SigmaWay Blog

Social relationship management focuses more on social media than structured data. Social CRM is people driven and creates a personalized relationship between the customer and the company. When properly used it can improve the reputation of one's brand beyond Facebook and twitter. It is mutually beneficial for both the customer and the company. Unlike traditional CRM the benefits are not only focused on the company’s side. Out of 1802 internet users 62 percent men and 71 percent females uses social networking sites. Social CRM is more popular between the age group of 18 and 29. For young consumers web is an integral part of their life. Companies need to capitalize on this popularity for social media. Customers interacting via social media spend 40 percent more and 56 percent feel a stronger bond with companies through social media. Integrating social media reduces expenses by 58 percent, increases sales by 40 percent, and improves reputation by 64 percent. Whether a company requires social CRM or not depends on the company’s size, number of competitors and whether the critical systems and operations capable of accommodating social CRM. Read more at: http://it.toolbox.com/blogs/insidecrm/using-social-crm-to-bolster-your-business-62011

The performance metrics for ads shown against brand and generic queries can differ majorly, many advertisers choose to analyze these two categories separately. Many advertisers with paid search campaigns advertise on queries mentioning their brand (e.g., “Motorola smartphone” for Motorola) and also on generic searches (e.g., “smartphone reviews”). A new feature is introduced, that automatically identifies brand-aware paid search clicks tracked in Google Analytics,to make analysis of brand and generic performance easier. It involves a combination of signals (including the click through-rate, text string, domain name and others) to identify query terms showing awareness of the brand. Back in 2012, George Michie from the Rimm-Kaufmann Group, a leading online marketing agency, called analyzing brand and generic paid search together “the cardinal sin of paid search”. To know more go to:http://analytics.blogspot.com/2014/06/segmenting-brand-and-generic-paid.html

Analytics for Small Medium Businesses (SMB) today, is a much discussed topic. SMBs face the challenges of effectively using analytical tools to gain precious business insights from data generated. Today markets are able to provide solutions to SMBs which were costly before and this was made possible by the advent of Qlikview, Tableau etc. in Analytics sector. SMBs are realizing that analytics can help them understand customer preferences, expand their market share, cut down cost, increase efficiency and give them a competitive advantage even against the big players. Moreover, with the advent of new technologies like cloud, social media and open source platforms like Pentaho and Hadoop, the requirement for big infrastructural set-up and capital cost have been reduced considerably. The success of Analytics tools depends to a large extent on collecting and managing data and in such case ERP and CRM tools are a must for success. For successful implementation of analytics tool, SMBs need to assess the external market as well as their internal systems and processes. However, SMBs will soon be able to adapt their systems to bring in the external big data from social media like any other big enterprises and hence make their analytics more robust. Read more at:http://www.informationweek.in/informationweek/perspective/296888/value-analytics-businesses

Many companies are discovering that big data can also be used for security by offering a broader view of risk and vulnerabilities. In today's complex network environments, Advanced Persistent Threats (APTs) and other cyber threats can be wiped out by leveraging intelligence from data providers. Six ways for using big data to wipe out cyber threats include DNS feed which can provide lists of newly registered domains, domains commonly used for spamming and newly created domains, which can be incorporated into black and white lists, C2 systems which provide black lists of IP addresses and domains, threat intelligence which may be used to help determine if an address is safe or not, network traffic logs help to log all of the networks traffic  or even just parts of it, honeypots can be effective in identifying malware targeting a particular network and finally data quality is important to call attention to the data feed itself. By utilizing big data organizations can create more robust threat and risk detection programs. Read more at

http://www.informationweek.in/informationweek/news-analysis/296971/tips-wipe-cyberthreats/page/2

 A McKinsey study last year stated that companies using Big Data and data analytics effectively show high productivity rates and profitability. But implementation of data analytics is challenged by lack of skilled manpower. Recently many B-schools are stepping up and have emphasized on advanced analytics techniques such as 'Clustering', however very few institutes teach Big Data technologies like 'Hadoop'. The hiring companies which look for data analytics include digital companies, ad agencies, and IT companies and so on. Internationally a vast number of management schools including New York University, University of Texas at Austin, Georgia Tech have had Analytics certificate programs for the last five years or so.Read more at

http://www.business-standard.com/article/management/learning-the-abc-of-big-data-114062900615_1.html

 According to a survey of 900 business and IT executives from 70 countries by IBM Institute for Business Value study, Eighty percent of respondents are evaluating the impact of their analytics investments, 60 percent already have predictive analytics capabilities, and "leaders" who were perceived to be proactive in engaging analytics in their organizations were more than two times likely than average to have formal career paths for analytics professionals.The next generation of IT workers will work in highly automated environments that combine both in-sourced and out-sourced technologies that businesses will expect to get immediate value from. “We hire many of our people right out of college," said the CEO of a healthcare cloud analytics vendor. The intuition behind is that the company already possessed the internal analytics expertise to train these recruits, and the added advantage of hiring freshers is that it also gives the company an opportunity a to train these recruits in to customer service that is valuable to the company. To know more about this, go to: http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/big-data-analytics/better-training-in-search-of-next-generation-it-workers/

Cloud solutions can help businesses lower total costs and transition from a fixed cost structure to a variable one while freeing up critical IT resources for strategic initiatives and innovation. In case of Cloud applications cloud providers are responsible for the maintenance, operations, and bandwidth of the software and not the cloud customers. Finally, cloud applications are accessed through standard web browsers, providing scalability and agility to the customer. Unlike traditional on premise software applications, cloud applications are located and managed remotely and built with a single code-base customized to the company's needs. Some advantages of cloud computing are: Increased speed in responding to unforeseen events, Easy to get the latest updates, adoption is quick and simple, improved information security, deployment time decreases from years to months, lower risk with subscription based cost model. Increased strategic agility, short deployment times, lower risk and costs - the advantages of cloud computing are compelling. To know more, go to: http://blogs.sap.com/innovation/cloud-computing/6-benefits-of-cloud-computing-032893 

Today, a smartphone app would tell one what to eat, how much to eat, when to visit a doctor etc. based on analysis of medical research, medical history of that person, family medical records etc. Quality of our health will be increasingly improved by the quality of data and the ability to bring it all together. The growth of big data in the health industry will only take place once privacy concerns are addressed because health data, unlike the marketing data, is lot more personal. Big data analysis is already being used to make diagnoses in some hospitals. In Canada, Toronto Hospital uses big data to detect blood infections in premature babies. It could save the American health care system $300 billion per year and the European public sector €250 billion, according to a 2011 report. Doctors today are using Watson, IBM's supercomputer, to keep up with health research and to leverage the latest breakthroughs. Big data analytics also could be used to follow epidemic outbreaks. For example, Big Data enabled doctors and scientists to learn so much about the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS), and how quickly it spread, within weeks of the World Health Organization's initial warnings. In such case social networks and mobile data are used to ensure the delivery of real-time information. Read more at:http://analytics.theiegroup.com/article/53b6b4c43723a83b82000035/Big-Data-Could-Help-Your-Health-If-You-Let-It

The word start-up was a global slogan in 2000. Start-ups are generally new companies, undergoing researches and growth for different markets. E-commerce is contract of business by e-mail. Recently, one sees an astonishing rise in the number of e-commerce start-ups in India suggesting the increase in the number of risk-takers and customers eager to procure online. Regardless of tangible and non-tangible goods, these businesses made customers buy from them. Some famous start-ups possessing assets, talent or ideas come up and they succeed. There are almost eleven e-commerce start-ups in 2014 such as circle, crinkle, fashion and u, flipboard, level money, lyft, oyster books, and many more.. Read more at: 

http://www.socialmediatoday.com/node/237276

Generally people think that the role of a data scientist is just to examine the relationships between diverse sets of data as well as the disparate systems, processes and locations which store them. But the role is actually mature across certain sectors like retail. With the help of this, Amazon, for e.g., is able to analyze the behavior across multiple accounts, and knows exactly when and why to push a certain product to a customer. But the case is somewhat different in financial services where the role is not properly organized. Though Big Data analytics is used across the retail banking industry from fraud and sanctions management to improving account management processes, analysis of Big Data provides the potential for banks to create new income streams and the sector as a whole is benefitted when it comes to deriving value from vast quantities of information. Thus financial services, in spite of having people with good skills to do modeling and statistical analysis, need people who are able to spot key trends and focuses on looking for the relationships between data across disparate sources. Once these two skills are combined, the financial sector will start to see the rise of data scientists in it like other industries. Read more at:http://www.banktech.com/business-intelligence/piecing-together-the-data-scientist-puzz/240168604

One must think like a customer to make them happy. Happy customers recommend you to others and increase sales. Speedy service is a solution for perfect CRM. However recent studies show that opposite happens. Customers value their time above anything else. Your effort at listening and understanding the customer's problems is what is necessary. They appreciate the personal interest that you take. Having a personal connection is the very best way to get customers on your side. To bring the personal touch one should get rid of the automated recordings and get people to talk to customers. Adding an online video conferencing element too your online service department is helpful. Employees should be trained to take time and personal interest for dealing with customers. Customer's loyalty should be rewarded by offering them coupons and special offers. It is important to take such lessons from psychology into CRM strategies as they help improve customer experience as a whole. A positive experience makes customers feel hear and appreciated. Read more at: 

http://www.trackvia.com/blog/technology/how-to-use-behavioral-psychology-to-improve-your-crm

Customer relationship management deals with all types of interaction between a company and a customer, whether it is sales or service-related. Customer relationship management is generally used to explain the relationship between business houses and customers. CRM systems are also used to manage business contacts, clients, contract wins and sales leads. Technology Advancement have changed consumer buying behavior, and today there are many alternatives in which a company can get in touch with its customers and collect data about them. Technology and the Internet have changed the way companies approach customer relationship strategies. There are various benefits of CRM strategy like it helps  understanding the customer, retaining customers through delivery of better customer experience, attracting new customers, win new clients and contracts, increased profitability, decrease customer management and helps the companies to know what the customers and the general market want. To know more about CRM go to:http://www.webopedia.com/TERM/C/CRM.html

According to the Business Technology Innovation Research, analytics is the topmost priority. Three key core areas comprise 2014 analytics research agenda. The first consists of a definite focus on business analytics and methods like discovery and exploratory. The people and process aspects of the research include how governance and controls are being implemented along with these discoveries. The exploratory analytics space comprises business intelligence. Value indexes, mobile business intelligence and business intelligence will provide deep explanations and ranking of vendors in these categories. The area of second agenda is big data and predictive analytics. The first research on this topic will be released as benchmark research on big data analytics which explains vendors of software that helps organizations do real-time analytics against vast data. The third focus area includes information simplification and cloud-based business analytics including business intelligence. Thus, Analytics as a business discipline is getting more importance as we move forward in the 21st century. Read more at: 

http://tonycosentino.ventanaresearch.com/2014/01/23/business-analytics-in-2014-trends-and-possibilities/

Today call centers are becoming increasingly famous all over the world. Call centers play a vital part in most modern organizations, as they fulfill the need of creating a strong bond between a company and its customers. It is basically a place where inbound calls to the company are taken for customer service and support, while outbound calls to customers and clients are made for telemarketing. Taking the help of a company specializing in call center support will provide many benefits including: 1) saving money 2) saving time 3) providing expertise 4) better reputation. An expert call center gives protection to company and help build reputation. These benefits are required for many online companies and the best way to find a great call center is to compare the cost, reputation, such that any language barrier does not sustain between the countries. Read more at: 

http://serversitters.com/what-is-a-call-center-and-how-can-it-help-your-business.html

Manufacturing industry, in the past 20 years, have been able to reduce the quantity of wastage and the variability in the production process and improve their product quality after implementing Lean and Six Sigma programs. However, extreme variations are found in certain processing environments. Thus manufacturers need a better approach that would remove such flaws and advanced analytics helps in this way.  In manufacturing, managers use advanced analytics to identify patterns of data, relationships among discrete process steps and inputs and then optimize the factors that greatly affect the yields. Advanced analytics also helps to increase yield. Manufacturers that want to use advanced analytics to improve yield, consider how much data the company has at its disposal, as their first step. Some companies have too little data to be statistically meaningful and the challenge for these companies lies in taking a long-term focus and investing in systems and practices to collect more data. Advanced analytics and big data forms a critical tool to realize improvements in yield. Process complexity, process variability, and capacity restraints are present in such manufacturing environment. Read more at:  http://www.mckinsey.com/insights/operations/how_big_data_can_improve_manufacturing

Some strategies haven't succeeded dealing with supply-chain management. The reason is the cost of hiring expert workers. According to researchers the union of data science, predictive analytics and big data likely to alter the way in which supply chain managers lead and supply chains function. They named this as DPB. Companies have used datasets to plan ideas to meet customer demand. But now they combine external data to better estimate future risks .two points to judge analytic skills: 1) Data science and domain expertise are not mutually exclusive: Analytical skills are important for data scientists who focus on Supply Chain Management (SCM).2) that doesn't mean theory doesn't apply: Strong theoretical knowledge is essential in SCM. Use of suitable theory to build models before operating predictive analytics is key to justifying a circulation of false positives. The three links in supply chain: manufacturers, retailers, supply management, shipping management and human capital. Read more at: 

http://sloanreview.mit.edu/article/are-predictive-analytics-transforming-your-supply-chain/

A clear marketing plan and prior knowledge about your customer and the sales process is necessary before using any Customer Relationship Management(CRM). CRM is affordable and simple for organizing your primary market structure. Without having proper details about the customer's past and present status it is quite difficult to serve and approach them. A customer relationship management allows accessing such information about one's customers and enhances sales for future business. Advancement in technology keeps access to customers always high whether we have open source package or home grown CRM.  Defining  your business customers through information is rampant in the internet and then organizing and referencing it lets us achieve our sales goal irrespective of which particular CRM plan we use. Read more at: http://journalstar.com/business/local/small-talk-establish-marketing-plan-before-choosing-crm-service/article_e330e485-9637-5758-9ee5-d9657514867e.html

A recent survey by The Economist Intelligence Unit found that those who were polled believe that customer service and marketing is expected to gain most from analytics, but customer service is unprepared to deal with big data. Proper analytics of the brand will enable business houses to understand how their business is performing, whether they need any improvement or not.  An October 2013 Gartner report, Market Trends: Leveraging Analytics in Vertical Industries, identified four major categories of analytics: Descriptive, Diagnostic, Prescriptive, Predictive. Three ways in which analytics is transforming customer service: Analytics is encouraging organizations to break down barriers

Analytics is changing perceptions of important measurements

Analytics is allowing brands to get ahead

To know more about the three ways in which analytics is transforming customer service, go to:https://blog.zopim.com/2013/11/20/3-ways-analytics-transforming-customer-service/

There are few things and tricks one should apply at a product launch to make it successful.  Firstly, one should sell a product which buyers want to buy and would be really interested in. One should keep in mind about customer's preferences while creating a product. Secondly, we need to include the right group of people on our consumer's list. Just adding people and increasing the list won't help. Not the quantity but the quality of the people matters. Thirdly, we should give them an offer they cannot refuse. There need to be more in one's offer package than just the product.  For example adding "special content" to movie DVDs or adding worksheets and bonus audios in e-books. Fourthly, writing a sales page that makes them comfortable buying. One should neither make an overrated hype or heavy handed sales tactics nor should they create soft-sell presentation of their offers. Fifthly, they should hire a team of affiliates to promote the offer. One should be aware not to associate with affiliates who don't resonate with their audience or have incompatible promotion styles or never actually do the promoting. Sixth, one should draw a pre-launch content that builds trust and goodwill. Videos that come before a launch to create excitement about the product that is coming up do not work on people that have seen it before. Lastly, we should be careful about the e-mails that get readers off the fence and follow simple, effective and non-pushy ways to make the clicks happen and get the goods sold. For more follow: http://www.thelaunchcoach.com/product-launch-tips-2

Big data, the huge amount of structured and unstructured information will slow down most traditional approaches to data management. Cloud providers such as Amazon Web Services are contributing powerful, profitable approaches to analyze big data. Analytics can make organizations "self-healing" or "self-optimizing."The AWS services directory has a mixture of SQL and NoSQL database technology. Amazon DynamoDB is a managed NoSQL database service has a single-digit millisecond latency that makes it a fine fit for big data project where fast line with the data is a must.  The first difficulty need to think in big data analytics is data amalgamation. Amazon Relational Database Service (RDS) is a relational database that can sort in the AWS cloud. Amazon Redshift  (Oracle), which is a petabyte-scale database intended for big data analytics and data warehousing. Finally, Amazon Elastic MapReduce is a Hadoop file system structure on Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud decrease queries. Read more at: 

http://searchaws.techtarget.com/tip/Whats-what-in-AWS-big-data-analytics?asrc=EM_ERU_30984098&utm_medium=EM&utm_source=ERU&utm_campaign=20140630_ERU%20Transmission%20for%2006/30/2014%20(UserUniverse:%20932694)_myka-reports@techtarget.com&src=5265609