Parliament’ s IT system was hacked last Friday, compromising the email accounts of almost 1% of the 9,000 users of the system according to the latest reports.

Remote Access Disabled

After the sustained cyber attack, which some media commentators have already blamed on a state-sponsored attack by Russia (North Korea and Iran have also been mentioned), remote access to the emails of MPs, peers, and their staff was disabled in order to safeguard the system. As well as the disruption caused to the UK government by the attack, one fear is that some of the information stolen by the attackers could lead to blackmail attempts.

Weak Passwords

It has been reported that the attackers were looking for accounts with weak passwords as these would give them the best chance of gaining quick access.

Measures Taken

The parliamentary email system was shut down and MPs were also prevented from being able to access their email accounts remotely from outside of Westminster while the attack was investigated.

Also, it has been reported that any individuals whose accounts were compromised during the attack have been contacted and investigations are now under way to determine whether any data has been lost.

WannaCry

This new attack comes hot on the heels of the WannaCry attack in May in which ransomware infected the computers of an estimated 300,000 victims in 150 countries worldwide, many of them large, well-known businesses and organizations, including 16 health service organisations in the UK. That attack has since been attributed to a North Korea-based hacking group known as Lazarus, the same group that targeted Sony Pictures with a hack in 2014 over the release of the film ‘The Interview’ which satirised the North Korean leadership.

Echoes Of The US Election

The attack on the UK Parliament’s email system is also reminiscent of the cyber attacks against Democratic Party organisation during the 2016 election campaign where Democratic National Committee (DNC) emails were hacked and leaked, possibly influencing the presidential vote in Donald Trump’s favour. At the time, the finger of suspicion was pointed firmly at Russia as President Obama was reported to have warned Russian President Vladimir Putin about the possible consequences for the cyber attacks.

What Does This Mean For Your Business?

This is another example of how even important and supposedly secure government systems can be vulnerable to cyber attack. Although we don’t know (and may never know) the full effects and the extent of this latest attack, it is a reminder that everyone, whether they are in Parliament or elsewhere, needs to do everything possible to maintain their own cyber-security.

In the wake of this latest attack and the WannaCry attack, Internet and data security, particularly with GDPR due to come into force next year, must surely now be given high priority by businesses and must be championed at board level. The danger and false economy of staying with old operating systems as long as possible, and the favouring of potentially weak password-based systems have been painfully exposed.

Businesses need to take a range of measures to ensure that they are well defended against known cyber threats, and prepared for the aftermath, should defences be breached. Preparations could include making sure that all the latest updates and patches are installed on systems and that anti-virus software is up to date, all important data is regularly and securely backed-up, all staff are trained to spot and deal correctly with potential threats, and workable Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity Plans are in place.

After a decade of campaigning by EU citizens and after 2 years of preparing the mobile networks for the change, The European Commission has announced that there will be no more EU roaming charges.

What Does This Mean?

The abolition of roaming charges applies to calls, texts and browsing the internet, and this means that citizens who travel within the 28 countries of the EU will be able to call, text and connect on their mobile devices at the same price as they pay at home.

Balance

Statements from the EU have focused on what a valuable achievement the agreement between mobile network operators and EU countries is in terms of its contribution to the idea of the EU’s Digital Single Market and accessibility for all citizens.

Other statements have focused on the balance that has been needed to strike the deal with the mobile phone networks. This means offering customers a better deal and maintaining profitability of mobile networks, and many people have taken this to mean the mobile networks could make up the charges lost in roaming fees in other ways e.g. increasing domestic phone tariffs and charges.

Are There Any Caveats And Exceptions?

Yes. Although, as the EU statements say that roaming charges have been abolished for travellers in the EU, there are some important caveats, exceptions and anomalies. These are:

• Exceeding your agreed minutes, texts and data allowances are still chargeable in the in the EU, just as they are in the UK.
  The fair use clause still applies to data roaming. This means that even though you can make as many calls and send as many texts as you like at domestic prices, if your roaming data use exceeds “a reasonably high volume” at domestic rates, you may have to pay a surcharge of approximately £8.30 per gigabyte (inc VAT).
• If you spend more time abroad than at home and consequently use your mobile more abroad than at home, you may still receive roaming charges. This is a result of a clause that was designed to dissuade people from taking out a contract in a low-cost country e.g. Romania.
• Different providers include different countries in their roaming territories. Also, some countries are not automatically covered by the new rules e.g. Switzerland, Monaco, Andorra, some Eastern European nations, the Channel Islands and the Isle of Man.
  Roaming charges will still apply when you are on board European ferries or cruise ships in the Mediterranean, the Baltic and across the English Channel. This is because you are between EU ports and are using a satellite link to the ship.
• Calling another EU country from the UK will still incur extra charges.
• Calls to any EU country are now cheaper as long as you make them from any EU country that isn’t the UK.
• Three non-EU countries in the European economic area have not yet introduced ‘Roam Like at Home’ charges, but have said that they may do so a short time after 15th June. These are Iceland, Norway and Liechtenstein.

What Does This Mean For Your Business?

For business people who are frequent overseas travellers, and for UK citizens who plan to use their mobile while on holiday abroad, this announcement is good news. There is still a rational suspicion that the mobile operators will make their lost roaming charges back somehow e.g. with higher tariffs and extra charges.

Brexit could, however, mean that the UK may lose its right to freedom from roaming charges. Some commentators believe that the UK could avoid this by negotiating equivalent measures, and / or that the mobile networks will introduce some lesser charges.

Legally, the UK government could decide whether EU price restrictions on roaming apply after Brexit because EU price restrictions on roaming or not after the UK leaves the EU are part of a regulation (not a directive), and, therefore, are not technically part of UK law. At this stage, it is unknown exactly how Brexit will affect the roaming charges issue going forward.

New research from US CRM and strategic applications company Pegasystems has found that 60% of UK people would use more Artificial Intelligence (AI) if it saved them time and money.

Real World Value

The UK results are drawn out of a larger survey which involved 6,000 people from 6 countries. The survey results show that British people accept and feel most comfortable using AI for specific, practical, real-world, time saving, benefit-delivering and value-adding purposes. These include personalising their online retail presence, getting a better diagnosis from the doctor using AI, and using AI for better financial services.

Supports Other Survey

The positive UK view of AI shown in the Pegasystems survey results appear to support the results of an Accenture survey carried out with 32,715 people (3,007 of them from the UK). This showed that 68% of UK consumers would use software robots for banking services. Many consumers found that the ‘artificial’ aspect was, in fact, a positive because it meant that there was impartiality.

Suspicion

Not all UK consumers are used to / comfortable with the idea of AI in their working lives, and many are clearly suspicious that they will lose their jobs to AI automation. In a YouGov survey for Konica Minolta involving 11,362 people from nine countries for example, 20% of respondents thought that their daily tasks could be automated through AI and robots, and 10% believed up to 60% of their role could be taken over completely by AI robots.

This is consistent with the findings of a report by PwC back in March this year which claimed that over 30% of UK jobs could be lost to automation by the year 2030, and that 44% of jobs in manufacturing (where there are already many robots e.g. car manufacturing), especially those involving manual work, look likely to go to AI-led software or robots.

The same report singled out Transportation jobs as being at particularly high risk for robot replacements where 56% of jobs could be lost to autonomous vehicles. The report also highlighted jobs in the UK’s largest sectors, wholesale and retail as looking vulnerable to (AI) automation.

Already Used

Most of us already come into contact with AI as it is already used in many different ways. For example, the London Borough of Enfield uses a software AI robot to provide customer services so it can redirect resources, and Transport for London (TfL) has developed an intelligent agent-based chatbot on Facebook’s AI application programming interface (API) to be used as a digital travel assistant through Facebook’s Messenger app.

Google also introduced its AI Neural Machine Translation system (GNMT) to automatically display business reviews in the language that your phone / device is set to (for overseas travel), and Microsoft has added the new AI ‘Microsoft Team’ toolkit to Office 365 to help improve workplace communications and collaboration.

A Step Further

Developments that have taken AI a step further again to show even more of its potential include the Watch, Listen and Spell (WLAS) system that can read human lips better and interpret more words than a trained lip reading professional. Also, the Libratus (updated from Lengpudashi) AI poker program made the news by winning more than $1.5m (£1.2m) worth of chips when it defeated 4 human poker experts at the Rivers Casino in Pittsburgh in a 20-day tournament back in January.

What Does This Mean For Your Business?

Much of the popular use of AI up until now has benefitted business aspects such as customer service. Most businesses are likely to be affected by some aspect of automation e.g. software or mechanical, in the near future, either themselves of through suppliers and stakeholders. There is an inevitability that AI and robotics will alter what jobs look like in the future, and will take some jobs away from humans, but it is also important to remember that they could provide huge advantages and opportunities for businesses and their customers.

Workers can try to insulate themselves from the worst effects of automation by seeking more education / lifelong learning, and by trying to remain positive towards and adapting to changes. How much AI automation and what kind of AI automation individual businesses adopt will, of course, depend upon a cost / benefit analysis compared to human workers, and whether automation is appropriate and is acceptable to their customers.

The baking and retail high-street chain Greggs is reported to have undergone a £25m change programme for its 1,500 outlets, using a range of SAP software to simplify and better integrate its business processes, and make it more competitive in the lucrative ‘food-to-go’ market.

What Is SAP?

Started in 1972 by IBM employees in Germany, SAP is a software and programming company that was on Forbes 2016 list of “The World’s Biggest Public Companies” in third place, just behind Microsoft and Oracle. According to SAP, 75% of all global business transactions come in contact with an SAP system, and the company now focuses mainly upon cloud computing options.

SAP’s Business Suite On Hana

One of the main elements of the transformation of Greggs is reported has been the use of Business Suite on Hana for its enterprise resource planning (ERP) since 2014, and now the use of the updated, (in-memory) S/4 Hana ERP system.

The introduction by Greggs of SAP’s Ariba for procurement and San Francisco-based SAP SuccessFactors cloud-based, software as a services learning management system for HR and training are reported to have helped Greggs to integrate, centralise and consolidate compatible systems right across the company, rather than relying on lots of different software suppliers and systems.

The combination of SAP elements is reported to be needed to help manage future growth as part of an ambitious five-year transformation project because of the increasing scale of the company, and because Greggs is a manufacturer, as well as a retail front-end distributor of its food. The ‘Sunrise’ programme from Greggs, therefore, aims to use SAP to centralise the business and make it more responsive to customers’ needs.

Training

It has been reported by the 70 strong IT team at Greggs that, so far, the SuccessFactors learning management system has delivered training to 16,000 staff, and that 1,500 shops (at the rate of 100 shops a week) have converted to the new SAP technology.

Keytree

Greggs is reported to be have been using international award winning design and technology consultancy Keytree to help with improving its production and warehousing in its supply chain. This will be the next phase of its change programme, but Keytree was first selected to work with Greggs back in 2015 as the SAP Systems Integrator for the first of two phases of the retailer’s business transformation programme.

Keytree also helped with the delivery of cloud-based Learning and Development solutions through SuccessFactors, and with the implementation of Source to Contract requirements using Ariba solutions, which wil have enabled Greggs to better manage 4,500 suppliers across its operations.

Keytree has worked with many large clients including Dyson, Mercedes-Benz, National Grid, and News International.

What Does This Mean For Your Business?

This story is an example of how many businesses are switching to cloud-based technology and systems to improve management and collaboration, and to ensure that important functions can be homogenised, product availability and waste can be improved, consistency and quality can be maintained, and companies can keep pace with rapid growth while still allowing room for innovation.

Cloud-based systems such as these also help businesses to save costs (e.g. in training large numbers of employees) and adapt quickly to changes in the marketplace, both of which will be needed by Greggs to compete effectively in the future of the evolving and competitive food-to-go’ market.

Amazon’s $14 billion acquisition of struggling grocery chain Whole Foods Market Inc, announced last Friday, will now see Amazon take on bricks-and-mortar grocery giants such Wal-Mart.

Amazon In The Grocery Market

Last month, Amazon expanded upon its existing Amazon Fresh grocery service, which already operates in 16 cities worldwide, with a trial of the ‘Amazon Fresh Pickup’ service from two ‘bricks-and-mortar’ locations in its home city of Seattle.

Amazon Fresh offers attended delivery (hand-to-hand drop-off) or doorstep delivery of groceries, and the new Amazon Fresh Pickup service invites customers to come and pick their shopping up themselves from Amazon’s stores, rather than having it delivered to their door.

Why Buy Whole Foods?

US store Whole Foods, which has notoriously high prices, and has been struggling in recent years is believed to have been purchased by Amazon:

• In order to fight back against traditional bricks-and-mortar retailer Wal-Mart who acquired retailer Jet.com for $3 billion last year in order to compete seriously with Amazon in the e-commerce world. Wal-Mart is also reported to have been going after Amazon’s higher-income customers with other online brand acquisitions including Moosejaw, Modcloth, and menswear e-tailer Bonobos. Wal-Mart is offering curbside pickup of online grocery purchases at 700 locations (with hundreds more planned), and is testing same-day fresh and frozen home delivery from 10 of its stores.
• To compete directly with (and to take customers from) Wal-Mart at the heart of its business i.e. groceries, which accounted for 56% of its $486 billion revenue last year. It has been reported that Amazon intends to do so by reducing the Whole Foods prices and changing its assortment of products to attract a larger customer base i.e. Wal-Mart customers. Like Wal-Mart, Amazon is also large and resourceful enough to wage a price war.
• To use the 460 Whole Foods stores which are within 10 miles of the main population centres in the US to test how Amazon can learn how to compete with Wal-Mart in the bricks-and-mortar grocery world.
• To compete with Instacart which works with a network of 160 grocery chains and retailers across the US, and to pull Instacart’s customers into Amazon Fresh.

Concerns

Some of the concerns raised about the acquisition of Whole Foods Market Inc by Amazon (which have been denied by Amazon) are that it may cut jobs and / or use technology to automate jobs of cashiers.

Concerns have also been raised by some commentators about how the acquisition will affect Instacart with whom Whole Foods has a five-year contract. Whole Foods, however, only represents less than 10% of Instacart’s revenue, and Whole Foods has less than 1% equity in the company. Instacart is also confident that it has many more years experience in the grocery market than Amazon, and that it has spread its interests across a wide range of retailers, and that the move by Amazon may prompt other big grocery chains and retailers to seek Instacart as a partner

What Does This Mean For Your Business?

Amazon has grown and diversified at an incredible rate in recent years, and this move (in response to Wal-Mart’s moves) has meant that the traditional retail dividing lines between e-commerce and brick-and-mortar hasve now been blurred even more. This has led some leading retail commentators to say that dominance in this sector will now depend upon who is better at both e-commerce and brick-and-mortar retailing rather than just being best at one (as Morrisons discovered in the UK when its e-commerce lagged behind competitors).

The move by Amazon does look set to disrupt the U.S. grocery sector, and as we have seen with Amazon in the past, it frequently tests strategies in its home country before exporting them to others. This could mean that Amazon has the power and resources to set itself up as a serious competitor in many different sectors in the UK, just as it has recently done with its Amazon Business online trade-counter.

In the case of Amazon’s acquisition of Whole Foods Market Inc, some grocery retail commentators have, however, noted that it may not be as easy as Amazon thinks to start taking Wal-Mart’s customers because as things stand now, the two stores appeal to two very different types of customer. In the UK however, we have seen discounters (Lidl, Aldi) take customers from all of the other main supermarkets.