Connected & Ready

As cyberthreats become increasingly complex and pervasive, companies must look for ways to remain secure and compliant while staying focused on their digital transformation. In this episode, leading cybersecurity consultant John Reed Stark talks with Connected & Ready host Gemma Milne about the latest threats and vulnerabilities, how technologies like machine learning can support security efforts, the critical importance of incident response, and which emerging cybersecurity technologies he believes will help mitigate risk.

Microsoft Dynamics 365 Fraud Protection helps e-commerce, brick-and-mortar, and omni-channel merchants minimize losses, safeguard revenues, and protect their reputation. Using adaptive AI technology, Dynamics 365 continuously evolves to detect new fraud patterns and provide better business intelligence through connected knowledge generated from all Dynamics 365 Fraud Protection merchants. Request a live demo today:

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As companies work to create more personal experiences for customers at scale, how should they go about it? In this episode of Connected & Ready Natasha Takahashi, Chief Marketing Officer and Co-Founder of School of Bots, talks with host Gemma Milne about the world of chatbots. In this 30-minute discussion, they consider ideal use cases for chatbots, best practices that business leaders should keep in mind, and the changing needs of customers and increasing demand for personalization that will ultimately guide the use of chatbots.

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Retailers are being pressure tested in today's environment of rapid change. Which trends are expected to fade and which are here to stay? What technology is helping retailers the most? This episode of Connected & Ready features Tory Gundelach, Senior Vice President of Retail Insights at Kantar Consulting. Tory talks about characteristics of resilient retailers, how convenience is driving change, creative solutions to address current challenges, and her expectations for how consumer behavior and the customer experience will evolve.

Dynamics 365 Commerce delivers a complete omni-channel retail solution that unifies back-office, in-store, and digital experiences. This end-to-end solution empowers retailers to personalize customer engagement, increase employee productivity, and optimize operations across physical and digital channels. Request a live demo today:

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The pandemic had a profound impact on business in 2020. But the trends that influenced the retail industry might surprise you. In this episode of Connected & Ready, market researcher, speaker, and author Pamela Danziger discusses shifts in consumer expectations, the mindset retailers need to be successful, the biggest lessons they can learn from 2020, and her expectations for consumer behavior in 2021.

Dynamics 365 Commerce delivers a complete omni-channel retail solution that unifies back-office, in-store, and digital experiences. This end-to-end solution empowers retailers to personalize customer engagement, increase employee productivity, and optimize operations across physical and digital channels. Request a live demo today:

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The food supply and restaurant industries have been on a particularly difficult journey in 2020 and look to be facing a tough winter ahead. To shed more light on this, we welcome back Ariane Daguin, CEO of high-end food company D’Artagnan to talk about what she has learned since coming on the show in June and her expectations for the holidays and year ahead. Ariane talks about which aspects of her business have stabilized and which haven’t in the past six months. They also discuss steps D’Artagnan has taken to maintain its company culture and support struggling customers, how to make forecasts when you’re in uncharted waters, Ariane’s favorite holiday foods and traditions, and reasons to think positively as we look forward to 2021.

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While the evolution of the CFO role certainly accelerated in 2020, important changes were already in motion. In this episode of Connected & Ready, Ernst & Young’s Myles Corson and Tony Klimas join Gemma to discuss this evolution, as well as how to strike a balance between short-term growth and long-term value, the use of technology as a competitive advantage, and how CFOs can take a more strategic role within their organizations.

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Consumers have an increasing awareness of online data privacy concerns. This concern does not have to impede the customer journey, provided companies understand their responsibility to their customers. In this episode of Connected & Ready, Gemma talks with Maciej Zawadziński, CEO of Piwik PRO and online privacy rights advocate. They discuss why the customer’s digital experience is so important for engagement, the balance of data-driven experiences and individual privacy, how data shapes our perception of online advertising effectiveness, and how companies can collect data in privacy-friendly ways.

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There are many structural barriers that prevent the full participation and leadership of Black and Latinx technologists in the innovation economy. In this episode of Connected & Ready, Mimi Fox Melton, General Manager and Acting CEO of Code2040, talks with Gemma about Code2040’s efforts to increase equity for Black and Latinx tech workers, the effect of the pandemic on those efforts and their response, as well as concrete first steps companies can take to discover their own equity blind spots and how to address them.

For hundreds of years, incoming medical students have relied on learning human anatomy by dissecting cadavers, an experience far removed from the careers that await them. With advances in mixed reality such as HoloLens, that’s changing in a huge way. For certain subjects, students who combine hands-on learning with mixed reality actually improve how quickly they can learn and how much knowledge they can retain. In this episode of Connected & Ready, Mark Griswold, Director of MRI Research and Faculty Director of the Interactive Commons at Case Western Reserve University, joins Gemma to talk about his team’s development of HoloLens Anatomy, the tradeoffs between physical and virtual learning, the impact of COVID-19 on medical education, and new opportunities in education and industry for VR technology.

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Emerging technologies like IoT and AI are poised to have as dramatic an effect on the economics of innovation as the computer chip. In this episode of Connected and Ready, Moe Tanabian, Vice President and General Manager of Azure Edge Devices, joins Gemma to talk about the impact of efficient predictions, new opportunities with edge technology, the IoT value chain, and future possibilities created by IoT and other technologies.

Learn how Microsoft Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management is helping businesses build agile and resilient supply chains. Request a live demo today: https://aka.ms/AA8l720