The availability of choice has seeped into every aspect of modern day life. From the cars we drive to the food we eat and the holidays we take, to the way we choose to spend our leisure time, the possibilities for consumers have become almost limitless.

As I noted in Part 1 of this blog, financial workers have always been at the forefront of data collection, structure and management. That doesn’t mean, however, that our careers are impervious to obsolescence. Industry 4.0 is a technological revolution, and this is no time to rest on our pre-transformation laurels. Everyone in the finance ecosystem needs to be on top of incoming technologies, and understand, as best as one can, their long-term implications.

We live in a time of exponentially increasing distractions. We are constantly bombarded by information whether it be social, news or simply advertising. We carry devices with us wherever we go to make sure we don’t miss any of this. While this constant “connectedness” may seem like the ultimate step in the quest to stay informed, perhaps it does exactly the opposite?

I recently immigrated to another country and I have been thinking about the similarities between immigrating and companies changing their ERP solutions. From refereeing and analyzing risks, ensuring that all important people agree on the decisions and embracing change, to remaining focused on the end result, and never forgetting the reason for making the decision. The processes have many parallels.

On a recent business trip to Cape Town, I had the pleasure of visiting a retail outlet that is operating completely plastic-free. This got me thinking about the concept of a circular economy.

Visualize taking a straight line and bending it inwards on itself until the endpoints meet to form a circle. This depicts the evolution from the existing linear economy to an insular one in which materials, energy, and resources are fed back into the loop – a circular economy.

The echoes of Auld Lang Syne had barely faded before news headlines started to warn us that 2019 would be another year of tough breaks, particularly where businesses are concerned.

Globally – the outlook is bleak, with markets across the globe under significant economic stress. In the face of increasing trade tensions and the tightening of financial conditions, the world is braced for a tense time in the New Year ahead.

At the beginning of October last year, we held what has been widely regarded as our best customer event to date. Alongside guest speakers from within the SYSPRO community, Nick Peters, the Editorial Director at The Manufacturer magazine delivered a presentation which raised a very interesting talking point around how businesses react during hard times; such as recession or the ongoing Brexit uncertainty.

With all the current discussions about Industry 4.0 and the digitalization of industrial value chains, it seems to me that people sometimes forget to mention my own field of endeavour: finance. I suppose that’s not surprising. Finance, alas, may not be the sexiest component of the evolving Industry 4.0 value chain. When the awards are handed out, it’s the men and women implementing automation to the shop floor, introducing AI-backed chat bots into enterprise-wide collaborative networks, or applying predictive analytics for enormous savings in inventory and logistics, who go home with the ribbons, the accolades, the admiration and the Internet articles.

As far as food recalls go, what a busy year it has been. In North America, the food and beverage industry has seen a massive increase in the units recalled. The USA is experiencing a 92.7% spike in FDA recalls and an 83.4% increase in recalled pounds – cited by USDA, since 2012.

Most recently, here in Canada, we have all been affected by the massive romaine lettuce recall, and even over the past few days kale was seeing a massive upturn in sales due to the recall of romaine, but now kale has been recalled over possible Listeria contamination in Eat Brands salad shake ups kits as confirmed by the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA). Our pets are also at risk; at the time of writing this blog, eight dog food brands are being recalled due to potentially deadly levels of vitamin D.

It felt like just yesterday that I was discussing the eLearning trends of 2018. And here I am, seeing what’s trending in 2019. I am convinced the world is spinning faster each year.

For 2019, the front runner is still Virtual Reality. I still find this a challenging trend as our customers and partners would be required to have the hardware to make use of this type of learning. This cannot be guaranteed. We’d need to weigh up the benefit of creating such education with how much it would be used. So, for now, I’ll keep the goggles on the shelf.