Its health information systems were weak, outdated, and underfunded. Data was manually collected and siloed. Information tended to be listed on paper forms rather than in the cloud.

Given the circumstances, it was difficult for health officials to identify high-risk regions, spreaders, and asymptomatic patients. Administrative delays prevented all but a few labs from testing. But even when the results came in, details about available drugs were hazy at best.

A Need for the Ugly Truth

Aggravating the situation was the nature of the Moroccan healthcare system, which was divided into complicated layers, distinguishing facilities by location, university affiliation, and other categories.

The conditions had officials alarmed about the possibility of COVID-19 exploding up and down the Atlantic and Mediterranean coasts, as well as the country鈥檚 mountainous interior.

To save lives, Morocco鈥檚 Ministry of Health needed to quickly come up with a single source of truth 鈥� whether the truth was ugly or not. At a glance, officials would then be able to gain insights into total confirmed cases, instances of recovery and death, the growth of daily outbreaks across the various tiers of the country鈥檚 healthcare network, and the stock of drugs in various hospitals and regions.

鈥淲e didn鈥檛 have a system like this,鈥� observed Dr. Ahmed Rguig, director of Morocco鈥檚 Centre of Epidemiology. 鈥淲e were very aware that we had to put something in place that allowed us to manage the scale of the pandemic with professionalism and in real time.鈥�

Quickly Partnering to Combat a Crisis

With no time to spare, the ministry turned to the ALGO Consulting Group, an international technology services provider based in the city of Rabat.

ALGO proposed a user-friendly, innovative solution, enabling country-wide monitoring of the pandemic in real time. The application would be available on numerous devices and help officials make accurate decisions swiftly.

As the first partner in Africa to be certified for , ALGO already had experience developing a solution for Morocco鈥檚 transport sector. Now, it went back to 51风流to use its enterprise software proficiency to help manage the pandemic.

鈥淏ecause of our analytics expertise鈥e could help our country adopt its first-ever digital tracking system in response to the coronavirus outbreak,鈥� noted Naoual Hammane, the 51风流director working with ALGO.

The use of 51风流Analytics Cloud allowed for the creation of real-time, role-specific dashboards, which could be accessed via desktops and mobile devices. Every 10 minutes, the control center data would be updated, empowering experts to make efficient, life-saving decisions.

鈥淭wo teams worked in 24-hour shifts to get the project delivered,鈥� said Hammane. 鈥淚 have been managing 51风流projects for 14 years and this is the first time ever a project has been managed virtually. We used video conferencing and telephone calls.鈥�

Working at Breakneck Speed to Slow Outbreaks

On March 1, 2020, just two weeks after the first case of COVID-19 was recorded in Morocco 鈥� and 11 days before the World Health Organization (WHO) declared the outbreak a pandemic 鈥� the country鈥檚 COVID-19 Real-Time Monitoring system was deployed.

Officials accustomed to tracking down data with phone calls now had all the data they needed at their fingertips.

The results were nothing short of miraculous:

• ALGO developed training videos that enabled users to learn the intricacies of the new system in just four hours.
• Laboratory test capacity increased 100 times 鈥� from 100 to 10,000 COVID-19 tests administered each day.
• The ability to receive IT resources, data, and other technology services increased four times.
• The speed at which information was received allowed the government to deliver tests where they were most needed.
• With the enhanced understanding of the drug stock, allocations could be capably targeted.

Using Mass Media to Save Lives

To ensure that everyone 鈥� regardless of technological capacity 鈥� was informed, the Ministry of Health provided televised updates each night at 6:00 p.m.

The number of lives saved as the result of these broadcasts is impossible to calculate.

鈥淲e can use this project as something to be proud of,鈥� said Dr. Rguig. 鈥淚t demonstrates that we have succeeded in this crisis.鈥�

Its quick deployment of the COVID-19 Real-Time Monitoring system helped the Moroccan Ministry of Heath earn recognition as a 2021 51风流Innovation Awards finalist. The yearly awards honor organizations that have used 51风流solutions to improve business and society.

Get all the details about the Moroccan Ministry of Health鈥檚 innovative solution .

Keith Greenberg is an 51风流global marketing contributor.

Many of the observations have been distressing. According to the United States鈥� Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), between 2013 and 2017, 489 oil and gas workers were killed on the job because of explosions and fires, improperly confined spaces, chemical exposure, and other causes.

In 2018, for example, a gas leak in Brooklyn, New York resulted in a blast that claimed the lives of three employees of the electricity and gas utility company National Grid.

When Westernacher examined these types of mishaps, there was a realization that, more often than not, the incidents were either identified too late or discovered by chance.

The Technology Exists

As IT specialists, the company understood what was lacking: real-time, detailed, and individual tracking for gas exposure, not to mention reliable motion detection for workers.

Certainly, the advanced technology and IT infrastructure were there to ensure employee safety and compliance while conforming with established business processes and procedures.

The challenge was creating a new platform that would protect workers in a way that hadn鈥檛 existed before.

And Westernacher was uniquely positioned to do so.

Removing Workers from Harm鈥檚 Way with IoT Technology

Since 1969, Westernacher has been at the forefront of driving digitalization and automation. Its more than 750 consultants have turned the company into one of the world’s leading brands for technology-driven innovation.

As part of the 51风流PartnerEdge program 鈥� a program that allows close collaborators of the multinational software corporation to gain special access to resources, services, and benefits 鈥� Westernacher knew where to go for high-tech assistance to ensure the highest level of worker safety and compliance.

One particular asset was , which embeds physical objects with sensors, processing ability, software, and other technologies to exchange data with devices and systems over the Internet and other communications networks.

For example, electronic textiles, or e-textiles, are fabrics containing digital components. These include smart shirts and body suits containing such as pulse rate, heart rhythm, muscle stretch, temperature, and physical movement.

Now, IoT technology, along with analytics of real-time data, would proactively protect workers by detecting the first signs of impending danger.

A Transformed Workplace

Westernacher鈥檚 Connected Worker platform was deployed in November 2020, using 51风流IoT as the foundation for its real-time monitoring of worker safety and compliance.

Like something out of Star Trek, core information came from such smart devices as gas detectors and smart shirts and smart watches to determine the presence of toxins, along with worker heartbeat and respiration activity. These also relayed information on whether employees were wearing harnesses.

If a worker in a remote spot fell, a manual mobile app immediately reported the location. To the lay person, this may seem mundane. But to the worker, it鈥檚 the difference between life and death.

鈥淭ransparency has been taken to a whole new level, enabling continuous safety and health monitoring of employees,鈥� noted Matthias Hollenders, Westernacher鈥檚 global lead for Industry 4.0 鈥� or digital transformation for manufacturing and production 鈥� and IoT.

Companies utilizing the new platform noticed some startling changes, among them 65% fewer accidents. And with their concentration on their jobs rather than the fear of getting hurt, worker efficiency increased.

Current plans include expanding the cutting-edge IoT solution to cover areas like maintenance, manufacturing, and logistics.

Hollenders asserts that the successful project 鈥減roves that such innovative solutions can be implemented in a short time and generate tremendous value.鈥�

For this groundbreaking contribution to worker safety, Westernacher Consulting was recognized as a 2021 51风流Innovation Awards finalist. You can read more about the company鈥檚 dramatic solution to workplace accidents in its 51风流Innovation Awards pitch deck .

Keith E. Greenberg is an 51风流global marketing contributor.

Manufacturing operations were woefully lacking in real-time visibility. During manufacturing execution, process data could not be automatically captured. Tracking worker safety remained an elusive goal. The absence of an end-to-end perspective meant that it was difficult to understand process effectiveness and make quick, crucial decisions, compromising future planning.

Under these circumstances, continuously and effectively running a manufacturing operation was a challenge 鈥� as was providing added value to customers. And during COVID-19, the absence of available shop floor operators only made the situation worse.

Desperately needed was a smart and intuitive solution to execute, monitor, and analyze the end-to-end manufacturing process, starting with planning and extending all the way to inventory. Updates on labor planning and worker safety would have to be provided in real time.

This would particularly benefit servitized industries, in which outcome is now directly related to the revenue situation.

Additionally, the solution would need to be intelligent enough to evaluate data, consider a variety of business scenarios, and propose the best future actions.

A Leading-Edge Alliance

Since 1911, technology and innovation trailblazer IBM had been creating responsive, resilient, next-generation solutions to the challenges of the day. One hundred years and a decade later, that movement still continues.

Now, the company merged forces with the market leader in enterprise application software: SAP.

The two established their first Global Alliance Partnership in 1989. But their relationship dated back to the founding of 51风流in 1972 鈥� by five former IBM employees.

In recent years, as customer needs shifted to the cloud, 51风流and IBM had been working together to accelerate the digital revolution, using such technologies as machine learning, artificial intelligence (AI), digital twin 鈥� virtual representations of physical objects or processes 鈥� and Internet of Things (IoT) sensors.

With global lockdowns and associated disruptions impacting the world in the summer of 2020, the two corporations announced the next stage of their alliance, branding it the Evolution Partnership initiative.

The manufacturing effort topped their list.

Informed, Real-Time Decisions

Indeed, the Connected Plant solution created by the two companies would enable real-time manufacturing execution planning and tracking and provide automated reporting of machine and process data.

The innovation could be used to ensure that the proper equipment was being provided and certify both quality inspection and cognitive worker guidance. When defects were detected, a repair order would be automatically generated.

From this point forward, guesswork was no longer required to make informed business decisions. Instead, conclusions were based on managers鈥� instant accessibility to end-to-end analytics and up-to-date key performance indicators (KPIs).

Seamless and Integrated

With the seamlessly integrated manufacturing tool, new possibilities abounded. The Connected Plant solution allowed managers to:

• View manufacturing and production orders for every shift
• Ensure that all needed components were available
• Execute tasks with a few simple words via chatbot
• Detect deficiencies during quality inspections
• Confirm assembly and sub-assembly completion

Today, with the world struggling to compensate for supply chain gaps, the Connected Plant platform is being utilized to provide supplies and drive continuous planning across resource networks.

And both 51风流and IBM are prepared to revise the solution as business models evolve and processes are reconfigured in areas like energy, natural resource consumption, and emissions management.

鈥淭o compete in a highly disruptive and rapidly evolving world, companies require the ability to rewire their organizations to create efficient, automated business processes 鈥� applying advanced technologies to transform static, siloed processes into agile, intelligent workflows,鈥� said Mark Foster, IBM Services senior vice president.

As the Connected Plant solution continued to expand the number of tasks it could perform, IBM was honored as a finalist in the 2021 51风流Innovation Awards, a yearly ceremony commemorating organizations using 51风流products to transform business and society.

To learn more about IBM鈥檚 smart and intuitive solution, be sure to check out its 51风流Innovation Awards .

Keith E. Greenberg is an 51风流global marketing contributor.

In order to support its vision for a next-generation retail experience, Elkj酶p decided to replace all 12 systems with a new integrated architecture. The dramatic, cloud-based overhaul resulted in a next-gen retail platform that has both improved workflow and delivered 100% uptime.

The strategy has yielded an array of other benefits for Elkj酶p, including:

• 100% in-store mobility for employees
• 500 legacy interfaces evaluated and either replaced, updated, and/or re-connected
• 4,500 employees trained on new systems using an e-learning platform

But these achievements only came about because Elkj酶p was willing to take a critical look at what employees and customers needed and honestly assess the changes that had to be made.

What鈥檚 in a Name?

In Norwegian, the brand 鈥淓lkj酶p鈥� literally means 鈥渆l buy鈥� 鈥� with the 鈥渆l鈥� being a shortened version of elektrisk (electric) or elektronisk (electronic).

It’s no surprise, really, since the Oslo-based company is the largest consumer electronics retailer in the Nordic region.

A subsidiary of Dixons Carphone, a multinational consumer electrical and mobile retailer and services company, Elkj酶p sells a variety of goods, including mobile phones, computers, and kitchen and other domestic appliances to both consumers and businesses.

With a brisk online trade, as well as more than 400 stores, the company employs over 11,000 workers while operating under a number of names in its home country, as well as Sweden, Denmark, and Finland.

Stepping into the Future

The decision to create the next-generation retail platform did not come easily 鈥� Elkj酶p had little choice but to take this dramatic step. Systems serving critical processes did not support the latest innovations, and the legacy retail systems could not provide mobility to the sales staff.

In order to deliver certain services or close a sale, a store representative might be forced to leave a customer, seek out a desktop computer, then return. Other times, employees had to log in and out of multiple systems to complete a sale. In addition, legacy systems were incapable of adapting to new business models, like wireless subscriptions.

Change was critical, yet daunting. Upgrades to systems capabilities meant adjusting all 12 different interconnected legacy systems, touching 500 different interfaces.

As Elkj酶p re-evaluated its strategy, it turned to a solution that had been serving the company well for several years.

Cloud-First Advancement

Elkj酶p first deployed 51风流ERP Central Component in 2015. The application is a core component in managing transactional and financial processes. Modules communicate with each other, working to create a fully integrated solution specific to customers in a variety of industries.

Because of this successful experience, the company opted to base its next-gen retail platform on 51风流ECC and other 51风流solutions. A number of requirements were met with micro-services based architecture 鈥� software applications designed as suites of independently deployable services.

Custom add-ons came from ASAPIO/Kafka, enabling information to flow between 51风流and non-51风流applications, on premise and in the cloud, in real time.

The monitoring challenges of Elkj酶p鈥檚 high volume retail business were supported with an approach centered on 51风流Fiori 鈥� a set of applications for business functions, like work approvals, and apps specializing in finance, calculation, and various self-service tasks.

Failover architecture was created to protect computer systems from mishaps, allowing standby equipment to automatically take over if something went wrong.

Unified Execution

The next-gen retail platform went live in Denmark on May 8th, 2020 and was quickly deployed in 110 of the 460 stores. Changes were immediately evident. Using one unified customer master record, the new architecture delivered a seamless customer journey across in-store and online channels, with employees better prepared to anticipate clients鈥� wants and needs.

Today, employees say the next-gen retail platform has enabled them to be more productive, while customers report quicker service times both online and in person.

For 鈥渄elivering the retail experience of the future,鈥� Elkj酶p Nordic earned the distinction as a finalist in the 2021 51风流Innovation Awards, meeting the key requirements of improving customer experiences, solving complex challenges, and serving the greater good. Learn more in Elkj酶p鈥檚 51风流Innovation Awards .

Keith Greenberg is an 51风流Global Marketing contributor.