This week’s Smart IT roundup features robots writing reports, data stewardship automation, and an acquisition to expand data management offerings.

AP now uses robot journalists

Some fear that machines will one day rule our world as they become more intelligent, maybe even thinking for themselves. Though this sci-fi scenario may never become reality, today’s journalists may have good reason to fear the rise of the machines.

The Associated Press recently announced that it has tapped Automated Insights, a company that specializes in a software able to create marketing, sales and personalized financial reports by using complex algorithms, to write corporate earnings reports for its publication.

The AP stated that journalists are spending precious time writing these earnings reports when they could dedicate effort to more important topics such as earnings report analysis, reporting on earnings calls and other related topics.  AP produces about 300 earnings report per quarter but in automating the reports, it can produce as much as 4,400 such articles per quarter. Also, these articles are expected to possess the tone, variability and personality of a human writer, enough to fool readers.

Despite the apparent robot takeover, Lou Ferrara, AP managing editor, stated that no journalism positions will be lost.

New Financial Services Suite with stewardship automation

Staying on top of data governance can be quite an undertaking, and is one of the many aspects of IT management that’s ripe for automation. Collibra, a data management service provider, has introduced a new suite that supports it Data Governance Platform.  The Financial Services Suite is designed with data stewardship automation, which means data can be assigned roles and responsibilities for different business units. This establishes workflows for defining data elements or approving new reference data elements.

“Typically there’s a core data governance group that coordinates data governance actions,” says Benny Verhaeghe, vice president of sales and marketing at Collibra. “If this is not automated, people meet and send emails to each other—there’s no standard process established, and the result is there’s no auditability because you can’t see what people are doing and can’t track who’s doing what.”

Verhaeghe explains that even if there is no responsibility assigned to a data, it will automatically look for higher people in the organizational structure or anyone in the organization responsible for the said data.

Collibra also added a Critical Data Elements framework into its Data Governance Platform, which allows the enterprise to define data for business and regulatory requirements.  It uses a federated organizational model that will drive data governance programs in disparate units including sales, marketing and finance, throughout large enterprises.

HelpSystems expands data management with acquisition

HelpSystems announced that it has acquired RJS Software Systems, Inc., which includes its suite of document management solutions.

RJS provides a comprehensive suite of solutions that help small to medium-size enterprises better manage the entire lifecycle of critical documents and data by automating paper-based business processes.  Its flexible business solutions integrate with industry-specific business applications such as Oracle, SAP, QuickBooks, Sage, Microsoft Dynamics, JDA, JD Edwards, Infor, Epicor, Optimum Solutions, and more.

Richard Schoen, Owner, President, and CTO of RJS, explains that HelpSystems will allow it to “scale faster and capture a larger share of the growing market for enterprise content and document management.”

HelpSystems also announced that it has acquired the RODIN data warehouse software from Coglin Mill.

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