On Wednesday, April 8, 2015, the Reserve Bank of India issued a notification of Government’s decision to raise the bar of FDI limit in insurance sector to 49%. This move has been welcomed by the insurance industry of India as it will entice global insurance companies to set up units in India and the existing firms to increase their investment. The ability to absorb more foreign capital will also spur some insurance companies to list on the local stock exchanges via initial public offerings. As per the DIPP (Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion) guidelines, FDI of up to 26 per cent come under automatic route and beyond 26 per cent and up to 49 per cent government approval is needed. 

To know more, read the following Economic Times article:

http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/economy/policy/rbi-notifies-hike-in-fdi-cap-in-insurance-sector-to-49/articleshow/46852551.cms

According to Monica Zent (CEO & Founder of Foxwordy), social networking just takes a quarter of all time spent online to reach more than 75 percent of all internet users. Social selling, basically, is engaging with your target audience via social media. To leverage the power of social selling you must understand your stakeholders (customers, investors, clients, business partners etc.). Once you find your target, you need to engage with them and for building long term relations, you need to be credible. This strategy helps to generate 50% more sales. Read more at: http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/244293

According to Stefan Groschupf (CEO of Datameer), big data analytics can prevent healthcare industry from fraud as technology is providing powerful means to catch and prevent perpetrators.  Data-analytics will help in securing patient privacy and mitigating prescription fraud.  According to 2014 analysis of Standard & Poor's 500-stock index companies, it was found that healthcare and pharmaceutical companies have worse security performances. Big data analytics can be used to combine, integrate, and analyze data at once regardless of source, type, size, or format and identify   patterns needed to address fraud and compliance-related challenges. Big data can help to combine multiple data sources, analyze data and quickly deliver insights, pharmacies, doctor offices, and hospitals can track abnormal activity to mitigate prescription drug abuse. Read more at: http://venturebeat.com/2015/03/31/big-data-analytics-can-prevent-health-care-fraud-heres-how/

Lean Thinking is a form of structured thinking that aims to provide a new way to think about organizing processes to deliver benefits to the organization while eliminating waste. Understanding this concept forms a base for deciding what actions to take, what to change, what to do. 

Pascal Dennis, in his book Getting the Right Things Done, has easily explained lean thinking in 10 words:

· “What should be happening?”

· “What is actually happening?”

· “Please explain.”

      To know more, read this article by Mark Rosenthal: http://theleanthinker.com/2015/02/13/lean-thinking-in-10-words/

Stephen Covey, the renowned management thinker, said, “Start with the end in mind.” Every organization aims at meeting few common ends i.e. safe workplace, save money, save space, save time in launching new processes, and increase flexibility. The means to achieving these ends is designing the process in such a way that it is lean as well as waste is minimized. If done at the starting stage, this will be more useful in cost reduction as per the Rule of 10.Robert H. Simonis, senior consultant, KCE Consulting LLC in his article in IndustryWeek, talks about how reducing different types of wastes bring benefits to the organizations. 

Read more at: http://www.industryweek.com/lean-six-sigma/design-out-waste-and-build-lean

Investing in talent management software can assist HR professionals in gathering and analyzing the data of employees. Applying big data analytics to measure employee performance can help organization to find strength and weakness of their employees e.g. many companies use wearable tech to improve communication within its stores, to track employees when they're at work. Employee satisfaction surveys, team assessments, social media, exit and stay interviews etc. can help HR to predict employee's attrition. Conducting performance appraisals and 360-degree performance reviews can help HR in better understanding the effectiveness of their professional development efforts. Big data analytics can be an advantage while hiring employees. Read more at: http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/244247

Technologies are changing how things are designed, made, and serviced around the globe and they have the potential for disruptive change. They can create value by connecting individuals and machines in a new "digital thread" across the value chain. Digitizing the value chain facilitates innovation and can directly improve the top line. Digital manufacturing is already proving its potential. For example: Coca-Cola applied a flexible packaging process in its "Share a Coke" campaign, which helped to increase the company's soft-drink volumes across world markets. Read more at: http://www.mckinsey.com/insights/manufacturing/digitizing_the_value_chain

In this customer focused world, supply chain is no longer an internally visible process. The focus has now shifted to knowing where the supply chain needs to be. Predictive Analytics helps answer this question. According to Bill Abernathy, head of North America product supply logistics excellence, Bayer CropScience, “Predictive analytics are changing consumer buying behavior and supply chain professionals need to be able to satisfy the increasing demands of consumers who expect products delivered exactly when promised.” With the help of predictive analytics, manufactures are now able to make better decisions that are based on anticipating present and future customer preferences. Dave Blanchard, Senior Editor, IndustryWeek, has written in his article link about how predictive analytics is becoming a necessity for manufacturers. 

Read more at: http://www.industryweek.com/supply-chain/predictive-analytics-let-manufacturers-see-more-clearly-their-supply-chains 

Digitization has seen a rise in India in the past few years. Due to this, huge amount of data about our daily lives, needs and preferences is easily available. This is BIG DATA. If companies are already using this, then why can’t Government? Using big data analytics by government in policy making is a big step in improving its effectiveness. Moreover, government already has data in the form of Aadhaar Card details to start with. This data analysis can be used in a number of areas like formulating better policies for farmers by using Kisan Call Centre records, improving the transportation system, etc. This idea has already been implemented in Singapore and Germany on a smaller scale, but implementing it in India on a large scale can set another benchmark in evidence based policy making. Implementing this idea also faces various challenges like inefficiency of the public sector in India, invasion of right to privacy and not focusing on relevant information on such a large pool of data. The government already has initiated this idea but the need is efficient implementation.

Read more at: http://www.livemint.com/Opinion/LaTyG3Q111tuYa73XNMXsJ/The-promise-of-big-data-analytics.html

The latest development in the use of data and analytics is: Advanced HR Analytics. It is the application of new techniques and new thinking to talent management. It involves human resources and has a huge impact on an organization. Various organizations are already using it for following purposes:

·         Increasing the engagement and productivity of their employees

·         Reducing compensation expenditures

·         Reducing retention bonuses by $20 million

·         Reducing employee attrition by half

·         Detecting previously unobserved behavioral patterns

The insights that these companies have gained from data analytics are highly useful. Risk is always involved where there is a human element. But, developing data analytics to drive better people decisions can help companies compete in a better way.

To know more, read the following article in March 2015 edition of McKinsey Quarterly by Bruce Fecheyr-Lippens, Bill Schaninger, and Karen Tanner:

http://www.mckinsey.com/insights/organization/power_to_the_new_people_analytics

Social media is becoming popular. Social media answers millions of users nowadays. These users want their personal news feeds and timelines is full of interesting content. Digital media marketing analysts have conducted numerous studies on what kind of content performs best on social media platforms, especially Facebook and Twitter.  Answer? Photos and videos. Pinterest, despite being new in social media field, is actually the second-largest social media traffic referrer behind Facebook. To know more about the reasons why images will increase social media research, follow: http://www.socialmediatoday.com/social-networks/2015-04-04/6-reasons-why-images-increase-your-social-media-reach

Consumers become frustrated when they don’t see content which is not according to their taste. According to a study it was found that 61% of consumers feel better about a company that delivers custom content. A study conducted by Accenture found that while 86% of surveyed consumers said they were concerned that their data was being track, 85% said they realized that data tracking make it possible for retailers to present them with relevant and targeted content. 88% of marketers are also considering adding content marketing personalization to their plans according to another study. Read more at: http://www.socialmediatoday.com/marketing/2015-04-04/content-personalization-its-what-consumers-want

Public cloud has many advantages. They provide flexible and affordable virtual machine deployments and can boost an organization's data backup and workload-scaling capabilities. But, there are some drawbacks of public cloud. One of the biggest disadvantages is its multi-tenant environment. Another disadvantage is that public cloud providers own the hardware and control the software associated with it, so that they can make some changes at will. Running virtuak machines in the cloud make them costlier is another disadvantage and last but not the least disadvantage is how public clouds can complicate backup processes. Read more at: http://searchcloudcomputing.techtarget.com/feature/Understanding-public-cloud-risks-and-costs?utm_medium=EM&asrc=EM_NLN_41550237&utm_campaign=20150407_Cisco%20Intercloud%20banks%20on%20hybrid%20cloud%20prosperity_nrando&utm_source=NLN&track=NL-1814&ad=899900

In a recent research, it was found that annual revenues from connected healthcare and fitness online services will approach $2 billion by 2019 i.e. nearly six times the $320 million value estimated for 2015. The study also found out that connected healthcare devices and the data they generate will benefit consumers of these new products.  The study further found that the importance of hardware will diminish at a much faster rate than other IoT market segments and demand for analytics software (that can extract meaning from data) will increase. Read more at: http://www.socialmediatoday.com/technology-data/2015-03-31/demand-big-data-apps-fitness-and-healthcare

Big Data means a huge amount of data and is characterized by 3Vs: Volume, Velocity, and Variety. Big Data has become very clumsy. So, the trend is shifting towards Fast Data, which means processing of massive data in real time to gain instant awareness and detect signals of interest on the spot. Another trend is Actionable Data, which synthesizes the predictive analytics and what-if analysis which enables you to take actions with feedback. Another new trend is Relevant Data which is critical to identify pertinence in the data set, and which leads to understanding of unrelated events and sequence. The last trend is Smart Data which is meaning-based computing and cognitive analytics that make solutions intelligent and self-improving. In a nutshell, Fast Data, Actionable Data, Relevant Data, and Smart Data (FARS) are replacing Big Data. Read more at: http://www.socialmediatoday.com/technology-data/2015-04-04/big-data-really-dead

The key elements for a business to succeed are a well-articulated strategy and well-defined goals and every business activity should contribute to move the organization in the right direction and thereby achieve its strategic goals. Nowadays, firms spend a lot of time on consulting strategic planning to support sales, marketing and operations across the enterprise but, they don’t include social business activities which sustain the firm’s digital footprint. Social business activities are an automated version of a firm’s identify, thought leadership, relationship and value drivers and also means looking at social business as more than marketing campaigns. To know more about social business strategy, follow Vanessa DiMauro (CEO, Leader Networks)’s article link: http://www.socialmediatoday.com/social-business/2015-04-03/social-business-strategy-how-prevent-digital-muddle?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Social+Media+Today+%28all+posts%29

Customers always want good customer service and like timely support and excellent customer service drives repeat business. Customers can pay a little more for products or services if they receive good customer service. CRM system helps to improve customer support and increase sales through automated e-mails, quotes, and invitations to sales events. Anthony Ortega (Analyst with Studio B) writes in his article link about how to turn great customer support into sales. Read more at: http://it.toolbox.com/blogs/insidecrm/turning-customer-support-into-future-sales-opportunities-66195

Organizing an event? How to spread the word about the event? This is where marketing comes into the picture. Nowadays, while promoting an event, you have to include social media. It has become unavoidable in today’s world. But social media is used in different ways for different events and one must follow a unique process of marketing while promoting one’s event on social media. William Johnson (Web designer), writes in his article link about some tips on how to promote an event on social media. Read more at: : http://www.socialmediatoday.com/social-networks/2015-04-01/top-7-ways-use-social-media-make-your-event-successful

In a manufacturing process everything is volatile and the main driver of that volatility is demand. Customer relationship management (CRM) system is the best place that reveals to us whether a product is in demand or not. The CRM system shows what will be bought and by whom. Earlier, assistants would gather data from people or reports, combine these data into spreadsheets, and then make the calculations. But, nowadays, dashboards are used to reduce the workload. David Gillman (Analyst with Studio B), writes in his article link about some common metrics that manufacturers need from the CRM system. Read more at: http://it.toolbox.com/blogs/insidecrm/crm-dashboard-data-that-matters-most-to-manufacturing-executives-66197

User Experience, also known as UX has become important and it impacts everything from app design to social media. UX designers work with digital marketing teams and this will only increase in 2015. Digital marketers will benefit when working with the UX design teams as it will provide loads of ideas that revolves around how they position the product for sale and marketing. Tara Lifland (Content marketing manager), writes in her article about why UX is important and where. Read more at: http://www.socialmediatoday.com/marketing/2015-03-26/5-reasons-why-user-experience-important