SigmaWay Blog

According to Jolanta Pilecka (Contributor), mobile users behave in a different way from desktop users. So, you need to add a little wizardry to ensure that it looks good on a mobile screen and different from desktop view. As mobile users want that with every step they reach to end goal and it should be quick, easy to access. Ways to optimize the mobile path:
• Don’t Shrink, Rethink
• Incorporate navigational cues
• Maximize native functions
• Incorporate Apps
• Get Your Data in order
 Therefore, for designing an app, you need to redesign your process from a mobile user perspective. Read more at: http://www.processexcellencenetwork.com/business-process-management-bpm/articles/don-t-shrink-rethink/

According to Vincent Weafer (Senior Vice President of Intel Security), analytical capabilities will help you to be ahead of your competitors. Predictive Analytics help you to analyze the future trends more accurately and help you to realize your threats and opportunities which affects budget, purchase and staffing decisions. For prediction, a large amount of data is required from a range of activities which organizations perform, historical events and third party intelligence and to make predictive analytics more effective, you need to build foundational abilities like real-time hunting, prioritization and scoping of security incidents in their environment. You need to analyze your stakeholders for blocking decisions. Read more at: http://www.darkreading.com/partner-perspectives/intel/predictive-analytics-the-future-is-now/a/d-id/1319956

According to Saritha Rai (Contributor), e-commerce companies like Amazon, Snapdeal, ShopClues, Flipkart etc. find innovative solutions to timely delivery of their products by collaborating with Kirana stores, Dabbawallas in Mumbai, post office for reaching especially in rural areas and gas stations in Delhi and Mumbai. In a Morgan Stanley Report, Indian e-commerce market is expected to boom up to $100 billion in revenue by 2020. Timely delivery in the cities of India is a big challenge for e-commerce firms as roads are congested, streets are not numbered sequentially and customers many times don’t write zip codes or landmarks.  Finding these innovative solutions will not only benefit the e-commerce firms but it will also benefit local sources. To know more about these innovative solution read at: http://www.forbes.com/sites/saritharai/2015/04/15/from-dabbawallas-to-kirana-stores-five-unique-ecommerce-delivery-innovations-in-india/

According to Jacob Morgan, small teams are better than large teams because in small teams we find a fast decision with better communication between teams, less bureaucracy, etc. In the state of the American workplace report, in smaller organizations, employees are more engaged as compared to larger organizations and according to reports, 43% of employees work at companies of fewer than 10 employees are engaged at work whereas in big organization it is only 30%. According to the Ringelmann Effect, as the number of the employee increases they become inefficient. Social loafing helps us to understand why individual efforts reduce with the increase in size of the organization. Therefore, organizations should always think about their team structure. Read more at: http://www.forbes.com/sites/jacobmorgan/2015/04/15/why-smaller-teams-are-better-than-larger-ones/

According to Andre Lavoie, small business has to perform various tasks like accounting, marketing, the managing workforce, recruiting, operations, etc. Small businesses don’t have a separate HR department, so they ignore many HR tasks like making job analysis before recruiting, employee handbook, etc.  In a 2013 Career Builder Survey, it was found that the wrong hiring cost is more than $50,000. In a small business, due to less attractive job description they can't afford to hire the right candidate for their company. To help small business, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) also has guidelines to differentiate between employee and contractors.

Read more at: http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/245008

According to the World Bank report, there is a fall in the growth rate of developing countries like East Asia and China. According to the Washington-based lender, growth in China is going to be 6.7% in 2015 and 2016 from 6.9% growth in 2014.  And according to the World Bank, developing East Asia countries excluding China is expected to grow at 5.1% in 2015 and 5.4% in 2016 from 4.6% in 2014. Reason for China, is slow down in its policies that aimed at putting its economy in a more sustainable way.  And higher US interest rates and an appreciating US dollar may raise borrowing costs. Read more at:

 http://www.moneycontrol.com/news/world-news/world-bank-cuts-east-asia-growth-forecast-warnsrisks-to-outlook_1355974.html?utm_source=ref_article

According to John Mills (Industry week), manufactures have less visibility than others and manufactures can’t wait for a longer period. In manufacturing companies conditions change frequently. In North America, factory activity has been trending down after the fall of 2014 and the Institute for supply Management said US index falling is falling since five consecutive months. Therefore, we need to predict the future of manufacturing firms by conducting some test quarterly. To know more about test read at:

http://www.industryweek.com/leadership/assume-nothing-5-tests-every-manufacturer-should-run-quarterly

Amazon launches new supply chain management technique “Dash Button” which allows the customers to order products automatically at the actual point of use.  According to Paul Myerson (Industry week), Amazon’s new launch Dash button puts pressure on the retailers, especially grocers who have very small profit margins (1-2%) and have a huge impact on the retail order fulfilment process.  This will bring a new concept called focusing on value to the customers and eliminating waste not only in the business environment, but now at the actual home of the customers. To know more about dash button read at: http://www.industryweek.com/inventorymanagement/amazon-dashes-make-consumers-and-their-supply-chains-leaner

According to Mike Dalton (Industry Week), innovation requires risk and the goal of a firewall is to identify that risk. The firewall block projects that score low on five feasibilities i.e. commercial, technical, manufacturability, regulatory and intellectual property. At the project charter stage, it is useful to identify all of the stakeholders and solicit their input on all the potential ways the project could fail and what the impact would be. A study of the telephony industry (Ogawa & Ketner, 1997) showed that bottom 80% performers cancelled nearly 30% of their projects late in the process and about top 20% top companies cancelled the same percentage of projects early. Read more at: http://www.industryweek.com/product-development/obstacles-new-product-growth

Human resources analytics, also called talent analytics, is the application of sophisticated data mining and business analytics (BA) techniques to human resources (HR) data. The “Ulrich model with four specializations” is quite handy in case of HR operations and widely adopted throughout the globe.

Depending on the level of formalism in the organization, a lot can go into the wording of job descriptions here. It starts with the hiring manager looking for specific skills and operational responsibilities of the candidate. Moves into the negotiation with HR where it fits in the performance and compensation plans, and with the hiring practices. Recruitment firms provide the added value of data on candidate availability to the given descriptions, in addition to their access to such candidates from their networks. With the right data, companies can change their strategies not only for individual job descriptions but also bigger decisions like broader hiring, flight risk, or where to better place a new business office.

Rawn Shaw speaks in depth about modern HR operations and what will define the future of HR strategies. To read more, visit the following link:

http://www.forbes.com/sites/rawnshah/2015/04/13/taking-hr-analytics-beyond-technologists/4/

According to Aaron Agius (Contributor), social media is an effective marketing medium. There are many marketers who use Facebook followers, retweets, etc. to monitor their performance, but there are some other metrics like brand search volume, lead growth, brand sentiment, inbound links, and klout score. Social share provides very little information about the overall effectiveness of your campaign because: Many social shares come from bots.
• Social shares many not come from your target customers.
• Social shares can be from people that are speaking negatively about your brand.
Read more at: http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/244669

According to Travis Hessman (Industry week), the digital revolution will take us in the digital age from the information age. This will bring massive changes in our computing ability, our access to the internet and access to and proliferation of mobile devices. We use mobile digital technologies which allow us to stay connected to information and helps in taking decisions. We want to grow in this competitive world and move towards the fourth industrial revolution which opens up many opportunities.

Read more at:  http://www.industryweek.com/digital-revolution

 According to Dave Blanchard (Industryweek), customer’s demands for lower delivered costs are seen to be a big challenge. But, by using predictive analysis, we can identify patterns and predict future events. An organization using predictive analysis can make better decisions. George Prest (CEO of MHI) says that companies that continue to use traditional supply chain models will struggle in the future.  According to the MHI/Deloitte study, it was found that less than 25% of companies have adopted predictive analytics though that number is expected to climb to 70% over the next three to five years.

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

Cloud computing is a type of computing that relies on sharing computing resources rather than having local servers or personal devices to handle applications. Cloud is powerful but many of us our in beginning stage. Here are some benefits of using clouds:
• It helps to your Manage Cash Flow
• As all new innovations are happening in Cloud so there are wider choices
• Automate and Drive Efficiencies
• Gain better insights into your business
• Cloud helps us to grow cost effectively
• With the cloud you can keep your IT equipment costs low, and minimize your hardware and software maintenance costs
Read more at: http://smallbiztrends.com/2015/04/reasons-to-move-to-the-cloud.html

According to Larry Fast (president of Pathways to Manufacturing Excellence), inventory remains a key area where we want to improve processes and eliminate waste. In the manufacturing industry, we basically have three types of inventory (raw material, WIP and finished goods). If we have an excess inventory it means that processing issues are hidden. CI (continuous improvement) strategy in an organization generally reduces their average cycle time by 70.4%, reduce scrap by 50%. Read more at: http://www.industryweek.com/ask-expert-lean-leadership/are-you-overlooking-inventory-focus-process-improvement-and-waste-reducti

Predictive analytics is a “business game changer” that will separate the winners from the losers, according to Forrester. The better a company is at predicting what will happen in the future, the better positioned they are to do something about it. While data scientists will do the heaviest analytic-related lifting at big enterprises, the improvements that have been made to predictive analytic (also called advanced analytic) applications enables regular business people and developers to partake of the predictive bounty. With so many companies coming into the foray of analytics services, today the users have more options to choose from keeping the cost-benefit & need-value trade-offs in mind.  RapidMiner offers a “rock solid” enterprise solution with more than 1,500 methods that address all stages of the analytics lifecycle and has among the tightest integration with the cloud, Forrester says. There are also other options like SAS, SPSS, KNIME, sap, oracle to name a few.

To read more, visit:

http://www.datanami.com/2015/04/07/predictive-analytics-now-in-reach-of-the-average-enterprise-forrester-says/

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/

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