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DMS supplies real time loyalty card issuing to Arpico
http://www.sundaytimes.lk/100815/BusinessTimes/bt20.html
Sri Lankan IT systems company Data Management Systems (DMS) recently said that it had supplied a desktop card issuance system, created by Datacard USA, that can, in less than five seconds, print up an Arpico Privilege loyalty card; a customer reward by the local retailer of the same name.
According to a statement by the IT company, the 33-year old DMS, along with long time supplier, financial and mobile SIM card manufacturer Datacard, control 80% of the Sri Lanka’s market in the financial card and secure ID personalisation sectors. Further, “Datacard solutions are used worldwide everyday to produce, personalise and deliver more than 10 million cards, personalise more than 4.7 million smart cards and personalise more than 25,000 passports in 14 countries”.
Meanwhile, the solution provided for Arpico Supercentres “personalises the loyalty card as and when issued”, showing customer details including name, customer number, validity period as well as other information.
Additionally it has been suggested that all cards will be produced at an in-store counter, “allowing customers to get their personalised loyalty card instantly”. Also, this product, which is indicated to be “tamper proof and difficult to reproduce by a third party”, offers “very low cost of production and [no] cost for delivery and postage as in the conventional method” while at the same time increases customer satisfaction due to no waiting time for loyalty cards.
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SL must double credit flow to achieve target growth
http://www.sundaytimes.lk/100718/BusinessTimes/bt15.html
SL must double credit flow to achieve target growth
By Jagdish Hathiramani
Sri Lanka would have to double its present credit flow from US$ 1.5 trillion to US$ 3 trillion to achieve its target income per capita of US$ 4,000, according to Priyantha Fernando, a Deputy Governor of the Central Bank of Sri Lanka and Chairman of the country’s Credit Information Bureau (CRIB).
Announcing that the CRIB was now ready to move to a second stage of operations which would offer more value added products, after an upgrade begun in 2005; he also revealed that there were 3 million entities recorded in the organisation’s database. He also revealed that on average 5,000 credit reports were supplied daily, a figure which recently peaked at 7,000 a day. Consumers could request these from banks or even online for a minimum fee.
Also according to Mr. Fernando, moveable assets such as livestock, agricultural equipment, etc. accounted for 70% of the collateral for Sri Lanka’s small and medium enterprises (SMEs). Meanwhile, according to Tony Lythgoe, Head of Financial Infrastructure for the Global Credit Bureau Programme of the International Finance Company of the World Bank, 99% of all business globally fell into the SMEs or micro finance categories while this was closer to 89% in USA.
Indicating that better access to credit for SMEs and Micro Finance Institutions (MFIs) were shown to create employment, he however also suggested that the growth of micro finance was causing an over indebtedness bubble. This was witnessed recently in Pakistan where the opening of a credit bureau documented that micro finance customers in the country had, on average, 2.6 credit facilities each.
Mr. Lythgoe also noted that the role of credit bureaus such as Sri Lanka’s CRIB should be to facilitate broader and fairer access to credit as well as lower the cost of credit for good borrowers. It should also provide information to prevent over indebtedness by making lenders aware of borrowers’ capacity to service debt and improve lenders’ profitability by helping lower operation costs as well as provide proactive tools such as credit scoring, etc.
He also suggested that barriers to credit reporting for MFIs included customer identification (and address verification), IT constraints (connectivity, lack of data automation), process (data collection, application processing, credit risk management), value proposition (high costs of reports, unproven benefits, viability of bureau), experienced specialists such as credit officers, CRMs and regulators, and apathy stemming from over indebtedness, sustainability and the future credibility of the industry.
Mr. Lythgoe also showcased the ideal model of a credit bureau and the features it would provide including the ability to track individuals across multiple companies for a complete credit history as well as the incorporation of data from utility and telecom companies to be used as risk early warning signs, and value additions such as the enquiry log that would showcase customers’ credit enquiry footprint including credit hunger and credit stress factors.
He also noted that a recent meeting he had had with local telecom companies suggested that they would all be willing to share information with the CRIB and also join the bureau, a public private partnership under the purview of the country’s Central Bank. This is to facilitate access to consumer credit information and improve collections while also target postpaid offerings, that are much higher value products, toward better consumers.
Both Mr. Fernando’s and Mr. Lythgoe’s comments were made at a presentation entitled “Credit Reporting and beyond”, organised by the CRIB. Also speaking at the presentation, V. Narasimhan, Chief Operating Officer of Dun & Bradstreet South Asia Middle East, the organisation tasked with the CRIB’s recent upgrade, revealed that the local bureau had currently figures of approximately 6.2 million credit facilities held by 3.4 million entities, encompassing both consumers and corporates. Further, the CRIB’s estimate for the number of credit reports to be issued this year was 1.34 million, up from 866,000 in 2009 and 836,000 in 2008. The fees for credit reports, as per the CRIB’s website, are Rs. 750/- for information about corporates and Rs. 500/- for information about consumers.
Mr. Narasimhan also outlined the roll-out time-line of the products that would be available as part of the CRIB’s second stage: bulk-oriented, offline and cost-effective batch processing and instantaneous, online live processing (already available); automated email alerts that track changes in consumer profile and credit facilities (available in three months); and bureau scoring of customers’ credit worthiness as a numerical expression, business intelligence-centred portfolio monitoring reports, fraud reporting and a secure transaction and collateral registry (available in six to twelve months).
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tomorrowHOME
http://www.sundaytimes.lk/100418/BusinessTimes/bt09.html
tomorrowHOME: A return to basics
By Jagdish Hathiramani
Continuing the Business Times’ tomorrowSERIES features, we take a look at the” Home of the Future”, or tomorrowHOME. While future homes have been explored widely for many decades, albeit in the context of television shows and architecture and design forums or even as it pertains to living on different planets or the more recent novelties conceptualised by consumer electronics companies, primarily to excite their target demographics and ultimately sell products; one key notion which kept popping up was that our very definition of what a home or an office or even a doctor’s office or hospital, etc. would likely not stand into the future, especially with the concepts of office and home already blurring thanks to telecommuting and freelancing.
However, for the purpose of this feature story, we will attempt to lay out homes in their most recognisable parts and put forward the ideas that futurists think will most likely impact these spaces the most.
Design / Decor
Considering the growing popularity of the ‘reduce, re-use and recycle’ movement, tomorrowHOME will probably count cardboard, wood, glass, etc. as important building block. In fact, the homes of the future may look suspiciously like relics of a wasteful past with functionality replacing sleek lines.
Some ideas that are already being touted include using old shipping containers as frames for future homes while still-to-be-introduced materials such as the so-called bendable concrete, which is 500 times stronger and half the weight than its namesake, will be used to coat these frames for a more workable and familiar outcome.
Meanwhile, thanks to health and sustainability factors highlighting the value of natural light, future homes will probably have fewer walls and more windows and skylights, while if there are walls these would most likely be completely covered with interactive or display wallpaper. This leads to the incorporation of concepts like constantly changing decor and shape shifting furniture so that tomorrowHOME will change daily or even minute-by-minute instead of being redecorated every few years. This will also finally kill the notion of a family television room as all rooms will essentially have wallpaper displays.
Further, the occupants of tomorrowHOME will need neither key nor alarm. Pre-approved people will be allowed into or will be allowed to invite strangers into the house. This will be thanks to the house’s Operating System (OS) and the various sensors embedded throughout the house which will constantly track the biometrics or maybe even chips related to every visitor.
However, although today’s tomorrowHOME was from the start designed for convenience and comfort, it is interesting to note that many consider this to be a health risk which aids bad behaviours, such as obesity, in affluent societies.
As such, more emphasis may be given in future designs to try and embed exercise into the essential workings of the house such as exercise based access to entertainment system and the kitchen.
Kitchen
The kitchen of the future will likely also be very different from the present model. It is believed that all appliances will gradually migrate into one combined appliance or even a machine chef which will replace microwaves, juicers, toasters, stoves, etc.
In fact, the ultimate vision of the tomorrowKITCHEN is best suggested by the television show Star Trek where a replicator transforms stored matter into any programmed dish, a scenario admittedly some distance off.
For the immediate future, kitchens may recommend and fast cook recipes based on what groceries you have presently on your shelves, probably identified via reading the products’ barcodes or Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) tags, which will likely take the place of barcodes in the future. This will also allow the kitchen to automatically grocery shop online. Kitchens may eventually also count your calories and, in conjunction with the orders/network of approved doctors regarding what you can and can not eat, they may be in charge of the personalised diet for each occupant.
Most interesting of all will be the composition and look of the kitchen of the future, from all accounts a complete change from what we are familiar with today. These will be characterised by adjustable sinks and countertops as well as easy-to-clean or even self-cleaning and self-disinfecting surfaces. In fact, many future appliances are said to be focused on getting rid of the need for housework, particularly mopping, vacuuming and scrubbing; all tasks that have been carried out in the same way for decades. Or at the very least, make these tasks easier and more ergonomic in nature by way of positioning the furnishings in the kitchen and even through the home.
Bathrooms
The most startling thing about the bathroom of tomorrow is that it may also be uniquely qualified to double as tomorrowHOME’s in-house medical analytics. Thanks to sensors in toilet seats and room-wide which are able to gauge all the human body’s signals, from weight to fat content to heartbeat to waste, etc.; the future bathroom will monitor various biometrics and automatically update your heath record day-by-day.
Importantly, this may also allow doctors, or maybe just their computers, to monitor you 24/7 and treat you at home using telepresence technology or even just act in a timely fashion during a medical crisis.
Connectivity
It is also widely believed that tomorrowHOME will comprise a central computer and network and maybe even an Artificial Intelligence (AI) which will control every facet of the house, from lighting to unlocking and locking doors to tinting windows to turning off lights in unoccupied rooms, etc. Further, a central network will act as a bridge between your office and your home while also facilitating the ability of your current work projects travelling with you everywhere you go, from your bedroom to bathroom to anywhere else within the house perimeter. Additionally, appliances which are preset and networked to start working when you are on your way home will also be alerted via computer. Connectivity also extends to facilitating wire-free charging of portable electronics using either power pads situated across the house, which may even be activated by the house, or even just wirelessly no matter where these electronics are placed within the house.
Sustainability
While in past decades the ideas for the homes of the future have centred on convenience and gadgetry, in recent times there has been a major shift towards sustainability, even over convenience. So much so that ideas such as smart metering, solar ceilings, roof gardens, etc., have all become de rigueur for tomorrowHOME while energy savings and carbon neutrality have also become intrinsic in all the items which it will house.
Ideally, tomorrowHOME will also go so far as to produce its own energy, maybe from human-generated kinetic energy or more possibly the sun or even biomass, as well as being able to re-fuel tomorrowCAR using electricity or fuels.
In addition, kitchens and bathrooms will conserve or recycle every millilitre of water while also relying on rain or wells as key sources of water. Meanwhile, water may no longer be used to flush toilets and concepts like toilets directly linked to compost heaps masked by sawdust, etc. may eventually turn out to become the norm. Another area of concern is cooling, especially with the high cost and energy usage of air conditioners during increasingly warm months. As such, in the future cooling may not be dependent on electricity but rather on metal rods that are buried deep into the ground.
These allow radiated coldness from the depths of the earth which would be absorbed by the metal rods. Concepts such as cross ventilation, etc. could also be used to aid cooling while other concepts can be used for colder climates to retain heat, such as reflective windows, etc.
While we have attempted to explore a sufficiently wide number of ideas suggested for the most possible tomorrowHOME, there are innumerable more concepts being discussed today, hundreds in fact, in just one area such as sustainable architecture which we have not touched on in any way, shape or form.
No matter what ideas have be suggested, one thing we know for sure is that tomorrowHOME will likely surprise us all, just as ideas such as the McMansion and high-rise buildings and condos surprised our forefathers just a few decades ago. In fact, with the aforementioned inability to properly define spaces such as bedrooms, kitchens and bathrooms, especially due to merging functionality, tomorrowHOME may not just surprise but shock due to its total disregard for privacy or other such mores which we hold dear today.
(Comments are welcome to this ‘tomorrow’ series and can be sent to mobileoption@gmail.com)
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Sinhala, Tamil language website addresses soon
http://www.sundaytimes.lk/100404/BusinessTimes/bt41.html
Sinhala, Tamil language website addresses soon
By Jagdish Hathiramani
Sri Lanka’s Information and Communication Technology Agency (ICTA) announced this week that the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) has approved the use of Sinhala and Tamil language in website addresses, a move that ICTA said “would go a long way in making Sri Lankans, especially the rural folk, move speedily towards the ideals of world fellowship and global village”.
To determine the true impact of this potential paradigm shift, the Business Times spoke to local industry opinion leaders to ascertain how Sri Lankans and their online habits may be affected.
According to Prof. Gihan Dias, who heads the local body tasked with assigning Sri Lankan domain names or web addresses, the LK Domain Registry; Sri Lankans currently online already have a good knowledge of English and many can even type in English.
As such, rather than commercial organisations, it is more likely that more government organisations would make use of this service to experience the World Wide Web (WWW) in local languages. He further indicated that eventually banks, insurers and other mass market retailers would also want to extend their online offerings to consumers in all three languages, which would also necessitate the website addresses in Sinhala and Tamil. He also suggested that, while initially there would be a lot of take up of this feature in the public sector, this demand would ultimately be outstripped by interest stemming from the private sector in as little as two years.
He also indicated that since many local bloggers and social-networkers had already embraced Sinhala as their preference, it was only a matter of time before local language script in website addresses caught up.
However, Managing Director of local website developer Pyxle, Preshantha Jayamaha, suggests that there is no foreseeable demand, at least among his clients, for local language scripts in website addresses since most local businesses who talked to him had the objective of more effectively tapping international markets, with only about 5% interested in local retention.
He further indicated that previous experiences with online search engines such as Google suggested to him that the use of local language in web-related searches had a long way to go before becoming adequately user-friendly. He however did accept that there might be some cultural value in the use of local language scripts in certain websites.
Meanwhile, online marketing veteran and co-founder of digital marketing agency 360 Interactive, Sanjay Mendis, believes that more local language content would surely promote search engines to feature more localised content and local websites and ultimately create a stronger online identity for Sri Lanka.
This was already increasingly the case with blogs such as WordPress now offering Sinhala and Tamil blogging potential. Additionally, with more local language blogs and communities springing up all the time, the messaging suggested online was increasingly that Sri Lanka had a country vision.
He also indicated that, in a softer way, these facets of culture allowed for added identification, visibility and macro-branding which would continue to bring Sri Lanka to top of mind; and, at the same time, bring in additional revenues to the country as all Sinhala and Tamil domain names or web addresses had to be registered locally.
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tomorrowOFFICE
http://www.sundaytimes.lk/100328/BusinessTimes/bt44.html
Exploring tomorrow’s world today
Recently an innovative advertisement on a foreign news channel showed a classroom filled with children and a teacher. A visitor walks into the room and asks the children what they plan to do next week. “We are going to China,” shout the kids. “That’s wonderful,” says the surprised visitor, adding: “How do you plan to do that?”
“See, see …,” the children shout once again, pointing to a large, flat television screen behind the visitor which shows smiling and waving children in a classroom in China.
The message here is that technology has got so advanced that one doesn’t need to travel (other than using it as a experience) to learn about or deal with other countries. Advanced communication is taking care of this through innovations like video conferencing, conference calls, video chats, video lessons, Internet, Skype and all forms of social networks. The opportunities and ways of doing this is endless with new methods coming up almost daily to feed the hunger of a world eager for information and new ways of communicating.
The advertisement in a sense also reflected the classroom of the future which is the theme of a new series in the Business Times. In the weeks and months ahead, reporter Jagdish Hathiramani will profile the new age and what the future would look like in our classroom, our home, our office space, our car, our hospital, our general practitioner’s consultation room and loads and loads of what our space and the environment we live in would look like. Hathiramani says the future is closer than we think as technologists tell us that the world of tomorrow has already seamlessly and inextricable intruded in our lives today; to such a degree that, for those of only two or three generations past, we already live in a world that is almost indistinguishable from magic. This is about tomorrow.
This is the tomorrowSERIES. Write in with your comments and suggestions to Jagdish at mobileoption@gmail.com and join him as he explores tomorrow’s world, TODAY.
The office: Paperless and work on the move
By Jagdish Hathiramani
Wherever you turn, today’s corporate world is all about paperless offices, laptops, smart mobile devices, laser printers, virtual offices, more collaborative spaces, video-conferencing, shared and managed services, ‘plug and play’ offices, etc. In fact, the most common term of all representing tomorrowOFFICE is paperless. Ironically, this was first coined in the 1940’s, when mainframes were first introduced, and referred to the eventual automation of all data which was at the time stored exclusively on paper. While many of the abovementioned tomorrowOFFICE elements will by necessity fold into future concepts, most agree that many have not yet reached their ultimate level of miniaturisation or efficacy which will see them seamlessly integrate into the fabric of the office of tomorrow.
Meanwhile, shared visions of tomorrow offer increasingly simplified and uncluttered workspaces, which are almost indistinguishable from the outdoors. Coloured in light shades, and airy with plants; these offices will have no file cabinets, keyboard, monitor or mouse. All will be replaced by voice recognition capable wallpaper type display which, when not in use, would be transparent. Meanwhile if you need to type or scroll, as if with a touch pad, touch sensitive projections of keyboard and touch pad will appear on your desk.
At the same time, meeting rooms and other collaborative spaces at offices may also cease to exist due to total immersion technologies which will link your cubicle to others and aggregate to create the reality of an in-person meeting or multi-personnel conference. In addition, this technology will prompt a re-imagining of video-conferencing so your’s and your colleagues’ cubicles can seamlessly transcend from an individual to a group workspace, depending on your minute by minute needs, which will also allow linking colleagues both close and far away into the real time interface.
Data on the go
And as for your personal data, it will move with you of course; no need for a thumb drive, a data CD or any other storage device; storage, like your personal identification number (one unique number which will multi-purpose as your contact number, email,etc.), will move with you when you move and automatically update devices in your vicinity, all filtered according to private and public security and privacy levels. In fact, you yourself will become the ultimate smart device and the proposed microgramme-sized device with heads up display which is being proposed today in lieu of mobile phones will be painlessly embedded on your person and will also carry your credit history and your certificates for insurance, driving, etc.
This allows a project/document to be worked on while en route from office to commute to home and vice versa without a noticeable gap in the workflow. Unfortunately, this system also means that you will work more hours and that you will remain in touch with your office during vacation periods.
And, because of a predicted blurring between the functionality tomorrow’s office and tomorrow’s home, the virtual office concept will kick in when you reach home as well as being accessible 24/7 in all rooms of your home. How would it feel if your bed had a built-in office? More on this in upcoming installments of the tomorrowSERIES.
However, due to this constant and networking element of the modern workplace, it is believed that emotional intelligence will be even more valued than previously. Other areas which will also increasingly include more collaboration with less in-person interaction, less travel replaced by more telecommuting, and less investment in traditional expenses like leases, property taxes and facilities maintenance.
Biometrics
Other tech that may appear in the offices of tomorrow includes: sensors in the office that tracks occupants biometrics and changes temperature, light level, etc to improve worker output and ergonomics. A full shift towards collaborative spaces where, instead of cubicles, people could share one communal room akin to a large library and sit at any open space which will come preset with required work devices.
Additionally, one idea even suggests the re-definition of our understanding of the way people work; and most startling of all, it is an idea which has already proven its worth in, of all places, Kenya through a innovative company and service called txteagle. In fact, the example of txteagle may prove more revolutionary to the way we work in the long run than evolutionary.
Using ‘crowdsourcing’, simple micro-jobs like transcribing, checking search engine results, etc. are farmed at a vast and unaffiliated labour pool through mobile phones, which are almost universally possessed by the masses.
The idea ties in with the growing ‘future of work’ trend towards freelancing and enables txteagle to offer these micro-jobs to workers for a few cents for each job, thus allowing workers to take home as much US$5-US$10 a month for a extra few hours of work, a lot in Kenya. Others that have adopted this model, but with more professional and specialised freelancers, include Elance, InnoCentive and iStockphoto.
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