Sunday 25 March 2018

How Consumer Packaged Goods companies are adopting Digital?

Consumers are at the heart of the digital transformation, in every industry starting Retail, Financial services, insurance & Health Care. 

Consumers are most concerned with getting quick, easy and effective results from any interaction in their professional or personal life.

Consumer Packaged Goods companies are typically relied heavily on traditional media like TV and display advertising to drive brand awareness among consumers. You will see multiple advertisements for toothpaste, detergents, and dairy products and so on.

They have so far relied on mass marketing; focused on physical brick & mortar sales. They still have to catch up on online ordering like electronics, books etc.

The physical store still enjoys a major share of the market: customers like to feel a product before they buy it.

CPG companies are quickly adopting digital to connect with millennial consumers.

They are using Big Data Analytics:

·         To identify consumers who will convert with less spend on marketing.
·         Trying to identify the best and most profitable channels to sell select products and pack sizes.
·         To gain deeper insights into price-sensitive consumers
·         To be able to send unique offers to every consumer with extreme personalization
·         360 degrees customer views to build loyalty

Here are some innovative ways CPG industry is using digital for excellent customer experience:

·         Social media to understand the needs, gaps, brand performance, and purchase behavior leading to significant input for targeting, positioning as well as new product development.
·         Using geo-fencing to provide real-time deals when a consumer approaches the store.
·         Stores like Amazon Go has come up with cashless checkouts. When the customers have the Amazon app installed on their mobile device, any product added to the cart gets billed to the customer’s account automatically.
·         Mobile payments: most of the physical or online stores are accepting mobile payments like Apple Pay, Samsung pay, PayTm etc.
·         Beacons: to ease finding products in a store, a customer can download the retail store app, and be able to connect to the store’s “beacons” and get details of the best deals available
·         Smart Shelves: these indicate inventory levels, and instantly update product prices on display.


The future is digital and CPG companies are adopting it with an open heart.

Sunday 18 March 2018

HR in Digital Age

Human Resources is all about the recruitment, development, and retention of talent.

Across all industries, HR is one of the departments that are most affected by digitization – via big data analytics, social networks or mobile solutions.

Today, HR is empowered with digital technologies to tackle sourcing, recruiting, onboarding, analyze workforce data, spot performance, and skills gaps and enable the workforce to outperform.

Mobility solutions are enabling employers to access and engage with candidates when and where they prefer. Companies can now provide access to processes, infrastructure, and systems that allow employees the same level of productivity as if they were in the office, who are traveling, working remotely, or during off hours.

Workforce analytics is used to screen the right candidates, determine the areas of training in which company must invest and identify employees who are likely to churn.

Unlike digital immigrants, today’s workforce is not after the gold watch and lifelong position. They will not stay in the organization if HR processes are hectic, stringent and not social. It is crucial to enable your workforce to keep pace with the change as well.

·      Today, millennials are making more than 40% of the workforce.

·      Their expectations are changing. Long term for them is less than 3 years.
·      Job hopping and career shifts are new normal
·      Providing them with learning and innovation opportunities is the key to retention

Here are some tips for digitizing HR to become the front leader of the organization

·      Foster a culture that inspires innovation leading digital change which creates the ultimate employee satisfaction
·      Digitize & automate HR administrative tasks which do not have any employee touch points
·      Create an experience for employees as if you are treating consumers, make them feel special
·      Incorporate Mobile and social capabilities in the HR functions

Digital promises to re-position HR as the driver of employee engagement and align the workforce who would be self-motivated to achieve the company mission.


The digital age has changed a lot of aspects of our professional as well as personal lives. The future is now… and it is all about people, so HR digitization is extremely important !! 

Sunday 11 March 2018

Check this 10 tips for successful Mobile apps in this Digital age

Today, the number of mobile users globally exceeds the number of desktop users, and apps are far more popular than websites.

With the advent of smartphones and internet, people are spending maximum time on mobile apps to explore events nearby, gather news and get everyday alerts.

Hence having a mobile app is nowadays necessary for any kind of business. There is no dearth of tools to aid in the design and development of a mobile app but there are few key steps that businesses need to keep in mind before building the first app.

Consumers have little patience for bad mobile experiences. Over 30% of downloaded apps are uninstalled within the first 2 or 3 weeks of use.

Mobile app development should be based on the idea that user experience is everything and not how many features it has. UX is particularly important in mobile applications, you have so much less screen real estate and slower connectivity, so great design and execution make incredible differences in terms of user experience.

Here are 10 tips to make your app successful:

·      Research your app’s idea, & audience - Start by searching the app stores, not just Apple but also Google Play, and look for competing products. Don't waste money on app development and mobile resources that will not be appreciated by users. Reach out to customers via social media and similar platforms, to truly listen to what your customers want
·      Focus on the user experience – unless you have laser sharp focus on user experience, providing 100+ senseless features will not make it successful. Responsive design is an efficient way to optimize user experience.
·      Keep it very simple for use – do you see any user manual with iPhone? Same goes here, keep your app extremely simple to use. A common mistake is thinking your app has to be packed with features and have every bell & whistle you can think of. However, the reality is half of them won’t even be used. Simplicity deliver the great user experience
·      Use agile for frequent releases – by collecting frequent feedbacks, keep your app updated with agile deployments to make users happy
·      Market your app - Once you have the right app, get the word out about it. Both Google & Apple stores have millions of apps today, it can be challenging to get noticed.
·      Test the app thoroughly before and even after release - Test, test, and test with the target users until you get it right. Once launched, continue to use analytics, customer feedback, and A/B testing to optimize and improve the application.
·      Have an extra ordinary customer support – after sales support is where word of mouth publicity comes in. any problems reported by users have to be handled efficiently and effectively to make them happy so they become your marketers.
·      Keep Innovating - No app is ever complete. Listen to your users and find out what they’re asking for. Keep a running wish list of features you can build when you have time. As they say Rome wasn't built in a day, your app won't be, either.
·      Build analytics – incorporate analytics which gives you detail picture of your users, their behavior, usage
·      Choose right business model – free, freemium, charged or pay-per-use as per your business needs


Most mobile apps fail to engage the users in this highly competitive digital age. The bottom line is have a sharp focus on the customer. Sure, technical skill matters—but you can only succeed if you use that skill to meet the customer's needs. 

Sunday 4 March 2018

Digital disruption in Telecom sector

Digital disruption has turned the telecom industry upside down. New digital technologies are entering the market forcing telecom operators to adapt to new business models.

We went from analog to digital few decades back and then GPRS, Edge & came 3G, which brought data and web services to us. With 4G and smartphones now customers have the power of the supercomputer at their fingertips.

After iPhone, smartphones are penetrating deeper in many countries. Carriers now have to focus on customer churn more than on acquiring new ones. Today telecom operators are leveraging big data technologies to analyze call pattern data to better understand their customers’ habits and predict their requirements and thus offer better services at right time and price.

Operators are using analytics to identify customers at risk of default in bill payments and optimize their outreach for higher collection.

Today with so many disrupters, telecom companies have to think of survival. SMS or text message & MMS were some of the core services just a few years back, and then came WhatsApp, which changed all the communication paradigms. Further Skype, Viber, WeChat have entered the market to pressure the prices down for text and voice.

With the digital age, telecom companies have to:

·         Add new services to capture consumer’s attention
·         Accelerate time to market these new services with technology advancements
·         Map end-to-end customer journeys  from acquisition, engagement, retention
·         Use Big Data Analytics to focused market segmentation and hyper-personalization
·         Automate customer care and digital self-service options
·         Revamp website and give customers access to personalized information, offers and buying options

Leaders like Vodafone, Verizon, AT&T have leveraged all the digital technologies to reach out to their customers in a most efficient way.

Digital payments via mobile wallets have become a boon for telecom, as mobile payments are generating tons of Big Data on shopping behavior & preferences, enabling more sales opportunities via targeted marketing

Many technology players such as Apple, Samsung, and Google are collaborating with telecom players to make consumer’s life easy.

A good customer experience is now essential with help of digital. We live in a time when convenience, personalization, and speed are the bare minimum people expect and telecom companies have to take aggressive measures to exceed these expectations.
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