Like in any other service, in SaaS also, customer service is the most important element. And this becomes even more important because SaaS customers are different. They not only need service at the point of sales, but also for the whole duration of use of the software. If satisfied, then only, will they renew the subscription, otherwise not.

Micah Solomon, Customer Service Consultant, in his article at Forbes, explains the importance of customer service in SaaS by taking an example of PayScale, a B2B SaaS company. According to Mike Metzger, CEO of PayScale, “The SaaS environment makes the threshold for satisfying experience higher. We’re always working on it.”

Micah has also shared few tips for a successful SAAS customer service. Some of them are:

• Hire the right people
• Carefully define and put into place customer interaction standards and guidelines.
• Beef up your self-service options.
• Always be there for them.

Follow these tips and boost up your customer service, because ‘customer relations’ is the key to a successful SaaS business.

To know more, please visit the following link:

http://www.forbes.com/sites/micahsolomon/2015/04/25/how-and-why-to-improve-customer-service-at-your-saas-company-starting-today/

Today’s era is Online Era. Online brands are emerging day in and day out. There’s a lot of competition in this sector with thousands of startups growing. Amidst this competition, how do you plan to make your brand stand out? The answer to this is an interactive User Experience via websites that are the face of these brands. Website user experience (UX) is important in forming brand perceptions. By tailoring this experience according to the needs of the customers, a brand can easily win their loyalty.

Greg Zapar, Director of User Experience at Wire Stone, in his article at cmswire.com has shared four key points to keep top-of-mind when optimizing your website’s UX to drive value for your customers. They are:

• Every Touchpoint Matters

• UX and Content are One
• Aim for the Middle
• Visualize Everything

To understand them in detail, please visit the following link:

http://www.cmswire.com/cms/customer-experience/put-your-best-foot-forward-get-smart-about-user-experience-029130.php

“Thought Leadership is innovative thinking within a specific area of knowledge which helps shape the evolution of that field.”

For content marketers, thought leadership is about setting an example in their industry through original content that informs and delights. According to Dorie Clark, “Thought leadership is necessary because it gives people a clear reason to choose you over the competition.”

Nate Birt, Deputy Managing Editor at Top Producer Magazine, in his article at entrepreneur.com, has described five fundamental ways in which content marketers can command thought leadership. They are:

1. Create deep content on mission-critical subjects.

2. Invite users to exclusive beta testing of a new service.

3. Engage with real-time video using Periscope.

4. Start a cross-platform hashtag campaign.

5. Write news releases.

Using these ideas can help a brand to be at the top in its customer’s mind. To know more, please visit the following link:

http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/246056

It was found that, 59% of CMO's who use technology strategy, depends on marketing ops for tools, analytics, process and metrics. According to Scott Vaughan (CMO of Integrate), marketing operation (marketing Ops) focuses on customer acquisition. The marketing operations function has emerged due to the need for a more transparent, efficient, and accountable view of marketing. Its growth was driven by the proliferation of marketing technology and increased pressure from the C-suite to prove the value of marketing and contribute to the bottom-line. The Marketing Ops role is increasing in today’s world, so, some tips for Marketing Ops leaders. They are as under:
Tip 1# Lead process change by organizing around the customers: Look at your current marketing plan, technology, process and resources.
Tip 2# Drive decisions based on governed data: Apply data governance to improve quality.
Tip 3# Shape the marketing technology infrastructure: Identifying and applying right technology.
Read more at: http://marketingland.com/marketings-new-customer-nerve-center-marketing-operations-127292

In today’s competitive world, most of the organizations have a social media marketing as the part of their marketing strategy. But most of the time they won’t get success. Here are some common mistakes are discussed:

·         Choosing an incorrect platform.

·         Doing too much or too little.

·         Ignoring content marketing.

·         Inappropriate content or self-promotion.

·         No personal branding.

·         Canned responses to negative comments.

·         Not aligning with the target audience in terms of tone and messaging.

Here are some tips for choosing a right platform:

·         Facebook can be used for leveraging the community efforts and building trust.

·         Twitter can be used for broadcasting your messages and connect with thought leaders and people.

·         LinkedIn can be used for targeting a professional audience.

·         Google+ can be used for SEO efforts.

To know more about these mistakes and solution, read an article “7 deadly sins of startup social media marketing” by Radha Giri, http://yourstory.com/2015/05/social-media-marketing-deadly-sins/

According to Gartner’s report, “CRM will be at the heart of digital initiatives in coming years as enterprises look to create more targeted interactions in a multichannel environment.”

And the basis for these initiatives will be Internet of Things (IoT) because IoT is not only affecting the way people interact with objects and things but also the way customers interact with brands. In this IoT era, marketers have several new options for enhancing customer service as well as experience. Some of them are:

• Real time marketing promotions
• On-demand pricing
• Next-generation customer service
• In-store experiences
• Extensive use of wearable devices
• The self-marketing products

For these initiatives, a sophisticated set of CRM tools like Parature, Geotoko and Aislelabs are also available.

In the nutshell, to deal with today’s digitally empowered customers, organizations are realizing the need to change their focus from products to services.

To know more, please read the following article by Frank Palermo, Senior Vice President, Virtusa, at cmswire.com:

http://www.cmswire.com/cms/internet-of-things/a-new-frontier-for-crm-the-internet-of-things-029120.php

“Data is the new oil”

This comparison of big data with oil has always been there, ever since big data came into limelight. It is considered that like oil, the more you extract from big data, the more you benefit.

Now look at this new statement:

“Data is the new soil”

This statement reflects the growth in the field of big data. From being used only for extracting information, it is now being used to explore new avenues. Big Data is now being used as a raw material from which new ideas can be generated and further processed into new products and services. Many examples of this were given at Sapphire Now, SAP’s annual user conference, where innovators demonstrated various fields in which they have started using big data sets to create unique products. Some of them are:

• Handle the short and medium term challenges that climate change creates
• Help “local spaces” understand what mobile customers want
• Provide shoppers with a contextual in-store experience
• Help companies create solutions and discover things like energy and profit leaks, make predictable promotions based on clustered buyer preferences

Thus, big data is now providing a new range of solutions to make our lives easier as well as better. To know more, read the following article by Virginia Backaitis, Senior Partner at Brilliant Leap, at cmswire.com:

http://www.cmswire.com/cms/big-data/is-data-the-new-soil-sapphirenow-029124.php

There is a continuous fall in number of manufacturing industries due to lower profit margin or problem in operation. Here are some problems faced by manufacturing companies with their solutions:

 •    Organizations won’t able to find skilled labor:

·         They need to train them for building required skills, and train employees to solve daily problems.

·         Can’t keep track of all the regulations: Companies need to have Quality legal counsel.

·         Problem with suppliers: Apply lean, six sigma or analytics to reduce waste cost and lead time.

·         Competitive Advantage: Continuous Innovation and lean product development are the need of manufacturing industry.

To know more about these problems and their solution read an article link “Manufacturing: It’s Where and How, Not If” by Becky Morgan (President, Fulcrum ConsultingWorks Inc.): http://www.industryweek.com/strategic-planning-execution/manufacturing-it-s-where-and-how-not-if

In today's present scenario, retailers are facing threat from online stores. There is a fall in profit percentage. But to deal with this, retailers are increasing their customer's database as they can apply analytics on the data, predict and track customer behavior.

 In this context, the Future group's plan is to increase the database of customers so that they can fight ecommerce companies.

According to Punit Soni (CPO at online marketplace Flipkart), “Capturing a huge swath of pricing and things of the largest economies of the world, and becoming the default marketplace is not easily doable for offline players”.

To know more about Future Group strategy and analytics in retail, read an article link “Future Group banking on analytics to battle e-commerce companies” by Jayadevan PK (ET Bureau): http://articles.economictimes.indiatimes.com/2015-05-08/news/61947503_1_rakesh-biyani-future-group-data-analytics

It is the age of mobile devices and users spend most of their time in apps than they do mobile web. So, nowadays, brands are capitalizing this trend, and aggressively going for larger in-app budgets. According to a forecast by eMarketer, projects in-app ad which spends $29.66 billion now will be triple i.e. mobile web spend will be $10.84 billion by 2016. Mobile video is another fastest growing segments in digital advertising and it is expects it expects revenue of $4.4 billion in ad revenue in the US alone. Southeast Asia is another growing smartphone regions in the world, and specifically in India, where broadband internet is scarce and mobile penetration is high, it is expected to reach over 250 mm mobile devices this year. To know more about latest mobile advertising trends, follow:  http://venturebeat.com/2015/04/21/10-mobile-advertising-trends-for-2015-and-beyond/

People are always going to go shopping. A lot of our effort is just: 'How do we make the retail experience a great one?'

-Philip Green

The basic ingredient for success in a retail business is a magnificent customer experience. And, in today’s world, where technology has become an important part of our existence, then why not should we use its power in retail? That’s the next milestone that needs to be achieved i.e. to make retail more technology oriented and thus, customer friendly.

The following article at business-reporter.co.uk, lists out 5 technologies that will change the customer experience in retail. They are:

1. Projection
2. Touch Screens
3. Augmented Reality
4. Nighttime Displays
5. Robots

To know more about them in detail and how they have been actually brought into use by various retail stores, please visit the following link:

http://business-reporter.co.uk/2015/04/28/5-technologies-set-to-change-customer-experience-in-retail/

Agile represents a group of software engineering methodologies which promise to deliver increased productivity, quality and project success rate overall in software development projects. Now, the scope of agile methodologies has increase more than just software development. They are increasingly being used in aviation, construction, pharmaceuticals, defence and the financial sector. This methodology divides the project in parts and focuses on each part rather than one single deadline.

According to Steve Messenger, Chairman of Agile standards body DSDM, “Agile takes a more fundamental approach to problems, enabling you to move forward with versions as you go along. Rather than try to design everything upfront, your experience and knowledge will increase as you go.”

This article by Tim Adler at business-reporter.co.uk explains in detail about agile methodology, compares it with previous technologies- Prince 2 and Waterfall Technologies. It also talks about an upcoming methodology – Prince 2 Agile.

To know more, please visit the following link:

http://business-reporter.co.uk/2015/04/28/project-management-why-it-pays-to-be-agile/

In this digital world, continuous innovation in marketing is very important to have a competitive advantage. The traditional ways of marketing are no longer effective, but marketers need to build engaging ads to attract customers, which leads to the development of touchpoint marketing. Touchpoint marketing aims to build a contextual customer experience across every online and offline touchpoint. This approach can help in building loyalty and engagement of customers.

Here are some tips to make touchpoint marketing effective:

• Create an emotional customer experience.
• Move from linear marketing to the customer life cycle.
• Shift from personalized campaigns to contextual interactions.

To know more about touch point marketing, read the article link “touchpoint marketing helps you stay connected with customers” by Patrick Tripp (Senior Product Marketing Manager for Adobe Campaign) at: http://www.cmswire.com/cms/digital-marketing/touchpoint-marketing-helps-you-stay-connected-to-customers-029110.php

The retail industry is B2C industry. In B2C industry, forecasting and planning future demand and supply is a very important function to improve operation's efficiency. But, consumer behavior is very unpredictable. To analyze this unpredictable behavior, retail stores need to analyze big data. In Consumer Goods Analytics Summit in Chicago, suggestions on applying Big Data Analytics in Retail Industry were discussed. Let’s have a look on some of them:

·        By using big data analytics try to find out actual problem and their solution.

·        Apply analytics in every possible way from making sales report to multi-structured data to understand and improve customer service.

·        Always Interpret big data.

·        Recruit persons who understand the value of data analytics. 

To know more about Big Data Analytics in Retail, read the article link “Are retailers organized for Analytics” by Gib Basset, (Consumer Goods and Retail Industry Principal with Oracle Corp) at: http://www.retailwire.com/news-article/18266/are-retailers-organized-for-analytics

The Global Food System comprises of a number of stakeholders as well as data - consumers, producers, economics, trade agreements, financial transactions, demand data, supply data, forecasting models, climatology, large and small-scale farms, politics, distribution systems etc. How do all of these correlate in a useful manner and show results? This is not possible with traditional scientific methodologies and technologies as there is a robust volume of complex data available. Rather, there’s a need for Big Data Analytics that will help in following areas:

• Measurement of poverty and hunger levels
• Improve aspects of how we feed and eat
• Food policy actions, etc.

Therefore, we need to invest in larger data warehouses which will provide the backbone for big data analysis of local, regional, national and ultimately, the global food system.

To know more, please read the following article by Hari Pulapaka, Executive Chef and Co-Owner, Cress Restaurant, at The Hufffington Post:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/hari-pulapaka-phd-cec/big-data-analytics-the-gl_b_7216378.html?ir=India&adsSiteOverride=in

“Predictive analytics have the potential power to produce remarkable services and longer lives”

-James Heskett

All of us must have heard of uses of predictive analytics in marketing i.e. it helps to understand the needs of the customer. But, have you ever wondered that the scope of predictive analytics can be much more than that.

“Predictive analysis applied to humans is now one of the hottest concepts to come along.” It can now be used in the following situations:

• Development of concepts such as 30-minute package delivery
• Big Data analysis of target customer's and others' purchases, combined with related information to identify their needs even before they arise
• Personalized logistics

These situations seem to be amazing but turning them into reality is what that needs to be done. To know more, please read the following article by James Heskett at HBS Working Knowledge:

http://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/7527.html

About 85% of the world's population has email accounts and check their email inbox daily. So, email advertising is becoming very important. Email Campaign is the cheapest way of advertising and generates the highest Return on Investment (ROI). Here are some suggestions by Justin Zhu (CEO of Iterable) on creating good a email campaign:
1. Map out the customer flow.
2. Master the balance of building your list, while not asking for too much.
3. Embrace marketing automation.
4. Offer value with every touch.
5. Recognize lapsed users and bring them back.
6. Perpetually tinker with A/B testing.
To know more about these tips, follow: http://thenextweb.com/socialmedia/2015/05/05/the-6-rules-for-creating-killer-email-campaigns/

iGen or  Generation Z is the generation who has been born in digitalization age with smart phones in the hands. iGen is independent, stubborn, pragmatic and always in a rush. Marketers are facing problem in understanding their interest, hobbies and attitude. Gen Z wants to know everything about a product before buying. They trust friends, strangers over advertisements, blogs or information on the net. In an article by Joan Schneider (CEO of Schneider Associates), shares some tips on how to market iGeneration:

·         Personalize Everything.

·         Connect with them through social media.

·         Be strategic with advertisement.

·         Excite I Generation with content.

·         Use mobile to reach I Generation.

Marketers also need to be social, transparent and personal with this generation. To know more about this generation read an article “How to market to the Generation I” by Joan Schneider at: https://hbr.org/2015/05/how-to-market-to-the-igeneration

A business is identified with its customers. And to attract and retain customers, social media marketing is a must. But, unplanned or not well organized social media campaign is as effective as having no campaign at all. Therefore, it’s important to plan an inventive and comprehensive social media campaign.

Nina Zipkin, in her article at entrepreneur.com has shared few tips to help build up your following and your brand via social media marketing campaigns. Some of them are:

• Make your tweets stand out
• Inspire action
• Stay top of mind
• Share your feedback
• Veer off the beaten track

To know more, please visit the following link:

http://www.entrepreneur.com/video/240295

“Text messaging as a communication channel is impersonal because it lacks the emotional connectivity of face-to-face and verbal communication, yet it feels extremely personal.”

This personal element is what that makes text messages, an effective sales medium. But, familiarity factor is also critical for prospecting via text. According to the Lead360 study, that covered 3.5 million lead records from more than 400 companies, a text message sent alone converts at 4.8%. That same message, sent after a phone contact increases conversion by 112.6%. So, to get 112% results, combine text messages with another medium, use the familiarity factor and –voilà- the sales is done!

To effectively utilize this sales medium, Jeb Blount has given 7 keys to structuring effective text prospecting messages. They are:

1. Identify Yourself
2. Message Matters
3. Be Direct – Be Brief
4. Grammar, Punctuation, and Spelling Count
5. Avoid Abbreviations
6. Transparent Links
7. Before Clicking Send – Read It Again

Read more at:

http://jebblount.com/7-keys-text-messaging-sales-prospecting/