially in rural areas. Not only that we have friends and family that live alone too and this is an ideal way to keep tabs on them.
Liberty Watch is now having a sale on their first model which we reviewed back in 2016 and since then they launched a new version called the Assure which also has been reviewed recently….
Liberty Watch by Irish company Watchovers is a watch designed to keep track of your loved ones whereabouts,the watch is not a smartwatch in technical terms but is by how it works. The watch comes with Wi-Fi,Telephone and a speaker. The watch comes with a sim card built in allowing the parents/guardian to tell you exactly where the user is and also check the history and you can also call the user and vice versa… Note.. You can buy a sim direct from the company or get your own either is at an additonal cost to the owner.
Drop them an email at support@watchovers.com to get this great deal and check them out on Facebook and Twitter
Tata Consultancy Services, a leading global IT services, consulting and business solutions organization, today unveiled the industry findings of its Global Trend Study titled, “Getting Smarter by the Sector: How 13 Industries Use Artificial Intelligence.” Focusing on the current and future impact of Artificial Intelligence (AI), the study polled 835 executives across 13 global industry sectors in four regions of the world, revealing that they all identified artificial intelligence as increasingly important to their strategic competitiveness by 2020.
Disrupted Industries like Travel, Hospitality and Telecom Making Boldest Investments in Artificial Intelligence
Consumer Packaged Goods, Utilities and Insurance Outpace Other Industries in AI Investment as a Percentage of Company Revenue
According to the study, 80% of executives in all 13 industries currently invest in AI and almost 100% plan to invest by 2020. The insurance industry outspent the other twelve verticals surveyed, investing on average $124 million in AI systems, compared to a cross-industry average of $70 million. Consumer packaged goods reported the second most significant spend at $95 million.
Looking ahead to 2020, AI continues to be seen as a long term strategic bet, with ten of the 13 industries planning to increase their investments in AI. The increases are most dramatic among industries with the lowest current investment levels, including the travel, transport and hospitality industry, which plans to increase its spend by 750%, from $4 million in 2015 to $34 million to 2020. This is followed by rises in media, entertainment and information services (292%), industrial manufacturing (74%), healthcare (44%), and banking and finance (29%).
“The second phase of our Global Trend Study highlights that all industries see AI technology as a major game-changer on their business competitiveness by 2020,” said K. Ananth Krishnan, Chief Technology Officer of TCS. “It’s striking that the sectors making the boldest current or future AI investments and citing the most significant results seem to group around industries like insurance, travel, hospitality, and telecom, where disruption is having a major impact, and consumer-focused sectors such as the consumer-packaged goods industry, where the customer experience can be significantly enhanced by AI innovation.”
AI Investments as a Percentage of Revenue and ROI
The leading investors in AI, determined as a percentage of average company revenue, were the consumer-packaged goods (CPG) industry (0.66%), followed by utilities (0.53%), insurance (0.52%) and telecommunications (0.39%). Companies reported that their AI initiatives had a strong positive impact on both revenue improvement and cost reduction in the specific business areas where they invested in artificial intelligence. The average revenue increase across all 13 industries was 17%, while the average cost reduction was 12%. Telecom companies generated the most value from AI investments in 2015, in terms of revenue improvement (average 25%) and cost reductions (average 20%).
AI used in the IT function most frequently
The most frequently mentioned business function using AI was perhaps unsurprisingly in IT, with high-tech and utilities companies more frequently using cognitive technology in their IT operations than the 11 other industry sectors. Across all 13 industries studied, only 29% of companies are using AI in sales today. However, more than half the CPG companies (52%) and nearly half the retailers (49%) are using AI tools to improve sales performance.
Potential headwinds to AI adoption
Effectively managing the security risk of AI systems is of paramount importance for the majority of industries, with companies in the automotive, banking and financial services, CPG, technology, industrial manufacturing, and telecoms industries all stating this as the number one success factor to derive real value from AI. Moreover, all industry sectors cited the importance of getting managers and employees to trust the advice provided by AI systems, and getting employees to learn about and adopt the new processes and systems that AI requires.
In almost all sectors, addressing people’s fears about losing their jobs was not ranked as a major barrier. This was underlined in phase one of the Global Trend Study released in March this year, which found companies with the biggest revenue and cost improvements from AI see the need for at least three times as many new jobs in each function by 2020 because of cognitive computing innovations.
An Irish tech start-up will launch a global jobs platform for people who want to work from hometomorrow, Tuesday, 12thSeptember,at12.30pm.
Abodoo will match people who want to work remotely with suitable job opportunities. The platform has been developed by Irish couple Vanessa Tierney and Ben Wainwright, who were inspired by their own experiences of remote working.
At tomorrow’s launch, Abodoo will outline its plans for global expansion. The company will also highlight key figures on the business case for remote working.
Representatives from eir and the IDA, both of which are backing Abodoo, will attend the launch.
Commenting in advance, Abodoo co-founder Vanessa Tierney said:
“Remote working is growing rapidly, thanks to technological advances. Working from home is often associated with freelancers, but more and more employers now see the value of offering their permanent staff this option. Abodoo will make that easier for them to do, and easier for people who want to work from home to find exciting career opportunities.”
