4 Key Takeaways from the Apple Event 2017

Apple event is always the most awaited yearly event across the globe. People expect Apple to live up to the expectations of refining human lived by launching disruptive gadgets & technologies

iPhone which transformed the way people live came in 2007. & 2017 is the 10th Anniversary.

Entire globe is expecting the next generation breakthrough this year. In one of the most watched events, Apple launched Watch ( adding cellular), High definition TV, iPhone 8 & 8 Plus & anniversary special iPhone X. Below are our key takeaways from the Apple event last night

1) Machine Learning is the future:

Globe is talking about machine learning, but still, people are in the prototyping stages. Latest iPhone X is a face recognition feature gives a boost to the ML. Apple faces recognition machine learning algorithm sets the new trend & example in the industry. Face recognition feature which can recognize the particular face with an even hat, goggles, or any other object is a futuristic material.

Apple demonstrates that the software is not enough, ML needs to be supported by the appropriate hardware (with the launch of A11 bionic) for best results

2) Augmented Reality is catching up fast:

Apple demonstrated augmented reality on iPhone 8 as well as iPhone X. It directly conveys that Apple considers the migration of the significant amount of user to augmented reality in coming days.

It’s clear now that we have an AR war brewing in the technology space & with Apple’s entry, this market will get the much-needed boost.

3) Preventive Healthcare is the next big wave:

Apple has teamed with Stanford to bring the feature that monitors irregular heartbeats while the wearer is sitting still. Stanford certainly adds legitimacy & Apple the execution quality. Healthcare devices are getting improved & people are becoming more aware of using these devices.

Preventive Healthcare is the next big wave across developed & developing nations

4) Keep Evolving the User Experience:

Apple is one of the pioneers of the user experience. They always harped upon providing the user experience as per the customer. They always looked to solve the pain points of the client. This time also we have seen that up gradation of the Apple TV from the viewing perspective, the launch of OLED in iPhone X, New Retina display, Absence of Home button in iPhone X & others are one step to their commitment.

Biggest learning for the companies is to keep evolving the user experience from the best to very best. 

In conclusion, Apple has always been a front runner concerning technology & user experience. This year also, they redefined the space with their target services.

How to keep the website dazzling — The Agile Way

The website is the #1 marketing and sales asset which are working round the clock for the organization. Website is the first interaction of the company with the customer. It becomes essential for any company to keep their 24 X 7 sales person in best shape & size. Hence, in today’s ever changing scenario, marketers are looking for strategies to

Continuous up gradation & improvement of the website over time 

Enable data based decisions on the website features to help achieve the goals

Traditionally, any website is being designed, developed & deployed once in a lifetime with a complete revamp in average 2 years. This is typical waterfall model & against the Agile philosophy of incremental value add. Through this article, we will try to understand the implementation of the agile process during the website development as well as management.

1. Website development

Website development is not a one time job. If you are doing it for the first time, then the website can be developed in an agile manner as discussed below

1. Requirement Capturing

Ideally, the website development should start with a requirement capturing strategy.

Requirement Capturing Strategy should start with the wishlist across the departments. It should involve an understanding of business needs, customer understanding through persona development, value proposition & others. Key thing is to think like the customer & develop specifications accordingly.

2. Core Features Identification

Use the Pareto Principle i.e. 80% of the effects come from 20% of the causes. Segregate the wish lists into must-have & nice-to-have features. Concentrate on implementation plan of the must-have features.

3. The First Launch

Launch the first version of the website. It may not be the perfect, but it should be manageable.

2. Continuous improvement

In today’s technology world, website can support millions of features & options. But the crux lies in identifying the relevant & crucial features for the company. Focusing on the key options helps in driving the best results. Once the website is launched, below framework is good for managing the website improvements & upgrades.

We need to analyse the value being provided to our customer as well as user experience of the website through feedback. We can use NPS ( Net Promoter Score ) mechanism to understand the impact of our design & content on the customer. That NPS with the data of customer funnel on the website will help in deriving the key improvement areas

Continuous improvement cycle

Continuous improvement cycle helps in implementing the initiatives towards a common goal. The goals should be

SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant & Time bound).

Measure the performance of the existing website on the defined goals. Brainstorm & identify the features needs to build or optimized to reach the goal. In this scenario, PDCA model comes the expected impact & effort. Then build the feature as we do it in an Agile Sprint. Then we need to check the implemented features & their impact. We can act on the data by implementing the learnings in choosing next set of the high impact stories.

At the end, I would like to conclude it with the quote from David Lim

“Successful people aren’t those who have everything, but those who use everything they already have.”

5 key concerns of a Chief Data Officer (CDO)

Last week, I got an exciting opportunity to attend the CDO conference in Singapore. It was a gathering of who's who from the financial world CDOs like DBS, Lazada, MySale, Singapore Exchange & others.

The key takeaway is that though it looks like that CDOs strategy revolves around algorithms, that is not the case. CDOs have to manage the data strategy with the help of Data Engineering & Data Science. Both are equally important for the success of the data strategy at any organization

Primary concerns of the CDO can be categorized into five broad areas i.e.

1) Data Strategy & Direction: 

In today's world, CDO is no more a technical role, but it acts as the transformation agent for the organizations. CDOs like Paul Cobban of DBS Singapore are leading in defining the data strategy & direction for their respective organization. CDOs should act the evangelist to promote & implement data driven decision making across the organization by alleviating the fear associated with it.

2) Data Governance: 

Data governance (DG) refers to the overall management of the availability, usability, integrity, and security of the data employed in an enterprise. Data based intelligence will be of no use if the data is not collected & prepared suitably. Data Governance becomes critical to the success of the CDO at the organization.

It is always suggested to have a data governance policy which should assign accountabilities for accuracy, accessibility, consistency, completeness & updating of the data. 

There should be policy around data security, backup, disaster recovery & business continuity. It is always advisable to have a data governance vertical to help manage the policies & frameworks.

3. Data Integration

CDO can't be successful if he doesn't know where & how the data is being used across the organization. In today's world, organizations have multiple data systems across the SCM, Marketing, HR & others. Last decade was a product's market where organizations implemented various relevant products like SAP, Salesforce, Peoplesoft & others in respective departments. The wave of Mergers & acquisitions across the industries have deteriorated the situation.

Hence the significant amount of time needs to be spent on ETL ( Extract, Transform & Load) software.

4) Data Value Realization

Post implementation of data governance policy & data engineering practices, Data Science arrives. Monetization of the data depends on the analysis of the data to provide significant insights. Companies like Dow Jones created an entirely new revenue stream via Factiva by enabling subscribers to search and query articles from over 36,000 licensed news sources. Retailers like Amazon, Walmart are using the same to improve customer loyalty & engagement. Companies like Uber are thriving on monetizing the data collected across various functions across the organization.

Generally, CDOs have a team of the data scientists to provide the intelligence. But the key lies in implementing those algorithms on the bigger & bigger data sets. Hence, a technology team which is proficient with scale up the algorithms to big data could be a great asset.

5. Data Security: 

Last but not the least, Data Security !! Though data security has been a part of data governance, it has to see with an independent vision. CDOs must ensure that every piece of technology used within the organization is safe and enterprise ready. Recent incidents like data breaching of Zomato, Linkedin can impact the trust in a big way.

In the end, the conclusion was that CDOs role is not only to manage data but transform the organization into a data driven organization.

4 Ways to improve the User Engagement for your App

In today’s App driven world, time spent in apps dominates mobile usage, but 25% of all apps are used just once before being discarded. Few and far between are those that inspire loyal use. Top 100 Apps across the globe including Facebook has been able to increase the time spent by users by nearly 10%, as per a report from Opera Mediaworks.

 

Then the biggest question is that what to do to improve the user engagement. One of the concepts of developing high engagement app is Zeigarnik Effect

What is Zeigarnik Effect:

As per the research by the Scientist Bluma Wulfovna Zeigarnik in 1927, incomplete tasks are remembered better than completed tasks. It is due to the task-related brain initiation which is there till we complete it. The human brain has a tendency to remember unfinished/incomplete/interrupted tasks better than the completed or finishes tasks. This effect can be used as a concept to improve the user engagement.

How Zeigarnik Effect can be used to develop high user engagement

1. Leaving the unfinished effect: Always try to leave an impression on the user that the task on the app is unfinished. It is seen in various apps especially Training/Games where status bars or completion percentage are meant to improve the user engagement.
2. Developing the product ecosystem: As per the Zeigarnik effect, a user tried to acquire the entire product ecosystem due to unfinished effect. It can predominantly be seen in the case of Apple products where the users keep on adding the new product launches by Apple to help them get the sense of completeness. It is used wisely in app development where the roadmap can include launching various independent modules at different times to improve the engagement. However, we need to remember that there should not be the dependency. Otherwise, it can be a big detractor.
3. Bringing a sense of competition: Have you ever thought about the reason for user engagement is high on apps like Facebook & Twitter? One of the reason is the user’s hunger to get more likes/comments on their posts. Even Orkut did well in India & primary reason was the testimonials which led to a better user engagement. It is because every person compares with another to judge the completeness of the particular task. Hence, if the product feature allows than accommodating likes may not be a bad idea.
4. Gamification: Have you ever wondered that why the games have too many levels or stages. One may have experienced a desire to finish all the stages as soon as possible. The above behavior can be explained through Zeigarnik effect. The catch is that we need to reward the user for the completion of every level or stage. Human has a tendency to go for more rewards to give a sense of completeness.

In the end, we can conclude that the psychology plays the most important role in driving the user engagement. This concept has been used by multiple companies for various products across the century & are still relevant in today’s world.

Collaborative Approach to Lead Generation

In current world, there are multiple channels for lead generation including conventional means like cold calling, exhibitions, advertisements etc. and new means like digital and social media. But the most important question is effectiveness of these mediums while generating leads. It has been found that the prospect turnover ratio from conventional means is less than 10% and turning them to customer is less than 4%. In case of social media, it is much lesser assuming the fact that the presence is huge as well as there is a phenomenon of active and inactive users. Social media success is industry and business dependent.

Today, people are debating between conventional and new means and trying to demean the other depending upon their preference. At this juncture, we all are missing one of the most important aspect i.e. collaboration of mediums. In case of technology, collaboration of Social media, mobility, analytics and cloud (SMAC) has opened up multibillion opportunities for companies similarly collaboration can do the same in sales process too.

Have you ever thought of combining social media and cold calling and try to develop a new medium which can deliver better results? If no, then I would like to say that my experience of executing this collaboration says that it increases your hit rate by at least 100%.

Simple Case: Company is planning to participate in the exhibition and wants to generate as many leads as possible. Company can join the respective exhibition group in social media and after filtering the relevant contacts, can target them through email, cold calling and social media. It will help in increasing the recall value of the company. If it is followed by personal visit then the company definitely gets registered in the mind of the customer. It is followed by lead nurturing through collaboration of all the mediums and the company can see better returns and business.

Is Cold calling losing its relevance in the current world?

Is Cold calling losing its relevance in the current world?

I have been facing these questions from multiple people including colleagues, senior management as well as inside sales executives. People are getting the feel that the cold calling is losing its relevance and social media & internet marketing is replacing the same but I have my own views.

I believe that the lead generation channel differs as per the level of the organization. We can categorize the organizations based upon their position in the industry growth curve.

* If the industry is mature and products are also mature then cold calling is definitely needed. In this type of industry, competition is fierce and nobody takes the pain to search for a vendor for their needs. Due to competition, sales are always positioned around the customers and hence to crack those kinds of customers, cold calling is the best option.

* If the industry is in growth phase then the products and services are also in the growth phase. In this kind of environment, customers generally look for referrals and relevant execution experience so as to mitigate risks. Cold calling is generally effective but it is not the only thing. It should be accompanied with the right content marketing to generate business.

* If the industry is in the take-off phase and at that point cold calling is again very effective as customers are unaware of the companies operating in the concerned area.

At the end we can conclude that cold calling is still an effective way of lead generation but it need to be supported by the content marketing to realize benefits in current economic scenario.

EPO - A Perspective

In today’s world, engineering can be broadly categorized in Core & Support Engineering. Core engineering involves the product design & technology which organizations want to develop & enhance their core engineering & technology to help them innovate & capture the market. In addition to it support engineering includes application engineering, order execution, modeling & detailing, BOM creation, fabrication drawings which are needed to help in sales and revenue generation from current product line.

With growing consumption pattern across emerging economies as well as the globe and fast paced technological advancements, companies are facing with an uphill task of managing the innovations with routine engineering tasks. In 80% of the cases, engineering teams are busy with the regular and routine task of supporting sales and hence are missing their core activity of working on future product developments.

Engineering process outsourcing is helping organizations across the globe in establishing a global delivery model together with skillful resources to help executing the support engineering jobs. Strategic partnerships with the offshore partners help them being close to the clients as well as accessing new market areas in emerging ones like in Asia.

Engineering Process Outsourcing success depends on multiple parameters. After working with multiple clients across various domains, we developed a framework for the successful implementation of engineering process outsourcing.