Sunday, 31 May 2015

Mobile & Business | Integrating technologies for delivering values


Did you know?  70% of FMCG products are still sold through Kirana stores.

Let's throw a light on following things

  • How to penetrate low population market considering the cost of services.(Plugging an app with sales office: Rural distribution a new initiative)
  • Retail outlet audit for product availability and visibility (App for supervisor)
  • Where do you fit yourself 1) Buying 2) Storing 3) Packaging 4)Transporting
  • How an app providing a window to salesman for what he should do with a particular outlet, helped a vendor.

Webinar details will be furnished soon !

Thursday, 2 April 2015

From 50 K feet to 50 feet | Understanding the art of customer engagement.


Massive proliferation of smart devices changing how consumers live and consume media rapidly. Consumers are connected, they always go ahead of businesses. Identifying the right steps in the early stages of adaptation can help you get an edge, when thought of over a big scale.


This is the exact time when consumer facing business seems to be the absolute best deal. I hope young entrepreneurs are listening this, as the future is here.

Today, we are going to discuss what major changes that are observed in last few years and how people are focusing on customer engagement. My talk would be revolving around the mobility as already discussed previously we can not ignore mobility at any cost.  

As far as I know, major Indian businesses don’t have a mobile website that means people are not learning about you. Even those who have, don’t give the information which needs to be communicated.


Example: I asked few of my friends working in automobile industry and got to know that intention of designing automobile website is to generate leads.
I don’t think a customer will come to your website for generating leads. Moreover, are you giving the information which is exactly needed ?


“Researching online,  purchase offline” concept has gone off, it’s buying online as well. When we are in a store, we are checking competitive price of the products and deciding whether to buy or not.

E-commerce in INDIA is 4.5 billion dollar and it is just around 6 years old.
The live example is Flipkart.

What brands and market can get out of data, let’s see something

This weekend you would be 50 yards from your favorite pizza shop. Would you like a 50% discount coupon? I am just asking :)


Just for the curiosity, let’s check how we can make this happen i.e. letting the customer know about
your product at the right place and at the right time,If we have access to what data a consumer is consuming along with the location.
However, tracking path to purchases is difficult when an individual make decision on different devices and the consumer behavior as well.


Lets see an example


A customer goes from different locations in a daily routine day home to work, work to market and finally market to home or consider a day when you are changing from your standard routine path having 3-4 stops in between.


Brands are trying to reach customer by running most refined targeted ads considering right time, right place and at the right device.


Different options that are opted by market research companies are


  1. Push notifications and In-app messages.
  2. SMS
  3. Display ads within the site you are browsing.


It’s really important to understand how soon a mobile customer actually converts with different strategy.How customer respond to an ad when they are in a shopping environment.


I have seen mobile get a bad flag for not being effective. But it won't take time to convince that final result that you see, may be generated from other platforms but the primary source is mobile.


In a research that we did, we found that when a customer is within 10 miles from the store and when we offered him a 50% discount coupon, 41 % conversion happened the same day as compared to 30 % discount coupon offered to customer who is within 10-20 miles from the store.Moreover conversion rates tend to increase on weekends.




This is one of the strategy, It may vary from region, business etc.


If you guys have heard the word 'Attribution' then you know what all I am taking about.

Few factors to consider that plays a quantifiable role are


  1. Distance : Distance plays a very important role. The closer you are, possibility of conversion increases. Example is mobile geo fencing.

  1. Rank : The size of the screen. No of offers you are going to see on your smartphone is less than the number of offers you see on a device, so the rank of the customized targeted ad serve more critical aspect.

  1. Price & Offer : How far you are to send a right optimum value target ad or coupon so that you can redeem it going to the store and also which slot of your mobile screen it should be poped up.

  1. Time : Identifying the time at which your ad is most probable to be seen.


The point at which customer is going to download your app it the best proxy to decide that customer is turning loyal to you and this is the time when you can play the game.


Monetizing the free apps. Pricing in app world is known as freemium pricing i.e. you initially provide your app as free and then start charging for some premium services.


How to earn, few ways are

  1. Buy the products within the app.
  2. In app advertising.


Let’s see, what I have seen people doing wrong while designing an app communication module

We uses In App messages and push messages for communication with the app

push notification


  1. Push messages are those messages which are delivered when the app is not open or may be running in background.

  2. In App messages are those messages which are rendered when we are browsing the app for more interactivity.



It’s really important to understanding what messages we are sending and the mistake we do always. Few of them are, we just define the text that renders to all consumer of that app. My suggestion would be


  1. Don't use one size fit all strategy. As we have consumer information which is saved on registration so ‘Categorize people based on characteristics like age, region, profile.

  1. Use actionable language(don’t use long and confusing text, remember KISS principle).

  1. Make CTA(call to action) highly visual and clear.

  1. Ask the customer when he want to receive notification like preferable time, day etc.


Guys, it’s a tough market and ever changing as well. Looser don’t get a chance to respond, taking small but competitive steps serves very critical role.  Theory of survival of fittest works everywhere and this is the time when we should start thinking on the very small small things that helps in customer engagement by providing better services.


Do your best !

Wednesday, 17 December 2014

Thanks for attending the Webinar


We discussed

"Apple is Apple because people say it is Apple" and to make this happen you must know how to leverage the power of Social Media, which is a must for brand building now-a-days.

  • Utilizing Social data platforms (Facebook,Twitter,LinkedIn) for establishing your brand name and what major changes happened in last year.
  • Facebook said if you are a business then you have to spend money on advertisement even for the organic reach. Understood Do's and Don't of social media marketing.
  • Tip on how decentralization of responsibility and delegation of work is important for stress free work environment.
      

Tuesday, 16 September 2014

Technology Disruption | Yesterday’s home runs don’t win today’s game.



Best practices of today will get obsolete tomorrow, as customers are ever changing and quick adapter by making themselves more prone to technology. It is a hyper connected world where social is a core human behaviour, so understanding the nerves of a customer is very critical now-a-days.








"Consumer are connected approx. 2.93 billion people online."



  • Path to purchases have changed. User already made their mindset about the product even before entering the shop. The make sure they are spending on the right product by comparing it with other available options "online", moreover they do it over a mobile devices. 
                     

  • 2014, 1.75 billion smartphones. 2020, expected 5 billion people online with 40-50 billion connected devices. Moreover, every new wave of technology is taking half a long to reach its first billion users.


  • The way we communicate is transforming. Average Indian spends 3 hours on Smartphone everyday. The time you are working on emails, using smartphones, entering office, making calendar, working on laptops/machines, checking update, you are generating electronic information, which can be stored and used for analytic purpose.


  • SMS industry in Europe has gone to 0. Tradition business models are being disrupted:
           Lets see music Industry :
      1. CD : physical distribution has gone bankrupt.
      2. Downloadable music has beated physical distribution.
      3. What Next - Streaming music(2011 started-14 3 billion dollar business)

  • Technology is changing the consumer behavior, when I have to listen music why I have to go to shops and even why I will download when I can stream it on demand.

  • Customer engagement and customer satisfaction have got new definitions. The role of service industry to perform at its best and optimized rate have gone critical. Sharing an experience of one of my friend, after performing best in his sales and marketing job where he tried to engage his client's customer with all possible ways, at last he heard that what you have done, major sales happened on desktop or on store. Finally things wrapped up convincing that the sales might have generated on other platforms but the reason is new technology stack i.e. Social, Mobile and Analytic.(it will take another post to discuss proper strategy that they formed for the problem, so skipping it for now.)

  • Just for a moment think your toothbrush is gathering all information while you are brushing and sending the report directly to your dentist.Dentist now have the actual data in front of him and he is asking you about brushing properly as prescribed. Does it make sense, moreover your brush is configured how to operate and even your iPhone is reminding you about proper timing of brushing. Think it at a Big Scale, it can be revolution.

  • When you get up in morning, you are checking all updates on mobile, You are connected to your social network throughout the day, it is your smart device(iPad/smartphone) which is reminding you of your tasks and calender, going to sleep you are checking if I missed something. Tell me what is your primary screen? Where should you focus? I asked this a nursery student. He told sir it's mobile. Everything else laptop, desktop, T.V. comes later! and therefore I always emphasis on #mobilefirst.

Future is now, I am not an astrologer neither forecasting something but as a technical person can visualize what is happening. Want to see the revolution, let's see a video, this will give you a pretty good idea




Can you see the future is already arrived? Those who have started understanding this, I think have started preparing for the next wave of change.


Food for thought
  1. What are the freemium models.
  2. What encourages a user to pay for services and what motivates a user to convert a premium model
  3. How a small feature may changes the overall outcome?
  4. Where should you focus? What is your primary screen and what is secondary ?
  5. How mobility is adding new dimensions?
Thanks for your time, we will discuss these points in next post. If you have few thoughts on this please write to me at vaibhavtiwari260@gmail.com


Thanks notes & references

 ISB Hyderabad
 Digit Summit 2013,2014
Book recommended
Code Halos by Malcolm Frank and Paul Roehrig

Monday, 21 July 2014

Mentor | The Charioteer

                                    

At some point of time, when we feel helpless, we must have realized need of a person who can guide us or whom we can learn from with his experiences. One who can show the way of doing things, this is exactly the time where we need a Mentor/Guru so that whenever I will be in a doubt, whether I was doing the right thing or not, he can clarify my doubts.        

          
We need a person who can say go my dear, do this, I am with you, just make sure that you are doing it honestly and giving your best. He guides us as he has already walked the same path. He help us realizes and attain our full potential. 


The importance of the mentor can be seen from Mahabharat when Arjun chose unarmed Krishna(The Charioteer) over the powerful army. Arjun was completely aware of the fact that without strategy and the vision that Krishna had, the huge army and resources are of no use. On the battleground the Krishna not only acted as the Charioteer but he helped Arjun to drive the battle, by letting him see the right perspective. Krishna also narrated the divine Bhagavad Gita making Arjun aware of his duties.


It is also a mentee responsibility to find the right mentor and attain his trust. So, continue to look for a person whom you need exactly, it is only your job to find a mentor and if you find the one then surrender to him/her with the utmost devotion and trust. He could be anyone might be your teacher, boss, a friend, someone in your family. The mentor- mentee relationship is also considered the most divine relationship in Hindu mythology. He also sow the seed of values in you, the importance of which can be seen in later part of life.







Experience reflects, it is invaluable you cannot purchase it. When a mentor shares his/her experience with his mentee it is exactly as he is giving a secret weapon that can take you to the top from all the hurdles. In return, mentee also has to return some value to him (not financially).

In today's time, as the number of options has increased and the complexities have also gone high, Young generation feels too much stressed and confused between the things. The role of mentor and importance of proper mentorship has also gone more important. So you are lucky if you have a one or continue looking for the one.

Thanks a lot for you time, We will come back soon with the qualities that a mentor and mentee should have like trust, detachment, confidence and vision.
Stay connected.


References
http://www.businessnonstop.in/sme-guru/your-mentor-will-guide-you-to-win-business-mahabharata.html
http://swordarm.in/?p=135
http://articles.economictimes.indiatimes.com/2013-05-24/news/39501896_1_son-education-sattva



Wednesday, 14 May 2014

Enterprise Mobility: A Promise To The Future



Everyone talking about Enterprise Mobility so what is this? Enterprise Mobility defines access to data (enterprise), process and information anywhere, anytime, on demand and on any device. The future of Mobility has already derived.

Organizations should stop trying to predict the future and starts preparing for “the future that has already happened” by identifying major events that have already occurred and will have predictable effects in the next decade or two.  
    By Peter Drucker, The Late Management Guru






Statistics

Let’s see what big analytics giants say about this,
  • All companies they work with expect to deploy more than 25 applications within the enterprise in next 2 years and providing mobile access to CRM, ERP to all its users. (Source: Mckinsey)

  • Current Smartphone users across the globe: 1 billion (Source: IDC); percentage of Americans who use their personal mobile device for work: 81% (Source: Forbes)

  • Increase in number of Smartphone users per year globally: 46.5% (Source: Gartner)

  •  Smart phones and tablets sold previous year: 821 million; projected sales of Smartphone’s and tablets in this year: 1.2 billion (Source: Gartner)

  • Increase in employee productivity when using mobile apps: 45% (Source: IBM Research)

  • Personal mobile devices expected to be in use by 2020: 10 billion (Source: Economist quoting Morgan Stanley)


What is happening


There is no doubt that mobility is transforming the enterprise. It is also disrupting the enterprise by creating new business models and destroying old ones. The problem is that many businesses are scrambling to create a mobile strategy; hamstrung by unrealistic expectations, vague requirements and organizational inertia.

Early adopters of enterprise mobility are realizing significant business benefits and envisioning new and creative ways to extend competitive advantage. Many organizations, however, are employing a wait-and-see strategy to learn from the implementation experience of others before developing mobility roadmaps.

Although there is high level of complexity in development of Windows, iphone, Android meeting the platform challenges from use cases to deployment, continuous up-gradation and providing security. Mobile application development will outnumber any other application development in next 5 years.

Everyone has a question in mind, do I have Enterprise Mobility Strategy for next 1-2 year to drive the market expectations and support the increased demand from customers using mobile devices (42% app.)

Are you ready?


Options you can go for
  •  Native Application.
  •  Hybrid Application.
  •  Browser based Application.
We recommend Hybrid Application as the Build Once Deploy Many trend is taking space in market.

Frameworks which are available in market:
  1. PhoneGap is a mobile development framework produced by Nitobi, purchased by Adobe Systems in 2011.It enables software programmers to build applications for mobile devices using JavaScript, HTML5, and CSS3, instead of device-specific languages such as Objective-C. The resulting applications are hybrid, meaning that they are neither truly native. The software underlying PhoneGap is Apache Cordova. PhoneGap is a free and open source framework that allows you to create mobile apps using standardized web APIs for the platforms you care about.
  2. Oracle ADF Mobile (A Java & HTML5 Based Framework for Developing Mobile Applications) enables developers to build and extend enterprise applications for iOS and Android from a single code base. Based on a hybrid mobile architecture, ADF Mobile supports access to native device services, enables offline applications and protects enterprise investments from future technology shifts.
  3.  Appcelerator Titanium – An open, extensible development environment for creating   beautiful native apps across different mobile devices and OSs including iOS, Android, and      BlackBerry, as well as hybrid and HTML5. It includes an open source SDK with over 5,000         device and mobile operating system APIs, Studio, a powerful Eclipse-based IDE, Alloy, an                MVC framework and Cloud Services for a ready-to-use mobile backend.Titanium is the leading mobile development environment of choice for hundreds of thousands of developers. With more than 69,000 mobile applications deployed on 220,000,000 devices, the award-winning Titanium environment helps organizations get to market 60% faster and achieve a significant competitive advantage.                                                                                            In February 2013, Business Insider estimated that 10% of all smartphones worldwide ran Titanium-built apps.[34] As of 2013, Titanium had amassed nearly 500,000 developer registrations.

Path, which you can set for

·    Providing security as the BYOA and BYOD is taking pace day by day. BYOA can be taken at preference.
·         Mobile Social Networking.
·         Mobile Advertising.
·         Mobile Analytics.



Challenges we are facing        


  1. Employees everywhere are using cloud services developed for consumers such as Dropbox, SkyDrive, Evernote, and iCloud to make their lives more efficient. The drawback is that many of these systems do not have enterprise-grade security: a big problem when dealing with confidential data on a daily basis.
  2. BYOD automatically calls for increased need for security, which is now, seems to be changing to BYOA employees are bringing their own applications to work more efficiently and be more productive.
  3. Trying to implement EM strategies by oneself calls for high capital investment and high risk of complete implementation failure. Therefore most enterprise choose to hire service specialist.
           After looking at both the sides of this coin, We have a high expectations that enterprise mobility will emerge as a game changer in next few years and will definitely create tremendous amount of opportunities. 
        



Thanks Notes

Oracle Open World 2013
TechEd 2014
EnterpriseMobilityExchange
InformationWeek
Tushar Gupta (Titanium App Developer)

References
http://www.enterprisemobilityexchange.com/content/blog/7-future-trends-enterprise-mobility



If you have any queries or concerns, feel free to contact me @ vaibhavtiwari260@gmail.com(please mention perspective in subject line).
Thanks for your time :) Stay connected.  




Saturday, 8 March 2014

Leadership In Action

Leadership (Part -2 ) :Work the Talk






You don’t need to be great to get the work started but you can become great by doing that work.




Always deal in your core competency area. If you are into manufacturing, do that, don’t try selling but know your core competency area as well.”

        By – Ram Charan   Indian-American business consultant





We need Leadership at Organization level, Country Level with Global Mindset. Be Optimistic, Do best at whatever you do. We need to bring people up by giving training to unemployed and making them hirable this will serve our CSR with broad vision.

                                 By-Mrs. Rajashree Birla Former Chairman of Aditya Birla Group

Success is very easy to get but to come out of failure, it takes lot of efforts and failure is a great teacher.
Unless you fail you never realizes importance of success
                                  
                                 By- Amitabh Bachchan

There is a vacuum of qualified and motivated people with practical competence at grass root level we need to bridge that gap.

            By-Pawan Munjal             Managing Director and CEO of Hero Motocorp

How to do things is major question than what to do. Any work should be started only after proper planning. Once started no procrastination should be made. Challenges will definitely come in between.

                    By-SS Mundra Chairman and Managing Director of Bank of Baroda


Leaders delivers result but they also build capabilities with people who deal in influencing and building future. They identify and seize the opportunities as it arrives.




Guys, just for a minute think of three business leaders in your company (who not only create the vision but also work the talk) what three things they do?

  1. ...........
  2. ............
  3. ............  

Once you are done with the answer, you will get to know what you need to do.




The most important characteristic that a leader must demonstrate is 



CLARITY
and
SPECIFICITY



RIGHT PEOPLE
and
WORK ETHICS





LASER SHARP DOMINANT PRIORITIES
REVIEW AND DIALOGUE
FOLLOW THROUGH
 DO PRACTICE YOUR WORK RIGOROUSLY SO
 DO  
                      PRACTICE >> PRACTICE >> PRACTICE 
                    
                                               


  • They are clear and specific: they have their priorities clear.
                   Eg: Airtel

        1.     Get the largest number of people in network.
        2.     How to get price lower at large number of people.

  • They get the things done. In other words they serve the commitments at the same time leveraging the knowledge of others.
  • How to choose Right People
It is only up to you. You have to define three things required to succeed in job.


What is the natural talent of a person[not degree and psychometric test ]
How good he is fit in option 1 and option 2.
                   Noting overcomes a wrong person. He will flush out everything.

It’s really very important to get the right product at the right time even when your market share is declining to keep moving forward.

  • Review and Dialogue
Operational reviews are very important; it gives a mirror how you conducted.

                People always wander what content it should have, so here is the answer


                  1)    It should foster values, integrity and ethics.
2) What did you do better in the competition?[By working the talk]
3) Analysis what happens to behavior and nature

My personal suggestions would be
  • Don’t wait for the year end. Be specific and clear throughout the year.
  • Never perform meeting closure without confirming who will do what.
  • Closure is important for Accountability.
Always remember Young Millionaires are coming you have to bring them from 50,000 feet to 50 feet. Never ever, degrade them or underestimate them.  

References and Thanks Notes:
  •  International Management Conclave
  •  IIM Indore
  •  Indore Management Association