As the way the world works continues to change, improving human capital to keep employees happy and engaged has never been so important

An organisation is only as good as its employees. And as technology continues to change the way the world works, improving human capital has never been as important.

A term made popular in the 1960s by American economists Gary Becker and Jacob Mincer, ‘human capital’ refers to the economic value of a worker's experience and skills, including assets like education, training, intelligence and skills.

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KPMG is set to establish its Centre of Excellence (CoE) for metaverse and digital twins. KPMG announced this decision along the sidelines of the LEAP tech conference 2023. For this, KPMG will bring together a 'broad collective', with Microsoft bringing its infrastructure and gaming platform and Ericsson utilising its 5G tech and network, as well as Metakey as the technical partner to create three-dimensional objects, a press release shared by Zawya read.

Read more at: https://yourstory.com/ys-gulf/kpmg-to-establish-centre-of-excellence-metaverse-saudi-arabia

Gartner survey shows 'customer enablement' is most powerful value chain service but that under a quarter of supply chain organisations are offering this

Supply chain organisations that help customers meet their business goals are twice as likely to attract repeat business compared to those that focus only on customer satisfaction or ease of use, according to a survey by Gartner.

The survey also found that customer enablement is only being emphasised by 23% of supply chain organisations today, but the strategy will become the norm within five years.

Read more on Supply Chain Digital here.

Financial firms in Britain and the European Union remained under significant pressure to comply with diverging environmental, social and governance (ESG) rules over the past six months, KPMG's Regulatory Barometer showed on Monday.

The barometer, aimed at helping firms with compliance planning, also tracks the scale of the divergence between UK and EU regulations, with KPMG saying the biggest differences are in areas like customer protection and access to markets.

Read more on Reuters here.

Business leaders have once again been issued with a wake-up call regarding their IT supply chain. A new study suggests that most firms have too much confidence in their mission-critical IT contractors, with half of leaders admitting that while it could lead to outages, they are not routinely assessing their suppliers.

At the start of 2023, researchers found that organisations were too trusting of Managed Service Providers (MSPs). Despite 20% of companies hit by cyber-attacked in the last year saying attacks had come through MSPs, just four-in-ten believed they need to make sure MSPs were certified in providing cyber security essentials, while only one-third agreed personnel of providers should undergo security checks before taking on such work.

Read more on Consultancy UK here.

Public procurement laws are changing. The UK Government’s Procurement Bill is working its way through Parliament and could now be introduced as early as the end of 2023.

In this briefing, David Hansom of Clyde & Co and Susan Hilgers of Proxima look at what is changing and what you can do now to prepare for the biggest changes to procurement practice since 2015.

Read more on Civil Service World here.

TTEC Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ:TTEC), one of the largest global customer experience (CX) technology and services innovators for end-to-end digital CX solutions, today announced that Adam Foster has been named President of TTEC EMEA.

"Our industry is rapidly evolving and ever more global. TTEC is committed to driving significant growth across Europe, Middle East, and Africa and we will continue to invest in top talent. That's why I am thrilled to welcome Adam Foster to the TTEC family," said Ken Tuchman, Chairman and CEO, TTEC.

Ken continued, "With a strong track record of executing digitally enabled growth strategies, Adam will be integral to connecting TTEC's broad set of capabilities–from CX technology to outsourcing excellence–for clients across the region."

Read more on TTEC here.

TCS’s BaNCS platform continues to be extremely popular with UK Life and Pensions providers as long-term client the Phoenix Group signs to extend its use across its latest acquisition.

Phoenix Group is a key client for TCS with a relationship going back 18+ years, having started life as a specialist consolidator of life insurance and pension funds that are closed to new business (so called ‘Zombie funds’). Alongside this, it has developed an ‘open book’ business which creates and underwrites new saving and retirement products underpinned by a strategic partnership with Standard Life Aberdeen following Phoenix Group’s acquisition of Standard Life Assurance Limited in 2018, and which signed with TCS in 2019 (see TCS purple patch continues).

Read more on TechMarketView here. 

We saw a further round of layoff announcements yesterday, as yet more companies look to reduce costs and re-prioritise resources. Revenue growth and net income have come under increasing pressure for many organisations due to a post-pandemic slowdown and rising inflation.

Read more at TechMarketView here.

We all certainly know that business and government leaders have been challenged by a digital skills shortage for years. The scarcity of tech talent has been caused, in part, by the rapid business changes of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, the effects of COVID-19 and the Great Resignation that followed. Now, with the added threat of economic recession, the digital skills gap has only gotten harder to fill. The 2022 Digital Leadership  report published by Nash found almost 70 percent of digital leaders globally felt they couldn’t keep up with tech trends due to a lack of skilled labor. 

During this Fourth Industrial Revolution, more and more companies have gone from just talking about the need to transform to primarily digital processes and practices to beginning their journey. Unfortunately, many are finding they have not yet created, hired and grown the technical talent they need. These digital transformation challenges were also accelerated by COVID-19 with companies having to learn to sell, serve customers and run their business remotely. And of course, the pandemic also caused many people to reassess their work/life balance and professional priorities. 

Read more on Talent Management here.