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Glossary of Terms

AI Agent

An Artificial Intelligence (AI) Agent is a digital worker that can understand instructions and take actions in order to complete tasks.

A corporate framework is commonly defined as a structured system of guidelines, practices, and processes that define how a company is governed and managed. Corporate growth, technology, or structure can alter the framework or vision. The company may desire to re-align strategy and tactics with a new set of principles, rules, practices, and processes that guide how a company is managed and overseen.

A dashboard is an application presenting a visual display of data that provides a high-level overview of information. It’s commonly used to monitor key performance indicators, track progress, and make informed decisions. The screen display can be in the form of charts, graphs, tables, and other visualizations to make data easy to understand at a glance. Many dashboards display live or near real-time data, allowing users to track changes and trends as they happen. Some of our most valued dashboards use correlated metrics or background markings of averages to provide organizations a more useful display of data. Examples of data collection are provided at the end of the Workforce page.

Structured work involves repetitive, rule-based tasks with clear guidelines, while unstructured work encompasses creative, decision-driven activities that require human intuition and emotion

“The Great Reshuffle” encapsulates the widespread shift in employment patterns, including a surge in remote work, job hopping, and a renewed focus on work-life balance. This term was coined by Anthony Klotz, Professor of Management at Texas A&M University.

The idea of redundancy and resilience come up often, but have various meanings. With critical infrastructure we desire redundancy, backed up data, alternative electrical circuits, or an inventory of spare machines. When we apply the concept of redundancy to the workforce, we desire resilience, but may avoid excessive redundancy. Skills assessments when applied to process studies allow an overview of the resilience and redundancy within the workforce. The resilience of having multiple individuals within a team or organization capable of performing the same or similar tasks is a benefit. However, task redundancy is when two departments or employees are dedicating time or resources to a competing task or project. There is also outsourced redundancy, when employees or departments are using multiple vendors and failing to capture savings through specific contracts. Last is workforce redundancy, when changes in operation lead to restructuring and retraining staff for alternative functions. An organizational assessment of the existing strengths and resilience provides the ability to make potential changes, provides a gap analysis for incoming tech or change, and remains critical for making strategic and tactical decisions.

Various studies offer insight into the organization, and the potential for efficiencies and savings. One of these is a work process study. Also known as business process analysis (BPA) or broadly as business process management (BPM), it offers numerous benefits for organizations, including increased efficiency, reduced costs, improved customer satisfaction, and enhanced compliance. By understanding and optimizing business processes, companies can streamline operations, identify inefficiencies, and create a more agile and competitive business. The study is well known for the tangible return on investment (ROI). However, the potential for huge hidden returns on value (ROV) exists, but may be difficult to quantify. This is of particular use for future strategic and tactical planning. Understanding the detailed processes will also simplify later studies and provide more efficient points of reference for business analytics implementations (see Oversight Mechanisms above or Timely Information in Culture).

In addition to optimization, a study may reveal potentials for the adoption of technology to improve a process. This “process automation,” is the use of technology and software to automate repetitive and manual tasks within a business process, aiming to improve efficiency, reduce errors, and enhance overall operational effectiveness. It involves leveraging software, robotics, and potentially AI to execute tasks that would otherwise require human intervention.

The term called “Shadow IT,” refers to the use of unauthorized or unapproved technology by employees within an organization. The unmanaged hardware or software can pose a huge security risk. Examples include personal email accounts, USB keys, or even wireless access points (WAPs). Although this may seem like an Infrastructure issue, we want to call attention to it as a workplace issue. Employees often turn to shadow IT to improve productivity, access readily available tools, or bypass perceived IT limitations. In addition to security tools and physical audits, this can be addressed with an open dialog between IT and users, security presentations, and clearly understood penalties for violations.

Business Intelligence (BI) refers to the ongoing metrics within an organization. At one time this may have been presented in a weekly meeting or delivered as a report. However, today we can deliver this information in a timely manner. The addition of applications or appliances to provide real-time data can aid job efficiency throughout the workforce. Critical equipment can be monitored with temperature, humidity, motion, and vibration sensors. Environments can be monitored for sound, vehicle speed, air flow, water levels, direction of traffic, facial recognition, and even emotional state. Industry market interest rates and commodity trends can be monitored for organizations and sectors critical to corporate production. Within the workforce, production levels, internal spending, and unusual data trends can be immediately forwarded via email, text, or to dashboards visible on the employee workstation.

The concept of an overflow procedure is best described as a floodgate that can be opened when required. A simple example is a multi-lingual call center that has Spanish speaking agents that forward English calls when a queue is formed. Additionally, calls could be forwarded to an outsourced call center when a specific wait-time threshold has been reached.

When we use BI for primary alerting (being reports or dashboards), this can trigger a form of human interaction that can also be quantified and reported upon. The quantified human interaction could be an alert to a backup staff member or manager that the human interaction task has been completed. Imagine a fireman reporting to a fire, finding no evidence of a fire, and turning off the fire alarm. If the alarm continued to report additional firemen would be dispatched. Secondary intervention alerting is an additional oversight mechanism added for safety or liability.

Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) is a Virtual Machine (VM) technology allows users to access their desktop environments remotely from any device, typically through a central server or cloud infrastructure. This means instead of running a desktop on a physical machine, the desktop runs on a virtual machine in a data center, and users can access it remotely from their own devices. There is reduced risk of loss from a lost or stolen device because only keystrokes and mouse movements are processed on the actual device. The user’s remote hardware can remain inexpensive.