The City of Moscow recently announced that it had started to manage the operations of its whole fleet of 22,000 vehicles using a mixture of IoT and Machine Learning to optimise deployments for both effect and efficiency. This covers everthing from refuse trucks to snow plows. Efficincy savings of something live 9M roubles per month are now being claimed or roughtly £150,000. At the same time it meant that Moscos coped admirably with the recent extreme snow conditions, keeping the city moving with knock on gains to the lives and economic benefits of the local community. This is a good case study for Smart Cities.
At the same time, the digital work is throwing up whole new social and quasi religous groups such as the Kult of Kek and Witchblr. These groups have their own approaches to changing a frustrating world, but represent powerful pressure groups whose influence on things like social choice and consumer behaviour is leveraged well beyond their actual membership. They are however, non conformist and totally confusing to the pre-millenial generation, fusing a whole set of religious, game and folk themes with strong political messages and a dash of geek humour.
Little wonder then that a recent survey (by Virtusa and Forrester) show that 85% of businesses have digital plans, but many don't really know what to do next. They have not really grasped the principles or developped the capabilities to pursue their agenda. So they are not yet prepared for the fact that Digital makes access and on boarding of customers easier, but businesses can no longer rely on 75% of business being from repeat customers, unless as I pointed out in The Way of DAU they adapt to relentless renewal and re-invention and manage their ethical stance to keep their brand shiny and clean.
