Big data is in its adolescence. Companies have started to treat it as a corporate asset. The focus has been shifted to find those data initiatives that will have biggest and immediate effect. Companies are not looking for more data, but the right data. This helps in making better informed decisions. A correlation between good data policies and financial success is also observed. Big data is becoming less about volume and velocity, but more about value. As technology continues to improve, the "bigness" of big data is becoming a less important factor. Read the full article here: http://www.forbes.com/sites/bernardmarr/2015/11/30/big-data-now-a-top-management-issue/#29598044794d

Investment consultants have been working for hours researching and investing in asset classes like stocks, real estate, commodities and bonds. But all these asset classes pale in comparison to human capital. Human capital is the present value of your future salary. It is the most valuable asset in young age. With a professional and desirable skill set, you will always get a fair salary no matter how much inflation, your country is suffering. Everything you do to increase your earning ability like getting a higher degree, taking certification courses, all comes under investing in human capital. Like any other capital, human capital has also risked associated with it like - death or disability risk; professional competency risk. Read the full article here: http://www.investopedia.com/articles/younginvestors/09/human-capital.asp

The field of smart wears brings up wonderful innovations each day. New horizons are explored and tested. This merging of machine and man has brought many such things which we never thought of. Exoskeletons are one such example. These give superhuman abilities to human beings. Nowadays there have been issues regarding privacy. There is always a third eye around looking and collecting more and more information about you. So to protect this the stealth wear is coming. To make this work you need to find the right reflective material that can block surveillance cameras and mobile tracking devices. Smart textile and smart clothing are already very popular. These have various applications ranging from health monitoring clothes to the environmental monitoring ones.  Read more at: http://www.latimes.com/business/technology/la-fi-thedownload-wearable-tech-oddities-20160209-story.html

Data analytics is now not only restricted to the IT sector, but also serves other sectors of the society. If we look at the services and other sectors where data analysis can be used then, the list will be very long in today's world. Data analytics is used in each and every sector including sports, politics, medical and financial firms. Some of the predictions of how analytics will shape the business, sports, and political landscape in 2016 are:

Prediction #1: The hottest corporate job of 2016 is data analyst.

Prediction #2: IT will embrace the self-service analytics movement.

Prediction #3: Predictive analytics go mainstream.

Prediction #4: The "Internet of Things" (IoT) will get more organizations interested in geospatial analytics.

To read the full article, follow: http://www.forbes.com/sites/valleyvoices/2016/01/20/five-ways-data-analytics-will-shape-business-sports-and-politics-in-2016/#612ab3395a1d

Nowadays, data analysis and space technology are used to help live crime mapping and is known as Predictive Policing. This has been used by various police departments of the few developed countries. In India, Delhi Police is also developing this mechanism in partnership with the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO). It is called The Crime Mapping, Analytics and Predictive System (CMAPS) and is used for with ensuring internal security. This will help in crime control, and law and order and security management through analysis of relevant data and patterns, leading to the optimization of available resources. Each police officials will be equipped with Personal Digital Assistant (PDA) device connected to a central processor, with the records of more than two lakh criminals. To read more about Predictive Policing, follow: http://www.indiatimes.com/news/india/delhi-police-join-hands-with-isro-will-use-space-technology-to-predict-and-stop-crime-250432.html

The use of predictive analytics in the Human Resource Management is the recent development. The HR team is taking advantage of the loads of data to keep a check on the employees. Predictive Analytics is changing the relationship between employee and enterprise. Predictive models can easily predict the upcoming trends. The performance of the employees can be judged in an unbiased way rather than gut feelings. The models identify meaningful insights by collecting data from the various platforms. The kind of posts that individuals have on the social networking platforms, LinkedIn profiles all lead to predictions. HR teams use these insights to decide the promotions, pay scale etc. This also acts as a disadvantage to the privacy of workers. Soon there will be a need to redefine the worker privacy laws which will take care of these new technologies. Read more about this in the article written by Rodd Wagner (A best- selling author) at: http://www.stevenspointjournal.com/story/opinion/columnists/2016/01/22/predictive-analytics-transforms-workplace/79116764/

The Information Technology (IT) industry had changed a lot from its early years. If we see today, IT sector is changing at the rapid rate and also the problems related to it. Today IT is everywhere directly or indirectly. But if we look at the education system, it was never been easier to manage, but nowadays, it is like a choice between the difficult and the impossible. That is because of the rapid changes. So it is the reason of slowing down the pace of IT sector. The question arises as to how can we align our timelines and change our ecosystem? Top ten IT Issues gives a clear response: Divest, Reinvest, and Differentiate. The ten issues divided into these three categories are:

# Differentiate:

* Optimizing educational technology.

* Student success technologies.

* BI and analytics.

* E-learning and online education.

# Reinvest:

* Information security.

*IT Workforce Hiring and Retention.

* IT Workforce Hiring and Retention

* IT Organizational Development.

# Divest:

* Institutional data management.

* Enterprise application integration.

Read more at: http://er.educause.edu/articles/2016/1/top-10-it-issues-2016 

There was a time when all the retail stores were taking their business online. But now the well- flourished online stores have begun to establish their brick and mortar stores. In addition to the online setup, they are now even working on traditional retail. An online presence has become crowded and expensive. According to a report, there are more than 800,000 online stores, all competing to attract customers through the gateway of Google. By opening the physical stores they aim to create awareness and attract more customers. They have seen that this creates awareness for their brands and drives a lot of traffic to our website, as well and accelerate the e-commerce sales. Read more at: http://www.theguardian.com/business/2016/jan/30/future-of-e-commerce-bricks-and-mortar

People are actively looking for ways to increase their online privacy and security. So here are five tools to increase that will help you achieve the same.

1. Privacy Badger: It blocks all the tricky ads. It can be used as an extra level of security over common ad block sites.

 2. HTTPS Everywhere: This makes browsing more secure by encrypting communications provided that the sites you are opening have these additional capabilities.

3. Ublock Origin: It's a free and open source extension.

4. Purify Blocker: this application is made for iOS helps in browsing websites without ads and tracking. It will also lower the data usage and will improve speed.

5. Tor: It's a service that can encrypt web traffic and sends it across a series of relays to help maintain anonymity. It can be downloaded on laptop for Windows, Mac or Linux.

Read the full article here: http://www.forbes.com/sites/ygrauer/2015/10/13/five-tools-privacy-security/#5804444e537c

Business Plan is a systematic evaluation of the business goals, the reasons behind attaining them and tailoring a plan to reach up to them. The reason for the failure of many businesses is that they don't start with a business plan. It is essential as it helps in realizing the vision of next 2 to 5 years. So the start- up can always keep a check whether they are proceeding in the right direction. Must haves of a business plan are: Business Overview, Market Analysis, Marketing Strategy, and Financial Information. Before you start writing your business plan, you should honestly evaluate yourself and decide if your business idea has a good chance of success. Write down about how you intend to make money, what will be your business model. Start with your company description. A thorough description of the business environment and analysis of its strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats supports its marketing strategy. Financial information, gives the details of how the company will run the finances in the upcoming years. Read more at:  :  http://yourbusiness.azcentral.com/four-major-types-information-presented-business-plan-9328.html

The term "Artificial intelligence" (AI) was first introduced by the John McCarthy for the study of intelligence which is carried out using a computer. AI is becoming reality and both fear and faith are also increasing day by day. Even many movies like the terminator, ROBOT, RA-One are based on AI and machine taking control. Similarly, the world famous physicist Stephen Hawking shows his fear on the growth of AI and IoT by saying that the full development of AI could "spell the end of the human race". It is expected that by 2020, about 80% of adults will own a smartphone. It is also changing the way people relate to one another and their surroundings. There are apps for most of things that you can think of, like fitness apps, cooking apps and much more. Today AI and IoT are allowing people to do more things on their phones and off them too. Read more at: http://www.notchcommunications.co.uk/blog/2015/03/the-dawn-of-artificial-intelligence-and-the-internet-of-things

Contextual Integration refers in identifying meaningful relationships between different information types. This gives a multi-dimensional view of the data rather than a single access point. The best approach is to analyze these volumes of data from different perspectives. The traditional way is to follow a fragmented approach. The web teams, marketing and sales team will look at the different statistics offered by data. This lengthens the time to take decisions and also introduces inaccuracy. The need is to look at data from many angles to create a multi- dimensional profile of the customer. Then predictive analytics can assess and lead to intelligent messaging. Machine Learning is also helping to improve these predictive analytics algorithms by checking it on the real time data. Read more about it in the article written by Dominik Dahlem (Senior Data Scientist at Boxever) at: http://data-informed.com/contextual-integration-secret-weapon-predictive-analytics/

Retargeting is a form of online advertising that focuses on display ads to the visitors after they have left your website. It is a cookie based technology. It has proved to be of benefit to B2B businesses, according to the statistics. Retargeting can be done in three ways.

 1. Pixel-Based Retargeting: The marketer places JavaScript code on his website which drops a cookie on a visitor's browser.

2. List- Based Retargeting: The marketer prepares a list of contacts from email marketing campaigns or for some other source. It then serves them with a specially targeted ads on the Social Networking platforms.

3. Search Retargeting: Search retargeting targets user audiences based on previous keyword searches, they have conducted on search engines such as Google, Yahoo & Bing.

There are many tools available in the market that can be used to design the strategy for retargeting. Read more about it in the article written by Jessy Smulski (a valued contributor to Business 2 Community) at: http://www.business2community.com/b2b-marketing/tips-retargeting-b2b-leads-beginners-guide-01441414

The smart span filtering algorithms of the internet service providers make it difficult to reach the user's inbox with advertisements. So to take benefit of the email marketing, you need to keep few things in mind. One needs to integrate a HTML button in your email that is coded as Call to Action (CTA). These make the emails responsive. HTML buttons help in building and engaging traffic. A well designed HTML email reinforces your brand even in the email. The HTML button is visible before the images get loaded. According to a report, the majority of the online purchasing begins from the mobiles. So the emails should be very responsive for these devices. The three components needed for this are: Right breakpoints, Larger Text on Mobile Devices, CTA buttons. Read more about it on: http://blog.marketo.com/2015/12/3-email-marketing-must-haves-to-conquer-the-inbox.html

There are many CRM solutions available in the market. But, choosing a CRM technology, according to one’s business need is important. There is no absolute checklist for choosing the right CRM. There are some key functions that at the center of CRM. The following functions make a good starting point in the selection process – 1. Intelligence 2. Automation 3. Simple Data Entry 4. Analytics and Reporting and 5. Mobile Access. Read more at: http://it.toolbox.com/blogs/insidecrm/five-important-functions-to-look-for-in-a-crm-71190

Sales management benefits from lead tracking and activity monitoring i.e. keeping an eye on the sales pipeline. But sales staff, however, has a different perspective. CRM features are important to sales people. There are many important CRM features, but, there are some features that are important for the agent closing a sale. They are – Automation, Analytics, Activity Scheduling and Process Management, Offline Sync, and Easy Contact and Pipeline Management. Read more at: http://it.toolbox.com/blogs/insidecrm/five-features-your-sales-team-will-want-in-their-crm-71207

Mobile customer relationship management software is gaining popularity in today’s business world and as mobile CRM is evolving along with the development of Software-as-a-Service (SaaS), more and more organizations will have access to accelerated digital productivity. Data mined from mobile technology also augments the range of information available to CRM systems, which helps in getting more insight. Mobile CRM is also helping to streamline functions. It was also found that the entire sales process, from initial contact to after-sale service, benefits from mobile CRM. Read more at: http://it.toolbox.com/blogs/insidecrm/mobile-crm-accelerates-productivity-in-2016-71273

On premise CRM solutions are fading away and cloud-based CRM systems are the future.  According to Jim Desler, director of corporate communications for Microsoft, “The cloud opens up new possibilities and benefits for our customers”. Most software benefits from the cloud model, but the gains from placing CRM in the cloud are finding more customers. This article link describes reasons why businesses are moving to cloud CRM and how the cloud has changed the space. Read more at: http://it.toolbox.com/blogs/insidecrm/five-ways-the-cloud-changes-crm-71206

Mention database and what all things will come to your mind? Data management, storage, tables, RDBMS… But this trend is changing. The reason for the change is big data. Data has become so big that conventional methods and tools are not enough to manage this data. So what to do? We need some database technologies which can deal with big data. Hadoop is the most popular technology which can tackle big data. It is a data-centric platform which is highly scalable and used to run applications in parallel. Another alternative to RDBMS is the use of NoSQL platforms like MongoDB. Read the full article here: http://www.infoworld.com/article/3003647/database/how-big-data-is-changing-the-database-landscape-for-good.html

Start-up and entrepreneurship is not only regarding ideas you have, it also regarding the execution of that idea. Great ideas without execution and follow-through stand nowhere even if you have a good idea. The important things one need to do, if one wants to achieve success with your ideas are:

1. Be confident.

2. Accept risk.

3. Define your purpose.

4. Create a plan.

5. Assemble a like-minded team.

6. Constantly build momentum.

7. Anticipate obstacles.

8. Establish a professional/personal balance.

9. Set micro-goals.

10. Be patient.

To read in detail, follow the article by Jonathan Long (Founder and CEO, Market Domination Media) at: http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/269869