SigmaWay Blog

In Software-as-a-service (SaaS) all the data, app and app meta data is managed by the vendor. This created the feeling of dissatisfaction among customers. To make the customers satisfied, a new technology is launched "Container-as-a-service" and with some improvement in CaaS, an upgraded software (CaaSi) Container-as a service for ISV (Independent Software Vendors) has been developed. In CaaSi the data is managed by customers and, app and app meta data by vendor. CaaSi model is the mixture of on premise and SaaS benefits. For example, automatic effects, network effect, scaling ease etc. benefits are from SaaS and Accounting (include Capex and Opex), data access, cost transparency, data ownership, direct integration etc. are from on premise. Cloud service providers like Google, Amazon and Microsoft added CaaS in their service list. To know more about CaaSi and CaaS, read an article "Goodbye, SaaS - hello, Containers-as-a-Service" by Peter Yared (Sapho) at: http://venturebeat.com/2015/05/09/goodbye-saas-hello-containers-as-a-service/

According to Enza Lannopollo (Researcher at Forrester), "organizations ability to protect the customer's privacy is the building block of trust and long-term relationship." According to the Mobile Ecosystem Forum (MEF) annual research report surveyed 15000 respondents, about 49% of respondents say that lack of trust limits them from downloading the app, 72% of the respondents are not happy with sharing personal data and 34% of the respondents say that lack of trust stops them from buying online apparels.
This shows that trust is one of the most important factors while buying, downloading or sharing personal data on mobile apps. Craig Piezle (executive director of the Online Trust Alliance), offered 9tips for making an effective transparency process:
1. Communicate the value to the consumer.
2. Have a clear and concise privacy policy written for the customers, not for your legal team.
3. Provide the ability for consumers to opt out.
4. Restrict any sharing with third parties.
5. Have a lawyer’s privacy policy with icons.
6. Consider having privacy policies written in multiple languages.
7. Define your retention practices.
8. Move from a compliance mindset to stewardship.
9. Embrace doesn’t track.
To know more about the benefits of using transparency and why transparency is important in today’s customer driven society. Read an article “Big Data: Protecting Privacy Is Good For Business” by Pam Baker (Author of Data Divination: Big Data Strategies) at: http://www.informationweek.com/software/enterprise-applications/big-data-protecting-privacy-is-good-for-business/a/d-id/1320367

Social media marketing is considered to be the best way to reach the prospective customers. But it could be a disaster also, if not done with proper planning and strategy. Jeff Foster (Co-founder and CEO of Tomoson) in his article “How to build a social media marketing strategy that works,” discussed about some tips for building a good social media marketing strategy. That are:
• Understand your goals
• Create measureable objectives
• Characterize your customers
• Look at the competition
• Develop your messages
• Choose a content plan
• Choose your channels

For building an effective social media marketing strategy an organization need to define their mission that could increase their sales, creating brand awareness, etc. One should choose one or two missions at a time to make marketing more effective. To know more about these tips and their benefits, read an article: http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/246085

The Retail industry is very competitive. Retailers need to apply analytics to analyze consumer behavior and retain them. Predictive Analytics help retailers to predict the response of customers regarding new offer, discount or product. But barrier of culture and stage fright, stop them to apply big data analytics.

Leslie Dinham (Teredata) in her article "two ways retailers are overcoming barriers to analytics adoption," talks about solutions to these barriers or adoption blockers. They are:

Barrier 1# Culture is the culprit: Employees get rigid due to working in the same culture, performing same job or duties. They don’t want to change their decision making process and roles. It becomes difficult to apply data analytics in this culture. The solution to this problem could be informing employee about the benefits of using data analytics and provide necessary training.

Barrier 2# Stage Fright: Many times, retailers won’t get success while applying analytics in their organization because they won’t able to choose the right team, tool or technology, won’t able to integrate new analytical capabilities into operations or the culture of the organization is not innovative. Paying attention while applying analytics in these things can help organizations to successfully apply analytics.

To know more about these barriers and solution to them, read an article at: http://www.forbes.com/sites/teradata/2015/05/13/two-ways-retailers-are-overcoming-barriers-to-analytics-adoption/

“Companies are pushing more sensitive and regulated data into the cloud. But, this journey is raising questions like 'security of data'.”

Applying software-as-a-service (SaaS), Infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) and platform-as-a-service (PaaS) add on some more risk to the organizations. Ericka Chickowshi(specializes in information technology and business innovation) in her article “10 security questions to ask a cloud service provider” at Informationweek, discussed about 10 questions to be asked by companies from SaaS service providers before applying cloud. Some of them are:

·         Do you keep a signed audit trail of which users performed what actions when, both through their UI and API?

·         What is my role and your role in the protection of my data?

·         Do you encrypt all data transmissions, including all server-to-server data transmissions, within data centers?

·         What is your termination or ‘exit process’ for ensuring successful transition from services to an alternative offering?

·         Do you allow customers to perform scheduled penetration tests of either the production environment or a designated testing environment?

Asking these questions can help you to assess the risk. To know more questions and their reason for asking, visit the following link: 
http://www.darkreading.com/informationweek-home/10-security-questions-to-ask-a-cloud-service-provider/d/d-id/1320377

“Transferring data from your network to cloud includes processing and storing of the database and then processing for further use.”

Gerry Grealish (Perspecsys) in her article “Protecting the Data Lifecycle from Network to Cloud” at Informationweek, discussed about three phases for transferring data from your network to cloud and risk associated with them:

Phase 1# Data in motion: It is the term used for data as it is in transit. Risk is interference by third party. Cryptographic protocols, such as Secure Sockets Layer or Transport Layer Security can be used to protect data in this phase.

Phase 2# Data at rest: Data is stored in the form of file or database. Risk is reading of data by third party. Database solution can be used for protecting data like tools offered by CSP for encryption operations and there are various techniques like block level encryption technique.

Phase 3# Data in use: It is a data which is loaded into a process and is in the memory of the program that is running. And it is not protected by cloud service provider’s techniques like in-cloud based encryption techniques.

To know more about these phases and risk associated with them, read on: http://www.darkreading.com/cloud/protecting-the-data-lifecycle-from-network-to-cloud/a/d-id/1320249

It was found that, 59% of CMO's who use technology strategy, depends on marketing ops for tools, analytics, process and metrics. According to Scott Vaughan (CMO of Integrate), marketing operation (marketing Ops) focuses on customer acquisition. The marketing operations function has emerged due to the need for a more transparent, efficient, and accountable view of marketing. Its growth was driven by the proliferation of marketing technology and increased pressure from the C-suite to prove the value of marketing and contribute to the bottom-line. The Marketing Ops role is increasing in today’s world, so, some tips for Marketing Ops leaders. They are as under:
Tip 1# Lead process change by organizing around the customers: Look at your current marketing plan, technology, process and resources.
Tip 2# Drive decisions based on governed data: Apply data governance to improve quality.
Tip 3# Shape the marketing technology infrastructure: Identifying and applying right technology.
Read more at: http://marketingland.com/marketings-new-customer-nerve-center-marketing-operations-127292

In today’s competitive world, most of the organizations have a social media marketing as the part of their marketing strategy. But most of the time they won’t get success. Here are some common mistakes are discussed:

·         Choosing an incorrect platform.

·         Doing too much or too little.

·         Ignoring content marketing.

·         Inappropriate content or self-promotion.

·         No personal branding.

·         Canned responses to negative comments.

·         Not aligning with the target audience in terms of tone and messaging.

Here are some tips for choosing a right platform:

·         Facebook can be used for leveraging the community efforts and building trust.

·         Twitter can be used for broadcasting your messages and connect with thought leaders and people.

·         LinkedIn can be used for targeting a professional audience.

·         Google+ can be used for SEO efforts.

To know more about these mistakes and solution, read an article “7 deadly sins of startup social media marketing” by Radha Giri, http://yourstory.com/2015/05/social-media-marketing-deadly-sins/

There is a continuous fall in number of manufacturing industries due to lower profit margin or problem in operation. Here are some problems faced by manufacturing companies with their solutions:

 •    Organizations won’t able to find skilled labor:

·         They need to train them for building required skills, and train employees to solve daily problems.

·         Can’t keep track of all the regulations: Companies need to have Quality legal counsel.

·         Problem with suppliers: Apply lean, six sigma or analytics to reduce waste cost and lead time.

·         Competitive Advantage: Continuous Innovation and lean product development are the need of manufacturing industry.

To know more about these problems and their solution read an article link “Manufacturing: It’s Where and How, Not If” by Becky Morgan (President, Fulcrum ConsultingWorks Inc.): http://www.industryweek.com/strategic-planning-execution/manufacturing-it-s-where-and-how-not-if

In today's present scenario, retailers are facing threat from online stores. There is a fall in profit percentage. But to deal with this, retailers are increasing their customer's database as they can apply analytics on the data, predict and track customer behavior.

 In this context, the Future group's plan is to increase the database of customers so that they can fight ecommerce companies.

According to Punit Soni (CPO at online marketplace Flipkart), “Capturing a huge swath of pricing and things of the largest economies of the world, and becoming the default marketplace is not easily doable for offline players”.

To know more about Future Group strategy and analytics in retail, read an article link “Future Group banking on analytics to battle e-commerce companies” by Jayadevan PK (ET Bureau): http://articles.economictimes.indiatimes.com/2015-05-08/news/61947503_1_rakesh-biyani-future-group-data-analytics

In this digital world, continuous innovation in marketing is very important to have a competitive advantage. The traditional ways of marketing are no longer effective, but marketers need to build engaging ads to attract customers, which leads to the development of touchpoint marketing. Touchpoint marketing aims to build a contextual customer experience across every online and offline touchpoint. This approach can help in building loyalty and engagement of customers.

Here are some tips to make touchpoint marketing effective:

• Create an emotional customer experience.
• Move from linear marketing to the customer life cycle.
• Shift from personalized campaigns to contextual interactions.

To know more about touch point marketing, read the article link “touchpoint marketing helps you stay connected with customers” by Patrick Tripp (Senior Product Marketing Manager for Adobe Campaign) at: http://www.cmswire.com/cms/digital-marketing/touchpoint-marketing-helps-you-stay-connected-to-customers-029110.php

The retail industry is B2C industry. In B2C industry, forecasting and planning future demand and supply is a very important function to improve operation's efficiency. But, consumer behavior is very unpredictable. To analyze this unpredictable behavior, retail stores need to analyze big data. In Consumer Goods Analytics Summit in Chicago, suggestions on applying Big Data Analytics in Retail Industry were discussed. Let’s have a look on some of them:

·        By using big data analytics try to find out actual problem and their solution.

·        Apply analytics in every possible way from making sales report to multi-structured data to understand and improve customer service.

·        Always Interpret big data.

·        Recruit persons who understand the value of data analytics. 

To know more about Big Data Analytics in Retail, read the article link “Are retailers organized for Analytics” by Gib Basset, (Consumer Goods and Retail Industry Principal with Oracle Corp) at: http://www.retailwire.com/news-article/18266/are-retailers-organized-for-analytics

About 85% of the world's population has email accounts and check their email inbox daily. So, email advertising is becoming very important. Email Campaign is the cheapest way of advertising and generates the highest Return on Investment (ROI). Here are some suggestions by Justin Zhu (CEO of Iterable) on creating good a email campaign:
1. Map out the customer flow.
2. Master the balance of building your list, while not asking for too much.
3. Embrace marketing automation.
4. Offer value with every touch.
5. Recognize lapsed users and bring them back.
6. Perpetually tinker with A/B testing.
To know more about these tips, follow: http://thenextweb.com/socialmedia/2015/05/05/the-6-rules-for-creating-killer-email-campaigns/

iGen or  Generation Z is the generation who has been born in digitalization age with smart phones in the hands. iGen is independent, stubborn, pragmatic and always in a rush. Marketers are facing problem in understanding their interest, hobbies and attitude. Gen Z wants to know everything about a product before buying. They trust friends, strangers over advertisements, blogs or information on the net. In an article by Joan Schneider (CEO of Schneider Associates), shares some tips on how to market iGeneration:

·         Personalize Everything.

·         Connect with them through social media.

·         Be strategic with advertisement.

·         Excite I Generation with content.

·         Use mobile to reach I Generation.

Marketers also need to be social, transparent and personal with this generation. To know more about this generation read an article “How to market to the Generation I” by Joan Schneider at: https://hbr.org/2015/05/how-to-market-to-the-igeneration

In today's world, brands need to stand out and do something different. So, a new concept has come up. It is the concept of placing your brand in a subscription box.  Subscription box is a box that is received by subscribers periodically and contains products and samples. They can be used for customized market research and provides information about products and packaging. According to Euromonitor International, using subscription boxes will help to retain customers. Using this subscription box can reduce your marketing expenditure and help a company to reach a national audience, increase social traffic and sales. To know more about subscription box and its benefits, read the article linked by Aihui Ong (Founder and CEO of lovewithfood.com) at:  http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/245753

According to Chris Golec (founder and CEO of Demandbase), innovations in marketing technology are solving many critical issues of B2B marketers. These innovations are taking place in advertising, personalization, conversion and measurement which are helping marketers in driving and engaging present and potential customers. Future of B2B is maintaining continuous and long term relationships with customers. Three areas where innovation in B2B taking place:

• Accounting Based Marketing (ABM): It provides a vital strategy for companies that want to create sustainable growth and profitability within their most important client accounts. ABM focuses explicitly on individual client accounts and their needs. More importantly, it is a collaborative approach that engages sales, marketing, delivery, and key executives toward achieving the client’s business goals.

• “Always-on” advertising & subscription model: B2B organizations need to advertise on a regular basis and for attracting right companies, you need to have the right content on your website.

• Best of breed vs. Single vendor: Best of breed is better because it provides best solutions for each problem.

Read more at: http://venturebeat.com/2015/04/30/the-future-of-b2b-marketing/

According to Lauren Jung (Co-Founder of Theshelf.com), customers believe influencers over Facebook, twitter post for getting information about new trends, innovations and advice for buying products. Influencers are individuals who have the power to affect purchase decisions of others because of their (real or perceived) authority, knowledge, position, or relationship. In consumer spending, members of a peer group or reference group act as influencers.

Here are some tips to make influencer marketing effective are:

•         For making influence marketing successful align with influencer who have the power to influence the buyer’s decision or inbound interest.
•         Tailor your strategy based on the influencer.
•         Try to maintain a relationship.
•         Encourage content creation from brand evangelists.

 Read more at: http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/245757

Mobile commerce (m-commerce) is a type of e-commerce conducted through mobile devices such as mobile phones and other mobile devices with a wireless connection - including smart phones (iPhones, Google Android), tablets (iPad, Amazon Kindle) and notebooks. M-Commerce also brings new opportunities for selling online, and mobile marketing can be used to extend online reach. Four things a company must consider while developing m-commerce marketing strategy are:

·         Reach: Tap into the uniqueness of mobile-first consumers.

·         Curate: Trigger impulse purchases through well-crafted offers.

·         Entertain: Make shopping fun and easy, not just cheap.

·         Lock in: Capture the loyalty of mobile shoppers early.

Read more at: http://www.mckinsey.com/insights/consumer_and_retail/learning_from_south_koreas_mobile-retailing_boom

According to Burton White (Vice President of the Industry Supply Chains at Chainalytics), for retailers and e-commerce firms, developing an effective and efficient supply chain strategy is challenging. To make last-mile delivery as their core supply chain strategy, they have to provide right inventory at the right time at the right place in the right form.
Some tips to be considered while developing a supply chain strategy are:

• Never lose sight of what actually matters to the customer
• Explore innovative approaches, like to bundle product shipments.
• Explore non-traditional distribution capabilities.
• Optimize transportation solutions to meet last-mile demands.
• Consider the inventory’s form, function and placement within your supply chain.
• Focus on returns management efficiency.

Read more at: http://www.industryweek.com/last-mile

The Journeyman is a person with multiple skills. They are "highly skilled" labor in any field of manufacturing. Apprenticeship training is used to train journeyman which combines on-the-job training with academic instruction for those entering the workforce.  It is also known as dual-training program.

The advantage to this type of training is that the manufacturer will make an investment in a program that pays the workers while they are in job training. Some ways to eliminate the shortage of skilled labor are:

• Make a contract with workers who want training.
• Offer job security and long term employment.
• Provide apprentice training with job security.

To know more about apprenticeship training and ways to eliminate the shortage of skilled labor follow:  http://www.industryweek.com/recruiting-retention/kind-training-we-need-manufacturing