: Key Takeaways: In a groundbreaking move set to shake up the funeral industry, Everest Funeral Concierge has launched PriceFinder, a revolutionary tool designed to provide consumers with unparalleled transparency on funeral service costs. This innovative solution comes at a time when funeral expenses are on the rise, prompting the need for greater clarity and informed decision-making among bereaved families. Unveiling PriceFinder: Revolutionizing Funeral Service Pricing PriceFinder marks a significant milestone in the funeral industry as the UK’s first comprehensive funeral price comparison tool. Developed by Everest Funeral Concierge, PriceFinder aims to empower consumers by offering them clear insights into the The post Revealed: Groundbreaking Tool Unveiled to Revolutionize Funeral Industry Pricing appeared first on Business Today
: Key Takeaways: Strategic Expansion in Leadership Mesh-AI’s Bold Move In a strategic play to accelerate its growth, Mesh-AI, a leading consultancy in data and AI enterprise transformation, has announced the induction of two senior figures from Amazon Web Services (AWS) into its leadership team. This move signifies Mesh-AI’s commitment to enhancing its service offerings and expanding its market reach. Leadership with a Vision Jacob Parsons and James Houlton, the new Chief Revenue Officer and Director of Energy & Utilities respectively, bring a wealth of experience from AWS, aiming to replicate their success at Mesh-AI. Their roles are critical in steering The post AI Power Move: How This Consultancy Is Redefining Industry Titans with Top-Tier Talent appeared first on Business Today
: Key Takeaways: The Revolution in Workplace Wellbeing Uncover the Blueprint: The Watercooler Event and The Office Event In a landscape where workplace wellness is not just a perk but a necessity, The Watercooler Event and co-located The Office Event emerge as the catalysts for transforming traditional strategies into modern solutions. With an impressive lineup of sessions and exhibitors, these events are poised to revolutionize how organizations approach employee wellbeing. Free-to-Attend Insights: An Industry Game-Changer The Power of Knowledge: More Than 100 Industry Leaders The Watercooler Event and The Office Event break the barriers to workplace wellness by offering free-to-attend sessions The post Insider Secrets Revealed: Transform Your Workplace Wellbeing Efforts with This Game-Changing Event! appeared first on Business Today
: dc.contributor.author: Perreault‐Lafleur, Carl; Carvalho, Margarida; Desaulniers, Guy dc.date.issued: 2023-04-14 dc.description.abstract: Nowadays, reaching a high level of employee satisfaction in efficient schedules is an important and difficult task faced by companies. We tackle a new variant of the personnel scheduling problem under unknown demand by considering employee satisfaction via endogenous uncertainty depending on the combination of their preferred and received schedules. We address this problem in the context of reserve staff scheduling, an unstudied operational problem from the transit industry. To handle the challenges brought by the two uncertainty sources, regular employee and reserve employee absences, we formulate this problem as a two‐stage stochastic integer program with mixed‐integer recourse. The first‐stage decisions consist in finding the days off of the reserve employees. After the unknown regular employee absences are revealed, the second‐stage decisions are to schedule the reserv[...]
: Public consultation on the draft BEREC Report on Virtual Worlds and Web 4.0 yannick.stephan Tue, 17/03/2026 - 09:26 Breadcrumbs Public Consultations & Calls for Inputs Deadline: Monday, 20 April 2026 (17:00 CEST) During the 66th BEREC plenary meeting (12-13 March 2026), the Board of Regulators approved the Draft BEREC Report on Virtual Worlds and Web 4.0 (BoR (26) 39) for public consultation. The report in a nutshell Virtual worlds (VW) and web 4.0 are at the basis of a transition to the 4th generation of internet based services, leading toward industry 4.0 and smart society. This shift is driven by artificial intelligence (AI) integration in networks and services. Hence, web 4.0 and immersive services are meant to have a significant economic and social impact by transforming the way in which industrial production evolves and automates its processes. At the same time, they transform the fruition of online content and applications by users. This draft BEREC Report provides a fully-fledged analysis. The first [...]
: Buckle up for a two-lane look at car buying lfair July 30, 2020 | 1:04PM Buckle up for a two-lane look at car buying By Lesley Fair It’s one of the biggest purchases people make, but two new FTC staff reports examine some common pitfalls when consumers are in the market for a car. Buckle down and read the Bureau of Consumer Protection’s Buckle Up: Navigating Auto Sales and Financing , which focuses on the challenges buyers face in getting accurate, understandable information when shopping for a vehicle. Not in the auto business? Not so fast. The deep-dive analysis of Buckle Up and an accompanying report by BCP staff and the Bureau of Economics – The Auto Buyer Study: Lessons From In-Depth Consumer Interviews And Related Research – offer insights into the perception and behavior of consumers in the study that can apply to other industries. The FTC’s interest in auto-related transactions goes back decades. (Check out Volume 1 of Federal Trade Commission Decisions for a 1919 case regarding deception in the s[...]
: Joint letters take new steps to stop illegal Coronavirus robocalls lfair April 3, 2020 | 1:57PM Joint letters take new steps to stop illegal Coronavirus robocalls By Lesley Fair Consumers hate illegal robocalls. And as the thousands of reports pouring into the FTC indicate, they also hate robocalls that exploit concerns about Coronavirus. In recent months, the FTC has taken innovative steps to take on not only illegal robocallers, but also companies that “assist and facilitate” their conduct. Just last week, FTC staff sent warning letters to nine businesses that provide Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) services or other assistance to some of the entities that may be behind the onslaught of bogus COVID-19 calls. Additional letters just went out that reflect unprecedented actions in the fight against fraud. Warning letters were sent to three VoIP providers: SIPJoin, Connexum, and VoIP Terminator d/b/a BLMarketing. According to the letters, investigations have revealed that these companies transmitted calls [...]
: Today, 22 states joined the Federal Trade Commission in filing suit against Amazon, alleging that the company engaged in deceptive and unfair practices that secretly inflated prices in its online search advertising auctions. The complaint alleges that, for over seven years, Amazon has covertly and substantially increased the prices that more than one million brands and sellers were required to pay to advertise on its platform. As a result, the complaint alleges that Amazon’s scheme has likely extracted tens of billions of dollars from its unwitting advertising customers. “When one of the world’s largest online retailers engages in unfair and deceptive conduct, the impact can be staggering,” said Chairman Andrew N. Ferguson. “Amazon has millions of advertising customers who were misled into paying significantly higher prices. These higher costs were largely passed on to American consumers. The FTC under President Trump won’t allow this deception to continue.” The FTC, along with the attorneys general of Ala[...]
: Sign of the times? Protecting your company from B2B deception lfair December 9, 2019 | 2:09PM Sign of the times? Protecting your company from B2B deception By Lesley Fair They may look like invoices sent to business owners for posters they may need to display in the workplace. But we think of them as un voices – deceptively worded solicitations that tried to sell companies posters that are readily available for free. A law enforcement action just settled by the FTC and Florida Attorney General offers tips on protecting your business from this form of B2B deception. According to the FTC and AG, four defendants with ties to Texas and Florida – Starwood Consulting, Starwood Capital, Corporate Poster Supply, and Thomas Henry Fred, Jr. – sent letters to businesses across the country with the goal of tricking them into paying $84 for posters about labor practices. To perfect their pitch, the letters had the look of invoices from government agencies or other authorities and warned recipients that they had two choic[...]
: Practice Fusion case suggests 6 health privacy pointers lfair June 8, 2016 | 9:01AM Practice Fusion case suggests 6 health privacy pointers By Lesley Fair Combine two of the most talked-about consumer protection topics – health privacy and consumer-generated online content – and what do you get? A proposed FTC settlement with Practice Fusion, the largest cloud-based electronic health records company in the country, and six compliance tips for others in the industry. One of San Francisco-based Practice Fusion’s primary products is an electronic records system for outpatient providers. In 2009, the company launched “Patient Fusion,” an online portal where patients whose providers were already using Practice Fusion could view or download their health information or transmit it to another provider. Patient Fusion also let patients send and receive secure messages from their providers. Fast forward several years and the company decided to expand Patient Fusion to include a public directory where current and prosp[...]