Edina Manuel, Author at ��Ĵ�ý News Center

��Ĵ�ý Digital Hub Innovations Win Silver and Bronze at 2024 Stevie® Awards

Edina Manuel — Tue, 16 Apr 2024 11:15:00 +0000

Three of the more than 40 predominantly AI-based tools that ��Ĵ�ý digital hubs use to serve large numbers of customers through insights-driven and robust self-service capabilities won silver and bronze at the 2024 for Sales & Customer Service.

Enterprise GPT and digital launchpad, powered by Joule, won silver in the Best Use of Technology in Sales category, while ��Ĵ�ý Digital Value Discovery won bronze for Value-Based Selling Techniques.

Courtesy of The Stevie Awards.

Digital customer engagement at ��Ĵ�ý is executed via digital hubs located at 15 locations across six continents. The hubs are home to more than 1,000 digitally skilled, multi-disciplinary teams that innovate with and apply AI capabilities to serve personalized and immersive engagements, whenever and wherever needed.

“��Ĵ�ý digital hubs were able to support more than 22,000 customer engagements last year – primarily virtually – thanks to a plethora of AI tools we adopt internally to drive wider customer coverage and faster execution of digital customer engagements,” explains Sam Masri, global head of Digital for Customer Success at ��Ĵ�ý.

“We are scaling and expanding our digital customer engagement capabilities to every customer-facing role and function in ��Ĵ�ý, ensuring everyone uses multiple AI tools to outsource administrative, repetitive, and manual activities to AI,” he elaborates. “This way, we have more capacity to focus on strategic activities that address customer needs and increase customer satisfaction. We engage with ��Ĵ�ý customers of all sizes and industries at a pace that matches their pressing business requirements, accelerating business outcomes they get from our cloud solutions.”

The Stevie Awards encompass several of the world’s leading business award programs, including the prestigious American Business Awards® and International Business Awards®. More than 2,300 nominations from organizations of all sizes across all industries from 47 nations and territories were evaluated in this year’s competition. Finalists were determined by the average scores of more than 200 professionals worldwide.

Driving Business Outcomes for ONEX Holding with Digital Customer Engagement

Edina Manuel — Mon, 13 Nov 2023 13:15:00 +0000

With the new generative artificial intelligence (AI) copilot Joule, ��Ĵ�ý is uniquely positioned at the intersection of business and technology, opening up an enormous opportunity for economic value creation on a global scale. To help customers capitalize on this opportunity fast, ��Ĵ�ý is also embedding AI and intelligent technologies in its customer engagement motion.

“The value, relevance, and velocity demanded from a cloud leader extend to both the solutions provided and the end-to-end customer engagement. Industry research shows that by 2025, four out of every five B2B customer engagements will be executed through digital channels,” said Sam Masri, global head of Digital, Customer Success, ��Ĵ�ý. “Our customers need to achieve the business outcomes from their digital transformation much faster with streamlined interactions, reduced engagement complexity, and robust tech-enabled capabilities that make the buying journey agile, personalized, and memorable.”

With operations spanning more than 10 sectors and 80 business units across Europe and the Middle East, ONEX Holding entrusted ��Ĵ�ý with its five-year digital transformation plan. For the 35 legal entities in its oil and gas division, ONEX adopted , among other solutions, complemented by to support its sustainability strategy. In six months from the initial digital contact, ONEX’s digital transformation journey was mapped out and the implementation successfully kicked off. Such velocity was gained through digital customer engagement with about 90% of the entire process being completed virtually, through ��Ĵ�ý’s digital hubs in Cairo, Egypt, and Barcelona, Spain.

��Ĵ�ý digital customer engagement is executed via digital hubs, attractively located on five continents. The hubs are home to highly collaborative teams of diverse, digitally-native talent that help deliver end-to-end, virtual customer engagement services. By continuously applying AI and the latest technologies, these teams help drive our customers’ business outcomes at an exponential velocity while maintaining memorable and personalized customer experiences.

“Our experience with ��Ĵ�ý was frictionless and seamless,” said Waqas Butt, ICT and digital transformation leader at ONEX Holding. “��Ĵ�ý digital engagement gave us an incredible jump start on our digital transformation and removed all the lags you typically experience with a traditional, in-person buying journey. With the immersive, tech-driven capabilities, we had access to the demo versions of ��Ĵ�ý solutions that had already been mapped to our KPIs, enabling us to experience what these cloud solutions could do for us in an engaging way and at our own pace.”

“The best part of our experience was having immediate access to ��Ĵ�ý’s 50 years of leadership in enterprise processes. We had ��Ĵ�ý’s industry, solution, and value best practices at our fingertips, made available fast through digital modalities and powered by cutting-edge technologies,” added Butt. “Although digital, the experience felt more like we were seated at the same table with top minds in ��Ĵ�ý who had profound knowledge of all the regions and sectors ONEX operates in, including energy, oil and gas, power generation, and even infrastructure management and investments.”

Part of ONEX’s digital transformation journey includes the development of a new way of working, called “Digital Workplace,” focused on embedding digital approaches into routine business processes to gain efficiencies and promote sustainability.

“Digital transformation is not a transaction; it is a partnership in which both parties need to be like-minded. When we finally shook hands in person with the ��Ĵ�ý digital customer engagement team, we did it because we spoke the same language – we both understand the power of starting a digital transformation, digitally. We know we are in good hands on our path to redefine how ONEX runs,” stressed Butt.

“The relationship between ONEX and ��Ĵ�ý is a beautiful example of how virtual immersive engagements can enable and scale human relationships and interactions, not diminish them. We call this human-led, digitally-powered customer engagement with a mandate of ensuring that all ��Ĵ�ý customers have the same path to success with ��Ĵ�ý, regardless of where they are or when they needs us,” concluded Masri.

Edina Manuel is part of Digital, Customer Success at ��Ĵ�ý.

��Ĵ�ý One Billion Lives Makes a Difference in a Year of Uncertainty

Edina Manuel — Thu, 14 Jan 2021 14:15:32 +0000

What a year 2020 was; with the onset of the pandemic, everything changed. Those who pivoted and embraced the changes quickly stood like a beacon of hope for the rest.

As the first cases of COVID-19 were confirmed globally, the team running , the company’s flagship social intrapreneurship program, understood that 2020 would be the year where everything would need to move online.

“If there were ever a year to celebrate the creativity, collaboration, and passion of our people, this would be that year,” said Deb Kaplan, head of ��Ĵ�ý One Billion Lives. “This year’s teams have been put to the test to solve social and environmental problems focused on the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals and COVID-19 in a fully virtual environment. With a global pandemic displacing many teams from one another due to lockdowns and quarantines, these teams continued to push themselves to find new ways to work together, solve problems, communicate more effectively, and complete the journey that they started and refused to give up on.”

Teams from across the globe joined the 2020 ��Ĵ�ý One Billion Lives challenges with over 640 submissions. More than 2,000 employees tested their limits, participating in over 40 virtual idea factories, seven regional demo days, fast track enablement, base camp, accelerator, and investment committee meetings—all to make a difference in our communities and improve people’s lives.

After successfully evaluating all presentations, we are excited to share the 2020 teams within ��Ĵ�ý One Billion Lives with the most mature and impactful social innovation ideas.

Impact Venture

Recycletronics

Recycletronics will build a marketplace for electronic manufacturers and e-waste recyclers to drive value from unused electronics while addressing the negative impact of e-waste on the environment and human health. Learn more.

Regional Impact Transformation Ventures

Social Recruiting

There are currently more than 1 billion people in the world suffering from poverty. In Japan, this is no exception. While the third-largest economy in the world, its poverty levels hover around 16%, even prior to COVID-19. Compounded with the effects of the pandemic, people are even more at a disadvantage. So how ��Ĵ�ý help? This team from Japan was able to find a solution. Learn more.

Mask Makers Platform

By reusing facial masks, toxic emissions can be reduced by up to 84%. The team behind Mask Makers Platform saw these statistics and realized that during COVID-19 the need for masks that were reusable was not only necessary, it was critical. Learn more.

Sebenza

Coming from many different backgrounds, team members quickly found a common thread during their idea factory session: the growing issue of unemployment. Compounded with the current pandemic, this gaping issue was becoming even bigger–fast. Learn more.

Athena

Today, it is estimated that one in 15 people in China lives with a disability, affecting 20% of families. In addition, a 2013 report conducted by Human Rights Watch found that 43% of disabled people in China were illiterate, compared to five percent of able-bodied counterparts. The report also noted that with limits to aid, approximately 15% receive any funding or support. With these barriers in place, these communities are often living in poverty with no means of getting out. This is where team Athena hopes to make a difference. Learn more.

Greensap

Within one year, deforestation within the Amazon rose nearly 30%, creating even more strain on the natural world. The mission of one non-governmental organization (NGO) to help communities within the Amazon helped this team identify and solve two common pain points for NGOs by creating a platform to help streamline processes and create transparency where it is needed most. Learn more.

Cloud for Biodiversity

On average, animal populations—including mammals, reptiles, fish, and others—have declined by 68% in the last 50 years. The fact is staggering and leaves a huge crisis for the well-being of our planet that Cloud for Biodiversity plans to address. Learn more.

TutorAll

In the spring of 2020, due to COVID-19, schools across the U.S. shut down and dining room tables became the new school desks overnight. A study presented by Brown University noted that when students start the 2020-21 school year, they were only returning with average 66% of the learning gains for reading in a typical year and an average 44% of the math gains. Educators within the school systems were seeing the effects of the pandemic firsthand and realizing that many students were being put in unfair circumstances; creating an even bigger learning gap. TutorAll, decided to find a solution. Learn more.

Take a Deeper Dive into the Teams

Recycletronics

Today, we rely heavily on electronics, from the phones in our pockets, to the computers we use for work and entertainment. But what happens with the old phones that we trade in? Or to the computers that become obsolete? The 2019 article on downtoearth.org states that only 20% of global e-waste is recycled. According to Global E-Waste Monitor 2017, India generates 2 million tons of e-waste annually, ranking fifth among e-waste-producing countries.

The Recycletronics team, based out of ��Ĵ�ý Labs India, is working to develop a digital marketplace for electronic manufacturers and e-waste recyclers where they could connect and acquire the materials for secondary marketplaces. This will not only help reduce the amount of global waste, but also help develop a plan for how recycled materials can be introduced back into the industry.

The key market will be in India, where nearly 90% of the e-waste is informally recycled, meaning it is not government-certified and poses a health concern to workers. Consumer electronics in India account for approximately 70% of the total electronic waste and hence could potentially contribute $850 million value in derived recycled raw materials, if properly introduced into secondary market. The Reclycletronics team has their eyes set on developing this secondary marketplace.

Cerebra Green, India’s largest e-waste recycler, is already onboarded, and the team looks forward to continuing to create partnerships with more organizations in 2021. As the demand for electronics continues to grow, the team hopes that this venture will restore some balance to the output of waste while adding value to secondary markets.

While attending a workshop designed to combat the poverty issue, ��Ĵ�ý Value Advisor Expert Satoru Ota had the idea of digitalizing a job-matching process that would help the unemployed people who are suffering from poverty to find quality positions. From there, Ota worked with his team in ��Ĵ�ý Fieldglass to determine if a solution would be possible. Once the ��Ĵ�ý Fieldglass team members were able to review, they began to pull in other employees to help add their industry knowledge, and the team began to grow.

A differentiating aspect of the Social Recruitment Platform is that it is meant to be a network where employees can feel confident that companies using it treat their employee well while also empowering the individuals to be matched with positions that best suit them.

Team member Roman Rozanec noted that a similar endeavor was piloted in the U.S., called ��Ĵ�ý Fieldglass External Talent Marketplace. This project was able to connect employers who had open contract positions with job seekers. It was this talent pool that provided significant insights for Social Recruitment Platform.

“At the end of the day, we know how difficult life can be to find a job under the best of circumstances, and it is really heartening to know that we will be making a difference by helping poor communities get back on their feet, reestablishing themselves, and empowering them to live a productive life,” Ota said. “When we succeed in Japan, we hope to roll out globally. Thanks to ��Ĵ�ý One Billon Lives, we already have global access.”

Social Recruitment Platform is currently looking into creating a customizable job matching digital platform and working with partners in Grameen Japan to pilot the idea.

In the long term, Ota hopes that this venture will be used by major companies across the industries and stakeholders. The more companies come on board, the bigger the impact the platform will have. Ota also hopes not only to help in poverty-stricken areas, but also to evolve to help others, such as artists, independent contractors, and those whose industries may offer poorer visibility into open positions.

Mask Makers Platform

When Juriaan Mulder, an ��Ĵ�ý Netherlands employee, saw the launch of the COVID-19 sprint for ��Ĵ�ý One Billion Lives in response to the pandemic, he started wondering: “Could we do something to help within ��Ĵ�ý?” Mike Muurmans, Mulder’s manager, was supportive and allowed him to facilitate a team meeting with the presales team to brainstorm ideas.

At the start of the pandemic, the mask shortage was acute as global supply chains were disrupted. The team tasked themselves with solving three problems at once: help alleviate immediate need for masks; bring the supply chain closer to cut down on emissions; and produce reusable masks to alleviate the landfill problem.

They found the answer in creating a network for 3D printing.

The network brings together ��Ĵ�ý Ariba software, customers in need of facial masks, and 3D printing businesses. Through ��Ĵ�ý Ariba, organizations worldwide will be able to identify 3D printing companies closest to them and purchase reusable facial masks.

With the idea in place, the team created partnerships with companies that have validated and contributed to the solution and the work to develop agreements in 2021, is already underway.

“I hope this is a win for all parties, with ��Ĵ�ý being the host for everyone’s success,” said Mulder.

Sebenza

Many see the hiring process as “find a position, apply, get hired—rinse and repeat.” But that is not the process for many blue-collar workers who still struggle to find available opportunities. These communities often do not have cover letters or resumes to lean on, but still need to find jobs to support themselves and their families. Sebenza team decided to create a mobile app to address this situation.

The team partnered with the Southern Caribbean Islands of St. Vincent and the Grenadines to hone their venture’s idea. Because the Caribbean is heavily dependent on tourism, the islands saw unprecedented levels of unemployment during the pandemic. With the partnership, the team was able engage IT students on the islands and identify ministries within the country with which they could further partner.

Simultaneously, Sebenza worked collaboratively to create a good mobile app experience. A survey within Johannesburg indicated that approximately 65% of the people in the target group had smartphones. Additionally, they were able to identify roughly 300,000 free Wi-Fi hotspots within the communities as well, meaning that 50% of the target audience had personal Internet access, and the rest would be able to easily access via hotspots, which validated the mobile-first approach.

When asked about his experience with ��Ĵ�ý One Billion Lives thus far, Mario Mustapic, a senior solutions sales executive for ��Ĵ�ý Oman, shared: “The most impressive part is that you meet as strangers, with geographical constraints, yet your ideas unite you. Once you validate an idea, you can really reach the regional and even global scale. It’s such a great opportunity.”

Athena

In the small city of Taicang, China, there is an inclusion factory to facilitate the inclusion of differently abled people into society through meaningful employment. Through the ��Ĵ�ý Social Sabbatical program, ��Ĵ�ý initiated a collaboration with the factory in 2018. The team grasped just how prevalent disabilities were and how many obstacles had to be overcome by differently abled people in society.

Team Athena hopes to make a difference by discovering what was and what was not working for the differently abled recruitment experience—finding the gaps and working to solve them. Athena has successfully built and deployed an intelligent production planning application for Taicang Inclusion Factory. They are planning to design and build an intelligent tool that helps recruiters find differently abled people who are currently looking for a job. The team also is scoping out an inclusion dashboard and additional tools that should not only help recruiters, but also support the individuals in overcoming personal life barriers as well.

Athena’s main goal is to help create ways in which differently abled communities are seen, included, and accepted by society. It was here that the team leader Jason Sun, a principal support engineer with ��Ĵ�ý China, explained, “We hope to really help these people improve their lives in every way.”

Greensap

When it comes to deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon, a Vox article noted that it has increased almost 30% between summer of 2018 through July 2019. With more than 9,700 square kilometers deforested, the area is bigger than that of Yellowstone National Park in North America.

Green Hope is an NGO working within the Amazon to teach communities there how to thrive economically through reforestation and resource management. Its mission helped ignite the Greensap team’s idea.

Alejandro Vera, a Greensap team lead, was friends with Green Hope President Chan Shigematsu, and was inspired by the work the organization was doing. During the brainstorming, Greensap and Green Hope agreed to work together on the lack of transparency and traceability of donated funds passing through the current process.

Utilizing the Hyperledger Fabric on ��Ĵ�ý Cloud Platform and ��Ĵ�ý HANA spatial services, Greensap is working on the solution for smart contracts that make donations transparent, reliable, and conditionally tied to the automated process tracking.

Having validated the market gap and the need for a solution with NGOs, the team is currently in discussion with a number of new NGOs and certification companies to further validate their idea.

Matheus Leao, a data scientist with ��Ĵ�ý Latin America & Caribbean, stated that one of Greensap’s first goals this year will be to produce a new development backlog to reflect the changes that the solution has acquired, based on the learnings gained from the ��Ĵ�ý One Billion Lives events. Additionally, he noted that the team hopes to solidify additional partnership and secure more pilot customers.

“Our aim is to improve people’s lives by making the planet greener,” Leao said. “We want to support reforestation initiatives worldwide, helping bring more awareness and funding to NGOs and optimizing the cost of tree planting.”

Cloud for Biodiversity

In seeing the urgency around biodiversity, the Cloud for Biodiversity team was committed to finding a way to assist national parks and protected areas in the efforts to preserve nature and its ecosystems. Team member Lars Friedrich, a principal business process architect for ��Ĵ�ý Germany, felt that there must be a way ��Ĵ�ý could help turn the tide.

He was joined by Markus Herhold and Carsten Homeyer and the team met several relevant NGOs, including the Frankfurt Zoological Society, to discuss the major pain points facing these biodiversity stewards. Areas for action proved to be holistic park management, biodiversity monitoring, and park tourist experience. The team decided to create an open platform that would provide digital services to secure biological diversity and social-economic support.

Translating this plan into the ��Ĵ�ý product wheelhouse, the team noted that each issue would be best supported by a different ��Ĵ�ý solution. For park management, the team would work to digitalize park processes, such as finance, sales, and human resources (HR), through ��Ĵ�ý Business One.

For biodiversity monitoring, ��Ĵ�ý Business Technology Platform would be used to create a monitoring platform for key biodiversity indicators, animal health, and other vital information in protected areas. And park and tourist experience would rely heavily on Experience Management solutions from ��Ĵ�ý and Qualtrics to measure the experience of tourists and provide feedback to the park, agencies, and surrounding communities.

“This will really be a win-win situation for everyone – from parks and protected areas to NGOs, ��Ĵ�ý, and institutions that want to invest in this area,” said Homeyer.

Echoing his sentiment, Friedrich added, “I believe ��Ĵ�ý could be a real role model here and provide customers a way to offset carbon footprint, or even a way in which they could invest into nature and biodiversity.”

As a next step, the team will pilot Cloud for Biodiversity in 2021 with Frankfurt Zoological Society and two associated national parks in Africa: Gonarezhou in Zimbabwe and North Luangwa in Zambia.

TutorAll

Sachin Bapat, a value advisor expert at ��Ĵ�ý North America, has been involved non-profits and volunteering within the education realm for years. Having had ideas about how to help drive equity in education, in the spring of 2020 Bapat saw the need to support teaching students more than ever before—and decided that he needed to find a solution.

Bapat recalls thinking, “Can we take what is already happening through the nonprofit brick and mortar organizations and get that online?” As he began to reach out to his network, he was able to create a team within ��Ĵ�ý who shared his passion for education. Through an idea factory session and a lot of teamwork, the product was molded into what it is today: a platform for end-to-end process of recruiting, onboarding, and training tutors.

In early 2021, the team hopes to partner with United Way of Atlanta to execute a proof of concept in order to create a minimal viable product.

TutorAll sees the venture utilizing ��Ĵ�ý SuccessFactors solutions, ��Ĵ�ý Business Technology Platform, and Experience Management solutions from ��Ĵ�ý and Qualtrics as they continue to work on the tools for the platform. The aim is focus on what the nonprofits need immediately, and ultimately create a platform that enables different end user journeys that will differ for students, tutors, administrators, and so on.

Bapat notes that the end goal is widespread adoption of the solution. As the solution’s value proves itself, the solution should scale to bigger schools within the state, then to national level, and finally to global-level agencies.

“The dream is to have millions of students using TutorAll for their benefit across the world,” Bapat explained.
“��Ĵ�ý is uniquely positioned because we already have education solutions for local, state, and federal governments. Once we have the model validated, we want to be able to utilize these relationships to drive much faster and much broader applications.”

��Ĵ�ý One Billion Lives Sprint Against COVID-19

Edina Manuel — Tue, 09 Jun 2020 14:15:38 +0000

We are living in extraordinary times. The COVID-19 pandemic has forced us to reassess countless assumptions and paradigms about how we define and conduct business and, most saliently, how we live our lives.

The surge in communal spirit around the globe can leave one awestruck – from the volunteer armies around the world to significant pivots of ��Ĵ�ý customers that have redirected their processes and assembly lines from luxury goods and automobiles to sanitizers and ventilators.

At ��Ĵ�ý, we engaged at length in helping governments, customers, and partners cope with the COVID-19 crisis. But beyond that, we marshaled the strength of ��Ĵ�ý solutions and our individual and collective expertise to fight COVID-19 through our flagship social intrapreneurship program, , an initiative founded by Adaire Fox-Martin, member of the Executive Board of ��Ĵ�ý SE, Customer Success.

“For the past five years, through ��Ĵ�ý One Billion Lives, we have successfully married our business acumen and technology savvy with the passion of our employees for making the world a better place,” Fox-Martin said. “It made perfect sense to extend our annual program to include a quick but substantial sprint to fight COVID-19.”

“By using our technology for good, recognizing and managing COVID-19 outbreaks could be reimagined. Everything from early detection and accelerated case identification to driving containment, resource allocation, and community engagement has the potential to be transformed with digital capabilities,” she added. “I am deeply proud and personally touched by the response of our people. Each submission was well formulated, detailed, and demonstrated the understanding of how ��Ĵ�ý solutions and our people could play a major role in addressing the prevention, treatment, and alleviation of the economic and social issues associated with COVID-19.”

In the six short weeks in which the ��Ĵ�ý One Billion Lives Sprint Against COVID-19 took place, 487 ideas were submitted. Four projects were chosen for immediate development, with first working prototypes expected by early July. Learn more about the selected ideas:

COVID-19 Cohort Management: This solution allows people with a compatible COVID-19 status to work together and engage in social activities. In this way, the number of people who absolutely must stay at home during a pandemic could be dramatically reduced, and therefore economies can stay running. Predicated on rigorous testing, tracing, and certification, the solution identifies key cohorts that could engage with each other. For example, the recovered, when proven immune, could work with risk groups as long as immunity remains. With the solution, employers could book employees to work with other colleagues and customers who are in a compatible cohort. Read more.
AERATE: A critical life-saving asset registry solution enables wide and efficient identification, tracking, and validation of the working status for life-saving medical devices, starting with ventilators. The solution would connect manufacturers, governments, and hospitals with the ability to track device locations and help ensure ventilator effectiveness at stores or at hospitals. So far, the response has been overwhelmingly encouraging and the team has pilot pursuits in the works for three countries. Read more.
Sustainable Humanitarian Action Project: The disruption of supply chains during lockdown affected governments and corporations immensely but obtaining the necessary resources has been even more difficult for humanitarian organizations and non-governmental organizations (NGOs). This solution would connect the needs of NGOs, social enterprises, and businesses to provide better and faster services in times of crisis. It brings together an external needs-assessment social enterprise called NeedsList and ��Ĵ�ý Ariba Discovery to give humanitarian supply chains a required boost while helping ��Ĵ�ý retail customers find the best channels to donate excess goods. Read more.
COVID-19 Humanitarian Response: When coordinating a relief mission for a major disaster or a pandemic, no one benefits from old and inaccurate data. Through fast and clear data management, the 4W Machine Learning Wizard tool helps lead a much more effective response to COVID-19. The tool reads files, extracts needed information, understands it, corrects it—even completes the missing pieces—and finally consolidates it all in a simple and streamlined manner to present a single source of truth during a relief mission. It helps cut the data processing time down from 14 days to one hour and enables NGOs to plan, prepare, and execute based on more accurate, close-to-real-time data. The end result is a collectively improved humanitarian mission. The tool is based on machine learning and natural language processing. Read more.

Ability to Socialize and Work During a Pandemic

As the impossible actually happened and the raging COVID-19 pandemic put nearly the entire world into a lockdown, Kai Wussow, like many, was confined at home. Working in a makeshift home office that at other times doubled as a kitchen table, he felt frustrated and had enough of feeling helpless.

“Like many colleagues, I could not meet customers. In my role, I believe in personal, high-touch customer support. I felt like I was trying to do my job with one hand tied behind my back,” Wussow explains. “The magnitude of the situation dawned on me, and I wondered what could be a better way to cope with the situation. Blanket lockdowns might be necessary when dealing with something brand new because we are simply not prepared for it. But this does not have to be so if we are able to manage a few things, like, in the case of COVID-19, the health status certification and management of people with compatible health status, or the ‘cohort.’”

And so, the idea for a COVID-19 Cohort Management solution was born and submitted to the ��Ĵ�ý One Billion Lives Sprint Against COVID-19 challenge. It was founded on the premise that as long as we ensure that only the people with compatible health status interact with each other, we could still work, keep the economy running, and socialize while minimizing the spread of the virus.

Predicated on rigorous testing, tracing, and certification, the solution identifies key cohorts. For example, the recovered, when proven immune, could work with risk groups as long as immunity remains. The infected with no symptoms could work together as well as with those that are tested immune and traced.

As soon as the cohorts are clearly identified and certified, they could be self-managed to a certain extent, managed by employers, or managed by society at large. With the cohort management solution, employers could book employees to work with employees and customers who are in a compatible cohort. Some organizations have been trying to do this manually, but with Wussow’s solution, this effort could be simplified and executed at scale with improved safety.

“��Ĵ�ý’s large footprint in workforce management software is a great foundation to build on, and I believe that ��Ĵ�ý Sports One software provides a great basis that could be adapted in a short time to serve the purpose,” explains Wussow. “��Ĵ�ý Sports One is a robust system, used by the entire Bundesliga. It already deals with aspects like managing and scheduling players with injuries and diseases. It enables the players, doctors, and physiotherapists to collaborate to create training schedules for the healthy players and recovery schedules for the injured players in a safe and privacy-observing way.”

Helping Save Lives with Efficient Management of Medical Devices

When asked how he came up with the idea for the AERATE project, Andrew LeBlanc humbly says it was not his. He heard it on television.

By that he means that he, like everyone else, was following the news about the COVID-19 pandemic as it started spreading across the globe. With the exponential growth in the number of infections, country after country was in the news stating the issues with sourcing and managing life-saving medical equipment, such as ventilators. And in a pandemic like COVID-19, which attacks the respiratory system, a ventilator could make a difference between life and death.

Very few nations could pinpoint, at speed, how many devices they had, where they were, and if they were in an operational state. Government leaders were voicing out the need for hospitals and governments to be able to “flex” as one streamlined system, sharing resources in an emergency.

To LeBlanc, an enterprise architect in Customer Success at ��Ĵ�ý, this statement did not sound unlike a usual problem statement he might receive from an enterprise customer — in his words, “brief, to the point, and requiring immediate attention.”

That same night, LeBlanc called Matthew Easlea from product engineering for ��Ĵ�ý Australia, to tell him about his intention. Within a day, they had an initial idea to track ventilators and optimize their effectiveness.

“As an enterprise architect, you have to be deeply familiar with the entire ��Ĵ�ý portfolio and able to sketch a solution for your customer almost instantly,” LeBlanc explains. “This sketch is then taken to subject matter experts to shield it against mistakes and boost efficiencies while closing the loop between a problem and the value delivery, incredibly fast. We applied this knowledge and process to AERATE.”

Both men understood that time was of the essence. The pandemic was spreading at a neck-breaking speed, and the healthcare facilities were overwhelmed. As a result, the plan was simple: deliver a minimum, viable, and highly beneficial solution that would connect manufacturers, governments, and hospitals with the ability to track device location and help ensure ventilator effectiveness at stores or at hospitals. Then, at a more opportune time, they could build a path to apply more intelligent innovations and scale.

By the morning, a lot was done.

LeBlanc and Easlea decided that a simplified and “focused scope” version of ��Ĵ�ý Asset Intelligent Network was the way to go. It offered exactly what was needed: fast onboarding for critical medical devices through templates, online tracking in real time with maintenance records immediately available, effective trouble shooting, and a collaboration network to enable creation of one system that could flex and connect the necessary parties and the inventory in an emergency.

That same day, they had the manufacturers discovered. They knew that 20 out of the 28 world’s ventilator manufacturers were ��Ĵ�ý customers. They estimated that it comprised 90 percent or more of global production.

“We reached out to organizations and colleagues that were closest to these manufacturers and we had their green light almost right away,” LeBlanc says. “The vastness of the ��Ĵ�ý ecosystem and the value of trust-based relationships should never be underestimated. It is as crucial to our success as a company as our technology is.”

Within a few days, the first pilot was ready with actual models and manufacturers for the U.S. Strategic National Stockpile involved, proving the model worked. As alignment and concept feedback with healthcare and regulatory industry experts from ��Ĵ�ý progressed, the team grew to 20 active and a total of close to 70 members who wanted to see AERATE succeed. But the team knew that if the system was to truly be successful, it had to go to market as an ecosystem. To accelerate information sharing, large governments and alliances had to come on board.

“This is when we decided to nominate our idea for the ��Ĵ�ý One Billion Lives Sprint Against COVID-19 challenge,” LeBlanc says. “��Ĵ�ý One Billion Lives will greatly help with scaling the project and making a run to impact over a billion lives while growing the ��Ĵ�ý brand.”

So far, the response has been overwhelmingly encouraging and the team already has pilot pursuits in the works for three countries.

“What is clear from this pandemic is that no one is shut off against a disease. Its effects are no less serious than those of climate change. While I hope we will never hear of this or another pandemic again, we have to count on the possibility of a second or even a third wave of COVID-19, or even a different pandemic in the future. My vision is to help the world get ready,” LeBlanc concludes.

“Over the past month since I nominated the idea to the ��Ĵ�ý One Billion Lives Sprint Against COVID-19 challenge, I have already validated it with a number of customers that have shown tremendous interest and would be willing to try it out as soon as it is ready, which is really a great news,” he says.

Firing Up a More Connected Humanitarian Supply Network

“You know something is a great idea when a lot of people come up with it,” Drew Birtwistle says. Experienced at creating positive social impact through his 2017 ��Ĵ�ý One Billion Lives venture, Rapid Disaster Relief, Birtwistle has been working with agencies helping people at risk since 2017. Just before the global COVID-19 lockdown started, Birtwistlecould envision the crushing effects the pandemic would have on humanitarian networks.

“When you have both ends of the supply chain, the supply and the demand, shut off almost everywhere in the world and when governments and big corporations start having issues getting adequate resources, you can imagine what happens to humanitarian organizations and NGOs,” Birtwistle explains.

Birtwistle knew ��Ĵ�ý Ariba, the world’s largest B2B e-commerce network that sees over US$3 trillion in transactions each year, could play a huge role, but the system was not yet equipped to manage donations and humanitarian supply chain.

At the same time, Jennifer Breslin from the ��Ĵ�ý Ariba Discovery team was talking with her colleagues about ��Ĵ�ý Ariba retail customers that, in the wake of the sudden pandemic and the resulting lockdown, had inventory that they not only wanted to, but had to, dispose of. Brand new items had to be given away. These customers wanted a way to make sure they could give the goods to those who could benefit the most. As a matter of fact, ��Ĵ�ý had already started thinking about what it would take to enable donations on ��Ĵ�ý Ariba Discovery, but something was needed right now.

“Today, sustainability is key to sourcing. Every reputable company is looking to diversify and increase their spend with sustainable and positive impact suppliers. From a reputational aspect, this project is aligned with the ��Ĵ�ý Ariba vision,” Breslin explains.

Kristen Jordeth from the ��Ĵ�ý Ariba Go to Market team, on the other hand, had attended the Social Enterprise Alliance Summit and could not shake the thought that social enterprises, which are regular for-profit businesses but with a social mission at their core, should be more represented in Ariba Network.

“I was touched by their passion and belief that the business world could be the engine for positive change. They were thrilled that ��Ĵ�ý was listening to their situations and wanting to help,” Jordeth says. “I drafted an idea about plugging social enterprises into Ariba Network, but with the pandemic, work, and a three-year-old at home, I never pressed the submit button. I was extremely happy when I found out that Drew, Jen, and I were on the same page.”

Through ��Ĵ�ý One Billion Lives, the three were put in touch to fulfill the humanitarian supply chain through ��Ĵ�ý Ariba software.

At this point, Birtwistle’s contacts connected him with NeedsList, a women-led, technology social enterprise that provides software and builds a network of suppliers for humanitarian work for a faster, more sustainable approach to crisis response.

“Could the solution to our problem be as easy as integrating NeedsList into ��Ĵ�ý Ariba Discovery?” he wondered. The team agreed that it was the best immediate action and contacted Natasha Freidus, CEO of NeedsList, who loved the idea, and the project was submitted to the ��Ĵ�ý One Billion Lives Sprint Against COVID-19 challenge for realization.

The initial integration is expected to happen very quickly, and the teams are excited about the follow-up plan to this quick start.

“��Ĵ�ý Canada held a hackathon with a number of partners, including Accenture, Deloitte, EY, IBM, and Microsoft, to tackle COVID-19. Interestingly, out of the five winners, three were focused on sharing needs information and could be very complementary to our project with ��Ĵ�ý Ariba,” Birtwistle says. “The pandemic has been tragic on so many levels, but one positive aspect that has emerged is the realization that the business and social impact must go hand in hand.”

A Humanitarian Response Through Machine Learning

Originally from Germany but having lived on three continents, Carsten Boekholt was inspired to engage in social ventures by his grandparents, who spent significant time and effort helping refugees. And having personally witnessed poverty and unmet needs in countries like Eritrea, his wife’s home country, his desire to help those in need grew.

Triggered by the devastating earthquake in Haiti in 2010, to which he, like many others, had donated, Boekholt’s professional hat came on. Working in the Industries and Customer Advisory group at ��Ĵ�ý, Boekholt helped some of the largest ��Ĵ�ý customers improve their supply chain efficiency. And so he started looking into the efficiency of the humanitarian ecosystem.

“I thought that a collaboration platform providing a unified real-time view and fostering collaboration for all humanitarian stakeholders could become the basis for greater operational efficiency and better outcomes across organizational boundaries in humanitarian missions,” Boekholt says. He believed that ��Ĵ�ý could achieve much greater impact by improving humanitarian response processes through technology and innovation, rather than through simple monetary donations.

That’s how in 2017, together with Erich Winsloe, Koert Breebaart, and Luiza Maria Ramiento, his first ��Ĵ�ý One Billion Lives venture, Relief.iO, was born. The venture works to deliver a robust collaboration platform to drive better collaboration between humanitarian stakeholders, like NGOs, governments, and the private sector.

Since then, Boekholt and Winsloe kept a close working relationship with the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UN OCHA). While the Relief.iO platform focuses on improved collaboration between the various NGOs, the UN OCHA team approached Boekholt with a related problem but a different challenge. UN OCHA struggled to coordinate humanitarian missions manually, with a large number of Excel files with thousands of data lines coming from numerous NGOs.

These lines of text represent the information about the needs and available resources that needed to be verified and processed manually, which often took multiple days or even weeks depending on the disaster. Strict templatization did not work since each organization would end up tweaking the templates, leveraging their own formats or unintentionally destroying them.

The team took on the challenge and worked with a group of data scientists and students in Singapore to build a tool that uses machine learning and natural language processing to read the files, extract the needed information, understand it, correct it—even complete the missing pieces—and finally consolidate it all in a simple and streamlined manner to present a single source of truth. A rough working model was built in about four months.

When an earthquake and tsunami struck Palu, Indonesia, the UN OCHA called again. This time they asked if they could use the tool for the relief efforts in Palu. The team supported the UN over the entire three-month mission. Using the new tool, the pilot in Palu brought about tremendous quality improvements and time savings, cutting the data processing time down from 14 days to a few hours. As a result, the UN was able to create a unified report and get back to NGOs on who was doing what, where, and when (4W-Report), along with analytical insights, two weeks earlier than previously. This, in turn, enabled the NGOs to plan, prepare, and execute based on more accurate, almost real-time data. The end result was a collectively improved humanitarian mission.

However, while the tool was functioning well, it was only working as a concierge service and the UN was not able to use it directly.

As the COVID-19 pandemic reached a scale that no one was prepared to deal with, the UN OCHA reached out to Boekholt once again to see how the 4W Machine Learning Wizard could help. This time the team knew the tool needed to be upgraded for self-service if countless organizations across 20 affected countries with tens of millions of people in need were to meaningfully benefit from it.

“When ��Ĵ�ý One Billion Lives launched a new challenge specifically to fight the COVID-19 pandemic, we realized that it was once again an opportunity to leverage the program and finish what we started, scaling the tool and bringing it online,” Boekholt says enthusiastically. “The 4W Machine Learning Wizard is built as a web app and it is now time to convert it into a software-as-as-service (SaaS) solution, supporting multi-user, multi-language execution with an ability to scale.”

The team aims to enable the first self-service usage for the UN OCHA by early June 2020 to better coordinate the ongoing crisis, while maturing the tool in an agile development approach to a productized version in August.

“I feel so privileged to be in the position to help, and now that my role is also public sector-facing this project is not only a social impact project but a major conversation starter and an area of interest for our customers,” Boekholt says. “I am tremendously proud to work for a company that is clearly driven by its purpose to help the world run better and improve people’s lives.”

Edina Manuel, Author at ���Ĵ�ý News Center

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