SigmaWay Blog

For every start-up, customer engagement and promoting their brand is a big challenge. So if your business is in the start-up stage, integration of social media in your CRM will give you enormous opportunities to grow your business.

Social media in CRM aka Social CRM on cloud gives an extra edge to your business as engaging with your target audience will be limitless and creating brand communities which helps in monitoring and analysing customer’s demands will be very easy.

Here are the 5 benefits of having social CRM in your start-up -:

1.      Discover opportunities to engage with customers

2.      Monitor your notifications

3.      Real time updates in your customer contact records

4.      Integrate your marketing software and your contact records

5.      Share customer messages

To read visit on -: http://www.intellika.in/blogs/post/5-benefits-of-social-crm-for-startups

Today world is changing at a rapid speed. Technology is playing an important role. Agriculture technology is also advancing and promises to unleash its productivity. The combination of advanced mathematics, automation, advancements in sensor systems and next-generation plant breeding are setting the stage for the next Green Revolution, which is needed to ensure a better future. Next-generation farms are putting science and technology to work towards delivering a step change in yields and growing more from less. Here are the four most exciting developments in 2016.

1) The Mathematics revolution.

2) The Sensing Revolution.

3) Putting it together with automation.

4) Next generation plant breeding of corn.

Read more at: http://www.forbes.com/sites/gmoanswers/2016/01/26/four-technologies-that-will-usher-next-generation-farming/#3cfe147b69f5

The Six Sigma approach makes the work both flexible and focused. Six Sigma training helps entrepreneurs to assess process cycle of operations. The essential factor in entrepreneurship is that they are not afraid of taking risks. Six Sigma practices also help them in business planning. Entrepreneurs also realize that there is a need to move slowly and work on the service models for better consistency. Read more at: http://www.business.com/entrepreneurship/a-new-look-at-entrepreneurship-where-six-sigma-aligns-personality-with-process/

There is a significant shift that has happened in companies from waterfall methodology to agile methodology. Story cards are developed and bundled in milestones. Milestones are great in measuring the progress and determining the scope of the project. Milestones need not to be always set in a fixed time manner like monthly or quarterly. Often gaps are created in milestones to do other projects. A rhythm that can be set up for every Monday is a good option because it will help in getting small incremental changes that will help implementation team. But some point of time weekly cycle appears to be very fast. It is very necessary to determine that what is really feasible to achieve for the team. Read the full article here: http://it.toolbox.com/blogs/original-thinking/how-fast-does-your-agile-sprint-71351

The goal of marketing technology is to deliver "the right message to the right customer or audience at the right time," says Jake Sorofman, research vice president at Gartner. Marketing technology has evolved into a combination of complex software and data. Tools which are used today with marketing technology also create new complexities and difficulties. It can't solve the ad- waste dilemma. This means that the marketing team wastes billions of dollars on digital ads that no one sees. Marketing tech can't tell about the impact an advertisement had about the brand to the viewer. Read the complete article here: http://www.cio.com/article/3024934/marketing/how-and-why-marketing-tech-fails-to-deliver-on-its-promise.html

There is a lot of confusion building around marketing tech and ad tech. Are they same or different? There are minute differences between the two. Let's see what they are. Marketing technology comprises of tools that manage marketing processes, customer analytics, digital content and workflows. It covers all aspects of marketing, SEO, and even ad tech. It is basically the understanding the customer and optimizing data science around them. Programmatic buying and selling of advertisements are referred as ad tech. Both of these technologies also share many similarities. Read the complete article here:  http://www.itworld.com/article/3030325/marketing/what-the-hell-is-the-difference-between-ad-tech-and-marketing-tech.html

Some volunteers of a nonprofit volunteer outfit are going door to door in Odisha. They are collecting data about schools, health facilities, Panchayat, roads, etc. These data points are being analyzed by a not-for-profit development organization which will use this data and will draft a development plan for Member of Parliament. The idea is to filter the data into meaningful information which will help in reducing the gap between real needs and actions. Some big consultancies are also working together with politicians for the same purpose. Data analytics tools are used to determine demographic profiles and socioeconomic aims. Read the full article here: http://articles.economictimes.indiatimes.com/2016-02-02/news/70283182_1_data-analytics-tools-prime-minister-narendra-modi

The breakthrough in the mobile innovations that is coming into industry holds many promises for the future of mobile healthcare solutions. The power of technology to monitor patients from distance improves health care in a way that is cost effective and beneficial. To implement such systems the need is to change the thinking of both doctors and the patients. Mobile Healthcare systems keep a constant vigilance on the patient and can collect important data. The data related to the blood pressure, sugar levels and various important factors can be analyzed to make the treatment better. This gives freedom to the patients to complete their works without being tense about their healthcare system. They can remotely access the same. There are projects which are working on mobile healthcare and they have offered promising results.  Read more at: http://www.healthcare-informatics.com/article/harnessing-power-mobile

Want to make your industry more tech oriented? Follow a well-planned strategy and nicely made roadmap. The financial services and the manufacturing industry are adapting technology in their work culture. But the scenario is not the same for natural products industry. The new technical platforms are very critical to the organization's growth. But those who are still not working to make their work easy using technology are at a big loss. To blend Information technology with your work, it is important to have a strategy and a roadmap. A strategy consists of analyzing the current state, benchmarking and collecting recommendations. Then an analysis of the vision and the goals of an organization is required. To make the workforce acquainted with tech, a plan is required. Upgradation can be done only after taking the estimation of budget. Then comes the role of the consultants, they recommend which software or hardware will be most suitable and at what place. To do the same IT people recommend a plan of how and what is required to be done. Read more about it at: http://www.naturalproductsinsider.com/articles/2016/01/information-technology-strategy-and-roadmap.aspx

With the expansion of Analytics, each sector is trying to utilize it to the fullest. By implementing analytics, the managers are able to identify the behaviors that lead to positive outcomes and also identify the problematic areas. Therefore, organizations must develop the best practices that can streamline the work. By applying this to the calls, customers can analyze the customer - agent interactions. So they can identify the most important factors and can even reduce the volume in maximum traffic hours. The advance speech analytics software not only means, evaluates and presents audio and textual data, but also collects information regarding reasons for calls, emotional nuances in a customer's voice and how well agents are addressing a customer's needs and expectations. This even helps them keep a check on their marketing strategies so that it can be altered for the better. These generate very meaningful insights for why a customer needs to contact the support centers and thus exposing the root cause. So this helps in decreasing the average call time and monitoring the resources spent. Read more at : http://customerthink.com/top-5-benefits-of-call-center-speech-analytics-why-your-call-centers-success-depends-on-speech-analytics-solutions/

Every human being is interested to know their chances of getting sick in the future. This is where artificial intelligence scientists steps in. With the combination of machine learning, natural language processing and text analytics scientists are working to find out some latest concepts and technologies in biomedicine. Each term is then given a score, which, based on the technology's analysis, identified its predicted rate of incline. So based on that, few predictions have been made for 2016.  To know more, follow: http://www.science20.com/news_articles/ai_may_tell_us_whats_going_to_be_big_in_science_this_year-165373

Enormous demand of Wi-Fi has led to transmission of billions of bytes of data every day. Researchers have predicted that by 2019 mobile devices will exchange 35 quintillion bytes of information every month. This is just for mobile devices, just consider computers, IOT devices and you can get an idea how much data will be transferred. But our traditional Wi-Fi can't handle this entire load. So scientists have discovered a new technology known as LiFi. It uses light as a means of data transmission. Using LiFi we can send 224 gigabits per second. They can be also used in healthcare facilities. The idea that light can pass through walls can increase security because one has to be physically present in the room to access the data. Read the full article here: http://www.forbes.com/sites/bernardmarr/2016/01/12/will-lifi-take-big-data-and-the-internet-of-things-to-a-new-level/#2bceb09c346f

Big data is in its adolescence. Companies have started to treat it as a corporate asset. The focus has been shifted to find those data initiatives that will have biggest and immediate effect. Companies are not looking for more data, but the right data. This helps in making better informed decisions. A correlation between good data policies and financial success is also observed. Big data is becoming less about volume and velocity, but more about value. As technology continues to improve, the "bigness" of big data is becoming a less important factor. Read the full article here: http://www.forbes.com/sites/bernardmarr/2015/11/30/big-data-now-a-top-management-issue/#29598044794d

Investment consultants have been working for hours researching and investing in asset classes like stocks, real estate, commodities and bonds. But all these asset classes pale in comparison to human capital. Human capital is the present value of your future salary. It is the most valuable asset in young age. With a professional and desirable skill set, you will always get a fair salary no matter how much inflation, your country is suffering. Everything you do to increase your earning ability like getting a higher degree, taking certification courses, all comes under investing in human capital. Like any other capital, human capital has also risked associated with it like - death or disability risk; professional competency risk. Read the full article here: http://www.investopedia.com/articles/younginvestors/09/human-capital.asp

The field of smart wears brings up wonderful innovations each day. New horizons are explored and tested. This merging of machine and man has brought many such things which we never thought of. Exoskeletons are one such example. These give superhuman abilities to human beings. Nowadays there have been issues regarding privacy. There is always a third eye around looking and collecting more and more information about you. So to protect this the stealth wear is coming. To make this work you need to find the right reflective material that can block surveillance cameras and mobile tracking devices. Smart textile and smart clothing are already very popular. These have various applications ranging from health monitoring clothes to the environmental monitoring ones.  Read more at: http://www.latimes.com/business/technology/la-fi-thedownload-wearable-tech-oddities-20160209-story.html

Data analytics is now not only restricted to the IT sector, but also serves other sectors of the society. If we look at the services and other sectors where data analysis can be used then, the list will be very long in today's world. Data analytics is used in each and every sector including sports, politics, medical and financial firms. Some of the predictions of how analytics will shape the business, sports, and political landscape in 2016 are:

Prediction #1: The hottest corporate job of 2016 is data analyst.

Prediction #2: IT will embrace the self-service analytics movement.

Prediction #3: Predictive analytics go mainstream.

Prediction #4: The "Internet of Things" (IoT) will get more organizations interested in geospatial analytics.

To read the full article, follow: http://www.forbes.com/sites/valleyvoices/2016/01/20/five-ways-data-analytics-will-shape-business-sports-and-politics-in-2016/#612ab3395a1d

Nowadays, data analysis and space technology are used to help live crime mapping and is known as Predictive Policing. This has been used by various police departments of the few developed countries. In India, Delhi Police is also developing this mechanism in partnership with the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO). It is called The Crime Mapping, Analytics and Predictive System (CMAPS) and is used for with ensuring internal security. This will help in crime control, and law and order and security management through analysis of relevant data and patterns, leading to the optimization of available resources. Each police officials will be equipped with Personal Digital Assistant (PDA) device connected to a central processor, with the records of more than two lakh criminals. To read more about Predictive Policing, follow: http://www.indiatimes.com/news/india/delhi-police-join-hands-with-isro-will-use-space-technology-to-predict-and-stop-crime-250432.html

The use of predictive analytics in the Human Resource Management is the recent development. The HR team is taking advantage of the loads of data to keep a check on the employees. Predictive Analytics is changing the relationship between employee and enterprise. Predictive models can easily predict the upcoming trends. The performance of the employees can be judged in an unbiased way rather than gut feelings. The models identify meaningful insights by collecting data from the various platforms. The kind of posts that individuals have on the social networking platforms, LinkedIn profiles all lead to predictions. HR teams use these insights to decide the promotions, pay scale etc. This also acts as a disadvantage to the privacy of workers. Soon there will be a need to redefine the worker privacy laws which will take care of these new technologies. Read more about this in the article written by Rodd Wagner (A best- selling author) at: http://www.stevenspointjournal.com/story/opinion/columnists/2016/01/22/predictive-analytics-transforms-workplace/79116764/

The Information Technology (IT) industry had changed a lot from its early years. If we see today, IT sector is changing at the rapid rate and also the problems related to it. Today IT is everywhere directly or indirectly. But if we look at the education system, it was never been easier to manage, but nowadays, it is like a choice between the difficult and the impossible. That is because of the rapid changes. So it is the reason of slowing down the pace of IT sector. The question arises as to how can we align our timelines and change our ecosystem? Top ten IT Issues gives a clear response: Divest, Reinvest, and Differentiate. The ten issues divided into these three categories are:

# Differentiate:

* Optimizing educational technology.

* Student success technologies.

* BI and analytics.

* E-learning and online education.

# Reinvest:

* Information security.

*IT Workforce Hiring and Retention.

* IT Workforce Hiring and Retention

* IT Organizational Development.

# Divest:

* Institutional data management.

* Enterprise application integration.

Read more at: http://er.educause.edu/articles/2016/1/top-10-it-issues-2016 

There was a time when all the retail stores were taking their business online. But now the well- flourished online stores have begun to establish their brick and mortar stores. In addition to the online setup, they are now even working on traditional retail. An online presence has become crowded and expensive. According to a report, there are more than 800,000 online stores, all competing to attract customers through the gateway of Google. By opening the physical stores they aim to create awareness and attract more customers. They have seen that this creates awareness for their brands and drives a lot of traffic to our website, as well and accelerate the e-commerce sales. Read more at: http://www.theguardian.com/business/2016/jan/30/future-of-e-commerce-bricks-and-mortar