Posts in Category: industry

The Real Reason Why Millenials Aren’t Answering Their Phones

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When speaker Ryan Jenkins was approached by an audience member saying that his Millennial workforce was much more comfortable with texting compared to phone calls, he took it as further evidence that this was indeed the case and identified five reasons why this might be.

To his credit, Jenkins dots the “i” with some of his observations. Chief among them is the presumptuous nature of the practice, which implies that you drop everything to pick up the phone, without any fair warning as to what the caller has to say and how it will affect your workflow, or for how long. But that’s where I draw the line regarding the negative side of voice calls. Characterizations like time consuming, distracting, superfluous, and ineffective are the product of a subjective analysis, even though none of these are false either

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Research Uncovers Strong Correlation Between Competition and Creativity

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Collaboration has some undeniable perks, from brainstorming to actually building upon an idea. But what about creating things that don’t require the input of an entire team? A logo, for instance. Can the rivalry between a bunch of designers racing to draw the best design for one paying company actually improve the outcome? As it turns out, it can. But only when the competition dial is turned to just the right level

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VR Conferencing Could Soon Be a “Reality”

Photo by Drew Beamer on Unsplash

One of the best assets in the Unified Communications suite, video conferencing is enjoying a fair dose of popularity among adopters, as enterprises and small businesses alike demand higher-quality, lower-cost video tech to reduce travel and improve collaboration. Just like mobility took Africa by storm before the country could even set up landlines, so could VR take on the business sector before everyone has a chance to adjust their webcam.

In its latest report detailing the top technological trends, Juniper identifies 2016 as the watershed year for VR headsets, both in terms of product launches and consumer roll-outs

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3 (Busted) Myths About Communication

Photo by Paweł Czerwiński on Unsplash

The Unified Communications (UC) market is chock full of media meant to promote the use of technology for communication and collaboration. Overall, that’s a good thing. But the nature of the materials is often abstract, trading the human element for the tech jargon.

In reality, technology only assists the transmission of information, which can actually detrimental to communications in the absence of basic skills, such as friendliness, feedback, or eye contact (in the case of video calling). Below, we bust three myths about “good communication” that get tossed around in marketing materials, including counter-marketing ones

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Find Out Which Platforms Sell Your Product

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Our experience with code has taught us that platform optimization plays a crucial role in grabbing and retaining a customer base – essentially creating your market share. Ship a half-baked app and customer loyalty is immediately affected. Ship a polished, seamless, airtight experience and they’re yours to keep.

Whether you sell physical goods or services, online or offline, it helps to know what devices people own. Smartphones and tablets have become de-facto platforms for ad delivery and shopping, and marketers everywhere strive to deliver a compelling viewing experience on these gizmos.

Device ownership heavily determines the way people

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Female Entrepreneurs – Leaders Born from “Disobedience”

Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash

You might have heard us say this before, but here at 4PSA many of our software engineers are girls – more than what you’d find in a traditional tech company. And we wouldn’t have it any other way. We’re ‘naughty’ like that 😀

As it turns out, there are quite a few benefits to “a little bit of naughtiness or disobedience,” as highlighted by Lauren Knight, author of a column on parenting in the Washington Post. Disobedient children are entrepreneurial spirits that end up earning more as adults, research shows.

Truth be told, the signs have always been there. Only by challenging the status quo do we think outside the box, and it takes wits to defy authority as a child. Disobedient children are good candidates for

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Jobs Involving Communication Hardest to Replace by Machines

Want to stay relevant as machines gradually take over the world? Pick a job that can’t be automated. The work done by humans is getting systematically replaced by devices as time progresses and technology makes new leaps forward. It’s a fact of life that our society is all too familiar with. But there are still plenty of tasks that will be hard to replace by gadgets.

The jobs that machines fumble over are incidentally the same jobs that make life exciting. Choreographers, fire fighters, chiropractors, art directors, coaches, and many others can breathe a sigh of relief knowing that robots won’t render them irrelevant any time soon

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Why Cloud Doesn’t Equal Savings for a Finance-Driven Mind

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The biggest roadblock in cloud adoption everywhere is said to be lack of knowledge at an executive level. Technologically speaking, business leaders don’t always know what’s good for them in the long term. Clinging to outdated systems and processes is a sure way get left behind. Worst of all, the finance sector doesn’t feel it needs any transformative effects whatsoever.

The recent Cloud Business Summit held in New York saw financial and IT leaders debate the ripple effects of cloud adoption in corporate financial systems and processes. Finance is not an area in sync with technology, and nor should it, according to those working in this segment

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Is Today’s CIO Tomorrow’s CEO?

Current CIO strengths versus ideal characteristics of a successful CIO | Credits: Deloitte

IDC recently said that virtually every big organization will soon be a software company, capable of churning out its own code and sustaining its own digital existence. Here to lend credence to that forecast is a hefty report from Deloitte University Press which dots the “i” with a focus on CIOs and their job descriptions as of late

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Pizza as a Service [Infographic]

Remember the first time you landed on a paper about cloud computing “as a service?” How much of the tech jargon in there could you decipher? Chances are, not much, especially if your line of work rarely crosses paths with digital innovations.

Albert Barron, Sr. Software Client Architect at IBM, realized this on a bicycle ride when he rambled terms like SOA, WS, REST, JSON, SaaS, PaaS, and TLA to a friend who could barely articulate them back, let alone get the point of the story

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