Category: General

Is ‘Sachet Insurance’ The Right Model To Target The Mass Customer Base?

September 20, 2019

Insurers have now begun following what many in FMCG and the telecom sectors have been up to. Small package offerings, or as the insurance sector prefers to call it “sachet insurance” or “bite-sized insurance” products are making inroads to target the mass customer base. Though at its nascent stage, an increasing plethora of insurers offering such products, are signs enough to predict a positive future for the product model. Flag bearing insurance companies in this segment in India are Toffee Insurance and Digit Insurance. Whereas, Zego, a London based company or Axinan the Singapore based company is testing similar models for their markets. They are offering ‘small-ticket’ non-comprehensive low insurance cover, focus on specific needs and are priced at affordable/low premiums. Did you know? According to Rohan Kumar, CEO at Toffee Insurance, “The sum insured gets defined by the premium. A premium of up to INR 1,000 per year can be called as sachet insurance and the sum insured will depend on the category where it can go up to INR 4-5 lakhs” Digit Insurance offering a holiday home cover at INR 200 excluding tax for INR 2 lakhs cover or Toffee Insurance’s backpack policy which adjusts premiums as per the “bag value” of policyholder have found a number of takers. The bag value insurance has a pricing model which requires users to pay a premium of INR 25 for bag value of up to 2000 or INR 100 for a bag value ranging between INR 5,000 and INR 10,000.  So why is the sector upbeat about ‘sachet’ or ‘bite-sized’ insurance? The answer to this is not simple. However, after speaking with many of the insurers, we found a common ground which enlists the following adoption drivers: Higher price sensitivity Growing millennial cohort that simply gets attracted to the ‘pay-as-you-go’ or value for money proposition. A number of insurers believe these ‘sachet-packs’ are needed for driving insurance penetration as it did for the FMCG and telecom sectors. Access to insurance cover anytime, anywhere and for specific requirements at affordable prices is the single selling point of these ‘sachets’. “Insurers have products for individuals who have a monthly income of Rs 40,000 and above. We want to offer products with premiums as low as Rs 20 so that the masses can buy it instantly,” – Upasana Taku, Co-founder, MobiKwik If you are thinking that only new-age players are making a foray in this domain then let me tell you about some established ones ICICI Lombard has collaborated with Mobikwik for a cyber insurance cover that can be availed at INR 99 per month, with a sum insured of INR 50,000 and has a validity of one month. Max Bupa & Mobikwik have a business tie-up for its ‘HospiCash’ plan that has an annual premium of INR 135, and provides daily cash allowance of INR 500, for up to 30 days, during a hospital stay. AIG Singapore launched its ‘Travel Guard Direct’ plan which is priced according to destination, duration and age, so customers can benefit from more accurate, effective pricing based on the risks involved.  Wondering how will you jump into the fray? You should begin by considering the fact that ‘sachet’ products will transcend the geographical boundaries and reach the mass population. This implies that scalability will be of utmost importance. The overall service delivery architecture should be calibrated for low-value, high-volume transactions. According to PWC, a modular, scalable, cloud-based and API driven architecture that can handle concurrent transactions across customised product lines and last-mile distribution channels would be a good architecture for sachet products. A robust ecosystem comprising partners and third-party service providers will be an ideal service delivery model. Source: PWC Apart from handling concurrent transactions and associated architecture, another aspect that is of equal importance is that these products are simple and offer need specific coverage. This makes it imperative for insurers to pull relevant features from multiple insurance products and bundle into one relevant and simple package. For instance, Toffee Insurance’s bicycle insurance product covers theft, damage to the bicycle and personal accident. The company pulls theft and damage from a single underwriting partner, whereas it fetches personal accident cover from another underwriting partner. In such an operating model, insurance ecosystems emerge as the perfect fit for sachet insurance products. While considering an ecosystem, the role of open APIs (Application Programming Interfaces) in facilitating secured connectivity will remain crucial for the delivery of sachet insurance products. Open APIs can be deployed to amalgamate with a wide range of ecosystem players and deliver a synchronized customer experience. Over and above customer experience, open APIs also have the potential to provide insurers opportunities to sell insurance through partner websites thereby increasing revenue channels. So what lies in the future is already getting interesting. Source: PWC The rise of sachet insurance is not far as the current integration with taxi hailing service for each of its ride has become a norm. You might never know that your next insurance will be of a penny cost but for one of the most precious childhood memory. However, the challenge for growth still remains of creating ecosystems with secure data exchange at convenience. Technologies like blockchain, cloud and unconventional stakeholders will be roped in to ensure last-mile delivery.

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INT. – An evolutionary journey over 22 years!

September 19, 2019

Yesterday, Indus Net Technologies completed 22 years in existence. It has been an enthralling journey, though a slow one by today’s standards. Few thoughts: It has been an interesting journey. Some highlights and thoughts on the journey: – Headquartered and built out of Kolkata, which lacked a suitable eco-system, manpower, client base to build a tech business in the digital domain. In effect, we always discovered and/or created our way from the ground up. Think of it as a bunch of freshers with zero experience in building a company. This was repeated at every phase. Kolkata has come a long way since then, and so have we. – It was a bootstrapped business. We used the formulae of multiplying revenue by reinvesting. We continue to do so! – It was a service business. We did not know what a product business is when we started off. But, when we realized how important Intellectual Property (IP) is to business value creation, we invested in IP to strengthen and defend our business model. – We pioneered digital outsourcing for small business in our early days, created innovative marketing models and communication, which got copied by tens of thousands of aspirational digital entrepreneurs. We are not complaining. Imitation is the best form of flattery. – When the time came, we challenged the goliaths when we won deals against them, until it became a routine for us. Within the last few years, we have 40+ top brands from India engaged with us. – It has not been one business or the same business that started. It has changed several times over time to adapt to the industry, to adapt to client requirements, and to adapt to my own learnings and exposure. It started as a web hosting company, evolved into a web design and development business, further transformed into an agency for agency model, before it became a technology powerhouse for outsourced product development for enterprises (banking, insurance, public services, pharma). We continue to evolve! The one thing that has not changed is that – the undiluted focus on the client’s success. – It has evolved from a transactional business to an extremely strategic partnership-driven business. We serve less number of businesses, but serve them well, make bigger impact on the end-users in a more meaningful way. Today 85% of our business comes from existing clients and are retained business. – We have had many failures, which has taught us what not to do, or how to do things in the right way. We had our share of frustrations. – We have dabbled in venture building, digital education, our own charity, our own cricket tournament, and most interestingly our own digital success summit. These engagements keep us energized and open venues of new innovation, ideas, and expressions. – We invested in startups. We acquired companies. Some succeeded, some failed. We will keep exploring inorganic growth and improve the probability of our success based on our past experience. – Our team has also evolved with us. We have been able to keep most of our guys engaged for a considerable period with us in our journey. When we moved slow, the faster guys found a faster train. We moved fast, some slower guys were left out. We understand this is the nature of the business. We are investing and working to improve on this. – We are only getting started. We can see a solid growth path in front of us. We unfolded INT V2.0 in 2015. This was the first structured five-year plan. We learned that we need a shorter long-term plan. We are going to unveil INT V3.0 this year. The new INT. will be more aggressive, more focussed, flatter (as an organization structure), more open culture, more business domain centricity, and more fun. – We will continue to focus on learning, and spreading the knowledge; in cutting through the hype, misinformation, and bullsh*t, to empower businesses with real sustainable value. We seek all your support and guidance. On to next many decades… Thank you, everyone, for your on-going support. Keep showering your love and faith on us.

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“INTians is a 5 Star Team!” says our Happy Clients

September 10, 2019

Time is short and you need to learn fast! This was earlier just said but today we are implementing it. A study in 2014 had shown an upsurge of people starting to read books on their mobile devices as compared to 2010. This did send a signal and a recent report showing that audiobook downloads are up 36.1% (physical audiobooks are, unsurprisingly, down 11.4%, because there aren’t many people buying CDs and cassette tapes anymore) has not come as surprise. Learning and reading have been made a lot easy through electronic devices like smartphones today. At Indus Net Technologies, we are proud to be part of this shift by helping innovators leverage digital to the fullest. During our last few years, we have served multiple industries, from financial services to media. We have helped businesses right from managing remote teams to creating an experience of watching live television from any corner of the world. Our core philosophy has been driven by “We Win When Our Customers Win” where we always focused on stepping into our customer’s shoes and help them in value creation. Our recent review on Clutch, a B2B ratings and reviews website, reflects our customers’ satisfaction level. With an overall 4.5-star rating and a rank amongst top app developers in India and in Europe –is a representation of our capabilities. One of our newest reviews is for a mobile app that allows self-published authors to sell their books. The app lets users buy, sell, upload, and review these books. One of our clients found us through online reviews and gave us a perfect 5-star rating across multiple categories. “They did an excellent job, from designing the app to completing the work. I am very pleased with the result, and they were always very quick at solving any issues.” – Owner, Book Marketplace App In addition to mobile app development, we also have an excellent capability of developing web apps. Another recent review has been for both web and mobile app development of a SaaS product for a computerized maintenance management/IoT company. As part of our customer service even after the development process got wrapped, we continued to provide MS Azure technical assistance. Since the offering, 60% of existing clients switched over to the SaaS platform. Additionally, many new clients subscribed to the product. “We enjoy working with Indus Net. They seem genuinely interested in the projects that we’re doing and perform well.” – CEO, CMM/IoT Company In addition to Clutch, we are proud to be featured as one of the top web development companies in Singapore on its sister site, The Manifest. Feel free to find us on Visual Objects, which has us on its list of top app developers in India! We are incredibly thankful to all of our clients who have left us with positive reviews. With the world moving towards digital empowerment, we are happy to have the opportunity to help our customers succeed. If you have a digital struggle say Hii to us today!

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Why Cloud Based Innovation Is the New Norm for Insurers Globally?

September 9, 2019

A number of insurers have started migrating their core business functions into the cloud, a sight which was rare a few years ago. A report by Ovum a few years ago had highlighted how 67% of CIOs from the insurance industry predicted that cloud computing will “completely transform the insurance industry in five years or less”. Today, we are excited to see that it is happening. But the bigger question is why is it happening? The reasons for adoption enlisted at a strategic level include enhancing operational efficiencies, adapting to agility and seamless access to disruptive technology that can drive innovation. Let us see a simple use case of FinanceFox AG, they have teamed up with Salesforce to integrate CRM applications with its insurance brokerage platform.  The platform lets users manage all exiting insurance policies and get advice on insurance coverage gaps. This has given users complete control and the organization is acting as a virtual advisor 24×7. Cloud-based insurance solutions have ushered in an era of innovation to such an extent that large enterprises are craving for a pie in this segment already. For instance, Alibaba Cloud had partnered with eBaoTech to launch ‘eBaoCloud’, an insurance cloud platform that grants insurers access to standardized insurance capabilities without the need to self-build or deploy their own systems. Recently, China Continent Insurance (CCIC) launched its next-generation Core System based on ‘eBaoCloud InsureMO’ as middleware. ‘InsureMO’ provides a comprehensive set of APIs to develop an ecosystem for connecting all internal staff user interfaces and workflows. If we look around we see a dynamic range of companies that are leading the race with cloud-based innovations. Source: Accenture Though we assumed that cloud solutions are only for boosting operational efficiencies and agility but they are evolving themselves to play a crucial role in combating insurance fraud that has plagued the industry for a long time.  For example, CNA Financial Corporation uses Shift Technology’s ‘FORCE’ fraud detection solution to automate the insurer’s fraud detection capabilities. ‘FORCE’ is a SaaS-based solution and claims to have a 75% hit rate. CNA Financial is charged based on the volume of claims processed. Did you know? According to Insurance Thought Leadership.com, insurers across US and Europe fall prey to insurance frauds worth approximately Euro 60 bn per annum. While an estimated 65% of fraudulent claims go undetected, about Euro 240 mn is spent by insurers to tackle fraud. Journey to Being Cloud-Native By now you must have already started planning on leveraging cloud for growth. Let us help you make the first move. An insurance company which provides motor insurance plans to decided of creating a smarter claims prevention mechanism and move it to the cloud. They would then be engaged in a number of considerations and scenarios like: The application and infrastructure model should be designed to account for unpredictable data flow The system must be able to decipher possible business implications from a weather alert of a possible thunderstorm It should have the necessary ability and algorithms to prioritize sending of push notifications and warning messages to policyholders while not hindering other workloads. While they check and analyse the requirements and possibilities they have to keep the core principles intact. But what are these core principles? Clear identification of all possible infrastructure requirements, architectural patterns and application models Well established difference between infrastructure resources that required smart configuration, and provisioning in case of an unforeseen scenario Drafting of architecture patterns for achieving scalability and flexibility of services to cater to the surge in data flows Finalization of application model to optimize solutions for both low configuration and scale-out scenarios Figure: Guardian Life’s shift to AWS Now we feel like we’re in a platform. And we’re capable of testing and learning a lot faster than we have in the past with much less of an investment. But we also have access to these new technologies and just as importantly, the people that are developing these new technologies.”- Dean Del Vecchio, EVP, CIO and Chief Of Operations at Guardian LifeThe partnership between insurers and cloud is here as to stay with cost advantages, co-creation possibilities and higher sustainability. With major giants already deciding to get out of the business of owning and operating its own data centres is a huge milestone for the new cloud-first approach.

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How Software Excellence Fuels Your Business Growth

September 4, 2019

Business leaders are looking forward to implementing tech-driven solutions for their companies. By doing so, it will increase the efficiency of the business. And eventually, the improved efficiency will result in driving the revenue of the business. In this era, every single brand is heavily reliant on technology, automation, and digitalisation. Software is the cornerstone of increasing efficiency and allowing staff to focus on more hands-on tasks. And there lies the importance of joining hands with a software development partner.  Now, you might be wondering why you should partner with a software development company. Well, a software development partner is likely to have tailor-made strategies, a talented pool of employees, cutting-edge technological skills, and so on. So, when you combine all these factors into your project, you will get a fantastic result. Let’s have a detailed look at the reasons! Right Tech Partnerships Scale Up Your Performance A report has found that businesses that have technology partners grow faster and generate more revenue. From ideation to identifying possibilities, tech partnerships help create a data-driven marketing and growth roadmap with maximum impact. Leveraging full-stack technology solutions helps businesses stay a step ahead of the competition. A software development partner can help you engage with multiple touchpoints at a time, like:  Consultation  Campaign designing Product planning and development  Marketing  Customer support Tech partners can help you complete the whole customer journey where you can create interesting digital assets, manage them and amplify their usage as well. Hence, anything which allows you to grow your client’s businesses using digital technology can be executed without a major hassle.   In the current business landscape, digital technologies like websites, social media and eCommerce can give SMBs as well as enterprises a greater market reach and increasing level of customer satisfaction. Software Development Partnerships Foster Innovation & Creativity in Your Business Software development practices have evolved to focus more on building high-quality software at a fast pace. With human-centric development at the forefront, a plethora of innovations is coming to the scene. And It is shaped by insights from user research and customer-journey analysis. Focus on DevOps DevOps is the next frontier when it comes to technological innovation. With an increasing focus on agile development methodologies, strategic tech partnerships have become a business imperative. An offshore software development partner can offer technical expertise and extensive operational proficiency. This will help to notch up a perfect DevOps model that involves continuous integration and delivery, automated testing and performance management, and more to scale up the process. Digital Simulation of Physical Systems A digital simulation of physical systems, assets, and processes is the face of technological innovation lately. Not only IoT but data science and machine learning too also support technological innovation. The simulation requirements are rapidly evolving. So, businesses are relying more on specialized technical capabilities for better interoperability and availability of tools and computing infrastructure.   Adoption of Macro Technology Forces According to a Reuters report, macro technology forces form the foundation of the future. Eventually, the world has been experiencing a new wave of digital experience, analytics, cloud, digital reality, and Blockchain. However, the enterprise adoption of these macro forces has started. The tech partnerships are the key players to disrupt the business landscape in the coming years. The Takeaway The evolving dynamics of digital and analytics are probing enormously in business strategies and operating models. Quite obviously, companies are relying more on technological innovation to generate more value. “To seize the opportunities, executives are rethinking their business strategies, in which partnership with smart technology providers certainly plays a  decisive role”, says Bharat Berlia, the CIO of  INT.

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Influencer Marketing: 14 Things To Know In 2019

May 17, 2019

Have you heard of Lil Miquela? She’s a 19 year old singer and influencer from California, with 1.3 million followers on Instagram (@lilmiquela). The stunning social media star was invited by Prada to take over its Instagram account during one of its Milan shows. Time magazine named her as one of 2018’s 25 most influential people on the internet. But the only catch is; she doesn’t exist. Yeah, Miquela is a computer-generated model and brands are attracted to her! From Computer Generated Influencers (CGIs) and nano-influencers to Instagram killing accounts with fake followers – 2018 was an activity-packed year for influencers and marketers alike. Here’s a rundown on important insights & news from 2018 that will have an effect on your influencer marketing strategy this year. 1) Micro-influencers are in the highest demand  Micro-influencers, or those with less than 100,000 followers, are the most sought after influencers because marketers feel they are cost-effective and have a better connection with their audience. Brands have collaborated with micro influencers such as Steven Onoja, Yannick Merckx and Miette Dierckx because it’s been reported that micro influencers generate 6.7X more efficient per engagement than celebrities with millions of followers. Brands like Google, Nike, Starbucks, Gillette, Sephora, Coca-Cola, and Red Bull are collaborating with micro influencers who apart from being great storytellers are adept at creating authentic content. 2) More efforts towards building trust & transparency  A startling report in The New York Times uncovers the “black market” of bot followers that can be bought for just a few cents each. And these fake followers were being sold to celebs including athletes, politicians, and film stars. Marketers and social channels are proactively taking steps to address the issues of authenticity and credibility plaguing the influencer ecosystem. Last year, Twitter took major actions towards deleting suspicious accounts from the platform. The purge affected the follower count of celebs including Barack Obama, Katy Perry, and Justin Bieber. It was reported that Katy Perry, the most followed person on Twitter, lost at least 1.5 million followers! Instagram also took a major step towards cleaning the platform. It said we will begin removing inauthentic likes, follows and comments from accounts that use third-party apps to boost their popularity. We’ve built machine learning tools to help identify accounts that use these services and remove the inauthentic activity. At Cannes Lions 2018, Unilever’s chief marketing officer, Keith Weed said that the brand won’t work with the influencers who buy followers. He called for more transparency from influencers and urged the marketers and social media platforms to “take urgent action now to rebuild trust before it’s gone forever”. He laid out a three-thronged approach to improve the situation which involves “cleaning up the influencer ecosystem by removing misleading engagement; making brands and influencers more aware of the use of dishonest practices; improving transparency from social platforms to help brands measure impact.” 3) Clamour to grow for real-life like content  It’s an Instagram promotional content for Listerine as it’s been clearly mentioned in the post. Then, what went wrong with this post by Scarlett Dixon? Why did some users go berserk over this post? Let’s check some of the comments Listerine in bedroom… hahahah ridiculous post and constructed/fake reality A picture that provoked a thousand arguments. Personally I see the irony/humour and think it’s brilliantly staged 😉 *gets up, blows up balloons, makes the bed, puts strawberries on top of a plate of wraps, puts mouthwash on bedside table, takes photo Imagine if girls actually looked up to you and realised they could never reach this (which many girls all over the world will never experience pancakes and strawberry’s in a expensive hotel suite) especially the way suicide rates are going through the roof, you keep doing you though Someone even suggested that the campaign was a parody set up by Listerine. https://twitter.com/DaveParkinson/status/1036180435913633792 The more an influencer gives an unfiltered insight into his/her life, the better is the connection between the influencer and the users. We are seeing an emerging trend in the influencer landscape where more and more users are calling out the content creators who cram the feed with over-edited photos and carefully shot videos that border on faux reality. Amidst conversation around social media and its impact on mental health, we will see the trend to continue in today’s age of envy as noted by The Guardian. The report quotes Ethan Kross, professor of psychology at the University of Michigan as saying “envy is being taken to an extreme…We are constantly bombarded by “Photoshopped lives” …and that exerts a toll on us the likes of which we have never experienced in the history of our species. And it is not particularly pleasant.” 4) More opportunities for creators & brands There have been a host of developments last year aimed towards helping marketers and influencers collaborate with each other. We saw Snapchat rolling out “Snapchat Storytellers” pilot program that connects brands with popular content makers. Facebook also launched Brand Collabs Manager to help marketers connect with relevant social media creators so they can collaborate on sponsored-content campaigns. It also rolled out a series of features including poll and game features to Live and on-demand video for Facebook creators and new profile settings that let creators place their video content front and center. Also, there have been concerted efforts by social channels towards helping creators earn money and grow their fan base. YouTube, the world’s largest video site, rolled out channel memberships, merchandising, marketing partnerships, and “Premieres” to help YouTube creators generate revenue from their videos outside of traditional advertising. The announcement read With Channel Memberships, viewers pay a monthly recurring fee of $4.99 to get unique badges, new emoji, Members-only posts in the Community tab, and access to unique custom perks offered by creators, such as exclusive livestreams, extra videos, or shout-outs…Since launching in January, comedy creator Mike Falzone more than tripled his YouTube revenue. We want to make it easier for more creators to sell merch directly from their channel. So we’ve built a product that allows them to do just that. From shirts with a logo to phone cases with a creator’s face, we’ve joined forces with Teespring so creators can choose from over 20 merchandise items to customize and sell via a shelf on their channel…The creator of Lucas the Spider recently turned

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Project Management in 3 Minutes

February 28, 2019

When the Pyramid of Giza was being built around 2500 BC, Project Management was not much of a fad. Maybe whip yielding Scrum Masters did have daily stand up meetings and maybe some engineers had the blueprint drawn up in some papyrus scroll, but that was all to it. No jargon, no certifications, no proud Project Managers with PMP badges. Yet we know the pyramid was one of the daunting projects of human history, one that modern engineers still marvel at. Was this project managed right? You bet! But modern organizations cannot operate like the Pharaohs. We can not whip engineers to build a project out – well not at least literally. As we have refined process over the years, including sophisticated terminologies like Work Breakdown Structure and Process Flow Diagrams and Trade-Offs, we have no doubt blown up something simple and rational into something more of a puff-and-show. But at the heart of it, Project Management remains simple and straightforward. Any project, of any proportion or complexity, can be defined, scoped and planned (at least the basic draft, not as a versioned scope document that clients will accept, duh!) by just answering in a few sentences the following 6 questions. WHAT Well let’s just answer that, shall we! What is the project all about? What needs to be done? Such a basic, such a primary question – yet I find Project Managers, Project Leads, Team Members and sometimes even clients struggling to answer that question – WHAT is the project all about? Even when someone starts a narrative, they usually go on to describe the WHAT in terms of multitude of scattered user stories and exception scenarios. Well, take a breath and get a hold! The WHAT of a project needs to be like an Elevator Speech – short, crisp and to the point. No matter the complexity or budget of the project, if you cannot define the WHAT of it in a few sentences, you really need to get back to the drawing board. WHY Even though we sometimes survive the WHAT session, what really get’s at us is the WHY. When I ask teams working on a project – WHY are you doing this project? I am always amused by the look of befuddlement in their faces. People go like – What do you mean WHY? As if I have just asked one of the most absurd questions that they have ever heard. When I nudge them further, they conjure up reasons like – Well because the company won this project or Because it will earn us money. There are some bad-ass who retort to my WHY with a smirk and a – WHY NOT? The WHY of a project is the soul of the entire project and is the crux of the solution that we as a service providing company or team is supposed to provide. The WHY is the answer to the problem the client wants to be solved. If the WHY is not clear to the team, it is usually like a driver steering a bus without knowing where they are headed. On the contrary, answering the WHY, again, in a few simple sentences, get’s the entire team on the same page in terms of the requirement of the project and also shift’s their focus from Execution to Solution. HOW Now that we have discussed and written down in a simple document and in very simple format, WHAT the project is about and WHY the client needs the project, we next come to HOW of the project. Answering this clearly and briefly will make sure there is distributed clarity in terms of the solution implementation. Do not mistake this simple description as a replacement to the FRD, but rather treat it as a premise to the same. Different team members of an ongoing project are often clueless about the basic yet critical information regarding what technology the project will be built on, what will be the associated technologies and what will be the solution model. Defining such simple details in this section as to whether the project will be developed as a single application or a CMS or a SaaS model application; whether the scripting language will be PHP or C# or DotNet and whether, if any, a framework will be used, goes a long way in achieving critical project clarity for the development team. WHO With most of the project understanding in place, it just remains to set up the team right. Though we ideally want the best team to work on every project, but unfortunately, we do not live in an ideal world! So we know the resource pool at our disposal. In this section, we can be realistic and quickly define the team who will work on the project. This will include defining the entire team – from the Team Leads to the Developers to the Designers to the Client Relationship Managers, if any. It is extremely crucial at this stage to list out the backup resources as well. Though such resources may not be available presently, but we must always have a list of back up resources named to jump into should the occasion arise (trust me, it always does!) WHEN A human may not live by a timeline, but a project must! Discuss and quickly frame up a timeline for the project. When will the requirements be discussed? How much time should be invested for requirement discussion? X number of days? Great! What if it extends to X+2 days? Ah, then the deadline just shifts further by 2 days, right? Wrong! Time has an Avalanche Effect. When a rock starts rolling at the mouth of an avalanche, it is not 1 rock that ends up at the bottom of the mountain, but a huge pile of rumbling, disastrous heap! It is the same with time delays. A 2 day delay in the requirement analysis phase may end up delaying the project by months. So in this section of the document, quickly draft an initial and ideal project timeline, but also draft 2-3 other parallel timelines for delay scenarios. That way, if we jump and miss the rope, we will

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How to Keep Visitors Glued to Your Website

How To Keep Visitors Glued To Your Website

December 7, 2018

Businesses often wonder what they can do in order to keep visitors for a longer time on their websites. This is very important in order to drive revenue and sales. Reducing bounce rates and enhancing website engagement help in increasing conversion rates. However, the process of achieving these goals can be complex and requires a holistic approach towards the problem. Keeping visitors on a website for a long time necessitates a multi-pronged approach that involves web development, design, marketing, testing, and behavioral analysis. In this article, we have listed 7 steps that help in keeping visitors glued to your website for a long time. Make Navigation Simple 67% of mobile web users will abandon the page they are on if they feel frustrated by the navigation. Even on desktop browsers, if navigation is too complex or cluttered, users will abandon and move to a different website. It is crucial to keep navigation simple and focus on UX/UI. To make sure that the navigation of your website is simple, here are a few things you can do: Do not use non-standard styles of navigation. Keep buttons in predictable locations. Name your menu buttons attractively and refrain from using generic labels. Some recommend against using labels such as “Products” or “Services” and instead suggests using key phrases that people are searching. For example: “Our web solutions”, “app development products”. Avoid drop-down menus and cluttering your navigation Your navigation should reflect your sitemap and should provide easy access to all web pages within your website. This helps reduce bounce rates. Reduce Page Load Time Even a single second delay in page load time can reduce conversions by 7%. If a page takes more than 3 seconds to load, you can very well assume that most users will not return to your website again. To keep people lurking on your web pages, it is important to make sure they load quickly. Compress your images and files to load pages quickly Consider using Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) to load pages quickly on a mobile browser Many websites have complex codes that result in slow loading. Hire a custom development team to simplify the existing code. If you use a popular CMS such as WordPress or Drupal, upgrading it to the latest version helps too. Fix website errors such as the 500 Internal Server Error, PHP warnings, and errors, and inability to load dynamic library. A website audit helps fix most of the errors you may encounter. Understand your visitors’ needs Between 70 and 96 percent of web visitors never return to a website again, and this is mostly because the web page does not serve their needs. To eliminate instances of visitors abandoning your website and to encourage them to stay longer, you should start understanding what your visitors really want. Use predictive analysis to understand what your visitors want now and in the future, based on web traffic trends. Terracotta In-Genius predicts data processing requirements and helps fix slower data storage drives. Optimove offers bespoke predictive modeling that helps you implement persona-based segmentation. This insight is sourced from your business DNA and historical data. Use web traffic data to understand your demographics, search terms, most engaging content, etc. Conduct opinion polls and survey to directly ask your visitors what they want Google Analytics, Kissmetrics, Mint, Clicky, Chartbeat, and Woopra are some of the tools used to understand various user statistics. Engage your visitors You might be surprised to learn that people form an opinion about your website in just 50 milliseconds (0.05 seconds). To make sure that this opinion is positive, you will need to make your web content and layout attractive, as 38% will stop engaging if they are not pleased with either. Make your content shareable on social media and encourage visitors to do so Always have a call-to-action at the end of a page so that visitors are not left wondering what they should do next Add customer reviews, testimonials, polls, subscription options, and other features to keep your visitors engaged Be real and engage your visitors by actually interacting with them using AI-based chatbots Enhance content readability and usability Users spend only 5.59 seconds looking at the content on your web page. This means, the content you publish needs to be skimmable and your focus should be on readability more than anything else. In addition, the content you publish should also be useful to the reader. According to Smashing Magazine, these are some of the industry standards you need to follow: User-friendly headers Scannable text with focus points Lots of white space Consistency in the hierarchy of layout, font, colors, etc. Consistency in line height, length, and spacing An emphasis on important elements and density of text Accurate use of separators Organization of content and media Content that can be easily used, shared and consumed Focus on excellent videos Research shows that marketers who use video grow revenue 49% quicker than those who do not use videos. In other words, publishing engaging videos that act as infotainment will keep visitors glued to your website for a longer time and help you grow your revenue quickly too. Use explainer videos to present your services and products Convert presentations and blog posts into graphic videos Use animation to elicit emotions in your visitors, which can help in keeping them on the website too Consider voice over artists and professionally written scripts to take your videos to the next level Test and maintain your website continuously Bounce rate is defined as the percentage of people who visit a single page on your website and leave immediately. Reducing bounce rate should be an important goal if you wish to keep your visitors glued to your website. Conducting regular A/B tests and initiating ongoing website maintenance are crucial in reducing bounce rates. Bounce rates more than 25% are a cause for concern and need your attention. Engage in usability, interface, compatibility, and functional testing of your website. Google PageSpeed Insights, io, Google ngx_pagespeed, Google

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Enterprise Mobility – “Third Screen” Facilitating a World of Connected Devices

Enterprise Mobility – “Third Screen” Facilitating a World of Connected Devices

November 22, 2018

“Mobility is here to stay. It will only grow bigger and become more connected.” Enterprise mobility solutions can be defined, in simple terms, as the world of connected digital devices. Mobility means opportunities to reinvent business processes, giving access to information that is relevant and important at that point in time. It actually results in increased productivity at a decreasing cost – creating new revenue streams to engage customers in new and more agile ways. The main focus is a major transformation to unlock values at the backend data and deliver user-centric data in content to experience that transforms a system of record into a system of engagement. Business needs a solution to shift enterprise IT towards more agile mobile app development and deployment. Defining Enterprise Mobility Solution Strategy If you look at the meaning of strategy in the www.businessdictionary.com you will find that strategy can be defined in two ways: A method or plan has chosen to bring about a desired future, such as the achievement of a goal or solution to a problem. The art and science of planning and marshalling resources for their most efficient and effective use. Enterprise mobility solution is not rocket science. It is actually a well-planned structure comprising of the solutions of the existing problems. Here you will get a clear idea about what exactly is enterprise mobility strategy. We have divided the meaning into three parts for your better understanding of the concept. To structure and deliver information where it is required and when it is required Integrate technology, people and processes for efficient and effective delivery of the core business functions to the several business units present within the organization Aims at offering solutions to various existing problems of the organization related to developing as well as the delivery of mobile apps and implementing timely responsiveness to users. Source: medium.com/@maulikkotakstar/ Need for Enterprise Mobility Solutions in an Organization Let us look at the points below to get an idea of why EMS is required in an organization. Enterprise Mobility strategy ensures and evaluates: The present mobile landscape in the organization The organization’s mobile capabilities currently Potential threats related to mobility faced by the organization Evaluating the risks related to the protection of information within the organization as well as by means of corporate devices. Analyzing the impact mobility strategy will have on the functioning of the organization in future Effect of mobility on the partners, vendors, and clients of the organization and to what extent will it affect them. Enterprise mobility solutions will ensure that the organization has a well-structured and maintained mobile infrastructure. To ensure executive ownership, EMS should be inculcated in the strategic roadmap of the organization. The whole trend is shifting towards a work culture where employees will be working n business tasks sitting at home with the use of smartphones and cloud storage services. Vital Phases of Enterprise Mobility Solutions to Strike a Chord within Organization The whole idea is to simply put people, processes, and technology together powered by wireless networks which facilitates managing of the mobile devices and other computing services within the context of business. These solutions aim at those applications which help in getting the work done through smart devices like smartphones or tablet. Infinite Opportunities is directly proportional to the well-oiled enterprise mobility structure in the organization. Source: https://medium.com/@maulikkotakstar/changing-trends-of-enterprise-mobility-in-2017-53c0b89e8777 Enterprise mobility is an advanced technology that offers new-age companies a promising platform in terms of collaboration and productivity. The four important phases of Enterprise mobility are as follow: Target User: The first and foremost factor which one should take into account is the exact profile of the target user and from where there is a probability of getting business. The profile of the user should be at par with the industry objectives – keeping in mind the nature of business the enterprise wants to achieve through EMS. Objectives to be achieved: The organization has to be well-researched on places where mobility solutions can be inculcated in the daily business processes through connected devices. Before implementing mobility solution strategies the business should have a pre-set objectives which would define the goals they need to achieve. Approach: The operational tactics should be chalked out and implemented to meet the core objectives of the business, right after the alignment of the business objectives with the target group of users. Technology: Choosing the right technology is very essential for mobility initiatives. It would help in choosing the right platform and mobile devices as well. What More to Accept From Enterprise Mobility Solutions? Enterprise mobility solutions are essential for creating a bond between the various elements of the organization. Let us check how EMS connects to the vital parts of the organizational infrastructure: Implementation of EMS can help to improve the productivity of the various departments within the organization and facilitate business growth in this cut-throat competitive market. EMS provides a business-friendly work culture in the organization with innovative flexibility standards by building mobile applications through which the business reaches its target group far and wide, utilizing the technology to the fullest. With enterprise mobility, the organization is all set to handle each and every business responsibility with utmost care. The mistakes related to security can be averted by means of password protection, data loss prevention technology, and remote wipe capabilities. With EMS the constraint related to place, time and position have been eliminated to a great extent. Now businesses are connected to online media where it is accessible to millions of customers globally. This would help in the earning of profits for the business as they are actively participating in the global market. Source: https://devbatch.com/how-are-enterprise-mobility-solutions-changing-in-2018// Enterprise Mobility Solution Future Trends Enterprise mobility is advancing with the progressing time. Soon all multinational companies and business enterprises will have mobility solutions incorporated in their organizational infrastructure for a seamless workflow. The whole idea behind mobility solutions is to increase the level of comfort for employees, which in turn will increase their productivity in a conducive and favourable

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Blockchain and IoT Revolutionizing Supply Chain Management

November 21, 2018

Supply chain management can be defined simply as a baseball game… You must be wondering how isn’t it? All the participants in the supply chain management are baseball players – each having a role such as a shortstop, catcher, and pitcher. They are assigned specific duties such as hitting, throwing, and fielding – for the sole purpose of their team being successful. Similarly, in SCM a large number of people are actively involved in a number of processes for the successful completion of the assignment task – in short, the finished product reaching the end customer. Understanding the dedicated roles of each member of the SCM will help in developing winning strategies which can be implemented by the supply chain teammates. A supply chain can be defined as all the individual and business contributors who are involved in the creation of a product, right from the allocation of the raw materials to the end products. Source:https://applicature.com Supply chain activities comprise of : farming refining design manufacturing packaging transportation Global supply chain management is complicated both in terms of technologically and logistically. This is where blockchain integrated with IoT comes to simplify the process of SCM – making it more transparent, secure and traceable. Today supply chain has become extraordinarily complex, considering the uncountable links to create and distribute goods. There can be a hundred stages of the supply chain, depending on the product in consideration to the several geographical locations, the number of invoices raised and payments made, the number of entities and people involved in the process and time span. Source:https://applicature.com/blog/the-next-technological-revolution-blockchain-for-supply-chain-management Blockchain can help in creating a persistent, transparent, public, append-only ledger as it creates a network system where you can add data to and not change previous data within it. It does this through a mechanism for creating consensus between distributed parties that do not need to trust each other – they just need to trust the mechanism by which their consensus is arrived at. The blockchain is basically a distributed digital ledger which can be applied in numerous forms for any kind of agreements/contracts, tracking, payment and exchange activities. Every transaction is stored on a block, which in turn is distributed to uncountable nodes (devices) – creating multiple copies of the ledger all across the network. Every block is linked with its previous block and the next block – making it extremely secure and keeping the record immutable. This technology is decentralized which makes it quite efficient as well as scalable. In supply chain management, it can play an active role, right from storing of the products to the warehousing to their delivery to the settlement of the payment. FOR EXAMPLE – in the food industry business networks where data such as location, temperature, vibration, and humidity needs to be shared. A permissioned blockchain can help in creating a tamper-evident record. This will helps to open up a new way of automating processes among partners without setting up an expensive centralized IT infrastructure and all participants will have access to the same data at every point of time So no worry of validating and depending on others. Fig: the flow of data by use of blockchain Let us see how supply chain benefits from data sharing through permissioned blockchain and IoT: STATUS DATA The IoT enabled package will send the status data (temperature, location, etc) for passing through several carriers BUSINESS CONTRACT The business contract specifics will have to be met as we bring the shipment to the factory or to the store. The contract validation can be checked without any dependencies SENSOR TRACKING  A temperature sensor embedded will store package data locally and send it to the blockchain network through the IoT connected devices at wait points upon receiving connectivity. NO CENTRAL AUTHORITY Using blockchain, all the business partners (Producer, Processor, Distributor, Retailer, and Auditor) were allowed to access the same temperature data without the need for a central control. THE FOOD TRUST – ORGANIZATIONS USING BLOCKCHAIN IN FOOD INDUSTRY Some of the greatest retail giants of the food industry such as Walmart and Nestle SA along with eight other companies have founded the Food Trust which aims blockchain based food supply chain management. The use of Blockchain in this industry will help to possess a complete and accurate monitoring of the movements of the food items, ensuring no contaminated or damaged items reach the end consumers. The primary objective of the Food Trust is to avoid past crisis such as the E.coli bacteria contamination of romaine lettuce, which happened recently, affecting 35 states. The other companies who are members of the Food Trust are Unilever NV, Driscoll’s Inc., Golden State Foods, Dole Food Co., Kroger, McCormick and Co, Tyson Foods, and McLane. Source: https://hackernoon.com/to-blockchain-or-not-to-blockchain-45004a23e8a7 Walmart Walmart has integrated advanced levels of traceability powered by blockchain technology across the global food supply chain management. Walmart, one of the top fortune 500 companies in the world has collaborated with blockchain to improve food traceability and tracking as well as food safety in China. The organization has already started implementing Blockchain based supply chain structure to accomplish greater transparency across the global food-supply chain, which includes mangoes in the U.S and pork in China. Frank Yinass, Walmart vice president spoke on Walmart’s food safety solutions based on Blockchain platform, “What we hope to do with Blockchain is to bring all food safety system stakeholders to collaborate, so that we can do it very quickly and efficiently.” Walmart extended the application of blockchain to reduce the growing instances of food-borne illnesses by tracing issues in the food chain and at the same time evading huge losses for suppliers and retailers during the recall. This food retail giant is using this new age technology to track vegetables from farm till store for quick detection of contaminated products. It has integrated the information of the vegetable suppliers in its blockchain database to trace every unit of vegetables. Source: https://www.pinterest.com/pin/612419249303061416/ Walmart’s entry in the world of blockchain based ensured data privacy

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