AU2016100520A4 - ABSTRACT A solution provided as a platform that collects data and provides reporting on the work patterns of human and machine interactions to optimize the productivity of Knowledge Workers. - Google Patents

Abstract

Patents Act 1990 INNOVATION PATENT WORK PATTERNS - PLATFORM AS A SERVICE (PaaS) WORK PATTERNS - PLATFORM AS A SERVICE (PaaS) A solution provided as a platform that collects data and provides reporting on the work patterns of human and machine interactions to optimize the productivity of Knowledge Workers. Fig. 1 - Infrastructure Layer - Public Cloud Work Pattern - Platform as a Service \ 1101 102 10 Il P lI I0 1I1 1 1 1 1 ------ I1 l

Description

WORK PATTERNS - PLATFORM AS A SERVICE (PaaS) TECHNICAL FIELD

[0001] The present invention allows for the business optimization of humans and machines through the collection of recorded work activities that form a work pattern for assessment and analysis. The solution collects from sources of data from third party software and data extraction tools, text to data and OCR sources, and is provided to customers and developers as a secure centralized multi-tenant platform as a service.

BACKGROUND OF INVENTION

[0002] The increase in automation and artificial intelligence has changed the Work Patterns of human labor in the 21st Century. The Industrial Age of the 19th century was supplanted by the Information Age in the late 20th century which has affected the workforce in several ways. It created a situation in which workers who perform tasks which were easily automated have been forced to find knowledge based work. These workers have also been forced to compete in a global job market with the increase in 'outsourcing' of technological and manufacturing industries. This poses several problems for workers in industrial societies, because the solutions involve lowering their working time, and as such is usually highly resisted.

[0003] The Workforce: There are three main work roles that have been strongly impacted by the Information Age. These are; [0004] Service Workers (hospital, home care and nursing home workers, property services, field maintenance, cleaning, security officers and food service workers) technological advances have meant that some roles focusing on customer service or manual labor may now be mechanically assisted or technologically mediated i.e. online booking, electronic phone services, mechanical devices to perform menial tasks such as plate washing.

[0005] Production Workers (Construction Workers, Process Operatives or Factory Workers) involved in manufacturing goods and repetitive office processes, are beginning to disappear, either through outsourcing or automation. Production Workers in industrialized nations are unable to compete with workers in developed countries and either loses their jobs through outsourcing or forced to accept wage cuts, as itinerant workers travel to their location.

[0006] Knowledge Workers (Engineers, Medical Practitioners, Lawyers, Teachers, Financiers, Architects, Scientists, Technologists). Such knowledge workers are also labelled Professionals - Professional workers. Knowledge workers are workers whose main capital is knowledge and whose job is to "think for a living". Knowledge work can be differentiated from other forms of work by its emphasis on "non-routine" problem solving that requires a combination of convergent, divergent, and creative thinking. These Knowledge Workers are able to compete successfully in the world market and can receive higher wages.

[0007] The internet has made it possible for knowledge workers in developing countries to provide services worldwide and compete directly with their counterparts in developed nations. This has had several major consequences, including increased opportunity in developing countries and the globalization of the workforce. Knowledge Workers in developing countries have a competitive advantage which translates into increased opportunities and higher wages. The full impact on the workforce in developed countries is complex and has downsides in terms of copyright infringement, management of intellectual property, and brand dilution.

[0008] The explosion in mobile device and networks over the last decade has also seen a shift in the technological work practices of knowledge workers. The dramatic increase in 'bring your own device' (BYOD) practice has seen an increase in productivity previously not possible with standard desktop computing. Workers are now able to work on the move or at home with ease.

[0009] Computing Everywhere: Ubiquitous computing is the third wave in computing. First was the Mainframe Era, which provided centralized processing. Then came the Personal Computing Era where single processing devices were available to a person and now is the Ubiquitous Computing Era where computing is available anytime and everywhere, from any source (in the cloud). This has given rise to industries becoming more informationintensive and less labor and capital-intensive.

[0010] This trend has important implications for the workforce, namely workers becoming increasingly productive as the value of their labor decreases. There are also important implications for society itself; not only is the value of labor decreased, the value of capital is also diminished. In the classical model, investments in human capital and financial capital were important predictors of the performance of a new venture. It now seems possible for a group of relatively inexperienced people with limited capital to succeed on a large scale.

[0011] The future of business is algorithmic and that allow the integration and delivery via a platform as a service. An Algorithm is set of rules for accomplishing an activity in a certain number of tasks. Algorithms are essential for computers to process information. As such, they have become central to the daily lives of Knowledge Workers. Algorithms have become increasingly sophisticated, allowing businesses to move from a space where they ask customers what they want to one where they understand what customers are actually doing and can adapt accordingly. Knowledge Workers are becoming more reliant on machines as autonomous activity improve productivity, which increases operational efficiency and enhances security of physical assets. Machines with the ability to self-sustain, raise new issues of trust, ethics and legal status which will impact customer service, digital commerce, marketing and sales processes, and are creating a new digital disruption.

[0012] As businesses increase their dependence on information technology, the number of fields in which knowledge workers must operate has expanded dramatically. Managing knowledge workers can be a difficult task and most prefer some level of autonomy. Those who manage knowledge workers are often knowledge workers themselves, or have been in the past. Projects must be carefully considered before assigning to a knowledge worker, as their interest and goals will affect the quality of the completed project. Knowledge workers must therefore be treated and considered as individuals.

[0013] Work Patterns - Platform as a service (PaaS) is a cloud computing service that provides a platform allowing customers to develop, run, integrate, and manage productivity applications without the complexity of building and maintaining the infrastructure typically associated with developing and launching an application. Work Patterns - PaaS can be delivered in two ways: as a public cloud service from a provider, where the customer controls software deployment and configuration settings, and the provider provides the networks, servers, storage and other services to host the customer's application; or as software installed in private data centers or public infrastructure as a service and managed by internal IT departments [0014] Work Patterns - PaaS is a management system, its dashboards are a presentation of people's activities in a measurable format. Management can make fact based decisions or instruct further analysis to form an opinion as to 'what' is 'productivity' and tailor to its needs to 'how' productivity should be captured and reported.

[0015] In Work Patterns - PaaS case, the ability to analyze, measure and report on productivity and optimization relies on the following a number of inputs (including but not limited to) areas using the following information that can be extracted into dashboards;

Work Pattern = Function / Role / Capability / Activity / Duration / Volume / Cost / Outcome / Value

Productivity = Activity / Capability / Duration / Volume Optimization = Productivity / Cost / Outcome / Value

As well as additional reports on the following;

Capability = Skills / Experience / Qualification Capacity = Function / Role / Productivity / Optimization [0016] The aphorism "what gets measured gets done", refers to a number employee-performance management and personal development frameworks such as SMART (Specific, Measurable, Assignable, Realistic and Time-related) criteria of Management by Objectives (MBO) also known as Management by Results (MBR), which was first popularized by Peter Drucker in 1954, with an important part of these methodologies being the measurement and comparison of the employee's actual performance with the standards set. Ideally, when employees themselves have been involved with the goal setting and choosing the course of action to be followed by them, they are more likely to fulfill their activities and creates a culture of innovation and progress. For Management, its fact based decisions because they can measure input expense and return value of people. For People (including Management), its self-management and progression because reporting and administration is automated giving rise to more time to the outcome of activities versus time measurement on the inputs. Importantly, reward and recognition relies on the individual completion of activities that are measurable, therefore linking output to contribution and performance.

[0017] With machines, input expense and return value is 100% measurable. For businesses that subscribe to measurement to make fact based decisions, then machines will thrive. The problem both Business and people face is they can't truly measure people.

[0018] Specifically, for businesses in financial services and governments contracting professional people at no time are people's activities measured, only their KPI achievement. By then, it's too late. The productivity gains along the journey have been lost and retrospective analysis takes over, at an even greater cost, often resulting in an overall loss of money, time and waste that can never be recovered. Take out: If you can't measure it, then don't do it.

[0019] Work Patterns - PaaS can be used as a protection case for or against the replacement of professionals by machines or argue the case for select replacement (a machine is 100% measurable vs. a human). Emphasis is one the data collection (including tools that convert, scan or output hand written notes to a data format that can be analyzed by a machine, be that from meeting, note taking and associated collaboration tools and systems; time and human effort recording and input tools; and systems and resource planning, remuneration and payment tools and systems used by office workers and professionals in the course of their work. Work Patterns - PaaS is specific that of collecting, storing, analyzing and extracting data that can represent a human or machines, time (effort), participation pre, during and post a meeting, and performance to that of an activity based contract.

[0020] Work Patterns - PaaS provides an environment for developers and companies to create, host and deploy agent collector that integrate into other 3rd party applications based on Work Patterns PaaS, saving developers from the complexities of the infrastructure side (setting up, configuring and managing elements such as servers and databases). Work Patterns - PaaS can improve the speed of developing an application, and allow the companies to focus on the application itself.

[0021] With Work Patterns, the solution can be hosted in a multitenant environment in the cloud by a PaaS provider, or IT department at the customer premises; in either model it includes the runtime, middleware, operating system, virtualization, servers, storage and networking. Development tools provided by the vendor are customized according to the needs of the customer. The customer can choose to maintain the software, or have the vendor maintain it.

[0022] Work Patterns - PaaS will also include application design, application development, testing and deployment, as well as services such as team collaboration, web service integration, database integration, security, scalability, storage, persistence, state management, application versioning, application instrumentation, and developer community facilitation. Besides the service engineering aspects, Work Patterns - PaaS offerings include mechanisms for service management, such as monitoring, workflow management, discovery and reservation.

SUMMARY OF INVENTION

[0023] This solution invention provides a complete framework and platform provided as a service for the collection and correlation of work activities, and resulting work patterns that blends and reports the activities of humans and machines to improve productivity and optimize a business. WORK PATTERNS - PLATFORM AS A SERVICE (PaaS)

BRIEF DESCRIPTIONS OF DRAWINGS

[0024] Fig.l is an infrastructure diagram of the solution that is for an organization or third-party developer to access Work Patterns as part of a Platform as a Service (PaaS) offering.

[0025] Fig.2 is an organization (human and machine) diagram of the dashboards and setup screens [0026] Fig.3 shows the correlation of Work Pattern focus areas (human and machine) diagram and relationship to collectors and dashboards.

DETAILED DESCRIPTIONS OF DRAWINGS

[0027] Turning to Fig. 1, an infrastructure diagram of the solution that is for organization or third-party developer that has all their servers hosted in the internet cloud, with the organisations end-user devices and automated machines located in their local premises. The virtual or physical server 101 hosting public API or HTTP/HTTPS web services acts as the gateway for communication via the Internet 106 with any qualified web client but specifically a custom written software agent on end user devices; workstations 107, Laptops 108, Tablets 109, Smartphones 110, and Autonomous Machines 112, all have a resident software agent that collects information on activities performed. The LDAP Server 102, uses, Lightweight Directory Access Protocol, an Internet protocol that email and other programs use to look up information, is used to provide contextual information about the organization. The dashboard server 103 provides the information from the devices 107-110 & 112 and stored in a data format held in a database 105. Additional electronic files can be stored in either a common cloud storage service provider 103 or a specified network location that links back to the database. Additional server date sources 104 can be added to the data as required to provide alternate information for dashboard Additional supporting policies and procedures can be stored in various document retrieval systems 106, and additional Human Resource 107 records can be linked or data incorporated into the dashboard server 103.

[0028] Turning now to Fig. 2, User Layer and Setup Screens, a privileged user can access a screens to setup Work Patterns 201, Productivity Capture 202, and Optimization Capture 203, these screens set the collection from data sources within the organization from Humans 208 and Machines 207 that can be then represented in the dashboards; Work Patterns Dashboard 204, Capability Dashboard 205, and Capacity Dashboard 206. These dashboards can then be accessed by a Human 208 [0029] Turning now to Fig. 3 Work Pattern Focus Areas depicts the various modalities 301 and collates them to input of Collectors and Dashboards 302.

Claims (4)

1. WORK PATTERNS - PLATFORM AS A SERVICE (PaaS) The claims defining the invention are as follows:

   1. Helps organisations examine the impact of automation on jobs
2. 2. Helps organisations interpret time-based activities be that of humans or machines
3. 3. Helps organisations understand their work patterns to measure productivity.
4. 4. Helps organisations manage capacity and capability to optimize business performance.