Blog, News & Events

Here’s a selection of the latest news, views and insights from industry leaders and experts from across the globe.

Blog

International Men’s Day 2023

At ASM we’re recognising International Men’s Day by celebrating the positive value men bring to the world, their families and communities, highlighting our positive role models whilst also raising awareness of men’s well-being.

This year’s theme is Zero Male Suicide as men are three times more likely than women to die by suicide. We can all help address this crisis by encouraging men to reach out for support with their mental health.

We invited all colleagues to a fantastic webinar with ANDYSMANCLUB. ANDYSMANCLUB are a men’s suicide prevention charity, offering free-to-attend peer-to-peer support groups in person and online. Their purpose is to end the stigma surrounding men’s mental health and help men through the power of conversation.

By encouraging the power of conversation, be it a quick chat, a more formal check-in, or a shared story, together we can make a difference.

internationalmensday.com
andysmanclub.co.uk

Blog

Vuzix Sales Enablement Session

We were thrilled to host our partner, Vuzix for our November Sales Enablement session at our HQ. Thanks to Jonathan Nelson, Strategic Sales Manager at Vuzix for the engaging and enjoyable session.

Vuzix connects the modern deskless workforce with Assisted and Augmented Reality (aR and AR) wearable technology, providing high-performance smart glasses that enable see-what-I-see remote guidance, teleconferencing, IOT visualisation and digital work instructions.

Adele Hope-Urwin, Head of Vendor Alliances said:

“I am thrilled to have secured our partnership with Vuzix and to add their assisted reality products to our vendor portfolio. As our newest vendor partnership, I’m excited to host Vuzix at our Cheshire HQ for an engaging training session with our sales team”.

Jonathan Nelson, Strategic Sales Manager at Vuzix said:

“We’re really excited to add ASM as a value added partner and are looking forward to sharing our skills and knowledge to continue to innovate and offer an exceptional customer experience to our customers”.

Blog

Something spooky at ASM

There’s been some frightening goings on in the office today with all our teams getting involved. 

We held competitions throughout the day with some fantastic entries. Laura Helsby won for her fantastically fiendish cupcakes, Becci Darby created the best pumpkin of the day and Jasmine Elliott spooked the office the most with their fancy dress.

Blog

International Women’s Day 2023

Technology has typically been a male dominated sector but at ASM we’re very proud to say 66% of our workforce is female.

Today we’ve been celebrating all of our fantastic team with some sweets treats while raising awareness about discrimination.

The aim of the IWD 2023 #EmbraceEquity campaign theme is to get the world talking about Why equal opportunities aren’t enough. People start from different places, so true inclusion and belonging require equitable action. Read more about this here.

Blog

Top Emerging Technologies for 2022

We talk about Emerging Technology a lot, whether that be on our podcast, ASM Connected or in our day to day work with our customers. During a keynote speech at ASM Connect, Futurist Matt Griffin argued that those who think we’re not living in sci-fi times are wrong, so we decided to explore some of the key emerging tech trends we’ve seen throughout 2022.

Conversations around the newest generation of wireless technology, 5G are happening more frequently as more industries adopt and see benefits. In ASM Connected episode 9, Inma Martinez, Digital Pioneer and AI Scientist shares that anyone offering digital products and services are going to be part of the new telecom industry with technologies such as 5G, Edge and Cloud Computing making up the technology of the new century. 5G differs from 4G and 3G because the benefits go far beyond connecting to a smartphone, and play a vital part in the digital ecosystem of the future.

Want to work from anywhere? With the rise of Virtual Reality (VR), more and more people are successfully thriving in this new digital world. At ASM Connect, Futurist Matt Griffin spoke about the notion of ‘Working from Anywhere’ and how this also extends to working within VR, and not just working away from the traditional office. It seems that everyone is talking about the metaverse and how the internet as we know it will look completely different in the future. Futurist Amelia Kallman in episode 5 of ASM Connected gave us some great insights on what we can expect, such as how it will be a decentralised network of immersive spaces that connect to create one universe. Amelia shared that one of the practical challenges will involve uniting the many spaces which currently exist as a multiverse, such as Fortnite, Roblox and Minecraft, and making them interoperable so users can move from one space to another, like we do with the Internet. There is lots to look forward to with this technology, and who knows, perhaps one day, you’ll be listening to ASM Connected in the metaverse!

Moving onto Synthetic Data, which tends to be most commonly used in the financial services and healthcare industries, is information that’s artificially and algorithmically manufactured and stands in for real life data where there are constraints around using sensitive or regulated information. In series 3, episode 4 of ASM Connected, Simon Godfrey shares insights about the opportunities for public sector organisations to leverage Synthetic Data and Digital Twins to drive better outcomes.

Augmented Reality (AR) is an emerging tech trend that gained popularity during the pandemic when businesses were forced to work remotely. Richard Price spoke about a study conducted in the healthcare sector about patients attitudes to clinicians wearing AR goggles such as Google Glass and Microsoft HoloLens. They found that when clinicians were wearing headsets such as Google Glass, patients weren’t as opposed to them because they were smaller and more discreet, whereas when clinicians wore headsets such as the Microsoft HoloLens patients felt it created a barrier between them and the doctor.

Deepfake technology is frightfully gaining significant traction around the world. This technology leverages machine learning and artificial intelligence to manipulate audio and visual content to replicate someone else’s appearance. Deepfakes can be unbelievably realistic so exercising caution and discretion is paramount. In episode 5 of ASM Connected, series 3, we spoke to Öykü Işık, Professor of Digital Strategy and Cybersecurity at IMD Business School, who shared insights about FakeCatcher, the world’s first real-time deepfake detector, launched by Intel, which detects fake videos with 96% accuracy by looking for clues of what makes someone human, which is subtle blood flow captured in the pixels of a video.

Assisted Reality (aR) is often confused with Augmented Reality (AR) however aR is a reality first, digital second experience. Our partner, RealWear is the world’s leading provider of Assisted Reality wearable devices which connect the modern frontline worker to all the information they need, when they need it. Workers are able to utilise the aR technology to leverage the hands-free verification and visual documentation they need to fulfil their role and don’t risk the same safety concerns linked to bulky hand held equipment.

Finally, Natural Language Processing (NLP). When choosing technology, you should always consider how it helps people to work more efficiently. Our partner, Primer AI are an industry leader in NLP technologies and work with government agencies, financial institutions and more to automate text-based workflows at scale with human level quality. In episode 15 of ASM Connected, Primer AI’s Geoffrey Nicholls MBE and Nick Melgaard spoke about the practical benefits NLP technology can deliver to the defence sector and beyond. Primer AI are experts in addressing some of the National Security use cases such as identifying disinformation campaigns, monitoring global events in real time and responding to cybersecurity attacks.

We’ve really enjoyed working with so many emerging technologies throughout 2022 as well as discovering from our podcast guests about what else we can expect to see in the future. The emerging tech landscape is continuing to grow, but the question is, are you prepared?

Blog, Charity

Christmas Jumper Day 2022

The ASM team celebrated Christmas Jumper Day on Thursday 8 December to raise money for Save The Children.

Save the Children is a UK charity for children that works in over 100 countries to make sure children are fed, learning and treated fairly.

We hosted a Christmas Jumper competition where the team came to work wearing their best Christmas Jumper, which was judged by some of the children and teachers from Rudheath Primary Academy. ASM also donated selection boxes to the school as a thank you.

The winners of the wackiest Christmas Jumper competition were Chloe Bentley from the Customer Services team in first place, Ruta Porwoll from the European Sales team was the runner up, and Mark Buckley from the Sales team took home third place.

Blog

ASM and GoTo Boost

We were thrilled to co host ASM Boost with GoTo on Wednesday 16 November at the Sea Containers on London’s iconic Southbank.

Adele Hope-Urwin, Head of Vendor Alliances said

“This event is a great opportunity to showcase GoTo’s innovative unified communications solutions in a relaxed networking environment”

GoTo’s flexible-work software, including GoTo Connect, GoTo Resolve, Rescue, Central and more is built for small and medium sized business IT departments, but powerful enough for the enterprise. GoTo software is designed to support end-users’ unified communications and collaboration (UCC) and IT management.

Blog

RealWear Sales Enablement Session

We were thrilled to host our partner, RealWear for our November Sales Enablement session at our HQ. Thanks to Derrick Sawyer, Regional Director for Northern Europe and Ben Wright, Customer Success Manager for EMEA at RealWear for the engaging and enjoyable update and demo of the RealWear product suite.

Adele Hope-Urwin, Head of Vendor Alliances said

“I am thrilled to have secured our partnership with RealWear and to add their market leading assisted reality products to our vendor portfolio. As our newest vendor partnership, I’m excited to host RealWear at our Cheshire HQ for an engaging training session with our sales team”.

RealWear is the world’s leading provider of assisted reality wearable solutions that engage, empower and elevate the modern front line industrial worker to perform work tasks more safely, and with increased efficiency and precision.

Derrick Sawyer, Regional Director for Northern Europe at RealWear said

“RealWear is excited to join our distribution partner ASM to collaborate on all things RealWear! We look forward to sharing with the ASM team the skills and knowledge to continue to innovate and empower today’s frontline worker and offer an exceptional customer experience to our mutual customers”.

Blog

Halloween Hauntings at our HQ

The team had a great time celebrating Halloween at our Cheshire HQ today.

We put our pumpkin carving skills to the test with a ‘Best Pumpkin’ competition. The calibre was high and really put our judges to the test. Customer Service Advisor Rosey Stapleton took the crown of first place with her glitzy pumpkin!