Tag: mobile

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ZMOT.ly

Marketing in the times of Corona

CarpeDiemMarketing_1

Carpe Diem!

What #Marketing, #Sales, #BusinessDevelopment and #ChannelManagement teams can do in the times of #Corona

(Part 1 of n – This is the first in the multi-part series on how business can thrive in these times)

With COVID-19, the world is passing through extraordinary times. Companies require super-extraordinary approaches to survive and thrive in such situations. In this multi-part series, I will address what an organisation can do to lead the industry and leave the competition far behind.

Businesses will be restored to normalcy in due course; only the innovators with innovative marketing organisations will survive. The rest will perish and fall by the end of this pandemic. What remains hence is the impact that you have created in the coming weeks and months. Towards that goal, we will see and share a few tips in marketing and business development.

With the partial to a near-total shutdown of businesses worldwide, the domestic and global companies are facing a watershed moment. Their inbound marketing leads and enquiries have dried up. The social distancing norms constrain the sales team and outbound team. Many businesses are working from home. Revenues are barely trickling in.

Yet, this provides one of the perfect opportunities for a savvy marketer. Here are a few things that you can do –

[1] Reset and recalibrate the internal marketing

Lockouts and quarantine times, such as this is an ideal time to set the internal house to order. The marketing team can now experiment with things that you always wanted to do but never found adequate time. Some of the areas could be

  • Create ‘stock’ content like blogs, white paper, case studies
  • Revisit the calendar for ‘flow’ content like posting blogs and social media.

[2] Reach out to currently engaged prospects

Today is an excellent opportunity to reach out to prospects and customers that are engaged with you presently. The trick is reaching out to them, ‘not with a sales pitch but with ‘hacks’ or ‘tips and tricks. Such a sharing of high-value content that truly eases their lives can add tremendous value to their businesses and organisations. Your customers have all the time in the world now, and you can even reach out to them with web sessions like Zoom or Facebook / Instagram Live. Here are some examples of topics that you can use –

  • Everything you need to know about X.
  • Why most Y strategies today are destined to fail.
  • Three steps by that Y can do to stop Z
  • COVID-19 – How X can change the future of Y.

[3] CRM, Database clean up, and customer segmentation.

One of the vital things a sales team (and the marketing organisation) must have is a well-segmented target audience. It would be best if you used this time to look at the database of current opportunities in your CRM system. If you have not updated the customer database/ CRM, use this time to reach out to sales teams to update the CRM. You can then segment / re-segment the prospect and customer data. You may want to customer lists into categories or based on the sales cycle or with tags that your company is comfortable with. You would need to have a specific plan of engagement for each type.

Let me know your thoughts, and I shall continue to build on these on my next posts in the series. You can also reach out to zmotly@futureshift.com.sg, and I will be glad if I can be of help /Rajesh

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Analytics Cloud Futrlabs IOT Mobile Social

5 Hot Technology Trends (2/2)

In our earlier post, we wrote about #ISMAC and how it is changing the business ecosystem. In this post we will continue the conversation by understanding the leaders in each of these technology areas. We will also review what each one is doing in that space.

1.    Internet of Things (IOT)

Vendors in this space range from chip manufacturers (Intel, ARM, Texas Instruments), mobile and embedded device vendors (Freescale, Qualcom, Ericsson), Home appliance vendors (GE, Bosch), pure-play software developers (Microsoft, Apple, Google, Facebook), Networking vendors (Cisco) and large system integrators (IBM, Oracle, SAP). The spread is so broad given the multitude of technologies that go into making a device intelligent and automated.  One of the biggest business and technological
challenges in this area is the need for standards at all hardware and software
layers.  Standards are important to
ensure complete hand-shake across device vendors as well as to derive
functionalities at scale. Early-stage research companies will lobby for their
work to become the standard.  This tussle
will continue for a few years until the standards bodies get a grip of the
overall collaborations required.  A potential obstacle from consumer perspective is the pervasiveness of these devices leading to privacy compromises. This will be a larger problem involving social, economic and political ramifications.

2.  Social

Social sector is already close to maturity on the consumer usage perspective.  While there could be finer tweaks, the ability to post 140 character reviews to author elaborate ebooks provides consumers enough to go with.  At the backend, processing of these gazillion bytes of data and deriving meaningful value for businesses is key focus area.  At the current juncture social channels are simply used for consumer and prospect connect beginning with lead generation through to customer service and repeat customers.  Most organizations are working to understand and correlate the various factors that impact the conversion funnel and how best they can take advantage of it themselves.

3.  Mobile

With about 200 Million feature phones and 80 Million smartphones sold in India in 2014, the data cannot be clearer.  Complete ecosystems have formed around mobile exchange of money, ewallet, transaction processing etc.  Nationalized banks are also heavily invested in this direction. Ability to transfer money with the swipe of a finger is practical subject to security considerations. While Social is the biggest application used on mobiles (much more data traffic over voice), other ecommerce and financial transactions are not lagging far behind.  It is critical for business to adopt a mobile-first strategy in through thinking. Minimalistic and Responsive Design as some of the key deliverables in this space.

4.  Analytics

The ability to spot the proverbial needle in the haystack holds promise.  Analytics space continues to be hot with hundreds of new entrants each quarter. Open Source Technology platforms like Hadoop (sponsored under the Apache Project) play a key role in providing real-time and batch analytics. Quick access data stores like NoSql are very prevalent given the
unstructured nature of data.  The need to handle millions of data element inputs per minute has also created a proliferation of queuing technologies that ensure data events are processed without loss. While Analytics is touted as the panacea, this space requires good blend of business acumen combined with computing abilities to derive true
value.

5.  Cloud

Cloud is the most advanced of all the five technologies.  The question is not one of viability any
longer.  Usage of cloud has become so
common place that one cannot imagine otherwise.
All our emails, files, photos, documents, videos, photos, blogs are saved
up there in one of the cloud. Cloud infrastructure vendors have gotten the
entire store, access, retrieve cycle ironed out.  Redundancy of infrastructure and replication mechanisms have evolved so well to completely hide the true complexity away from the end customer.  With companies like Amazon, IBM, Microsoft and others giving out free access to developer’s worldwide, cloud is the only de facto platform to develop applications.  It has also brought some semblance of uniformity of development with standardization of infrastructure stack open source products.

In summary, the five technologies listed above are very real and very NOW.  Businesses should take advantage of these technologies in ways that is most beneficial for them.

Futureshift Consulting [www.futureshift.in] brings you the right combination of business and technology strategy and implementation expertise. Visit us at www.futureshift.in for a sneak preview of our offerings.  Write to us [help@futureshift.com.sg]  or for a quick response..

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Analytics Cloud Futrlabs IOT Mobile Social

5 Hot Technology Trends (1/2)

SMAC (social, mobile, analytics and cloud) and IoT (Internet of Things) are the five buzz words in the technology industry that is driving innovation for business and hence valuations for businesses that are in that space.

Let us address this one by one. In this two part series, we will cover introductory and business aspects of SMAC+IoT in this part and take up deep dive in the next.

SMAC delivers an ecosystem to help businesses have maximum reach with minimal costs. It also helps business to be present in front of the customer without being intrusive. We are all creating peta-bytes of data both in structured and unstructured formats. In today’s day and age, anything that we do on the internet is captured in more than one way. This explosion of structured and unstructured data is generating through billions of devices and services – mobile devices social media, sensors, loyalty programs and browsing website and is creating new business models built upon user-generated data. Each of the four technologies – social, mobile, analytics and cloud (let us keep IoT out of the equation for now) – is critical and creates a synergy and provides immense competitive advantage for businesses when used efficiently.

Social Media has provided billions of users and millions of businesses
with new ways to reach and interact between businesses customers and between customers to customers. The mobile technologies have dramatically altered the way people communicate, shop and work and have fun. Analytics allow businesses to understand how, when and where people consume goods and services. Cloud computing provides a disruptive way to access technology with data a business needs to quickly and respond to rapidly changing markets and solve business problems. Each of the four technologies can impact a business individually. But the power lies in the integration and the coming together of the four is proving to be a disruptive force and is creating entirely new business models for service providers.

While it sounds simple the integration involves immense complexity at the back end. There are tools available to achieve the stated purpose. Integrating SMAC requires clear systems, policies and management tools that can automate business processes. The online-retailer company Amazon is a
good example of a business that has successfully harnessed the power of SMAC.
For example, when an Amazon member buys an item on Amazon on their iPhone, they are given the option to login with Facebook’s social login. After the purchase, customers are given multiple ways to provide social feedback. They can rate their experience with stars, write reviews and/or share what they just bought with friends on Facebook or Twitter. Customer data is stored in the cloud and Amazon can break down its analysis to such a granular a level that its recommendation engine can personalize suggestions for friends that are connected and have similar preferences, a concept known as 1:1 marketing.

Any modern CRM strategy would see such 1:1 marketing as the holy-grail of customer engagement and is the aim of every SMAC initiative. Critics however worry that such massive aggregation of customer data from disparate sources, data that is possibly purchased from data brokers, may violate user privacy and cause legal problems related to compliance and data sovereignty.

In spite of such criticism, SMAC is here to stay. In the next post, I will talk about Internet of Things, IoT that is the next big disruptor. Stay tuned.

Categories
Futrlabs ZMOT.ly

5 Hot Technology Trends of 2015

5 HOT TECHNOLOGY TRENDS from Rajesh Soundararajan

5 HOT TECHNOLOGY TRENDS #ISMAC FROM FUTRLABS

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Futrlabs

#Futrlabs small enough to innovate, big enough to disrupt

Futrlabs is our Innovation Hub that develops Intellectual Property on disruptive technologies to positively impact outcomes.

Technology is the bedrock for success. Picking the right solution for the right problem is critical. Futureshift’s Mobile, Cloud, Social and Analytics platforms will help you achieve success, instantly with the right tools.

At Futrlabs cutting-edge innovation happens because we are focused ground up with solutions that impact business and real problems. We are bunch of tech-savvy people who meet and talk to real people almost every week. That is what keeps the creative juices flowing with feet on the ground.