It’s probably the least surprising conclusion of our times that some 86% of IT leaders around the world say they believe that generative AI will “play a prominent role at their organizations in the near future”. Of more interest - and certainly deserving of more debate - is an accompanying claim that most of the said IT leaders believe business stakeholders have a firm grasp on how generative AI can be “effectively leveraged” within their organizations.
What’s the context here? Some headline conclusions from Salesforce’s latest State of IT report, which polled 4,325 IT leaders around the globe to identify prevailing trends in their job function. Given that Salesforce has essentially re-defined itself as an AI firm in latest months, it’s fortunate that AI and automation are top of mind among those polled.
The percentages vary by country inevitably. In India, 95% of respondents cite the prominent role claim; in Australia and Thailand, it’s 92%; in Ireland, it’s 91%; and in Brazil, it’s 87%. In the US, it’s 86%, while in the UK, it’s 84%. But in Japan, the figure drops to 78%.
It’s worth noting though that a separate survey with a smaller poll base of 500 respondents back in March found that 57% of those surveyed saw generative AI as “a game changer”. Since then the generative AI hype cycle has ramped up and every enterprise tech firm has pivoted to become - or to claim to have become - an AI vendor.
So how much of IT leaders views in this latest poll are influenced by theoretical benefits and how much by practical deliverables? The State of IT report notes:
AI is a rapidly evolving technology, but it’s no longer novel. As such, the majority of IT leaders can now articulate how AI can play a role in their organizations, even if they haven’t implemented it yet.
That said, 78% of respondents insist that the role of AI in their organization is “well-defined”, and, as noted above, there’s a lot of confidence that everyone’s on top of what this means. Eighty-four percent of IT leaders believe they and their peers understand how AI can be applied, while 83% have similar faith in their staff. Meanwhile 81% reckon that their business colleagues have the necessary broad understanding. The report goes on to note:
While AI use cases are diverse, organizations are currently most likely to put it to work in customer service settings, such as chatbots.
Breaking down use cases, the study found that among organizations currently using AI, service operations optimization leads the way (24%), followed by new AI-based products on 20%, then customer service analytics and customer segmentation, both on 19% a piece.
In terms of organizational investment in automation as a whole, 87% of respondents reckon that this will increase over the next 18 months. IT workflows around operations management, service management and asset management are already well established, but there’s work to be done around HR workflows and areas such as customer onboarding. In fact, only 42% of IT leaders say that they are completely satisfied with the state of the organization’s process automation.
That said, automation is delivering clear ROI, according to poll respondents, with over half of IT leaders citing increased operational efficiency (56%) and improved employee productivity (52%) as the two leading benefits. It also helps to Improve customer satisfaction, cited by 49%, but employees aren’t yet seeing such gains, with 44% citing increased job satisfaction and only 39% able to point to the much-repeated pitch for automation of it allowing staff to offload mundane tasks and focus on higher-value work.
This is a good solid report that’s worth a read - download here (some registration data required). Other Topics of interest for IT leaders include sustainability; proliferation of data and consequent need for more integration; and the drive for more focus on operational efficiency. But inevitably it’s generative AI and the views around this that catch the eye. Given the way the entire tech industry has pivoted around this tech in the past few months, the level of interest expressed by respondents is only to be expected.
What’s unclear from this report is where the dividing line is between excitement/hype around the enterprise potential of generative AI - hype which has largely stemmed from consumer adoption - and deliverable realities. I’m particularly intrigued at the idea that IT leaders appear to believe that their business stakeholder counterparts have a firm grasp and understanding of generative AI practicalities. As many vendors have acknowledged, including Salesforce itself, we’re at the very early stages in rolling out generative AI and while that potential is clearly there, so too are a lot of barriers to adoption that still need to be addressed, not least around areas such as trust and ethics, both Topics that Salesforce has identified as priorities.
This is the third annual State of IT report. It will be interesting to see what the data around generative AI is by the time issue four comes around next year. By that time, there should be more real-world exemplars of both the benefits and the pitfalls/challenges of the tech. How much that changes IT leadership views will evolve over time. In the meantime, this latest article based on commentary from Patrick Stokes, Salesforce EVP of Product, provides interesting insight into the vendor view of generative AI from a technology, rather than line of business, perspective.
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This report provides an overview of Salesforce.com and its products as part of the enterprise software and customer relationship management (CRM) market. It contains relevant statistics on the company's financials and its segments. Finally, Salesforce competitors are included.
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For nursing home operators looking to avoid complaint investigations, researchers have a resoundingly clear message: Staff retention matters just as much at the top of the managerial chain as it does on the frontlines.
Hold on to your directors of nursing and administrators as well as your nurse aides and you’ll likely face fewer consumer complaints — and have fewer of them substantiated, according to new work from the Miami University in Ohio.
A review of four different data sets across hundreds of Ohio nursing homes found that administrator and DON turnover was significantly associated with an increase in both total complaints and substantiated complaints.
Conversely, when the researchers crossed nearly 10,000 complaints against building-level data, they found higher CNA retention rates and family satisfaction scores were significantly associated with fewer total complaints and substantiated complaints.
They also cited previous research that showed better administrator retention feeds stronger retention among CNAs.
“Leadership instability has been found to be significantly associated with high turnover of direct care workers, which influences the overall quality of care,” they wrote in a JAMDA study published online first Friday. “Similarly, NHA stability is associated with a higher CNA retention rate as well as a fewer number of deficiencies. Although the current concerns around nursing home quality will require an array of solutions, the influence of management stability is certainly critical in decreasing the number of complaints.”
The findings come as providers report increasing turnover among their leadership teams, and operators adopt new benefits, higher pay and bigger bonuses to entice them to stay in the field. The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services also began tracking and publicly reporting administrator turnover early in 2022. At the time, the agency said reduced administrator turnover can provide “leadership stability” and direction and may help staff “provide care more consistently or effectively to residents.”
For this study, researchers from the Miami University Department of Sociology and Gerontology and the Scripps Gerontology Center used consumer complaints as a real-time signal of care quality concerns.
They noted that, nationally, the average number of annual complaints per 100 residents rose from 3.2 to 5.2 from 2005 through 2016.
Similar to other states, Ohio saw an increase in the average number of nursing home complaints received annually from 2.6 per 100 residents in 2005 to 5.0 in 2016. The number of complaints continued to grow by 40% between 2016 and 2021.
The researchers focused on Ohio, in part, because it has the fourth-highest number of nursing home beds of any state, and owing to that, has a long-term care system with ownership and payment characteristics similar to that of the entire US system.
“Considering the rapidly increasing number of people aged 65+ across the nation, the findings of this study can [highlight] similar concerns that other states might face and help providers and policymakers take preemptive actions to Improve nursing home quality,” co-author and PhD candidate Jenny Kwon told McKnight’s Long-Term Care News Tuesday.
Ohio also one of only three states in the nation that collects satisfaction data from residents and families, which was used to assess complaint trends. While it had 950 nursing homes in 2017, the analysis examined only the 629 that responded to either a state biennial survey or resident and family satisfaction surveys during the study period.
‘A more fundamental problem’
Nursing homes with higher administrator and DON turnover were more likely to be in a group of facilities with 6 or more substantiated complaints, as were those with lower CNA retention and lower family and resident satisfaction scores. That means that not only were complaints made, but that upon investigations, state surveyors documented real deficiencies in care.
But even when complaints were unsubstantiated, the researchers said they served “as the canary in the coal mine to suggest that something is not right in the system.”
“No industry will ever eliminate complaints, and, in fact, many argue that receiving complaints is not necessarily a bad thing as it provides evidence that consumers can exercise their voices,” the researchers wrote. “However, receiving an increasing number of complaints every year indicates a more fundamental problem that needs to be addressed.”
They recommended more state-level research to inform policymakers on the “large effects” both administrative and direct care staff turnover have on overall quality and how such factors might lead to more complaints and tax inspection resources.
“On a related note, state and federal officials are exploring staffing requirements for nursing homes to address the shortage of workers,” they added. “However, if the reimbursement rates are not addressed, mandated staffing patterns are simply unachievable as states and nursing homes will not have the funds to support such initiatives.”
Study authors were Kwon; Xiao Qiu MGS; Katherine M. Abbott, PhD, MGS; Jane K. Straker, PhD; and Robert Applebaum, PhD.
The dilemma of what's next - how to allocate resources, adjust pricing, invest in product - is going to get easier with real-time insights from employees who are closest to customers.
SEATTLE, July 27, 2023 /PRNewswire-PRWeb/ -- Groopit, the enterprise SaaS platform that makes it easy to crowdsource insights from employees, today launches new Salesforce capabilities that help leaders determine what's next using insights from frontline sellers.
Business leaders are constantly determining what's next - how to allocate resources, adjust pricing, Improve customer experience, and invest in products. But by the time you have data to support your plans, it's too late. Decisions have already been made, opportunities have been missed, deals have been lost, customers are frustrated, and competitors have moved ahead.
The future of "what's next" starts by adding Groopit to Salesforce. Groopit delivers the critical business insights needed to inform decisions from Salesforce, directly to your department and to you. For the first time, you can harness the collective wisdom of your frontline employees within Salesforce, guaranteeing that these invaluable insights reach you and the key decision-makers across your organization. Simply install Groopit from AppExchange into your instance of Salesforce and you'll have the quantitative data you need from employees who are closest to customers. Insights at your fingertips, in real-time, making it easy to determine and articulate what's next.
Groopit provides business leaders with extreme agility, speed, and scale. As business needs change and evolve, you'll redefine the insights you need and get them fast - without waiting for Salesforce configuration. The enterprise system is built on top of a Microsoft Azure Cloud Services, so it will power hundreds, thousands, or tens of thousands of your employees at a time, updating data in real-time. Today, enterprises like Home Depot, Siemens, and Guidant Financial, rely on Groopit to inform their most strategic initiatives with real-time insights from the frontline.
Key features and capabilities include:
"Groopit transforms business problem solving, just like smartphones transformed photography – both delivering high-quality, rapid views and outcomes that were previously out of reach", says Tammy Savage, CEO & Co-founder of Groopit. "With Groopit, leaders decide the vantage point from which they approach a problem, immediately receive data from employees to form a high-fidelity image of that problem, and can pivot immediately to explore new angles. It transforms how leaders are understanding competitors and improving customer experiences, products, and operations."
The new Groopit App for Salesforce is available beginning today. For more information on the solution, please visit https://groopit.co/products/groopit-salesforce-app/.
About Groopit
Groopit is the leading provider of crowdsolving software, a new category of enterprise SaaS software that transforms how people come together to solve problems. With Groopit, front-line employees share real-time data to illuminate a problem, and everyone involved is empowered to make better, faster decisions. To learn more about Groopit, visit https://groopit.co/.
Pull Quote
"Groopit transforms business problem solving, just like smartphones transformed photography – both delivering high-quality, rapid views and outcomes that were previously out of reach", says Tammy Savage, CEO & Co-founder of Groopit.
Media Contact
Media Relations, Groopit, Inc, 1 (564) 212-6962, press@groopit.co, https://groopit.co
SOURCE Groopit, Inc
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