44 WAIKATO BUSINESS NEWS <strong>July</strong>/<strong>August</strong> <strong>2019</strong> Electronic scooters approved E-scooters are set to hit the city's streets. Hamilton City Council approved a six-month trial, for the hire of personal transportation devices from public spaces in the city, with permits available from <strong>July</strong> 1. New management team at Lodge City Rentals delivers benefits to landlords Get smart, Hamilton The interactive Smart Space has just opened beside the Garden Place Library. It is designed to tell stories of how technology is making a difference in addressing real problems facing our community and enabling innovation. Visitors are encouraged to provide feedback and thoughts on how emerging technologies may be applied to create a smarter society. Open to the public from 10am to 4.30pm Wednesday to Friday. For more information visit https:// www.smarthamilton.nz/ Māori walking tour of Kirikiriroa Te Ahurei Mā ori Tourism has just launched a guided tour in the CBD that will take you on a journey, across the scared lands of Kirikiriroa (Hamilton CBD). The tour is using prestigious visual art and lush surrounding landscape of Kirikiriroa, to tell the fascinating stories of the Tainui people. Follow them on Facebook at teahureimaoritourism Boon after dark Boon After Dark is bringing to the Hamilton CBD an incredible display of temporary sculpture to Garden Place by the art collective Hybycozo, support by CBD Events, Hamilton City Council and Beca. It will be installed in Garden Place from <strong>August</strong> 2 to November 30. Follow Boon After Dark on Facebook for updates and invites. Lodge City Rentals has seen a change in management recently as real estate industry guru David Kneebone steps away from his role as general manager. Though Kneebone stepped aside in June, he remains part of the executive team and continues to provide advice and expertise to property investors, clients and the wider team. Branch manager Jason Waugh has taken up the reins from Kneebone who, Waugh says, has been exceptional in creating a team culture that is focused on excellence. The Healthy Homes Standards set minimum requirements for modern heating, proper insulation in floors and walls, ventilation in highmoisture rooms, moisture ingress and drainage, and draught stopping. “David has been instrumental in instilling the core values in our team. The transition of myself into the general manager role will be a matter of continuing the great work David has accomplished in his 21 years of service to Lodge City Rentals. The goal of providing a high level of customer service remains our team’s focus,” says Waugh. Waugh has been part of the Lodge City Rentals team for 18 years. This experience, coupled with his background in the construction industry, has given him the nous to work closely with clients to help them build value in their property portfolios. “We’re fortunate that David is remaining within the Lodge Rentals team capacity so we can continue to draw on his expertise and knowledge. “His key focus has shifted to developing our service offering to landlords. He will work closely with clients in a property investment advisory role,” explains Waugh. Matthew-Shane Berryman has been promoted to branch manager. Berryman joined Lodge City Rentals in 2016 after Jason Waugh, left, and Matthew-Shane Berryman. working overseas as an investment consultant and banker. He has extensive experience in both the real estate and banking industries. On the immediate horizon, Waugh says the team is focused on ensuring the Healthy Homes Standards, which came into force on <strong>July</strong> 1, is rolled out by all landlords across all rental properties under management. The Healthy Homes Standards set minimum requirements for modern heating, proper insulation in floors and walls, ventilation in high-moisture rooms, moisture ingress and drainage, and Intelligent automation should lighten the load David Kneebone draught stopping. “We are putting the right steps in place to ensure the rental properties under our management are dry, warm and to the standard they should be.” CBD celebration awards The CBD Celebration Awards are sponsored by Spark <strong>Business</strong> and brought to you by Hamilton Central <strong>Business</strong> Association and The Breeze. Support your favourite business for the People’s Choice awards, open from <strong>August</strong> 1-21, vote at hamiltoncentral.co.nz. CBD activation in spotlight The CBD will be on show when Hamilton Central <strong>Business</strong> Association presents at the International Cities, Town Centres and Communities (ICTC) Conference - Transformative Cities, held in Townsville in October. HCBA has been invited to speak on CBD Activation - bringing vibrancy to public spaces through activation, events and people. Visit ictsociety. org/<strong>2019</strong> to find out more. Snippets supplied by Hamilton Central <strong>Business</strong> Association TECHNOLOGY SECURITY > BY AARON STEELE Aaron Steele is a senior manager at PwC <strong>Waikato</strong>. Email: aaron.steele@pwc.com Intelligent automation (IA) is ushering in the fourth industrial revolution by disrupting and creating new business models. In order to thrive in the digital revolution, we must balance business understanding with technology innovation and human insight. Seventy-six percent of CEOs in our <strong>2019</strong> global survey are worried about the speed of tech change. And 64 percent acknowledge that changes in the technology used to run their businesses will be disruptive over the next five years. PwC have analysed the business impact and commercial viability of more than 250 emerging technologies and have a list of the essential eight core technologies that will matter the most for business, across all industries, over the next three to five years. These are artificial intelligence, augmented reality, virtual reality, blockchain, drones, 3D printing, Internet of Things (IoT) and robotics. IA has the ability to transform how your business operates and delivers services in the future, but implementing new technology just because it’s the latest thing, in isolation from your business strategy and with inadequate upfront assessment, can lead to a failure to achieve the benefits. There is a broad spectrum of IA and some areas such as virtual assistants/chatbots and robotic process automation (RPA) are already well developed and used by a large number of businesses. One of the most visible elements of IA at the moment is the virtual assistants, such as Amazon Alexa or chatbots that pop up when you visit a website to enable automated enquiries and customer support. This is conversational intelligence that is based upon natural language processing and artificial intelligence to enable a computer program to conduct a conversation based upon audio and/or textual input. RPA is less visible, but can have a major impact on your business processes, freeing up staff for customer-focused and value-add activities. Essentially, RPA transforms how a business deals with manual repetitive processes through automation which increases workforce capacity. In 2018 Gartner said that RPA will be adopted by three in four financial controllers within two years. RPA is computer software (a “bot”) that sits on top of existing systems (it is technology agnostic) to perform tasks normally performed by a human, using rule-based processes. There are no changes to existing software or additional interfaces required, your existing systems view the RPA bot as just another user and interacts with the system through the graphical user interface (GUI). The best processes for automation are high volume, rules-based, digital and often involve interaction between multiple systems/tools. For example, we had a client that was replacing approximately 20,000 assets per year and had a manual process to update the asset records with the new asset information. It took six minutes per asset for a human to perform this simple, repetitive process, whereas the RPA bot took just one minute and could work 24/7. By automating this process, staff didn’t have to perform a task that they didn’t like doing and their time could be used on more productive tasks. RPA is becoming easier to implement, and can lead to quick improvements in terms of efficiency and cost savings. Like all technologies, RPA only works if it is applied to the right processes and if it is implemented well, with the old saying “garbage in equals garbage out” applying. Intelligent automation should put the human back in the people, increasing employee morale, customer experience and satisfaction by allowing people do what they do best. If it doesn’t, then come and talk to us. The comments in this article of a general nature and should not be relied on for specific cases. Taxpayers should seek specific advice.
THE ADVENTURE BEGINS HERE... KIDS NOW RIDE FREE ALL WEEKEND IN HAMILTON. WHERE’S YOUR NEXT ADVENTURE?
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