Introduction
This world was modest about two decades ago when ‘Digital’was just another word for ‘Information Technology’. The CIO was not considered a strategic resource, and IT department was functioning normal though things were happening usual even with the entry of YouTube and LinkedIn. Making technology to work for productivity improvement was easy for IT as still the alignment of IT to business was not the core agenda.

Revolutionary developments in technology, recently, have enlarged the canvas of information and knowledge feeds enabling decision makers with new tools of development.

Today digital driven change is huge and being embraced by CEOs making technology integral to business strategy struggling into creation of knowledge societies. Digital initiatives, investment in technology, culture of innovation, customer employee interaction, driving profits from technology are the new normal for growth in an organisation.

Global economy is being reshaped with the knowledge society being built on the stimulus of technological advances. Knowledge has always been a booster to economic growth but the advent of digital technology has increased the capacity to analyse and communicate large amount of information inexpensively has increased the speed of innovation. Innovation that creates new jobs is rapidly becoming an important component in global competitiveness.

Technology in HR – weaving a fabric of change
Change is constant. Not only fashion, trends or people change but even technology changes. The technology change at times is witnessed at a tremendous speed. It weaves a fabric of change that affects everyone. The technology change in Human Resources has altered its role from being mere administrators to strategic enablers

empowering the HR function in key decision making of the organisation.

HR department is viewed as reactive due to their traditional role of hiring, running payroll and compensations, rather than being considered as a partner in business. But the sweeping change that technology progressed in HR domain enabled them to push back the disgrace of Human Resource department tag and convert in Human Capital – partners in business, managing Talent.

Another change that happened was human resources- employees were considered as liabilities, a cost, an overhead, and not realizing that they are really an asset of strategic purpose, until companies like Google, Apple, Microsoft and even Infosys in India conveyed the focus.The technological shift has enabled HR to attract, manage, measure and retain talent in an organisation. Thus revealing the true identity of HR where they strategically plan to support business as a true partner helping the organisation to reach its goals.

The technological innovations has helped HR to shed its secondary role of employing and managing complaints and contribute to the bottom line of the organisation with a focus on Talent sourcing, engaging employees, administering trainings, planning successions, and topping it all is doing social recruitments, assessing skills online, managing BYOD (bring your own device), and managing the demands of Human Capital Management.

Having born with the technology, the millennials are supporting this HR enablement and the organisations are capturing these opportunities to build customised network of talent, at times using social networks, Video interviews, mobile chats, web assessments or even gamification method to recruit, in turn building a brand, and sourcing through highly targeted groups for example LinkedIn, Marriot International Inc.

HR in its new role of a partner collaborates and incorporates data and with the help of predictive analytics

converts this data into relevant and critical importance. This helps the organisation in its decision making a sit recommends course of action and its outcome.

Technology in Education
Higher education is redesigned by technology – primary technologies like emails, fax machines, World Wide Web, CDROMs with some commercially developed simulations and contemporary syllabus changes are shifting the routine operations in a university or college / institute thus expanding the missions of these organisations.

Students want to learn at their own pace and at their own will. The current need in education that is growing is to disregard location, time restrictions, classroom space, and in metro towns even transportation. Students are of the opinion that lectures take too much of their time hence they prefer notes, study material, assignments to be made available on-line. The millennials have grown up in groups hence they prefer to practice or do homework in groups and problem solving becomes difficult if done alone. Therefore they prefer to have on-line problem solving sessions of course with the support of the lecturer.

The technological advancement in recent times has caused a makeover in higher education. Professional course students like medicine are drawing immense benefits out of these alterations caused by technology as they use e-books, CDROMS, ready-made notes and even at times evidence based study material. Technology has helped in reaching large audiences maintaining the quality at the same time achieving economies of scale in the conventional market of teaching and learning. Potential to lower the cost is the main driver behind utilising technology in education.

The basic premise of today’s education is to help the learner to reach the potential and technology is enabling the learners to take more control of their needs in education. The conventional method of teaching in classrooms is being overtaken by the advances in technology allowing the lessons to be disseminated by web making it simple for the student to access the subject course material suitably and also as frequently as needed to achieve basic understanding or know-how or even to gain command over the subject matter. Technology is helping educators to make the course a collaborative learning augmenting the understanding, recall and solving problems.

Students of today do multi-tasking and the usage of technology shifts the power from education provider to the education receiver (consumer) as the consumer has multiple choices to select the opportunity of learning. This alters the role of a professor from an instructor to a coach or consultant. A professor manages the active learning process by creating suitable environment using search engines, emails, videos, digital databases in a high-tech classroom and disseminating lessons digitally thus inspiring students

to take responsibility to learn and derive meaning from the carefully constructed lessons rather than students physically sitting in a classroom and listening to the lecture.

Technology is making it suitable as well as commercially affordable to software companies, publishers, and other academic material providers to integrate material using sophisticated technologies like gaming or simulations. This development is shifting the control of courses developed in-house to these providers as design and distribution of courseware and academic modules has become financially attractive.

Technology is playing a prominent role in education industry and supporting its mission. In spite of its tempting appeal it also poses some challenges because of its fast paced advancement. Merely building technological infrastructure is not sufficient. This needs to be supported by suitable human resources to deliver the technological promises. Technology can be firmly integrated to provide service to a diverse group viz. faculty, students, administrators and any other stakeholders, but training to effectively use the technology still remains a challenge as this diverse group has divergent expectations. At the end Technology usage is all about experience and these citizens of education industry would understand the role of technology predominantly by their personal involvement with technology.

Computing at any place and any time through mobile phones has given freedom in gaining access to any information. This has enriched coordination, collaboration, communication in knowledge exchange. The wireless medium has helped individuals at home and office to be in touch with their near and dear ones as well as professionally transact.

The popularity of Mobile Technology has gained importance in supporting the value chain and giving an organisation a competitive edge. Organisations are using this technology to establish connectivity, interactivity with their employees as well as their customers and suppliers. This has increased an organisation’s efficiency and effectiveness by altering their business processes to in provide value to their business partners. The Wireless Application Protocol (WAP) based systems connected with the organisation’s internal technology infrastructure facilitates in providing Intranet based self-service to employees, mobile services for brokers and agents, mobile payments and banking services and also electronic procurement.

The usage of mobile technology has transformed the way we interact, share, communicate and express ourselves as a society. This has made mobile device management a necessity in organisations where access and identity management helps in optimizing the functionality and

securing the organization’s data. This brings up an important aspect of measurement – the advantages to be drawn by the usage of this technology.

Every organisation wants to be unique and have a competitive advantage in the market. The measurement of this technology whether measuring tangible benefits such as profitability, market share, productivity and cost savings or intangible benefits such as customer service, customer and competitor knowledge, product quality influence the competitive position in the market. This measurement helps the organisation to get a clear picture of its competitive position in terms of cost, differentiation, and analysing further with the help of technology changing the product mix offered which changes the competition itself. The technology and measurements is a great help in maximizing customer service, image of the organisation, employee satisfaction, efficiency, effectiveness and minimizing cost.

Technology in Retailing
The increase in globalization of retailers’ technology in the retail sector has equally increased to manage the intricacy of that business. Technology has helped retailers to ease product complexity, supply chain challenges, complexity of scale, and the complexity in process.

Not more than five years back in India the convenience store owner in the neighbourhood knew each and every customer of his personally. Those were the days when every product had limited number of substitutes hence the selection was not a task to a customer. The customer’s need and the quality required were known to the store owner. The transactions have a personal touch, the likes and dislikes were taken care on the basis of trust.

But today, the increase in size and number of retailers, with various products, with multiple brands and several categories the individual relation with retailer is replaced with promotion led and purchase led loyalty schemes.

To top it all technology has worked like a promoter augmenting the efficacy of any retail purchase or process activity. Technology in the area of merchandising has impacted top line revenues, mining huge amount of data, arriving at a trustworthy forecast to collaborate with suppliers and mange assortments. To manage the cost of operations technology in the supply chain area serve to get right product at right time in the right place. The entire operations depend upon the data, which is fragmented and needs integration. With the help of technology this challenge is handled with accuracy and speed.

The degree of technology implementation has been different for different retailers depending upon their size and business. Some have implemented the core technology solutions cover operations and merchandising, and for some the investment has paid back for implementing strategic

business software like Business Warehouse or Business Intelligence. Technology has been mainly utilised in customer focussed solutions, analytics, and social media as consumers today are buying more online and also happened in measurement areas to compare past and present revenues, acquisitions, and customer value.

Below mentioned technology adaptations is going to make the retail scenario most interesting.

Electronic Retailing - internet serves as one of the major platform used by a retailer to communicate effectively with the prospect as well as the customer offering promotional goods. For example - Baazee.com Times Internet, Rediff etc.

Interactive Projection Displays – are used inside a store to stimulate the offers. At times this is also used within the window of a shop to promote new products. Many a times this is kept at a such a place where user can interact with the display with the hep of a touch screen.

Attention Seeking Display Units – these are illuminated display units designed exceptionally to display messages about products that are promoted or at times to message certain facts about particular products. These units are either kept inside or outside the store.

Vending Machines – such machines are installed at prominent places like bus stations or railway stations, Malls, or public places. These machines generally are used to dispense tickets, soft drinks, milk or even cash.

Handheld computer devices – these devices are generally used by delivery personnel as a substitute for paper documents. At times such devices are also used in restaurants to take customer orders that are automatically transferred to the kitchen inside.

Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) – a technology that is used to accurately track material within a warehouse revolutionizing the material handling process. RFID is also used to identify vehicles passing through the toll booth.

Rear Projection – This is an interactive floor display, a technological tool to involve customers in a particular brand. Mostly this technology is used on Point-of-Sale(POS) counters for the promotion of competitions that are running or any offers where manual form filling and coupon can be avoided.

3D Floor Stickers – is a self-adhesive vinyl with a coloured print cut out, at times even transparent, tempting a customer by creating illusions and making him visit a particular isle where the store wants to promote certain products.

I-Shelf – an LCD display attached to a shelf in an aisle of a supermarket, where promotions are pre-programmed or operated with an inserted flash drive.

QR codes – are generally used along with the display of

special offers or competitions. It is a technological substitute to filling forms or using promotion coupons. With the help of QR code a virtual store can be created for example - A list of items with store name and QR Code graph displayed on a bus stop. The traveller can easily order items and receive them at his/her house.

Barcodes – generally used for identification of a product with specific manufacturing details and price, but also the scanning technology can be used to inform nutritional informational of a product.

NFC chips – these near field communication chips can be used to purchase and make payments. Certain stores do not allow buying goods physically from the store instead provide them with tablets using NFC tags helping customers to scan items on promotion and buy them online. At times customers touch their mobile phone to the NFC tag displayed on a product in a store and add the product to their mobile app basket. It is like moving in a store with a scanner and paying for it at the time of checkout.

Augmented Reality – helps customer to visualise the perceptions while buying an item. With the help of AR a customer can decide whether particular furniture fits into the overall house décor, or at a retail shoe store point his mobile camera at a shoe and his feet, the app helps in visualising the shoe to be tried.

Self-Checkout Machines – these machines offer a mode to customers in processing the purchases made in the store, a very effective alternative to a cashier/payment counter.

Technology in Manufacturing
Technology is being used in manufacturing right from the Industrial revolution for example cotton gin, machines to manufacture cloth. Today robots are being used in manufacturing which has helped in creating heavy goods effectively.

Technology has been used in Manufacturing for several decades starting with manual machines, upgrading it to electrically operated ones, doing mass production, and recently getting into computers to use AI /Analytics/Big Data/ 3d Manufacturing.

Early Computer Aided Design and Manufacturing (CAD / CAM) systems introduced programmability but not generic enough. Three dimensional (3-D) manufacturing and additive manufacturing used the power of programmability in a more fundamental way. The support functions in manufacturing like planning, logistics were enabled by core Enterprise system modules but the core engineering requirements like Direct Numerical Control Software (DNC), Computer Numerical Control(CNC), Robots, always remained out of reach of Small and Medium Enterprises(SME) because of the high cost.

Technology is used in manufacturing right from the first generation of computers for better efficacy and mapping effectively the resources. In the second generation manufacturing used connected, networked computers and were ahead in using email, Social media, Smart phones/ Tablets, WWW. The next generation will connect computers, human and things by using Augmented reality/Virtual Reality, Smart homes/cars, smart cities will impact human life – the way we live.

Big Data, Analytics, will help us in decentralised decision making, Intelligent Robots will use Artificial Intelligence(AI) for in-depth learning, and processing images, Self-driving cars will make use of Image processing, Big Data, AI and drive us around safe, intelligent homes will make our life easy, Internet of Things(IOT) will change the way manufacturing is done today, changing the perception the way Facebook changed us, Drones using AI, algorithms, image processors, cameras and storing data on cloud, will allow us in getting new knowledge, 3-D Manufacturing will change manufacturing, logistics, trade and economics.

The following technology advancements will change the manufacturing arena -

Internet of Things (IOT) – This will help in overall effectiveness of the machines, labour utilization and productivity, as this will link machines to the web for real time monitoring, getting online information (data) translating the same to get insights to the micro functionality level.

The next generation manufacturing companies will measure the effectiveness of the analysed data, sought through the real times connected information platforms and equipments. This will require a new set of labour capable of designing and analysing the data produced to deliver durable, high quality products.

Robotics – has helped to fully automate factories. These unmanned control technologies may not address all the concerns of productivity. Moreover greater automation may be harmful and may result in lesser innovation. A new concept called ‘Cobotics’ is developed in developed economies, where robots complement the human workers instead of replacing them. Robots are used in this concept to manufacture, assemble complex parts at a speed and accuracy with safety promoted. The more erudite robots with sophisticated sensors will be used by manufacturers to allow human and machines to skilfully interact on the shop-floor.

Augmented Reality – The developments in information technology, engineering, vision technologies, have supported manufacturers to deliver real time information at the very point of use. The use of graphics, audio, texts, are superimposed on the assemblies to enable the worker to achieve quality. Machine manufacturers are supplying this

facility as in-built with the machine helping a worker to walk through the instructions of a process.

3D Printing - has helped manufacturers to produce prototypes and reduce the cycle time from design to manufacture. This technology still in its early period can produce solid objects in a predetermined shape saving considerable cost in production lead times and retooling.

Jobs and Knowledge Economy
Knowledge as personified in a human and technology has always been vital to economic growth. All these years land, labour, capital were considered as factors of production, but in a knowledge economy labour is considered to design, manufacture and implement ideas rather than just produce goods.

The huge part of knowledge economy is based on learning by doing, rather on just education, though education is one of the primary source to get explicit and tacit knowledge. A career has become a field of opportunity and no longer remains a path where a person works for years together and moves up vertically. A formal education can prepare a person to work in the field of opportunity but the person will have to move horizontally to make a career.

Most importantly the jobs that get created are at the lower end. For every high end job there are four jobs at the lower end for example – a programmer has an alternative to perform as a cook, a waiter, or any other such. So the thought of knowledge economy remains a myth as most jobs may not require a degree, hence half the people getting degrees may not have jobs that they want and will work in such fields which do not require a degree.

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