Here on the Exela Blog, we’ve been talking quite a bit lately about sustainability and how we, as a company, can do our part in preserving the planet for future generations. But what does that really mean? Whether or not you subscribe to the idea that human activity has caused changes in our climate, scientists are generally in agreement that humans can slow the process by reducing greenhouse gas emissions.[1]

But what actually are greenhouse gas emissions? Most of us have it in our minds that greenhouse gases are “bad,” and greenhouse gas emissions should be curbed. Many of us also find ourselves swapping out “carbon” in place of “greenhouse.” None of that is exactly accurate, however. Since we expect we’ll be talking about sustainability--and Exela’s efforts in supporting it---for some time to come, we’re going to take a moment now to clarify the relationship between carbon and greenhouse gas emissions and sustainability.

Greenhouse gas emissions

Greenhouse gas emissions refer to the release of certain types of gases into the air as a result of either natural processes (like respiration) or unnatural processes (like manufacturing). The types of gases that are referred to as “greenhouse” are those that allow sunlight to heat our planet but don’t have the ability to escape the Earth’s atmosphere. Greenhouse gases, therefore, act as a “greenhouse” for our planet, generating warmth and also preventing heat from escaping. Greenhouse gases also protect our skin from the damaging rays of the sun. So they’re not all bad. But reducing the amount of greenhouse gases we produce is a goal that scientists agree can help sustain our planet for generations to come.

Carbon: two sides to the story

Stronger than steel and more flexible than rubber, Carbon is the key ingredient for almost all life on earth and was first known to humans and their predecessors as a form of coal--which remains a major source of fuel today, accounting for about 30% of energy worldwide. It’s also an important component in manufacturing, both in the form of graphite (a lubricant) and as a key component in the production of steel.[2] Carbon is the key component in diamonds. Carbon is taken in by plants as part of respiration, and animals (such as humans) benefit by eating plants and plant-eating animals.

Carbon comes in many forms, but not all forms are good for sustaining life, particularly when two parts of it combine with one-part oxygen to form the gas, carbon dioxide, which it does when it is burned (for fuel). Theoretically, the burning of carbon-based fuel can be regarded as “progress.” On the other hand, one thing that makes it so effective as a precursor of fuel is that it is really proficient at retaining heat. Accordingly, the buildup of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has the effect of trapping heat close to the earth.

Carbon also becomes problematic when it combines with hydrogen to form methane gas, which is emitted in the course of decomposition of organic material. Methane is a combination of one-part carbon and four parts hydrogen, methane is a natural byproduct of organic decomposition (think garbage in landfills, livestock manure, and also livestock flatulence). It’s also is released by rice fields, mud volcanoes, and termites. While far less abundant than carbon dioxide, it possesses 80% more power to trap heat in the Earth’s atmosphere.

With their power to trap heat, these two types of carbon byproducts (carbon dioxide and methane gas) are considered “greenhouse gases.” But they’re far from the only ones. Other greenhouse gases include:

• Water vapor

An even more prevalent greenhouse gas than either carbon dioxide or methane is...nothing more than water in gas form, i.e., water vapor. Water vapor helps cool the Earth through precipitation, but it also acts as a form of insulation that doesn’t allow heat to escape the atmosphere.

• Ozone

Ozone is oxygen that’s been exposed to ultraviolet light from the sun. It also forms when fuel is burned and as a byproduct of manufacturing. While the ozone layer, way up high, shields the Earth from the sun’s radiation, it also traps heat when it is in abundance at or about ground level.

• Nitrous oxide

Nitrous oxide forms naturally from soil and the ocean, as well as from energy production and manufacturing. Natural yes, but it also damages the ozone layer that protects the earth from the sun’s ultraviolet radiation.

• Chlorofluorocarbons:

Like nitrous oxide, chlorofluorocarbons damage the ozone layer, but unlike nitrous oxide, are derived solely from human activity such as energy production and consumption.

Greenhouse gases and sustainability

Whether or not the emission of greenhouse gases into the air can hasten climate change, controlling those emissions can slow that change. Here at Exela, where our mission is to accelerate the business transformation of our customers using innovative strategies that create the most value using the least resources, our solutions are part of the solution. One of our goals this year is to reach even more businesses, not just those who are motivated by the promise of digital transformation, but also those corporate citizens looking to make this world a more sustainable place.

[1] https://climate.nasa.gov/causes/

[2] https://www.livescience.com/28698-facts-about-carbon.html

“Sustainability” means preserving the planet for future generations. “Corporate Sustainability” refers to the creation of long-term stakeholder value without compromising the future of our planet. To what degree a particular enterprise is engaged in corporate sustainability is reflected in:

• The business in which the enterprise is engaged (e.g., manufacturing versus services)
• How the enterprise operates its business (e.g., to what degree are the enterprise’s business practices consistent with environmental sustainability?)
• How the enterprise supports and promotes sustainability among its workforce (e.g., to what degree does the enterprise engage its workforce in supporting and promoting a sustainable workplace?)
• The degree to which the enterprise shares the global weight of responsibility for sustainability (e.g., is the enterprise involved in philanthropy that supports sustainability?)

Ultimately, corporate sustainability requires striking the appropriate balance between maximizing earnings, on the one hand, and minimizing environmental impact, on the other. Thus, corporate sustainability will look different among industries and among businesses within industries.

Exela’s approach to corporate sustainability is “organic” to our mission

Exela’s approach to corporate sustainability stems organically from our mission, which is to accelerate the business transformation of our customers using innovative strategies that create the most value using the least resources. In other words, corporate sustainability at Exela begins with the services and solutions we provide to our 4,000+ customers, which are comprised of businesses of every size, in every industry, all across the globe.

Here are just a few examples of how Exela’s services and solutions can help reduce paper use in the name of preserving our planet’s forests.

In addition, Exela has made efforts to create efficient workspaces and engender in our employees a sense of personal responsibility with regard to the environment. We have also chosen to throw our support behind philanthropic initiatives that directly support the planet’s future.

Please stay tuned for updates on Exela’s 2020 Corporate Sustainability campaign, including our I’m Accountable program, which we know is going to be a success because #TeamExela has proven to be admirably community-minded.

Businesses must attain a balance between maximizing productivity, reducing risk, and fulfilling customer requirements. This balance is crucial because while every business has a specialty, few excel at every single aspect of running a successful enterprise – nor should they. An enterprise should focus on its core, revenue generating work, and related customer service efforts.

But effective business management requires a broader focus. Efficient transaction processing is a prerequisite for success. Turning massive amounts of business-critical information generated not only through said transactions but also by active account management into effective outcomes, is another.

The numerous, intricate daily transaction and information management processes undertaken by any modern enterprise can lead to errors in payment processing, missed communications deadlines, or a variety of workflow-based issues - which can all lead to delayed or lost revenue, and even worse - aggravated customers.

By leveraging specialized knowledge platforms through an external partner, enterprises can gain access to innovative end-to-end solutions, integrating data aggregation, workflow, analytics, payment processing, exception management and outcome resolutions. Technology and knowledge platforms help automate and streamline high-volume, mission-critical processes for business across industries.

Here are three specific ways leveraging a specialized partner who leverages key technology can help organizations streamline operations and focus on their core, strategic goals:

1. Inject Automation into Transaction & Info Management Processes Can Reduce Errors
   Organizations today are confronted with enormous amounts of data to process. It’s not uncommon for a given enterprise to be processing an average of 15,000 invoices per day – or tens of thousands of documents per week. This already-daunting task is further complicated by issues like the use of multiple, disparate legacy computer systems. Or, a lack of an effective business-continuity plan ensuring operations can continue in the event of a power outage, extreme weather, or any other type of major disruption to a business. Confronting these issues effectively from a strictly internal perspective might be difficult.
   These types of issues however can be mitigated by partnering with a specialized technology provider who focuses on managing such complex processes. For example, some providers can implement a single, integrated system which manages the capture, processing, research and archival of payments, invoices, and other related documents.
   These systems can support both electronic and paper transactions, and offer a number of benefits, including: cost savings on payments processing, streamlined processes which improve productivity, automated ‘match rates’ to preemptively reduce errors, and on-site support from the end-user company’s own IT team – creating a highly integrated, independent, and effectively efficient system.
2. Leverage Specialized, Tech-Based Partnerships is a Proven Way to Maintain Focus on Customer Service, Sales, and Core Strengths
   When a business grows, so can document volume. At a certain point, the growth may overwhelm manual, or paper-based systems to process said documents. Over time, this will begin to impede customer service delivery, which can impact that growth itself. While confronting the issues that accompany rapid growth is a problem every business stakeholder would like to have – it is also one that must be addressed. Even without substantial growth, processes can simply age out of effectiveness.
   When a company needs to improve processes, and put in place superior workflow technology, it can be less costly, more time efficient, and ultimately, more effective to partner with a reliable, proven supplier. This way, the client enterprise gains a true partner, one who can commit to developing, deploying, and monitoring new processes and systems that are scalable over time. Attempting to develop everything internally would be complex and costly.
3. Link BPO & Transaction Processing Services (TPS) to the Same Provider to Provide Maximum Governance, Cost Savings, & Efficiency
   BPO has been established as an effective way for enterprises to streamline and update internal processes to refocus on core, revenue-generating work. Yet, many of the benefits can be negated by complicated vendor management scenarios, where one outsourcer is handling payment processing for instance, and another is managing the print and mail work for statements, invoices, and other communications. By bringing all the areas of your enterprise under the same supplier, organizations gain a single point of contact to control and monitor these actions, leverage synergies across the business and often time reduce costs – creating the simplified management structure needed to maximize the value of these efforts.
   Outsourcing to a single vendor who can handle your needs holistically has other benefits, too. When handled in-house, line items like statement generation, call centers, lockbox services and payment processing really add up. But full-service, end-to-end BPOs absorb these costs or provide them at a much lower rate than a single enterprise could negotiate with providers on their own.
   As noted, every business has a specialty. Joining forces with one whose focus is different and mutually beneficial can provide better results at lower costs than handling everything in-house. Particularly if that partner has a robust service and solution offering to handle the entirety of your periphery.

As the business world becomes increasingly competitive, a need to refocus on customer service and core operational goals has emerged. One effective strategy that’s surfaced is BPO – a strategy which becomes even more effective when all areas that are outsourced can be handled by a single, holistic outsourcing partner.

In early September, it was revealed that a large credit reporting company was successfully hacked by an entity unnamed as of this writing. It’s considered now one of the largest breaches in memory because this particular company held delicate information – social security numbers, names, home addresses, and more – of at least 143 million Americans.

There has already been much written and said about this hack, and understandably so. While data breaches are a prevalent problem these days, there are still best-practices to guard against this type of attack – and, steps that organizations should promptly take in the hours and days after a breach is detected or reported. It would be wise for enterprises to both take a close look at not only the details of this hack, but also to use this as an opportunity to review internal information security protocols and those of any third-party shared service providers.

Here are three lessons from one of the largest data security breaches in history.

    1. It Matters Who Handles Your Enterprise Data

As a credit reporting agency, most of the individuals affected by this hack did not even sign up for the service – their information was likely provided to the breached organization by yet another company that was performing a routine credit check on the individual. Your enterprise will have more control over who gains access to your proprietary data than the individuals affected in this hack did. Therefore, it’s important to know what to look for.

Look for providers who offer a ‘defense-in-depth’, or layered approach to data security. This military-inspired approach provides successive layers of security measures to make life much harder for unauthorized users trying to access information or internal systems. With no shortage of potential targets for hackers to choose from, implementing successive layers of defense may be enough to discourage a hack, and push them on to their next target which may not be as time consuming or difficult to penetrate.

    2. Look for a Partner Who Offers the Following:

There are also a few industry-standard security certificates that any third-party provider who will be handling your data should hold. These include ISO Certificates, SSAE16, PCI, and FISMA documentation.

Different industries require different types of security. For instance, a healthcare vendor will need to make sure a potential communications partner or enrollment platform provider is HIPAA compliant. For financial services, the parameters might differ, but they are no less stringent. Nearly every financial services provider and monetary institution is subject to the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act – a strict code of laws on protecting private financial information. Further, the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform statutes, as well as the Consumer Protection Act, both set the standard for what is “reasonable and appropriate” for protecting user information. Firms in these industries must be especially careful in vendor selection.

A worthwhile vendor should be able to demonstrate that their own security protocols go beyond holding the above-described certificates, and comply to the sets of laws mentioned in the previous paragraph – demonstrating proficiencies in these areas is a solid indicator that a potential shared services partner has a thoughtfully-designed, best-practice security protocol in place.

What a provider does after a breach is detected is almost as telling as the steps they take to prevent one in the first place. Shared service partners who can provide a data breach response offering that is standardized, tested, and ready to be put into action should be given preference. Look for one who can offer notification, contact center, and project management services, all within a separately secure environment – so your enterprise will have a viable go-forward strategy for dealing with such an issue. These services can even be offered as a standalone service, for enterprises already in contract with providers who may not offer these crucial services.

    3. Do Your Own Due Diligence

Don’t simply rely on the sales pitch of a potential shared services vendor – do your own research. What exactly should you be considering to vet a potential partner who will be helping you manage or leverage your proprietary data to gain insights, create communications, or process invoices? Here are some ways to help you narrow the scope and hone in on effective information:

• Know state and federal laws: While there is a growing body of law built around the protection of private information online – there is less codification in terms of what an enterprise must do after a breach. Disclosure laws vary state-to-state, and can be surprisingly lax. Therefore, it’s important to talk to potential providers about their own, internal protocols for breach notification and damage mitigation.
• Know what a good protection plan looks like – and ensure potential partners have these policies in place: Similar to the information security certificates discussed earlier in this article, federal laws around these issues provide only the most basic protections – worthwhile vendors will go much further – using a defense-in-depth approach, multi-key encryption, or any number of other intensive security measures.,
• Work to learn the provider’s past performance record in this area: Has this provider been hacked before? If so, how did they resolve the situation after the fact? Were clients quickly notified, and all necessary steps – even the ones that come at a direct cost to the provider – taken? While past performance is not always a reliable indicator of future performance, in the case of a data breach, how a company has handled such an event in the past, or even whether they have been hacked at all – can be quite telling.

To conclude, while cybercrime has become a ubiquitous concern, critical business operations still need to be undertaken – including those that require data handling and management online. Therefore, it is essential to partner with service providers who can prove their dedication to protecting valuable and sensitive information through certificates, protocols, adherence to federal laws, and proven track record of doing the right thing. With proper due diligence and by selecting the right service providers – enterprises can begin to take the steps necessary to effectively prevent these types of breaches in the future.

In 2016, Experian Data Quality put out their Global Data Management Benchmark report, which laid out several insights on how enterprises are collecting, managing, and leveraging big data. Logically, some businesses have proven more adept at the task than others – using their data to improve decision making, customer experience, and internal processes. Others are struggling in the face of the digitally-driven proliferation of data.

In the report, Thomas Schutz, SVP, General Manager of Experian Data Quality elaborated, “a shift has taken place where businesses are using data for nearly every aspect of their organization" and that "the majority of sales decisions are expected to be driven by customer data by 2020." He further noted that “businesses get in their own way by refusing to create a culture around data and not prioritizing the proper funding and staffing for data management."

Not having enough data to accurately paint a picture of historical customer behavior, data patterns, or significant relationships between events, groups, or individuals is no longer a concern – but drowning in data may be.

The question then becomes, what is the best way to approach big data collection and analysis so that you’re effectively leveraging the data that you have? Simply letting it pile up, and never gaining the unique insights big data can provide a business is no longer a viable answer.

Complicating Factors

Even a team with best-class analysts can be overwhelmed by the sheer volume of data that enterprises collect today. The days of relying on Excel files to manipulate pivot tables to find patterns or correlations in your data have passed. Traditional approaches to data analysis may no longer be enough. Finding the meaningful signals within a mountain of data should be the aim of every enterprise, but a new approach may be necessary to do so.  Nearly every business interaction creates actionable data. It is up to each enterprise to decide what they do with that information – let it compile and accumulate, or efficiently mine it for everything it has to offer.

A Better Way Forward

By effectively analyzing and gaining the intelligence that big data holds businesses can make more informed decisions to achieve better results. Information without analysis is not intelligence – but with effective processes in place, deep operational insights can be gained that otherwise would be lost in the noise.

To tap into the real value of their collected data enterprises need a data mining platform that finds, monitors, analyzes and summarizes the information needed to make informed decisions in real-time. These platforms act as a force multiplier of analyst man-hours, automate data extraction, and then aid in the identification of emerging trends and abnormal behavior.

How it Works

Big data mining platforms work by linking data sources from an organization’s own databases, visible and invisible web feeds, customer feedback, and proprietary data silos to make critical information more actionable in terms of decision-making and the insight it can provide. Using the latest machine learning techniques, these platforms can recognize trends and patterns in data, identify correlating factors, analyze sentiment, and find meaningful relationships, events, groups and individuals within amounts of data too large to be manually analyzed.

An ideal data mining platform then has the ability to turn its analytics into action with customized outreach strategies. It can escalate internal alerts, send targeted messages to customers, or deploy two-way communication to gather new data. For example, a platform that aggregates recipient’s preferred method and time of delivery, can help an enterprise more effectively reach a target customer with a custom message when the recipient is most receptive.

From there, big data mining platforms help internal teams to analyze numerical data for correlations, language for sentiment, and interactions for network relationships. Through an intuitive workflow, an optimal big data platform’s artificial intelligence engines can learn to filter data noise and mine media channels for the most relevant results. The platform tracks who’s talking, what they’re talking about, and how they feel, along with where and when reactions are generated.  This use of internal data in combination with external sources can help enterprises better understand individual behavior and expected values and take action before problems reach a tipping point.

From businesses gaining insight on customer loss prevention, to governments targeting fraud, waste and abuse, automated big data analytics provide organizations the tools they need for real-time decision making. Effective platforms can enable users to discover, monitor, extract, analyze and visualize large structured and unstructured data sets in a multitude of formats and languages.

To conclude, it’s become increasingly important that businesses do not just collect data – but that they put in place the necessary platforms, processes, and people to actively manage, and effectively mine that data – turning it into real business outcomes.

You might have noticed Exela CEO Ron Cogburn has been particularly busy lately offering his highly unique and valuable business insights via thought leadership articles in Forbes and other publications. In the June 27, 2019 Forbes article, Tech Experts Predict 12 Ways 5G Will Transform How Business Is Done, he doesn’t disappoint with his response to the question, “What benefits will 5G bring for both businesses and consumers?”

Ron’s answer? Well, you can read it here. But here’s a hint: Ron recognizes that the Internet of Things is expanding more rapidly than anyone could have predicted, and well, he’s in the B2B space, so he’s thinking about ways to integrate the IoT of the office into our lives as a whole. And that matters to Ron and the rest of us at Exela, where work-life balance is an important value. Not to mention, we’re bringing our customers the IoT every day with our Smart Office suite of solutions.

Ron Cogburn is a member of the Forbes Technology Council, offering many valuable insights. You’ll find many other thought-provocative articles from elite members of the C-Suites of Top Tech Companies like Exela here. For more up-to-the-minute Exela news, stay tuned to the Exela Blog, including this post regarding why Ron spent some time on Exela’s July 12 birthday shopping for a good pair of shades. To learn more about Exela’s broad range of rapidly deployable business process automation solutions, check out our Solutions page.

If you have a smartphone, artificial intelligence is already in the palm of your hand, and you’re making effective use of it whenever you ask Waze for directions or Siri to run a search. Likewise, AI is making effective use of you as you let it in on where your travels and what you like to eat for lunch. Not that this is necessarily a bad thing. While it may feel like “someone’s always watching,” it’s not so much someone as it is something. And that something is “machine-learning.”

But artificial intelligence isn’t limited to outward-facing (or customer-facing) processes such as those with which you engage via mobile app or user platform. Machine learning is just as hard at work in processes with which you’re not directly interacting (i.e., inward-facing processes). For example, your car may be using artificial intelligence to diagnose and even predict maintenance events. In your business, it may be built into your inventory management, accounting, and/or fulfillment systems and may come into play in your company’s optimization of cash resources and asset management.

“AI can aid internal processes in many ways,” notes Exela’s CEO, Ron Cogburn in the July 10, 2019 Forbes article, 9 Ways Inward-Facing AI Can Help Your Business. “One of them is monitoring and assessing employee sentiment. AI systems can passively monitor internal communications to determine how employees feel about recent organizational changes, whether a specific project is on schedule or is likely to be delayed, and if hiring needs to be done to close workflow gaps—all while preserving anonymity.” You can see the full text here.

Ron is a member of the Forbes Technology Council, offering many valuable insights. You’ll find many other thought-provocative articles from elite members of the C-Suites of Top Tech Companies like Exela here. For more up-to-the-minute Exela news, stay tuned to the Exela Blog.

To learn more about Exela’s rapidly deployable business process automation solutions, including what we can do for your business—both inwardly-facing and outwardly, using artificial intelligence, check out our Solutions page. Or check out our case studies, including this one on how robotic processing contributed to a healthcare insurer's 35% gain in productivity.

For a look at the human-side of Exela, check out what we did for children suffering from hearing loss over the July 4th holiday.