“Marketers don't like analysis -- they prefer an epiphany."

- Elaine Murphy

Contrary to this view, analytics isn’t that bad for marketers. Rather, if used effectively, it can bring them some realization. So, the question that now arises is that how can marketers use analytics effectively to their advantage? To answer this question, Jonha Revesencio, Brand Marketer, Storyteller and Global Speaker, has listed down various useful analytics tools in her article at huffingtonpost.com. They are:

• Clicktale
• CrazyEgg
• Jotform
• Simply Measured
• Compete
• Google Analytics

To understand how these tools will help you market better, please visit the following link:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jonha-revesencio/6-effective-analytics-too_b_7421078.html?ir=India&adsSiteOverride=in

“Debt is the vital air of modern commerce.”

 - Daniel Webster

These words were spoken in 19^th century when the U.S. bond market was still in its initial stage. But, today, in 21^st century, the situation has changed. The volume of debt is growing in multifold.  This is justified by the following fact:

The borrowings of global households, governments, companies and financial firms have risen from 246% of GDP in 2000 to 286% today.

But the question is that why is the world growing so much addicted to debt? The answer to this question lies in following two causes:

1. Interest on debt is a tax deductible expense.
2. People over-estimate the safety of the fixed payments that debt offers

3 global trends have magnified the effects of these causes. They are:

• Big exporters such as China have built up reserves that must be invested abroad
• The increasing inequality between the rich and poor
• The growth of finance industry where the impulse is to manufacture debts owed by others in order to generate fees

The need of the hour is to bring reforms in order to reduce these mountains of debt.

To know more, please read the following article at the Economist:

http://www.economist.com/blogs/economist-explains/2015/05/economist-explains-20?fsrc=scn/tw_ec/why_the_world_is_addicted_to_debt

Live chat is the best way to boost overall satisfaction with your customer service

- Zendesk Benchmark Report

Live Chat has emerged as one of the most satisfying customer service channels. This is because of the following reasons:

• Live chat moves customer requests away from web forms and feedback tabs to real time interactions, which enable questions to be answered directly
• Customers like the back-and-forth style of conversation

But, customer service providers should not forget the fact that customers want an accurate, relevant, and complete answer to their question upon first contact. Live chat agents sometimes fail to satisfy customers because of the following issues:

• When the customer has to wait more than 30 seconds for a customer service agent
• As agents start handling more and more chats, the increased workload may impact their ability to respond quickly and thoroughly

According to the Zendesk Report, “To optimize customer interactions, companies should monitor the ebb and flow of their live chat request volume by day and hour”.

To know more about the results of the Zendesk Benchmark Report on Live Chats, please read the following article by Noreen Seebacher, Chief Editor, at cmswire.com:

http://www.cmswire.com/cms/customer-experience/we-should-talk-how-live-chat-improves-cx-029235.php

Big Data- Knowing what it is and how it can be used is not sufficient. To be successful, the need is to develop a strategy on how to optimize its use for your own advantage.

David A. Kelly, in his article in Q1 2015 issue of TeraData Magazine has compiled the views of three eminent researchers in this field - Vince Dell’Anno, David Stodder and Dan Vesset. They have suggested the following 3 best practices for developing big data strategies:

• View Big Data As A Valued Corporate Asset
• Foster A Culture Of Embracing Data
• Collect Diverse Data, Then Follow Up With Action

To understand them in detail, please visit the following link on forbes.com:

http://www.forbes.com/sites/teradata/2015/05/20/three-best-practices-for-executing-on-big-data-strategy/

“#”

Most of you must be familiar with this symbol – Hashtag. It is usually used to classify tweets. This classification is being used by banks to provide services these days in the form of Hashtag Banking.

“Hashtag banking or twitter banking is a method of providing banking services such as fund transfer, balance enquiry etc. as well as giving banking information using hashtag (#)”

The following article by Vivina Vishwanathan at livemint.com explains the concept of hashtag banking. In this article, she explains with an example that how # banking works. Since this is still in its initial stage, there are a lot of doubts regarding it like its safety, technical glitches etc.

Whatever its future, it will be decided on the basis of how banks develop this service and earn people’s trust regarding it.

To know more, please visit the following link:

http://www.livemint.com/Money/PaklJWALLp7ttemZp9oleL/One-minute-guide-hashtag-banking.html

•  Adoption of digital technologies has led to a customer-centric set of services. These technologies are nowadays demanded by banks, financial services firms and insurance companies.   With the world becoming competitive, sectors such as banking, finance services and insurance industries and product development, delivery and customer engagement are now being driven by a more mobile, social and data driven experience. But, the financial industry is still way behind firms in the consumer and retail markets. Firms in financial industry must ensure that they build a foundation for digital change. Read more at:   http://blogs.sap.com/banking/2015/05/19/digital-innovation-in-banking/

•  Big Data enables various capabilities like forensics and the analysis of long-term historical trends. By collecting data and analyzing historical trends, you would be able identify when an attack started, and what were the steps that the attacker took to get a hold of your systems. These techniques could play a key role to detect threats at an early stage. Big Data provides  opportunity to consolidate and analyze logs automatically from multiple sources rather than in isolation. This enhances intrusion detection systems (IDS) and intrusion prevention systems (IPS). Integrating information from physical security systems, such as building access controls and even CCTV, could also enhance IDS and IPS to a point where insider attacks and social engineering are factored in to the detection process. This presents the possibility of significantly more advanced detection of fraud and criminal activities. Big Data could result in far more practical and successful SIEM, IDS and IPS implementations. Read more at-         http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/big-data-analytics/how-big-data-is-changing-the-security-analytics-landscape/

• Apache Hadoop- as software vendors are targeting the distributed storage and processing architecture, need for Hadoop is increasing 
• Apache Spark-The rapid rise of the in-memory stack is being extended as a faster and simpler alternative to MapReduce-style analytics.
• NoSQL-Databases like MongoDB and Couchbase are taking over jobs previously handled by monolithic SQL databases like Oracle and IBMDB2.
• Machine Learning and Data Mining- Big data pros who can harness machine learning technology to build and train predictive analytic apps are in high demand Statistical and Quantitative Analysis-Add in expertise with a statistical tool like R, SAS, Matlab, SPSS, or Stata is of high demand in today’s world. 
• SQL- SQL is still in demand for the next-generation of Hadoop-scale data warehouses. 
• Data Visualization-It has become most important in the job market. 
• Progamming Languages-Knowing programming languages like Java, C, Python, or Scala could give you the edge over other candidates. Read more at: 

http://www.datanami.com/2015/01/07/9-must-skills-land-top-big-data-jobs-2015/

US companies make huge profits by paying employees minimum wage. US taxpayers pay $153 billion public assistance to working families. Now public opinions are divided. They want these corporations to pay workers enough to live decently. A proposed bill in Connecticut states that companies paying below $15 per hour will be imposed a fine of $1 per hour, per worker and this money will be spent on social welfare. Each Walmart in Connecticut costs taxpayers $1 million in social programs; also state pays $486 million in medication and cash assistance.  The bill could be a creator of many positions, and also help to shift the social assistance burden from taxpayers back to employers. The bill though in its initial stages has gained politicians' attention. Read more at:

http://www.fastcoexist.com/3046341/is-it-time-for-companies-to-pay-for-not-paying-enough-the-walmart-tax-gains-momentum

Companies want to have an edge using analytics but struggle due to unavailable technologies, outdated software, cumbersome systems, complex integrations coupled with huge costs in infrastructure and personnel. The cloud has transformed the way organizations look at big data and analytics solutions. It has been predicted that investment in cloud over the next five years will grow threefold. • Open source platforms like Apache Spark provide simple and fast data processing capabilities. These though powerful, due to expensive hardware, long lead times are difficult to deploy. The cloud allows immediate usage of open source platforms without initial investments.
• Cloud -based software are user friendly, simple to grasp and sort in comparison to on premise counterparts and release cycles are shorter.
• Cloud-based analytics provide a platform where hard business problems can be effectively tackled.
• Processing and extracting data are easy from a synced centralized location.
• Better connectivity leads to better productivity, deployment of data pipeline is easy. Read more at:

http://insidebigdata.com/2015/05/08/5-reasons-data-analytics-in-the-cloud-will-take-center-stage-in-2015/

Researchers gave out warnings of a "full" internet or a capacity crunch which may arise as a result of exceeding the upper limit of information passed through the optical fibers. This is primarily due to the fast growth of online media consumption through YouTube, Netflix, etc.  The trick of increasing the capacity of the optical fiber by increasing the power of light beamed through them has hit a dead end as increasing the power beyond a certain point degrades signal quality. Thus, data rationing and other restrictions may be the only options if the researchers aren’t being able to commercialize the solutions they are coming up with like creating fibers with multiple cores or new techniques to compensate for distortion at high power.

Read more at: http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn27536-the-internet-is-running-out-of-room--but-we-can-save-it.html#.VVq8ByuUcV8

Natural disasters unlike other man-made disasters are the most terrifying events in the world since they cannot be controlled. However, by using the power of big data, it is possible to help in disaster management. For this purpose big data can be used through crowdsourcing which can be achieved by the increasing use of social- networking in the present days. In case of earthquakes, instead of using dedicated sensors which are highly expensive one can use the almost similar sensors in smartphones through Wi-Fi-hotspot and GPS to collect data to create an overall picture. For this, infrastructure needs to be set up so that information can be uploaded from the affected areas so that the affected people can be tracked down. Moreover the maps created through crowdsourced collaboration helps to optimize the recovery process. Read more at :http://channels.theinnovationenterprise.com/articles/big-data-in-a-crisis

Counter party credit risk is becoming important nowadays; advanced risk management methods are being implemented in power and financial-services sectors. Transportation infrastructure industry lag behind but the need is immediate. Technicality in rail infrastructure is complex, thus the need for assessing risk. Failures are growing due to lower rated original equipment manufacturers (OEM). It is necessary to integrate systematic assessment of credit risk into the supplier selection process. Minimum rating requirement could be a way out allowing customers to control and lower the risk of supplier default.  This increases transparency, improves efficiency of risk assessment and facilitates monitoring of counterparties.  Customers of railway projects should learn from the available risk assessment methods and use them to their benefit. Read more at:

http://www.mckinsey.com/insights/risk_management/managing_supplier_risk_in_the_transportation_and_infrastructure_industry

According to a recent study, 50% of the consumers believe that their brands are clueless about how to reach them and only one in three customers believe that their brand understands them. According to Bill Carmody (CEO of Trepoint), the best way to understand the customer is by emotional intelligence. Emotional Intelligence refers to the ability to perceive, control and evaluate emotions. It is about being real, authentic and intuitive and also helps to develop digital marketing campaigns. Here are some tactics to implement emotional intelligence in digital marketing campaign:
• Understand your audience by using social listening tools such as Topsy, Hootsuite and Social Mention.
• Add value to customers rather than simply pushing your agenda. Adding value includes finding ways to enhance and improve the customer’s experience.
• Try to attract customers by thinking beyond benefits and features.
• Think ways to surprise or delight your audience rather than creeping them. This can be done by using predictive analysis.
• Respect when retargeting.
Read more at: http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/246390

The increasing importance of digital marketing is forcing every organization to use digital marketing. Here are some tips for organizations which are planning to use digital marketing:

·         Hire someone who has knowledge about digital marketing or learn how to use digital marketing.

·         There are various ways to analyze digital marketing, but some of them may suit you or some not. It is important to keep on trying new ways.

·         The best type of digital advertising reaches its audience by consent. Maintain a link between consistent efforts and spamming.

·         Try to make your advertising, mobile-friendly because mobile revolution is the next revolution.

·         There are various tools that allow for a do-it-yourself approach and leverage content across platforms.

Read more at: http://www.investopedia.com/articles/investing/051215/dos-donts-digital-marketing.asp

Vendors often focus on showcasing their front-end capabilities, i.e. dashboard reporting and data visualizations, while ignoring the vital aspect of analytics, namely data preparation: cleansing, structuring and integrating data to make it ready for analysis. The typical scenarios include using more than one type of data source, working with large datasets, working with messy, unorganized data. This is where your business intelligence tools come in. These tools are meant to automate or simplify the bulk of the data preparation process by using pre-programmed adapters that connect into different types of data sources, and restructuring the data into a single centralized repository. Here are 3 crucial aspects of data preparation one should be aware of when evaluating business intelligence software: Access to the original data, joining multiple data sources and data management. Choosing the wrong software could skew your initial price estimate when you are forced to allocate technical resources or purchase additional programs to handle data preparation.

Read more at:

http://www.sisense.com/blog/data-preparation-checking-hood-analytics-software/

It's high time to move away from the old adage "Sell in May", because the market is on its way to double its year- to-date returns. Marketing axioms, rules of thumb may be comforting than investing logic but do not show the best path for investment. This concept though statistically proven to be nonsense does not discourage investors. Historical stock market data shows return from May through October might be more than the others on an average. Transaction costs, taxes on profits cannot be avoided by investors as trading volumes in summer months being consistently on the lower side. This leads to fewer trends and influence traders to get out as it is not worth to stay in the market. People believe that market loses from May to November with the worst in October, which is not the truth as research shows. Read more at: http://www.marketwatch.com/story/when-it-gets-to-may-you-might-as-well-stay-2015-05-16?page=1

Over the past few years, the impact of globalization, amongst other things, has also been seen on Supply Chain. It’s not restricted to one place or country, rather, Supply Chain function has also spread its wings across countries. This change has affected the entire working of businesses. The change in supply chain has also affected the finance department of the firms. It has to adopt its practices to comply with these changes.

Now, a new era of supply chain is on its rise i.e. Digital Supply Networks. Be it the use of robots or 3-D printing, ‘digital’ is the key word.  Once again, its impact on the finance team is huge. This impact has been discussed by David Axson and Gary Hanifan in their article on IndustryWeek. They state the following 3 major effects:

• Release of working capital
• Improved forecasting
• New control philosophy

But the big question is- Are the CFOs and their finance teams ready for this?

To know more, please visit the following link:

http://www.industryweek.com/finance/finance-ready-demands-digital-supply-chains

With mobile usage growing at a tremendous rate for apps and social media, e-commerce companies have realized the importance of collaborating with the mobile platform rather than using just website interface. Social Collaboration has become the new trend. Retailers are now creating experiences for mobiles that add to the website experience.

Consumers are also getting the benefit of convenience. The concept of digital shopping is now becoming their habit. With m-commerce continuing to grow, retail businesses are now seeing a vision of golden age of e-commerce, where convenience and collaboration will play the key role.

To know more, please read this interesting article by Jack Lowinger, Founder and CEO of Cartonomy, at entrepreneur.com:

http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/244208

According to Bill Baker (President/Owner, Speed to Excellence), manufacturing companies need to be innovative.  They need to keep on finding new ways to do a task. Companies and individuals need to be agile and flexible in gaining new skills. In manufacturing industry only three things matter. They are:

• People: Employees are the most valuable assets of the organizations. They can find innovative ways to make processes more efficient.
• Technology: It keeps on changing. To be competitive you need to adapt new technologies.
• Process: Process can be improved by reducing waste time and by improving quality and to improve process you can use lean six sigma.
Read more at: http://www.industryweek.com/leadership/what-does-future-hold-manufacturing