News & Events

Session Title: Building Strong Foundations for Digital Success Speaker: Jason Hein, Director of Delivery, Earley Information Science With the “Soaring 20s” for digital just around the corner, there is a whirlwind of new opportunities and new potential directions for companies planning for the next step in their digital maturity. Concepts like Conversational Commerce, Product Configurators, Recommendation Engines, and Mass Personalization may be new now, but they might quickly become table stakes for digitally savvy firms. But what if your firm is behind the curve? What steps can you take to prepare for digital in ways that make success more likely (and help you sidesteps the costly mistakes others have made). In this session Jason Hein from EIS will lay out a simple, easy-to-explain set of foundational practices for those who are new to KM (or those who need to explain KM to non-experts). We will cover the basics of the digital success and highlight a process to build out the assets needed to support digital strategies of all varieties, from those listed above to those that haven’t yet hit the market.

Session Title: Making Chat and Voice Bots Scalable, Portable and Reusable Speaker: Seth Earley, CEO & Founder, Earley Information Science Abstract: Chat bots are brittle and costly to scale. At the end of the day, a chatbot is a channel to data, content and knowledge. This means that sound information retrieval approaches have to be followed. AI content should not be considered as significantly different from other content (with some exceptions). In this session we will discuss how to solve problems today and prepare the organization for the future by modeling content and knowledge assets so that they can be reused in multiple contexts from traditional search and retrieval through AI driven approaches. This will show leadership how to approach chat and voice bots so that content and data is flexible and usable across contexts and applications.

Workshop Title: Differentiating Your Digital Business with World-Class Product Rulebooks Speaker: Jason Hein, Director, Delivery Services, Earley Information Science Are your customers frustrated with your digital experience because they can't find the products they want to buy? Are you tired of hearing, “If Amazon can do it, why can't we?" Takeaways: In the rush to launch digital, many companies invest in technology, process, and people without considering how each investment supports the products they sell. This results in poor discovery, confusing product pages, low sales, and disappointed customers. In this workshop, we'll discuss how to build a master rulebook for product information, i.e., a “productpaedia.” You’ll walk away with a product information readiness scorecard and a roadmap for how to build (and use) your productpaedia to differentiate your digital experience for customers.

Session Title: Building Effective AI: Breaking Down Data Silos Speakers: Seth Earley, CEO & Founder of Earley Information Science, Cal Al-Dhubaib, Managing Partner, Pandata Abstract: Artificial Intelligence (AI) has the potential to completely revolutionize manufacturing as we know it today. From operational gains in production efficiencies to unlocking new markets and sales opportunities, AI, when built correctly, has the power to transform how and where we do business. In fact, great AI can only be built from a foundation of well-governed, clean, and collaborative data sets. In order to execute upon your desired objectives, AI applications must rest upon a framework of data that’s coordinated through taxonomy, attribute schema, and relationships. In this discussion, we’ll present four different siloed data challenges that can trip up a manufacturer’s AI initiative, and best practices to overcome them. Attendees will learn how (data or AI) will: Improve product data availability through their distributor channels through clean, completed data Break down silos between their marketing and engineering functions Streamline product onboarding, from initial R&D to pushing into distribution channels Build a digital roadmap for plant operations

Speaker: Seth Earley Topic: Using Ontologies to Power AI Systems There’s a great deal of confusion about the role of a knowledge architecture in artificial intelligence projects. Some people don’t believe that any reference data is necessary. But in reality reference data is required- even if there is no metadata or architecture definitions outside defined externally for an AI algorithm, someone has made the decisions about architecture and classification within the program. However, this will not work for every organization because there are terms, workflows, product attributes, and organizing principles that are unique to the organization and that need to be defined for AI tools to work most effectively.

About the Conference: Take your knowledge, your business, and your industry to new heights. Meet face-to-face with your trading partners, solution providers and experts from a wide range of industries. Explore topics such as Data Quality & Data Management, Blockchain, Supply Chain Innovation & Emerging Technologies, Inventory Accuracy, Traceability & Visibility, Artificial Intelligence & Machine Learning, IoT & Digital Disruption, Unique Identification and E-Commerce.

Session Title: Product Data Strategy: No More “Clean-Up on Server 3” Speaker: Jason Hein Distributors have had no bigger technology headache than managing and integrating fragmented product/content databases, with often messy and expensive cleanup projects. With recent advances in PIM/MDM technologies (Product Information Management/Multi-Domain Management), new approaches are possible that are less expensive, more effective and provide faster ROI on investments in the content asset while using data to drive the roadmap for user experience. This session identifies why data-cleanup projects fail and outlines the technology developments that are opening up new ways to manage product information and content that are more scalable and drive business results quickly.

CS101. The Rise Of Artificial Intelligence Tuesday, May 21: 10:45 a.m. - 11:45 a.m. Depending on who you talk to, AI will either enable massive productivity gains from your employees or replace them entirely. Hype aside, AI is coming, and companies need to understand how to harness it. Despite the promise of “plug and play” technology, real AI requires varying degrees of information architecture (IA), knowledge engineering, product and content architecture, and high-quality data sources to be effective. Seth Earley demystifies AI in this mini-keynote. Speaker: Seth Earley, Founder and CEO, Earley Information Science