The only possible way to ensure public safety and act against the financial ruin or loss of the company's reputation is to know how and when to respond. The timing of a crisis cannot be predicted with certainty but crisis management plays a crucial role to ensure that the company stands in the wake of an unexpected and unfortunate mishap.

Steps to be followed for management of crisis are :

• Messaging is a fickle art - A humble dosage of humanity and being transparent is the best policy. It is important to provide the information about the issue to the public in a polite manner.
• Restoring and rebuilding your reputation through media - Working with the media is the best way for restoring people's trust.

For further details on crisis management, please follow the link :

http://www.business2community.com/crisis-management/need-crisis-management-01239230 

Inspite of the fact that Big Data analytics is found everywhere, the willingness of the firms to invest and to act on analytics insight is extremely slow. This is decision latency, where the companies have all the required data and knowledge but lacks the speed to make decisions on major issues. In today's world, data becomes less relevant with each passing minute. Traditional analytics tools face challenges in handling this data because they are designed to store and process the data but not to analyze this data from moment to moment. Three capabilities crucial for event processing systems to deliver ROI, are as follows :

1. High availability
2. User empowerment
3.  Empowerment of developers in order to built better distributed system with custom UIs (User Interface).

Read more at http://www.tibco.com/blog/2015/06/09/decision-latency-solving-the-big-data-analytics-oversight/

In modern world, there has been an increase in communication channels and hence this customer-centric era presents both challenges and opportunities for businesses. Companies must have the skill to connect to the data sources relating to customer experience. Hence, nowadays the big data challenge has gained more importance. In case of customer experience management, the data needs to be combined with unstructured customer feedback data and this is important in order to have a complete picture of customer experience. Data governance plays a crucial role here. One big challenge of customer data is that they don't know which data is more relevant in the first place. Data governance creates the base for the common understanding of the customer across the business.

To read more about customer data governance, please follow the link :

http://www.computerweekly.com/blogs/Data-Matters/2015/05/the-growing-importance-of-data-governance.html

Everybody wants their workplace to be a place where they can enjoy themselves and not a place which is boring, where nobody enjoys their work and where everyone pays attention only to their respective work. As a result of conflicts between business owners which is difficult to resolve, many workers find themselves working in such environments. However according to many business owners the best way to encourage productivity is to avoid fun at work. There are few strategies which an organization can use not only to raise productivity but also to inject a light atmosphere in the office environment.

• Organic Challenges
• Encourage Breaks
• Socialize Offsite
• Celebrate Achievements
• Focus on productivity, not schedule.

For further reading on this topic, please follow the link :

http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/246981

Human intelligence is found in every organization. It is difficult to derive meaningful information from unstructured data and hence it's a big mistake not to use it in decision making.  Content Intelligence is the combination of technology and information science which allows machines to model, interpret, analyze and visualize human intelligence within an organization. It is used to generate new revenue streams, gain operational efficiencies, increase customer satisfaction, rise in productivity and avoiding costly networks. The rising pressure on enterprises increases costs and riskiness when content intelligence isn't available. It makes unstructured information self-describing and hence allows content-based information to be described in a similar way as structured data.For further details on content intelligence, please follow the link :  http://www.dataversity.net/what-is-content-intelligence/

As cybercriminals are trying to penetrate into each and every system, leading to huge losses, some steps that can protect an enterprise from cyberattacks are: 1. It is important to enable full disk encryption technology, so that all data on the storage drives are scrambled, which makes it impossible to restore the original data, when in wrong hands.
2. However, a concern dealing with sensitive data can maintain a separate encrypted file volume for its most sensitive files, by installing it before the first usage.
3. It is preferable to use hardware-based encrypted USB flash drives for data transfer, which provides seamless encryption of data, as it gets copied onto the drive.
4. A private cloud hosted on a network-attached storage device can be maintained for data synchronization among privately-owned devices.
5. It is always preferable to use password managers in systems.
6. Multifactor authentication should be enabled, which requires an additional information for final authentication, like maybe a pin code sent via text message.
7. It is important to have some backup account (say email id) registered to get information of any password reset, which may happen in a cyber-hijack.
Read more at:http://www.cio.com/article/2933183/cybercrime/7-steps-to-protect-your-business-from-cybercrime.html

In modern times, business leaders learned from the industry influencers the skill of how the organizations are hiring a modern HR to transform their enterprises.

The ideas below discuss how today's managers are including emerging technologies to employ the best talent, thereby keeping their workforce active and efficient

1. HR still faces the same challenges as before: recruitment of best talent, onboard recruitment and development of employees. However modern technologies solve these age-old HR challenges.

2. The next best thing is how modern HR adds value.                                                                                                                                               

 3. HR should view the data through the lens of a scientist.

4. Better segmentation of the population and understanding the behavior of each group.        

5. Empowering people to come up with ideas  that work for them as leaders in their lives.

Read more at :   https://blogs.oracle.com/OracleHCM/entry/five_ideas_human_capital_management                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                            

Have you recently asked the right questions from your CRM application? If no then here is a piece of advice from Inside CRM blog to upgrade your CRM application. It will bring more business agility, efficient workflow and will improve customer relationship.

But what are the right questions to ask:

• How old is your CRM solution? And if you can’t remember then here is your cue to upgrade.

• How many applications are you using to support your CRM?

• Does it grow with your business? 

To find your answers, click on the link: http://it.toolbox.com/blogs/insidecrm/how-to-tell-its-time-to-upgrade-your-crm-solution-67836

Mobile is a much more personal, interactive, engaged platform than desktop, and should be used as such. - By Ari Brandt (CEO and co-founder of MediaBrix). In this competitive era, if a company won’t recognize the opportunity first, a chance of losing the games increases. And mobile phone is one of the biggest opportunities to maintain a close relationship with your customers. But most of the ad companies are failing to recognize the demands, challenges and opportunities of mobile phones. Rule to crack the opportunity of mobile phones:
• Leave old ad methods behind.
• Take advantage of unique mobile capabilities.
• Put the customers first.
• Leverage new measures of campaign success.
Read more at: http://mashable.com/2015/06/11/mobile-marketing-innovation/

Big Data and analytics have a huge role to play in the future of healthcare. Data will play a major role in deciding how healthcare companies, practitioners and technologies interact with their patients. Big Data ensures efficiency and accuracy in predicting treatments. Using data, doctors can make more accurate predictions based on the specifics of the patient rather than using a general rule for treatment. Major companies are venturing into healthcare by formulating pre-defined algorithms; making it easier to cure complex medical conditions. With the advent of Big Data in healthcare, people will have the opportunity to keep a track of their health; doctors will have a better idea of somebody’s health thus allowing them to provide health advices on the go. Read more at: http://channels.theinnovationenterprise.com/articles/big-data-has-a-huge-part-to-play-in-the-future-of-healthcare

A firm needs to build a firm base that gradually can destroy others. The amount of information produced by social media platforms is an excellent way to measure a business’s both real and potential value. 56% of marketers named the ‘inability to tie social media to business outcomes’ as the central challenge to measuring ROI from social media. Gauging customer demand prior to launch using social media helps minimize risk, especially for entrants. Social media data can be correlated with an organization’s KPIs to know their impact upon one another indicating its usefulness. Allowing big data analytics capabilities to the social media platform helps firms to cross-reference social data to other data streams from their business. Read more about this article at: http://channels.theinnovationenterprise.com/articles/social-media-analytics

Maximizing ROI has become the ultimate goal for Marketers. Increasing visibility, likes, followers and tweets seems to be the major indicators. Daniel Newman, author of The Millennial CEO and a Forbes contributor, in an article in Forbes term these indicators as vanity metrics which distract marketers from the actual story. Rather than measuring likes, focus should be on how many of the likes were converted into new customer and other measures which go beyond customer acquisition and sales that will help discern their real growth story. 

He lists out 7 things that marketers should measure: 

• Top of funnel conversions

• Engagement

• Customer satisfaction

• Customer Retention 

• Employee satisfaction 

• Employee retention 

• Attributable Revenue

For more on this, follow the link http://www.forbes.com/sites/danielnewman/2015/05/12/7-things-marketers-should-measure-big-data-can-help/

Data mining results can be used by organizations to prevent losses ahead of time. Organizations usually use indications like inventory levels or employee turnover, which occur later in the business cycle to gauge shrinkage cost but by that time the losses start to incur and there is nothing much that can be done. According to a report by PricewaterhouseCoopers, if companies gather and analyse data, they are able to get better insights into the business and use the early warning indicators to stop losses from happening by making informed, strategic decisions, thereby saving time, money and effort. Read more at: http://www.tibco.com/blog/2015/06/03/strategic-data-analytics-to-help-reduce-shrinkage/

Big data is set to change the healthcare landscape offering better patient care, minimized hospital re-admission, and reduced costs but every new tool has a learning curve and so does this one in the healthcare industry. Big data in healthcare is referred to as Electronic Health records (EHRs), though relatively easy to collect but volume does not mean insight, it is necessary to extract data relevant to the heart of the specific problem. Apart from the 3Vs in big data – Volume, Variety, velocity, healthcare analytics also has another V, Veracity i.e. truthfulness or credibility, since it involves life and death decisions. But it is still a goal and not reality since the quality of healthcare data is highly variable. Another challenge is that the methodology requires technology and professional expertise for predictive analysis to fully utilise the data mining results to improve patient care. Read more at: https://www.healthcatalyst.com/3-reasons-why-comparative-analytics-predictive-analytics-and-nlp-wont-solve-healthcares-problems/

Now big data will help diagnose climate change. Shalene Gupta from Fortune talks about five big data projects that are on verge of changing the way we look at the problem of climate change. From tracking deforestation in Amazon, graphing animal life in African Savannah, tracking illegal forest fires to telling people how much energy they consume compared to their neighbors, we have it all in these 5 big data projects-

• Google Earth Engine

• Madingley Model form Microsoft

• Data.gov’s climate

• Global Forest Watch

• Opower

For more interesting insights follow the link http://fortune.com/2015/02/14/big-data-climate-change/

Nowadays, daily sales are not enough to ensure longevity of a business. Markets are beginning to realize the necessity of predicting future sales. They are tapping into the business trends and applying machine learning algorithms on big data to allow businesses to maximize their efforts in the most profitable areas. By knowing ahead of time, what a customer will buy, profits can be maximized and businesses can be tailored accordingly. Predictive Analytics allows us to segment customers, find patterns in their behavior and take preemptive measures to reduce churn. Analytics can be used to identify correlations and also to find causation. It can allow us to predict an individual's purchase behavior once we understand the causation underlying a pattern. Read more at: http://www.computerworld.com/article/2934086/business-intelligence/marketers-are-betting-big-on-predictive-analytics.html

Social media, due to its immense popularity, is being used for branding. It is paving a way for small businesses to compete with their bigger counterparts. Social media has led to consumer empowerment thus allowing them to interact with one another, ignoring the established channels of marketing. Adopting a mobile strategy is critical for marketers, and almost every individual in today's world possesses a mobile phone. Social media can both strengthen a brand or lead to its demise. Companies should be able to quickly adopt new strategies in response to consumer preferences to be successful. Read more at: http://www.businessnewsdaily.com/7953-social-media-branding.html

Marketers need to think creatively for building an effective and creative campaign. On the other side, they have to give returns on investments. So, marketers are feeling stressed. To improve the performance of the marketers, they need to make standardization a priority across their organization. Standardization is an essential practice to improve the performances and gives long-term benefits. Scott Vaughan (CMO of Integrate) in his article at marketingland.com, discussed about five areas where marketers should start standardizing are:
• Process
• Data
• Key technology systems
• Metrics and Benchmarks
• Team Expectations
Read more at: http://marketingland.com/marketers-time-stop-standardize-130267

With increasing use of smart phones in today's life, most of the viewers are using smart phones for research and buying online. This is the biggest opportunity to the companies. Mobile is not just an e-commerce channel, but it can be used for building relationship with your customers. Brian Rigney (CEO at Zmags) in his article “Maximize Marketing Reach: A Glance at the Customer Is All You Get” at marketingland.com, discussed about four simple steps to deliver rich and creative campaigns at the right place and says, “52 percent of Web traffic to retail websites globally currently comes via smartphones and tablet devices.”  Steps are:
• Think for omni-channel and use holistic approach.
• Develop sites, offers and experiences in different ways to serve different channels.
• Create, adjust and preview the sites.
• Tap the knowledge base to understand what works for your organization.
To know more about these steps, follow this link: http://marketingland.com/reach-glance-get-often-small-window-130011

Big data, legacy data, operational data and streaming data - these are all impacting the ever-increasing volumes, velocity and variety of data. - Deepak Belur (In4Group). Data and analytics have become essential to formulate critical business decisions. The big data storage technology is capable of analyzing massive amounts of data. But, analyzing a big data rarely gives you a full picture. To analyze full picture, a company need to analyze “unstructured data” which is present in mainframe servers. This data can be analyzed by using performance analytics. Enterprises need to combine relational and non-relational data, open system and mainframe, to retrieve the combined information via a simple, single query or request. And they need agile data architecture. Timeliness, accuracy, usability and accessibility of data are critical factors in the successful decision making process. Read more at: http://www.itweb.co.za/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=143791