All posts tagged: streamline

Tesla ditches EV inventory discounts to ‘streamline’ sales and delivery

Tesla ditches EV inventory discounts to ‘streamline’ sales and delivery

Published by skeptic

Tesla has ended discounts on inventory across its electric vehicle lineup — even as sales for EVs have flagged — as part of a larger and vague plan by CEO Elon Musk to “streamline the whole Tesla sales and delivery system.” “It has become complex and inefficient,” Musk wrote in a post on X, the social media company he owns, in response to another user’s comment. Musk’s announcement on X comes a day after thousands of Tesla employees lost their jobs. The layoffs, which will affect more than 10% of staff or about 14,000 people, were caused by poor financial performance, one source told TechCrunch. One of Tesla’s delivery workers who was cut this week and spoke to TechCrunch on the condition of anonymity said their location was “short staffed” but still lost multiple employees. Tesla appears to have also eliminated most job listings — save a handful of postings related to its Manufacturing Development Program — from its North America careers page, suggesting a hiring freeze. Rohan Patel, formerly Tesla’s VP of Public Policy …

5 ways to leverage AI to streamline your business workflows in 2024

5 ways to leverage AI to streamline your business workflows in 2024

Published by skeptic

AI has become a major driver of innovation in countless areas of the business sphere. Used right, it has the potential to significantly improve the efficiency of operational workflows, and increase productivity. That said, here are five ways to leverage AI to streamline your business in 2024, and take your operations to the next level. Automate communication workflows To begin with, AI offers countless possibilities when it comes to leveling up communications. Modern business communication platforms and call center solutions, for instance, offer virtual AI assistants to agents. During conversations with customers, these assistants automatically pull relevant records from your CRM to provide information and make exchanges more efficient. Some even monitor conversations and run a real-time sentiment analysis, then offer suggestions to agents when they get stuck or customers become frustrated. Similarly, AIs are now capable of taking over certain types of customer interactions. When it comes to customers calling to get updates on orders, schedule appointments or update profile details, AIs are more than capable of handling these queries. This leaves human agents …

Streamline your mining operations with visual and metric data

Streamline your mining operations with visual and metric data

Published by skeptic

Mining companies are turning to UAS inspection technology, like the Elios 3, to prevent humans from being exposed to dangerous situations. Mines around the world vary in size, material, and age, but they all have the potential to pose risks for the humans who work in them. Thankfully, technological advancements are enhancing mining safety for the people who work there, with drones emerging as a game changer, particularly in confined or inaccessible spaces. The Elios 3, Flyability’s specialised remote visual inspection tool, revolutionises the safety and efficiency of inspections while decreasing downtime. The Elios 3 is a very flexible tool, and its applications in mining include drilling and blast assessment, exploring old workings, volume calculations and stockpile tracking, mapping, and more. Features and capabilities of the Elios 3 The Elios 3 is a specialised drone created to access and collect data in the most challenging environments. It has a collision-tolerant cage along with special flight monitoring settings that help it withstand and correct impact in confined spaces. The drone also carries a unique set of …

7 Ways To Use Google Bard to Streamline Your Productivity

7 Ways To Use Google Bard to Streamline Your Productivity

Published by skeptic

In the current era of information saturation, maintaining productivity is increasingly challenging. However, a solution is at hand with Google Bard, the advanced AI-powered language model. Google Bard represents much more than a simple query-answering tool; it embodies a comprehensive and dynamic personal productivity assistant. This system, powered by a sophisticated algorithm, is intricately designed to refine and enhance your workflow processes. By doing so, it significantly boosts efficiency and operational effectiveness, allowing you to allocate more time and attention to your most pressing priorities. To truly harness this advanced technology, it’s crucial to understand and implement specific strategies. In the forthcoming sections, we will embark on a detailed exploration of seven key strategies. These strategies are meticulously crafted to help you maximize the exceptional capabilities of Bard, turning it into a valuable asset in your day-to-day professional endeavors. 1. Conquer Writer’s Block and Generate Stellar Content Whether you’re facing a blank page for a blog post, struggling with an email, or crafting a social media caption, Bard can be your creative muse. Describe your …

Titan AI leverages generative AI to streamline mobile game development

Titan AI leverages generative AI to streamline mobile game development

Published by skeptic

Generative AI is attracting a significant level of investment, including in the gaming space. Titan AI, a new mobile games studio, raised over $500,000 in pre-seed funding led by Berkeley SkyDeck. Titan AI joins several other generative AI gaming startups that aim to reduce the cost and speed of creating 2D and 3D content for games. Depending on the complexity, mobile games can cost upwards of $250,000 to make. Titan AI uses image generators Stable Diffusion and DALL-E to create 2D graphics and then uses proprietary technology to combine those elements with 3D models. The company is also training AI to build level segments – easy, medium and hard – which co-founder Fabien-Pierre Nicolas claims is another “labor-intensive task.” Titan AI was founded by Nicolas, former vice president of U.S. marketing at SmartNews and Victor Ceitelis, the co-founder of Scenario, a generative AI startup that enables game developers to create custom image generators. The company’s most important objective is to create more inclusive experiences for players who are largely underrepresented in games. “We both saw an …

Harbour secures M to streamline and automate contract drafting

Harbour secures $15M to streamline and automate contract drafting

Published by skeptic

Contract management startup Harbour today announced that it raised $15 million in a Series A funding round that had participation from Getty Images co-founder Jonathan Klein, Scribble Ventures and The Palmer Company. Bringing Harbour’s total raised to $20 million, the new funds will be put toward growing the startup’s team of 12 and scaling its sales and go-to-market efforts, as well as supporting Harbour’s ongoing engineering and product development.   “The biggest challenge the digital contracting industry will face is continuing to strike the right balance between automation and augmentation as AI becomes a stronger force across all markets,” co-founder and CEO Josh Elkes told TechCrunch in an email interview. “Harbour is built to augment a business’ processes, not replace them. We’ve architected the product to easily integrate with other systems and move contracts through an enterprise from draft to execution as seamlessly as possible.” Elkes, who co-founded Harbour in 2019 with Eric Doversberger, spent most of his career licensing content at Downtown Music and Getty Images (which likely explains Klein’s involvement). Doversberger spent over 10 …

iPhone 15’s shift to USB-C has hidden potential to streamline computing

iPhone 15’s shift to USB-C has hidden potential to streamline computing

Published by skeptic

Apple is set to reveal the iPhone 15 at a special event held tomorrow, Tuesday September 12, and we already know a lot about what to expect thanks to rumors and supply chain sources – but this time thanks also to European Union regulators. That last source strongly suggests that the newest iPhone will get a USB-C connector, replacing the Lightning connector that Apple introduced with the iPhone 5 in 2012. That’s not all we expect to see in a new iPhone, but it could be the most significant shift because of what it potentially unlocks. That’s particularly true for the iPhone 15 Pro and Pro Max, which are both expected to get a Thunderbolt port that makes use of the same connector as USB-C, but adds a whole lot of additional capabilities in terms of input and output options, for data, display, power and more. The iPhone getting more hardware input and output capability has ramifications about what kind of role it occupies in the overall computing lives of users. Already, competitors including Samsung …

Runway lands .5M to streamline financial planning for businesses

Runway lands $27.5M to streamline financial planning for businesses

Published by skeptic

Siqi Chen, the former president of Sandbox VR, the brick-and-mortar VR experience franchise, didn’t always have a strong grasp of finance. And it’s something he felt self-conscious about. “I’ve always thought it was something for ‘real business people’ and I could just go and do what I enjoyed, which is product and engineering,” he told TechCrunch in an email interview. “This is the state of the world for most founders today.” After countless frustrating experiences with Excel spreadsheets, Chen was spurred to create an alternative. Alongside co-founders Alejandro Matamala and Anastasis Germanidis, he started Runway, which aims to replace spreadsheets with “intuitive” financial modeling, planning and reporting workflows. “Runway is the first strategic management platform for modern, high-growth technology companies,” Chen said. “[It gives] teams a clear and joyful god’s-eye view of their entire business, from finance to HR, sales, marketing, product and growth — enabling them to make better business decisions faster.” Runway, which connects to existing accounting tools, data warehouses and human resources information systems, allows customers to write formulas and create models …

Indian upskilling platform Skill-Lync cuts 20% jobs to ‘streamline operations’

Indian upskilling platform Skill-Lync cuts 20% jobs to ‘streamline operations’

Published by skeptic

Skill-Lync, an Indian startup offering upskilling programs, has laid off 20% of its workforce — around 225 employees — to reduce operational costs amid the ongoing, global funding crunch for startups. The five-year-old Chennai-based company, which has its headquarters in Palo Alto, started its most job cutting drive on June 27, TechCrunch learned, but they do not appear to be the first to hit the company this year: today’s news comes on top of reports that Skill-Lync laid off over 400 employees in late April. Skill-Lync co-founder Suryanarayanan Paneerselvam confirmed the most recent layoffs today, Thursday, and told TechCrunch that it was a strategic decision to “streamline operations and limit future content and production investments.” (He has yet to comment on the earlier round.) “This decision was not taken lightly, and we have done our utmost to ensure that the process was as transparent and fair as possible for the employees involved,” he said this week, in response to an email that was originally sent to him last week. People familiar with the matter told …

Episode Six raises M to streamline payment processes

Episode Six raises $48M to streamline payment processes

Published by skeptic

Episode Six, a global payments and banking infrastructure provider, today announced that it raised $48 million in a Series C funding round led by Avenir with participation from Anthos Capital. In an email, CEO John Mitchell said that the tranche will be used to expand Episode Six’s go-to-market efforts and scale its business as the company looks to drive digital transformation journeys for banks and companies operating within the payments space. Episode Six was founded in 2015 by Mitchell, Chermaine Hu and Futeh Kao. Seeking to overcome the limitations of legacy payments tech, the co-founders built a platform designed to streamline various payment processes while reducing costs. “For CTOs and heads of product who want to grow their books and create competitive products, our platform allows them to launch new products quickly to meet a customer’s evolving needs and capture market share,” Mitchell told TechCrunch in an email interview. “For CIOs looking for payments at scale with safety, security, reliability and cost effectiveness, the platform delivers bank-grade payments’ infrastructure built by industry experts.” Episode Six offers …