Writer: Joey Garrand
2 min read September 2021 — Never has the world of business been more competitive. At the forefront of this increasingly competitive world, as the pandemic proved, is technology and the race to keep pace with customer expectations and industry competition requires tech talent. Lots of it.
According to CompTIA, tech sector employment in the United States reached an all-time high of 4.79 million in August 2021, compared to the previous peak of 4.76 million in March 2020.
Here is what South Jersey leaders said with regard to their increasing technology needs, representing the peaking and continuously growing demand for tech talent across every industry:
James Andreacci, Market President & Senior Vice President, Truist Bank
Truist Ventures is our technology area. We’re investing around $150 million in technology per year. We believe in T3, which stands for touch, technology and trust. We constantly talk about how we can continue to be on the cutting edge of technology to better help our clients.
Through Truist Ventures, we’re investing in technology companies that allow us to be on the cutting edge of cybersecurity, even as a bank. We’re investing in local companies, constantly looking at what they’re doing and seeing if they can benefit our clients. The key is to invest in the right companies and grow our portfolio. Our technical team is providing the firewalls and making sure that we are constantly protecting our clients’ assets, the bank’s assets and everything else from that standpoint.
Sidney Brown, CEO, NFI Industries
Autonomous trucking and robotics in warehouses have been a huge topic of discussion. I believe that as more demand is created, technology will have some solutions in addressing labor shortages. The solutions may not be fully autonomous or fully robotic but there are some very interesting technologies that we have been experimenting with that will continue to evolve and affect the landscape. This is not a static industry and how we innovate is key to our success. As consumer expectations become more demanding, companies look to us to become faster and deliver the most positive customer experience. Implementing these new technologies is exciting because in addition to enabling greater efficiency, they can also provide increased safety and development opportunities for our people.
Anthony Mazzarelli, Co-CEO, Cooper University Health Care
As an academic health system and teaching hospital, Cooper is committed to providing the most technologically advanced care and developing and adopting innovative technologies to make care delivery more efficient, improve safety, improve patient experience and outcomes and reduce costs.
One example of this was the launch of The Nuance DAX system. Cooper was one of the first health systems in the nation to introduce Nuance DAX, which revolutionizes the physician-patient experience by securely capturing and contextualizing physician-patient conversations. By populating the patient’s electronic medical record through this new AI technology, our physicians spend less time at their computer screens during visits to focus more attention where it’s needed: on their patients.
Gary Stockbridge, Region President, Atlantic City Electric & Delmarva Power
In our industry, we often talk about the utility grid of the future. In my mind, this is a smarter grid with a lot of data going through it, which would help us and our customers understand how our energy is being used. It also needs to be a self-healing grid, understanding when issues are happening and performing self-repairs to a certain extent. This includes innovative technologies to improve system reliability, such as specialized equipment that can restore service faster or isolate damage in the event of a power outage. We need to be able to bring on distributed generation quicker. In the utility grid of today, we still run into issues of congestion and there’s still a general lack of knowledge regarding how energy is used.
Carl Ortell, CEO, Holman Enterprises
The automotive industry as a whole is buzzing with a variety of new and evolving technologies. Consumer demand continues to be the main driver of innovation in the automotive sector but the fleet industry is well positioned to quickly follow and capitalize on these emerging trends.
One particular trend that stands out above the rest is the customer’s desire for a fleet experience that mirrors the ease of a typical consumer transaction. Today, fleet stakeholders expect Google-fast and Apple-easy, and rightfully so. With that in mind, we’re investing significantly in our client-facing technology to deliver an enhanced experience for all fleet stakeholders – from drivers to executives.
For more information, visit:
https://www.nfiindustries.com/
