What's New - 12 February 2019
Front page changes: We have simplified the front page by moving Expert Panels and How will the Future be Different? to below Ask Athena on the database page. We’ve added a new Advisory Services banner there too leading to details of our most popular digital foresight methods and their associated lead facilitators.
FRONT PAGE
Changes to the database page
Cognitive ability: We have increased Athena’s cognition through her new ability to offer instant, potential ‘Solutions’ to your challenges and search results. Thus, we are using her forecast knowledge and intelligence to increase creativity and wise action in our clients and members organizations by offering what is already known about next practice. We will be working hard to extend this breakthrough in Athena’s digital consultancy capability in the coming months.
DATABASE PAGE
Left-hand navigation: We have renamed Forecasts to Challenges better reflecting what can be found there.
More methods: We have renamed Prospections in the center panel grid to the simpler title of Tools.
We have extended the Gapfinder method in Tools to now cover automated audits of Industries and your own Career path.
And, a new Rivalries button within Tools allows you to analyse competitors using four powerful methods: Potential | Profile | Controversy | Red hat
We have also developed a new Spline Chart within Metrics | Comparisons that provides a fascinating look at predicted potential peaks and troughs in future years and the directional trend of any searched topic.
Export: When using the methods, the system now displays only the row number and forecast title to considerably speed up download speed. The full spreadsheet is still available under | Intelligence | Export.
Pay-As-you Go (PAYG): We have simplified our pricing by removing PAYG in favour of free and subscription services only, increased the ability to pay by credit card and added a service Upgrade button in the top bar of the database page.
Other changes
Better data: In background we have fixed the thorny problem, faced by, and not solved by most content providers, of linking different used names for an organization e.g. FAO, United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization. This considerably improves the site Metrics.
In like manner we have deduped and cleaned up the Key People list and improved the underlying topics covered by Athena.
We will be doing more of this in the coming months to reduce editing, improve the search facility and implement eDiscovery for auto suggestions of new organizations.
Rivalries : We moved our separate competitor intelligence methods into Projects putting all methods in one place under Tools and removed the ‘+’ add project button which then became superfluous.
Source analysis: The system can now analyse different organizations by type e.g. commercial or not-for profit, and display these in the Export All Spreadsheet. The spreadsheet also now displays the number of items accepted from a single source and multiplies this by an individual forecasts relevance and likelihood to provide a credibility score for the source. This is in beta mode right now. We have more work to do here.
Advisory Services: We’ve now brought together all our Advisory Services on one page below
What’s Next?
Our next release will completely transform our database page, eliminating the central grid which has outlived its purpose, and replacing it with a much more intuitive, faster, flexible and simpler interface customizable to your personal needs.
Do contact us to see the ever-increasing power of our service to help you stay ahead of emerging opportunities and risks or to suggest new improvements.
Happy futuring
The Shaping Tomorrow team