Agile is the buzzword in industry today. Simply put, it is a better way of managing teams and projects by self organizing and cross functional collaboration.

Ming Chan, Founder and CEO of The1stMovement, in his article at Forbes, has shared his experience of transition to agile and benefits achieved from it in an agency context.

In his words, “Transition of moving from Waterfall to Agile as a business nearly killed our agency, but once we pushed through the steep learning curve, the implementation of Agile into our day-to-day workflow, and most importantly, our culture, undoubtedly took us to the next level.”

According to him, this transition yielded the following benefits:

• Project Profit Margin
• Client Satisfaction
• Employee Happiness

To learn more from his experience, please visit the following link:

http://www.forbes.com/sites/theyec/2015/06/01/the-benefits-of-adopting-an-agile-approach-in-an-agency-setting/

The new thing about big data is that, the cost of getting the three V’s namely, Volume Velocity and Variety has become very cheap nowadays. So as we consume data, it influences us. In the past, we weren't very much concerned about being caught by camera but today’s surveillance of the whole population, makes us realize about the sensors around us. Crowd-funding sites are a treasure of such smart censored things. The evolution of data collection in a world where every output is also an input poses immense technical and ethical challenges. But it’s also a massive business opportunity, changing how we build, maintain, and recover almost everything in our lives. Read more about this article at:  http://radar.oreilly.com/2015/01/the-promise-and-problems-of-big-data.html?cmp=tw-data-na-article-stca15_72724

According to the NetProspex report based on the analysis of 223million records in the database of B2B companies, most of the their marketing and selling database lacks in providing key information about prospects and customers. According to the report, 84% of the records don’t have revenue information. 82% of the records were missing with employee information. 72% of the B2B companies didn’t include website domain. 54% of the records did not include a phone number of customers and many were inaccurate. To know more about NetProspex report, please follow this link: http://www.marketingprofs.com/charts/2015/27711/the-state-of-b2b-marketing-data

The increasing amount of data available to retailers, are giving them quite a sweat, when it comes to extracting the required data from such a large pool. Big data yet again proves to be the savior of the day. Big data helps in segregating consumers, and sending them promotional offers on the basis of their purchasing patterns and location, thus improving 'customer opinion' in the process. It has been observed that customers, now-a-days are increasingly doing online study about their desired product before making the final purchase from offline stores. Big data integrates this data along with the data of actual purchases, including the location of the purchase, to filter the segregation of customers and give them better service. Read more at:

http://channels.theinnovationenterprise.com/articles/using-big-data-to-improve-consumer-sentiment

Customer analytics deals in the evaluation of consumer satisfaction, from the purchase of a product or service. The insights obtained from the data, assists in assessing a company's principle performance indicators, the sales division's performance and in making future sales forecasts. Customer loyalty aids in generating profits for the company. Customer relationship management (CRM) analytics, when applied efficiently, generates the best insights on customer satisfaction. CRM analytics analyses data, ranging from the profile of the consumer to customer feedback, to ensure the best possible results. Read more at:

http://channels.theinnovationenterprise.com/articles/the-secret-to-measuring-customer-experience

According to Marge Breya (CMO and Executive Vice President of Worldwide Marketing and Informatica Education), “data is the fuel powering business processes, machines, sensors and customized user experiences.” Using data in marketing gives you a competitive advantage. Some basic steps for making data driven marketing team: firstly, identify a person who has knowledge about data analytics within and outside the organization. Secondly, to create a data driven culture, find a leader. Thirdly, a leader needs to create an environment where their marketing team feels safe in becoming data literate. And to solve the problem of “how to make a data literate team,” use education, exposure and practice. Read more at: http://www.computerworld.com/article/2928800/big-data/how-to-create-a-data-driven-marketing-team.html

There is a lack of awareness about the insurance sector but it has a lot of attractive and interesting propositions to offer. Amendments have been made to the Insurance Act, 1938.  Foreign investment ceiling in insurance companies has been increased which will boost job opportunities and growth potential. But, talent retention is a challenge in this sector. Economic and regulatory changes have affected this sector. This led to companies adopting short term policies over long term ones. It is also predicted that salary structures would increase slowly with average increment levels at 8% for the current year. Read more at: http://info.shine.com/article/talent-retention-is-a-big-challenge-for-insurance-firms/8814.html

There is a positive correlation among investment in employees and output generated. This phenomenon has been defined as the Return on Employee Investment and it has been a challenge for organizations. It has been found that employee investment leads to business growth, revenue generation and has significant effect on long term growth. There is no hard and fast rule to measure the return on investment but it does bring back positive changes within an organization. This investment can be treated by the employees as a motivation factor, a "benefit on efforts". This can help to retain talents in an organization. Experts believe that though it is possible to find a measure for ROI, HR is not always the right choice to quantify it. To know more, please follow: http://info.shine.com/article/spending-on-employees-can-maximise-your-roi/8849.html

Mainstream retail companies are taking a heavy beating from their online counterparts. These companies are facing stiff competition due to discounts and lots of advertising from the e-commerce industry. Company reports indicate that the decline in sales for the brick and mortar firms are a steady affair, and sales do not increase even during the festive seasons. Revenue growth of these companies has slowed down impacting the distributors. Distributors are stocking less and there has been a significant decrease in inventory holding. With the number of offline firms growing day by day, these firms are looking for a change in their marketing strategies to counter online competition. To know more, please follow the link: http://info.shine.com/article/the-churn-in-the-retail-sector/8822.html

Optimizing production for manufacturers with complex operations is not an easy task. There can be volatility in costs and prices, managing multiple plants and figuring out the combination of inputs for products are complex operations. These complexities are abundant in the chemical industry. Advanced data modelling and analytical techniques have helped this industry perform better. Data about companies’ performances can be put into a mathematical model which predicts production under different conditions. The resulting model brought sea changes in the companies’ production decisions, increased plants’ EBIT returns and production capacity. This change was not without a side benefit: better cross-unit collaboration and decisions were made with all constraints and trade-offs in mind. Read more at: http://www.mckinsey.com/insights/operations/taming_manufacturing_complexity_with_advanced_analytics

In healthcare, conclusions drawn from predictive analytics can directly influence patient's health but unfortunately it's not used widely because of the vendor hype and sales exaggeration of sales. Nowadays, doctors are using predictive analytics in treating breast cancer also. They ask questions like: Of the last 10,000 Asian females, with a tumor like this, how were they treated, what was the outcome, what were the side-effects to ensure she gets the right kind of medicine. That is what we call a learning health care system. Using data and predictive analysis is the need of the hour to improve our health care delivery.?Read more at:  http://www.zdnet.com/article/harvard-medical-professor-big-data-and-analytics-help-cure-cancer/

News agencies are venturing into analytics. A news agency also cleans the Internet for news, indexes it, and then allows users to ask questions of that data. It also allows you to extract facts and do trend analysis. Firms are taking data collected by machines or people, and using that data to generate news. Thanks to big data technology, it's becoming more practical to incorporate the field intelligence into the predictive models that executives increasingly rely on to make good, fast decisions.  Read more here: 

http://www.datanami.com/2015/05/29/how-big-data-is-changing-how-businesses-use-the-news/ana

Nowadays, companies are focusing on the best possible answers than asking the right questions to get the minutest details. To get the best details, a set of connect questions has to be answered which requires using a connected set of data sources. This is called unified analytics. It will enable the access and analysis of data from multiple sources on a single interface. But we need to keep certain things in mind like integration of unstructured and structured data which is not an easy process. Also, we need to look beyond traditional sources within firewall and focus the data strategy on customers. Read more at: 

 http://www.analytics-magazine.org/web-first/1266-unified-analytics-a-new-mastery-over-the-data-wave

Last month, Microsoft announced Microsoft Azure Stack at its Ignite Conference. Since then, there has been a lot of commotion among cloud technology enthusiasts as to what it is, how is it different from the existing Microsoft Azure pack, etc.

Tim Anderson (author) has answered these questions in his highly informative article at theregister.co.uk. According to him, the special features of Azure Stack fall into three categories. They are:

• Infrastructure services
• Application services
• Azure Resource Manager

To know more about this private cloud solution, please visit the following link:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/05/18/azure_stack_versus_azure_pack_whats_the_difference/

Marketing without social media is impossible nowadays, as it was found that over 72% adults use social media. Marketers are also utilizing B2B and B2C markets. But, marketers are also of opinion that it is harder to measure the benefits from social media. Mark Gadala (digital marketer), in his article talks about some social media tools that will help marketers to measure social media marketing and also help in accountability.  To know more, follow: http://www.socialmediatoday.com/marketing/markgadala/2015-05-30/3-targeted-tools-roi-driven-social-media-marketing

A Formula 1 car (F1) may take 5 months from the drawing board to production. Testing programs of the car's speed, stability, aerodynamics and tire degradation around a racetrack is done by the engineers and data analysts. Some teams uses technology which enables its existing systems to process this data faster than ever before.  It is not just about interpreting analytical information, but being able to make strategic decisions as a team. It would be interesting to see the sport getting audiences more integrated with real-time data. Exposure to basic forms of live data via a mobile app may give viewers an indication of why teams make the strategic decisions that they do. The F1 car technology shows how the sport is in pole position in terms of technology innovation especially with data. Read more about this article at: http://channels.theinnovationenterprise.com/articles/f1-and-data-analytics-it-s-a-numbers-game

Transport for London (TfL) data, collected through ticketing systems, censored vehicles, traffic signals, survey groups etc. is provided through open API's for 3rd party app developers. This data is then used to produce maps showing when and where people are traveling, and allowing analysis at the level of individual journeys by using Big Data. The key priority to initiate this data was to provide travel information which gives the routes customers use and to send travel updates to them. Thus Bernard Marr from Forbes in his article showed how big data played a big part in re-energizing London's transport network. Read more about this article at: http://www.content-loop.com/big-data-internet-things-improve-public-transport-london/

IoT has been present since long. But, recently this concept has achieved infinite fame with its easy to use nature and its feature of simplifying the complex devices. With IoT’s horizon widening and Microsoft being the Cloud software giant, with its program called, Azure, there are humongous possibilities of getting the benefits of both by combining their usage.

Kevin Miller, Microsoft’s Principal Program Manager for Azure IoT, has shared best practices for creating IoT solutions with Azure. They are:

• Think big. Start small
• Telemetry First
• Stream Analytics
• Don’t interrupt the fast path
• Defense in depth

Follow these guidelines and try the magic that this synergy provides.

To know more, please read the following article by Jonathan Allen at infoq.com:

http://www.infoq.com/news/2015/04/Azure-IoT

Software as a service (SaaS) is a software licensing and delivery system in which software is licensed on a subscription basis and is centrally hosted. The advantages of the SaaS model are that it is easier to manage and that all the users have the same version of the software because updates and patching is done automatically. It grants global accessibility, making remote working models easier, which reduces costs and improves performance. The SaaS industry is now maturing beyond simple, historical financial measures towards a sophisticated operational measure in the form of a new Customer Success Metrics and Predictive Analytics.
Some of the giants in the industry are Salesforce, LinkedIn and Workday and while their services vary, the most significant one remains their cloud computing applications and platforms. Read more at: http://zeendo.com/info/top-10-software-as-a-service-saas-companies/

 Customer Relationship Management (CRM) is the approach of managing a company’s interactions with customers. It involves various technologies that organize and automate marketing, customer service and technical support. Companies employ Business Intelligence (BI) tools for the same. A BI tool is useful when it has rich, in-depth data to analyze from a CRM system. It helps companies organize and manage customer data by improving tactical and strategic decision-making for company growth.

Objectives of integrating BI and CRM:-
1. Collecting and consolidating data, lowers overhead
2. Missing data is lesser as it stores data in a central location
3. Duplicate data can be detected easily.
The methodology for the above integration follows Review, Analyze, Plan, Implement, and Deploy (RAPID). Read more at: http://searchcrm.techtarget.com/tip/Integrating-CRM-with-business-intelligence-tools