Until now, Customer Relationship Management (CRM) was mostly a simple matter: you somehow collect some data. This behavior changed due to the technical possibilities. First, the amount of data you can collect about a potential customer changed. In addition to name, age and gender, click behavior, context or current needs were added.

Prerequisite

The basic problems in dealing with customer data can be explained in principle with the questions "Who?", "What?" and "With what?". This is the crux of future system selection. After all, which system provider will ultimately succeed in scoring points with artificial intelligence? Basically, the more you know about customers, the better.

But what connections can be made between individual customer data? The goal should therefore not be the clumsy collection of data, but the "interconnection" of data.

As a buzzword, the term "content marketing" is haunting conference halls. It's true that by analyzing customer data, you should know what they actually want. Predictive analytics has been a topic for a long time, now a kind of self-learning intelligence comes into play.

For example, the clip below shows a customer journey via Amazon's Alexa.

Amazon is apparently planning to follow the same strategy with "Alexa Echo" as Microsoft once did with Windows: presence, presence, presence. There is no other way to explain that Amazon products not only decorate living rooms, but are also "switched on" in televisions, cars or refrigerators.

A more detailed explanation of the Alexa use case can be found here:

Finally, it is relevant how the new information is distributed.

Email, social media or perhaps via print? The choice is extensive and links between individual customer attributes also play an important role here. Per se, the choice of medium is derived from previous consumer behavior. But how could other media, or channels, be used even more optimally?

Abstract example: Customers might want to attach product specifications via the browser's own "Print" command. Therefore, they might still be receptive to print advertising.

Nevertheless, customers are confronted with more and more digital tasks that can only be solved with great effort. This is where a new technology, or rather a new software, steps in to "channel" the previously read and collected data volumes. An "Alexa Echo" could now help with this.

The opponents

Proportionally to the use of the term marketing automation at trade fairs and conferences, the number of software manufacturers and agencies that want to support precisely this automation of marketing has also grown. It's hard to keep track of them all, but a selection has to be made here as well. SAP, Salesforce and IBM stand out in particular.

The drivers

According to an interview with McDermott, SAP employs around 100 developers in the area of machine learning. The project, named "SAP Clea", is still in its infancy and SAP still owes customers many answers. However, SAP has seen the writing on the wall. Likewise, Salesforce is revolving around a formula for success with "Einstein". It is "CRM + AI = Success". Salesforce also provides examples for its use:

Automatic recording of sales activities, recommending solutions and knowledge articles in the service area or comprehensive recommendation features in marketing. At the same time, "Einstein" should become more and more adaptive.

Former world chess champion Garry Kasparov could tell you a thing or two about it, as in 1996 he was the first grandmaster to lose a game to the "Deep Blue" chess computer developed by IBM. Today's artificial intelligence (AI) from IBM, meanwhile, circulates under the name "Watson". This has been declared the company's all-purpose weapon, so to speak.

While "Watson" already scores well on Jeopardy, it apparently still lacks a usage strategy across cloud products.

Other developers of something like AI are all over the map: Amazon, Facebook, or Apple are pushing their games in the social media space. Admittedly, they use this AI less as automation robots than as widely linked data pools. In any case, the players from Silicon Valley have one thing ahead of the established software companies: the courage to test simply structured products in public.

The keywords of the data protection convention in 2017 are also: good faith, purpose limitation principle, necessity principle - or simply: the data subject's right to information. The introduction of the European Data Protection Day shows how important it is to deal with personal data.

"More than 30 years ago, no one could have imagined the extent to which personal data would be collected and processed today. From today's perspective, it seems all the more visionary that the countries already recognized back then what the core problems were," comments Gabriel Gabriel, Managing Director of Brainloop Switzerland. In Switzerland, however, the agreement has not been in force since January 26, 1981, but only since 1998.

Current Handycap: Clouds

Especially with the triumph of the cloud, new challenges arise for the protection of personal data. With various protection goals, the legislator is attempting to transform the requirements of the fundamental right to informational self-determination into concrete instructions for the various actors.

In the area of IT security, the protection goals of availability, integrity and confidentiality have long been generally accepted. However, the protection goals of non-linkability and data economy also play a central role in this area. The aim is to prevent interlinked data from undermining the right to informal self-determination. At the same time, no more information should be collected than is absolutely necessary.

Preferred locations

Another much-discussed point is the question of the location of data storage - i.e. the question of whether the servers are located in Germany, for example, or in a secure third country. After the experiences with the Safe Harbour agreement and its successor, the Privacy Shield, it has proven to be worthwhile to rely on local or at least European data centers - which preferably operate in Switzerland or Germany.

For example, more and more customers are using data protection solutions for a variety of deployment scenarios, such as within the board of directors or executive management, in project collaboration or due diligence, or in areas such as know-how protection in research and development.

www.brainloop.com

Federal Councillor Johann Schneider-Ammann presented the inventor of the World Wide Web (WWW), Tim Berners-Lee, with the "WORLDWEBFORUM Lifetime Achievement Award". Federal Councillor Johann Schneider-Ammann presents Berners-Lee with the "WORLDWEBFORUM Lifetime Achievement Award" for his life's work.

WWW invented in Switzerland?

"The fact that the internet was invented in Switzerland should be both a beacon and a challenge for us in the coming years: digitisation is a huge opportunity for us - we have the best starting position. We must take advantage of it. For innovative strength, competitiveness, jobs and prosperity," says Schneider-Ammann in a speech.

Diverse personalities

This year, the WORLDWEBFORUM has a record attendance of 2,000 visitors and is the largest event on digitalization in Switzerland. The WORLDWEBFORUM 2017 will be attended by personalities who are as diverse as they are inspiring: Ed Catmull, the American computer scientist, co-founder of Pixar Animation Studios and Oscar winner, Cuban Herminia Ibarra, Professor of Leadership at the renowned Insead University, or Sir Tim Berners-Lee. The British physicist and computer scientist invented HTML (Hypertext Markup Language) at the European nuclear research center CERN in Geneva and is thus the founder of the World Wide Web.

"Digitalization is still a buzzword for many companies," says WORLDWEBFORUM founder Fabian Hediger. That's why the conference was founded in 2012 to show decision-makers from business and politics what digital transformation means for business models and leadership.

Digital Manifesto

To ensure that Switzerland plays a leading role in the digital transformation worldwide, 50 digital thought leaders have drawn up a Digital Manifesto together with the location initiative digitalswitzerland. Marcel Dobler, designated ICTswitzerland president, digital shaper and National Councillor, and Marc Walder, initiator of digitalswitzerland and CEO of Ringier, hand over the Digital Manifesto to Schneider-Ammann.

Here you can go to the Digital Manifesto of digitalswitzerland.

In the future, it will be essential to be able to deal intelligently with data. Four theses on digitalization by Christoph Höinghaus, CEO of Trivadis, on the developments in IT from 2017:

Thesis 1: A dynamic economic and political environment requires agile and flexible companies
The elections in the USA and the referenda in Italy and England are examples of current events that are influencing what the NZZ calls the already "fragile environment" of the current economic development. If the forecasters at UBS are to be believed, we are in for "a year of polarization". However the near future develops: For companies, it will mean operating in an increasingly dynamic environment. To survive in this environment, companies will have to become more agile and flexible.

Thesis 2: IT becomes the third pillar of the agile and flexible enterprises
In the future, those companies that can operate very close to the market will prevail. In other words, those that are able to adapt their offering very quickly to changing customer needs - and to do so with increased process and product quality and constant optimization of service delivery. This requires three things: highly qualified personnel, complete transparency through figures and powerful IT. Digitalization is changing or strengthening the position of IT in the company: It is turning from a working tool into a guarantee of success.

Thesis 3: With the existing IT, companies are not prepared for digitization
However, existing systems are not designed to process the volumes of data that digitization brings. They merely support the way a company works today and represent an internal view. In order to process this information so that it can be used in a meaningful way, today's internal IT needs to be greatly changed and expanded. The point is to evolve IT designed for the internal view towards networked digital intelligence to enable the company to access the digitized global world. To this end, systems must be replaced, expanded or rebuilt.

Thesis 4: Cloud, Big Data and IoT are the key technologies in the intelligent handling of data
Cloud computing, big data and the Internet of Things are the most important means of processing the flood of data in the digitalized world. The IT of tomorrow must know how to combine existing IT with these technologies. Two types of measures must be considered here: the modernization of existing applications as a prerequisite for a combination with modern technologies and - logically - the combination of existing with modern technologies.
The basis of such a combination is a new, changed way of dealing with data: away from the pure management of data as a reflection of operational activity to the provision of company-relevant data as a comprehensive basis for information and decision-making. In a nutshell: The key capability of the dynamic and flexible company of the future is the ability to handle data intelligently.

www.trivadis.com

With the mass of providers and the abundance of offers, it is difficult to decide on the suitable solution for data management. What must such a solution be able to do today and in the near future, and which topics are currently shaping the industry? Market leader Commvault shows IT decision-makers in a checklist what options a data management system should provide:

1. Data security

Mobile devices are playing an increasingly central role in everyday work. But what is necessary when there is sensitive business data on these mobile devices? They also need to be archived and protected: In addition to endpoint data protection, solutions should also prevent unauthorized access (e.g., against extortion Trojans, crypto Trojans, or encryption Trojans) and provide fast backups for files and applications on the devices.

2. Hypervisor/Cloud

When business goals change or companies want to benefit from the advantages of current technology, a change of deployment type should be granted. However, this change should also run smoothly. Providers that support numerous cloud providers and hypervisors are a great help here. Finally, the interoperability thus enabled could further help the risks and costs otherwise associated with a switch.

3. Big Data is a fact

Big Data is no longer just a buzzword, but a reality in companies. No wonder, the collection, analysis and utilization of complex data sets offers unprecedented, business-relevant insights. For this reason, a data management system today must be able to scale, store, index and analyze information on an enormous scale.

Results must be available quickly, but at the same time the storage space required for the masses of data must be minimized.

4. E-mail archiving

Email content is more important than ever: According to a survey by IDC, 60 percent of all business-relevant information is stored in emails. That's why an email archiving strategy is so important. Companies always have access to all important information, such as contracts or customer data. To meet the requirements of modern work, the solution should therefore simplify compliance, eliminate inflexible PST files and meet the growing storage requirements with cloud options, for example.

5. Hardware independence

Many data storage systems integrate only a small selection of vendors or support only a few platforms. What is missing is an integrated approach. This restriction to a few providers makes the system change more difficult because new storage hardware is also required with the new data management solution. This in turn drives up costs to unimaginable heights. Organizations often postpone the change from the old, inefficient system and thus slow themselves down.

In order for companies to best position themselves for the future, when looking for a provider they should focus on a solution that is as flexible as possible - both in terms of hardware and deployment method - and also knows how to efficiently deal with the challenges that companies will face. Data must be protected, backup and recovery operations must be automated, intelligent access options must be introduced, costs and time must certainly be reduced, and data must be made available at all times. Certainly, they should ensure that the most important company asset - namely their data - is never accessible to unauthorized persons.

http://www.commvault.de

As of 1 February 2017, risk management expert Silvio Catterini will be responsible for the Corporate Risk & Broking (CRB) business area at Willis Towers Watson in the Western Switzerland region. The Swiss national has a wealth of industry experience. He acquired this experience during many years of working for well-known brokerage companies, where he was responsible for major international clients as an account director and contributed to their growth as part of the company's development.

"I am delighted that Silvio Catterini has accepted this new challenge to strengthen our presence and visibility in French-speaking Switzerland," says Peter S. Philipp, Head of CRB at Willis Towers Watson in Switzerland, about the new appointment. Silvio Catterini is a federally certified insurance expert and holds an "Associated in Risk Management (ARM)" qualification. Willis Towers Watson is one of the world's leading companies in the areas of advisory, broking and solutions. In Switzerland, Willis Towers Watson has offices in Zurich and Lausanne.

www.willistowerswatson.com

Researchers at ETH Zurich (ETHZ) are working on developing an intelligent skin for robots. It senses when people are in close proximity. It is a flexible, transparent film made from pectin. With its heat receptors, the thin layer resembles snake skin. With this, robots should be able to navigate through crowded areas or locate people during relief operations.

More sensitive than human skin

The robotic skin from Switzerland already detects temperature changes with an intensity of ten milli-Kelvin. This makes it twice as sensitive as human skin. In this way, a body the size of a rabbit can be reliably detected from a distance of just one meter. Changes in temperature cause the resistance of the material used to vary. In this way, electrode displacements can be detected. The robotic skin could be used not only for operational robots but also for prostheses to provide the wearer with sensory feedback.

In contrast to other sensors, an intelligent membrane with a wide temperature spectrum is rather easy to manufacture.

www.ethz.ch

The European Patent Office (EPO) promotes innovation, competitiveness and economic growth across Europe through innovative SAS reporting. This creates a new kind of quality and efficiency. More than 160,000 patent applications for inventions from all over the world are received by the authority every year. In the three to five years it takes to examine, grant and withdraw an application, dozens of transactions are recorded:

Every source reference, report and correspondence must be linked to the right file and placed in the right process so that this information can be further processed with the business intelligence (BI) systems. With a smart reporting transformation, the EPO is now becoming a digital authority. With the Landing Page (LP) reporting framework, built on the existing SAS Business Intelligence platform, staff have visibility into all aspects of the patent search, publication, examination and approval processes, and can review and approve indicators. Finally, time is also reduced.

A question of time

The pace of innovation is accelerating. Accordingly, applicants to the EPO expect the rapid production of meaningful, reliable search reports for their inventions - and fast enough to make other important business decisions. The EPO is responding to these demands by streamlining its processes, so that the time required for search reports and patent grant decisions is reduced.

The time to deliver searches has already been reduced to six months, and review times should continue to reduce dramatically over the next three years. The challenge for the BI environment is to strictly meet deadlines, provide effective workload management monitoring, and generally keep up with the rapid changes in processes. The landing page framework and its agile BI component were developed using SAS technology. A simple drilldown report that used to take six months to produce is now accessible online within two hours.

"With SAS, our reporting has become agile, accessible to everyone and strategically underpinned," says Yvan de la Fuente, Head of Application Management at the EPO, summarising the benefits of the project. "Make it simple - that was and is the most important motto for the landing page project. We made complex changes in three months rather than years, and simple reports can now be created in two hours. SAS solutions made this possible."

User interactivity

"With the conversion of the reporting system, the EPO has taken an important step further towards becoming a digital authority," adds Wolfgang Schwab, Senior Customer Account Executive at SAS. "What many companies have not yet implemented - the digitalization and thus optimization of their processes - has already been successfully carried out here."

The EPO landing page framework comprises around 75 different reports and data services. So far, 4,600 internal users regularly access it. By the end of 2016, more than two million clicks had been achieved. And the end of the line for the use of SAS has not been reached by a long shot. After the successful introduction, the system is to be further developed, for example by increasing user interactivity with the SAS reporting infrastructure through the SAS Share functionality or through a higher degree of self-service BI.

When CEPOL has completely replaced its paper files with e-files, the prerequisite for seamless reporting with digital files will have been created.

You can find more information under  www.sas.com/ch