SigmaWay Blog

CRM is the major contributor of many businesses, but sometimes it turns out to be an inefficient and expensive sales killer. The truth behind this is most CRM platforms aren’t intended to help the end users who work with them day in and day out that is your sales representative. Most of them waste time in doing manual data entry. When there is poor execution of CRM, the organization has an insufficient picture of how it is selling its products. The data we are seeing is incomplete and possibly misleading. To know more, please read the following article: http://www.business2community.com/big-data/4-reasons-big-data-failed-impact-sales-01787213#R6gklCOP8mL83XgS.97

Nowadays we can start an e-commerce online retail business a lot easier than ever. Thanks to the internet which helps us to start our business with very little overhead or fixed cost and if we go with the trend that is creating something that people want then we can make much out of it. Here are some tips for starting a successful online retail business: We should create a business plan that should clearly show the route to achieve goal or success.

• Choose a creative business structure which includes tax benefits, requirements and how to legalize with government.

• Start a self-storage which will lower your cost of rent.

• Make a catchy website and make sure it includes all the information like store name, location and contact information for the betterment of customers.

• You should provide a convenient price chart and description of all products.

• Make your ordering process easy.

• Last but not the least show your policies of return, refund and warranties so that customers don’t jump to some other site.

Read more at: http://www.business2community.com/ecommerce/7-tips-starting-successful-online-retail-business-01798247#OCvXfd1Det8hkZMy.97

A long-term customer experience (CX) strategy is built in the entire organization because the strong correlation between customer experience and financial returns is seen. This involves redesigning. The first step to delivering an enhanced customer experience is to bring these various systems and data of customer experience together. Here are some fundamental approaches which need to be further enhanced to building a simple, integrated stack with Contact Center, CRM and e-commerce systems. The first being clean split, contact center systems handle routing and interactions whereas e-commerce and CRM systems bring transaction data and profile/customer journey data. Now the digital divide wherein Contact Center systems and CRM bring in engagement data - Contact Center handles all voice interactions and CRM handles digital interactions whereas e-commerce brings in transaction data. Lastly pragmatic beginning in which CRM is the only system of engagement for limited digital channels, such as email and chat while e-commerce brings in transaction data. Read more at: http://www.incontact.com/blog/tech-stack-deliver-enhanced-customer-experience/

Business developer's role is to develop your organization's revenue and profit. The four basic rules to increase revenue are:

1. Increase relation with more number of clients,

2. Increase your fees,

3. Retain your existing clients,

4. Buy different companies.

 Your sales person should be given training time to time despite of the past training and initial knowledge due to changing market scenario. If the company is not doing well, then you can follow some basic rules about how to improve your growth through better interaction with your clients and grow faster.

Read more at: http://www.business2community.com/business-innovation/company-best-class-average-laggard-01778358#qxC2O2djpW5Xv2J4.97

Many studies have concluded that analytic skills are beneficial for making business strategies. A sentiment analysis helps to highlight the role of marketing execution and performance to a company's success. A top vital component to accomplishing development relies upon how well marketing impacts client engagement and empowers the organization to tap new markets. Both of these require strong information and analytical skills to change the examination into business experience.  A study uncovered that high performing organization gives high priority to analytical skills and how they have helped them to analyze the market which made them win. To know more, please read the following article by Laura Patterson (marketing practitioner, consultant and dynamic speaker) at:

 http://www.business2community.com/marketing/make-sure-adding-analytics-skills-marketing-win-01763227#FcBIx0lUk9me8xeV.97

Very often a customer 360 view can be dangerous and distracting as it sets the organization of the track by providing it a false goal to pursue and diverts it from pursuing financially rewarding initiatives. As a consequence, business acquires a constant monitoring stage with their data and analytics investment. Customer 360 view data is not actionable until you don't apply analytics and you can't apply analytics until you know the business problem organization is wanting to address. A more active approach would require focus on identifying the decisions that an organization is trying to make about customers and validate, justify and prioritize those decisions. Read more at : http://www.datasciencecentral.com/profiles/blogs/the-danger-of-pursuing-customer-360-view

The growth and development of digital financial services or modern banking platforms as we see today is a continuous evolutionary project unlike traditional software projects , it doesn't have a beginning or end.To maintain a competitive edge, an organization must consider the following : User Experience : Every single cent of investment in well designed customer experience would generate a huge rate of return.

Simple Personal Finance Management : A large proportion of banks still cannot offer 100% online account opening facility which shows the potential in this area. Banks should tread carefully and do not rush just for the sake of winning the competition in the market.

Bots and Data :  Bots can hold intelligent conversation with your customers using natural language. Integrating bots on your financial platform would help you to achieve competitive edge.

Context : Banks should aim at varying the channel of their services according to the product. Users are more likely to access content on their mobile phones and  banks must take this fact into account.

Modern day banks need to adapt these changes and at the same time take care of current trends and experience of the competitors, Simply cherry-picking best solutions doesn’t guarantee long-lasting success.

Read more at : http://dataconomy.com/2017/03/choosing-digital-banking-platform/

User generated content(UCG) marketing is any type of content that has been put up by unpaid contributors in the form of pictures, videos, tweets etc. rather than the brand itself. It has proven to be a great tool to increase customer engagement. Around 76% social media users think UGC brand is more trustworthy. People who actively participated in UGC campaigns are in the age groups of 25-54. Moreover, sometimes videos created by users on YouTube get 10 times more hits than the actual brand. Even in the digital age word of mouth referrals are the best kind. A successful UGC campaign Increase authenticity, app engagement, app reach and brand loyalty. Read more at : https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/289838

According to a study, it was found that 78% enterprises agree that data strategy, collection and analysis have potential to fundamentally change the way their business operates. The sole aim of an effective data strategy is to utilize this potential . The 5 questions that one need to answer before building a data strategy are : WHAT is Data Strategy?: It is a strategy that allows you to have a comprehensive vision across the enterprise.

WHY do we need a Data Strategy? :You need a data strategy to find correlations across multiple disparate data sources, predict customer behavior, predicting product or service sales

WHEN should I start or have a Data Strategy?: Answer is NOW.

WHO in our organization should drive this Data Strategy?:Chief Data Officer

WHERE do we start with Data Strategy?:It depends on how the organization is structured , it’s recommended to start it in some business unit.

 Read more at : http://dataconomy.com/2017/01/data-strategy-part-i/

Managing Customer relations and increasing need of collaboration to build profitable business has led to the development of digital B2B ecosystem, which is a community of system working together to serve the needs of customers. These systems allow segmentation of audience and delivering a customized experience to each group. Some components of the B2B ecosystem are Enterprise Resource Planning System, Customer Relationship Management System, Product Information Management System, Order Management System, Marketing Automation System etc. A well-equipped system help marketers to Use Customer Insights to Cross-Sell, Optimize the Order and Reorder Processes, Better Manage Content ,Facilitate Lead Nurturing. In a well established B2B system Sales and Marketing collaborate to have a real time access to latest customer information. You can read in more detail at : http://www.datasciencecentral.com/profiles/blogs/how-b2b-ecosystems-big-data-can-transform-sales-and-marketing

 The first block to build a winning business strategy is to create a map based on business value of the question and approximating how much time would it take to get high quality answers to that question. The idea is to break the business questions into groups that corresponds to real time data systems. It allows you to focus on a specific system at once to build a strong strategy and optimize the sequence in which each sub question needs to be answered depending upon its current business value. A pattern of actions for data strategy begins with a hypothesis and collection of relevant data followed by building models to explain the data and evaluating its credibility for future predictions. The entire process is achieved on an enterprise scale digital infrastructure using Industrialized Machine Learning (IML). This approach can have a huge impact on natural resources and healthcare industries as well.

Read more at : https://blogs.csc.com/2016/07/05/how-to-build-and-execute-a-real-data-strategy/

Global markets are becoming more complex each day, and therefore, it has become essential for business intelligence teams to apply advanced methods for data interpretation. They believe that only the decisions based on quantitative data can be justified. Although there are some ways quantitative research may go wrong, the truth comes out only when you meet people, talk to them, involve them in creative exercises.

Read more at: http://www.dataversity.net/science-big-data-art-interpretation/

It has been evident that a great customer experience is one of the signs of a healthy business model. Machine Learning and Data Analytics are playing a fundamental role in building consumer intelligence systems. It is important to capture data and there is no single magic source to collect data. Telecoms are making billions by selling data. You need to ensure that the data is relevant to business. Once you have the right data, you are ready to model, design and engineer and deploy your 360-degree customer view platform and achieve the enhance customer experience for your organization.

You can read more at: http://www.datasciencecentral.com/m/blogpost?id=6448529%3ABlogPost%3A508502

Data Science is one of the hottest job of the 21st century. But is it easy to be a data scientist , and the answer is it’s not hard. But here are some of the things that one need to avoid to be a bad data scientist :

• Focus on tools rather than business problems :

Yaa tools do matter, but what is even more important is the problem you are working on, it should be the basis of all your decisions.

• Planning communication last :

Communication helps in getting various insights about our ideas and hence help in improving our approach to handle a particular problem.

• Data analysis without a question / plan :

Data without a plan or motive is useless and we often end with more of the things we don’t need than the things we really need.

• Don’t read enough :

This is a mistake that everyone makes, to be updated with the recent development tends helps in constantly improving our skill set and hence benefits the organization.

• Fail to simplify :

Data Scientist generally fail to maintain the core idea behind their product and hence end upwith something which is much complicated for the end users.

• Don’t sell well :

The job of data scientist doesn’t end with creating the product , he must know how to sell it, how to reach to the end users.

You can read more at http://ucanalytics.com/blogs/6-worst-mistakes-for-data-scientists-and-how-to-avoid-them-explained-with-quotable-quotes/

Social media is inextricably related to almost every aspect of daily life. It has changed the  communicate mode, how we exchange information, and how we take decisions. Instead of looking up to television for news and entertainment, audiences now tend to look to Facebook and Twitter to learn about the world around them; in lieu of reading magazine articles about where to shop, eat, and vacation, consumers now seek out recommendations from YouTubers, Instagrammers, and Snapchat stars.

In response to these trends, influencer marketing has increasingly replaced traditional forms of advertising as one of the most effective ways to reach online audiences. Despite the growing popularity of this kind of marketing, however, many marketers are still unsure how to leverage the influence of social media stars to develop, launch, and measure effective influencer marketing campaigns. These days, launching first influencer marketing campaign can seem like an inhuman task, especially for marketers who have never worked with social media stars before. Hence, we will break the process into ten manageable steps to help companies navigate the complexities and avoid some of the common pitfalls associated with influencer marketing campaigns:

Read more at: http://www.business2community.com/marketing/10-steps-launching-influencer-marketing-campaign-01705413#ERQ6R9yjcB12qcro.99

Converting analytics to action is a nightmare as it is fraught with problems, of which, not the least is the political nature of organizational decision-making. When it comes to ROI, we see lots of organizations taking on the analytics bandwagon and are happy to have more insight into which pages, and segments are driving returns. A host of digital tools can transform data into pretty dashboards to help improve ROI.

Overall, businesses do a great job of monitoring, understanding, and utilizing ROI information–translating it into effective actions. These relatively simple metrics guide managers on which messages, segments, products, and channels are working their best, allowing them to tweak strategy in order to improve market performance and intelligence. Still, sometimes issues of data quality and politics impede implementation of the right actions based on available data.

Read more at: http://www.business2community.com/digital-marketing/translating-analytics-action-right-metrics-right-time-01702969#LDbDrcQKbELE1vEd.99

Constantly improvising on the quality of data is essential to remain ahead of business competition. However, failing to do so will result in a fatal erosion in the value of your most valuable asset, data, which is why it is vital to manage and maintain it effectively. 99% of marketers feel the urge to turn data into insights, yet 75% of organisations believe inaccurate data is undermining their ability to provide an excellent customer experience.

It’s impossible to provide outstanding customer experience with incomplete and incorrect customer data. However, improving the quality of your CRM data doesn’t have to be costly or time consuming.

Read here how you can effectively improve the quality of your CRM data: http://www.business2community.com/big-data/ensure-crm-data-fit-purpose-01706169#BufvU0yIxvoRxkdm.99

It has been estimated that an average person spends half an hour to one hour per day on various social media platforms, which amounts to almost two weeks in the course of the year.

This statement should provide enough incentive for businesses to get hold of the utilities of social media marketing; though at the same time it is necessary to consider that social media management is extremely tedious and time consuming. While maintaining the busy life of a small business owner, dedicating time as well as resources to advertise business on social media can prove to be costly.

Yet it is extremely necessary for small businesses to ensure social marketing to gain on various factors like developing connections or creating more promotional opportunities for customers to ensure advantage of business

Consider these four reasons given below as to why you should be using social media marketing for your small business: http://www.business2community.com/social-media/social-media-marketing-4-reasons-small-business-invest-01705099#jMzMGG2ZBxxrD10z.99

In recent times, marketing has become an integral part of any business. Your business may offer the best products or services in the industry, but without continuous projection of the product to the customers, the chances of your competitors taking over your products is very high.

In the early 1950s and 1960s, marketing was production oriented and the quality of the production was the driving factor of marketing. Later, as new production technologies started to develop, techniques evolved simultaneously to meet the needs of the customers and efforts were made to maximize customization. But the next major advancement in marketing is literally hacking the brain of the customer.

Neuroscience is the field of study where the response to products and consumer decision-making is understood at the level of body and mind. The Neuromarketing concept is based on a model wherein the major thinking part of human activity, including emotion, takes place in the subconscious area that is below the levels of controlled awareness. For this reason, the perception technologists of the market are very tempted to learn the techniques of effective manipulation of the subconscious brain activity.

Neuromarketing is a flexible method to determine customer preferences and brand loyalty, because it can apply to anyone who has developed an opinion about a product or company.

To know more on neuromarketing, read : http://blog.fractalanalytics.com/integrated-marketing-effectiveness/neuroscience-in-marketing/

How do companies attract and engage new clients while making sure the existing clients are happy? The simple answer to this question is, manage.

However, you will not find many executives who would respond to this conjecture candidly. You will, however, find plenty of companies that take the “we manage” approach with one of its most valuable assets: relationships.

While running any enterprise technology company, we’ve seen just how consistently data can be used to help improve sales. But we do know, all its good intentions to provide sales managers with a way to monitor pipeline and sales activity, CRM is still hugely inefficient. Representatives are required to spend time manually entering data, and then spend more time searching through it. While senior management clearly values the ability to monitor these representatives through CRM, the vast majority of sales people dislike the extra work and overhead it creates and generally use CRM begrudgingly – and rarely to its full potential.

Read more at : http://www.business2community.com/strategy/relationship-intelligence-companies-acquire-01702402#tAmo7XUOWfJJ6g3Z.97