The Art Of Hiring

Often, managers think that if they want to speed up decision-making, they must also be prepared to make worse decisions. For example, a recruiting decision could be made more quickly but without getting as much internal input or spending as much time ensuring the candidate “fits” with the organization. They think they must trade off making a fast decision to ensure they make the right decision.

HR teams feel this fast/right conundrum in many parts of their work, but there are eight in particular where they can speed-up decisions without getting them wrong.

Following are a few tips from out talented HT team to hire the best talent and ways to retain them for a longer period of time.

1. Compete for talent more intelligently: Firms increasingly need highly specialized roles and skills regardless of the industry they operate in. But many HR teams lack the right data, or the right ability to use it, to find such people and hire them.They must first take the time to understand and anticipate what types of skills they will need in the future; this will pay dividends later. They must also understand how to use talent analytics cost-effectively to find the people best placed to fill these roles. And, finally, they should concentrate on non-traditional labor markets they may have overlooked (in an adjacent industry, say).
2. Streamline the recruiting process: The average time it takes for a recruiting team to fill a position has risen substantially in the past five years. Most HR functions have a big opportunity to speed up hiring without compromising quality.More complex hiring requirements have complicated recruiter workloads, recruiting processes, and hiring decisions. As a result, the average time to fill an open position is at 63 business days – 21 more days than it was five years ago. This can mean less savvy firms lose talent to competitors and waste an average of $8.5 million per 1,000 vacancies in lost productivity and additional recruiting work.Many firms try to combat this by giving recruiters more: more resources, more policies, more tools, and more information. But it rarely works. Instead, they should look to streamline the recruiting process itself. Recruiting teams should take three steps:
   • Realign resources for recruitment to focus on speeding up hiring for current and future posts.
   • Identify and remove hidden process inefficiencies that slow down hiring.
   • Slim down the amount of information and stakeholders that influence hiring decisions, and learn how to manage it better.
3. Don’t ask employees to “own” their careers, partner with them instead: Two-thirds of companies will face an internal skills shortage in the next three to five years, and only 30% of employees are satisfied with the future career opportunities at their organizations. This makes it imperative that HR teams engage and retain the right people to staff the roles the company needs in the future.To do this, 90% of heads of HR say they want to move away from a promotion-based career culture to a “growth-based” one where employees move laterally to acquire new skills that then put them in a position to take on a better paid, more responsible role. Most firms try to do this by encouraging employees to “own” their careers, and providing sample career paths, access to job boards, and career conversations. But this can often mean that employees don’t develop the skills the firm needs, which produces an internal skills shortage and/or the firm losing employees it wanted to keep.Instead, firms should encourage “career partnerships” that are of value to both the company and employees. Employees should be shown how the skills the firm wants them to develop will make them more employable. The HR team should market the right position (full-time or project-based) to the right employees rather than using passive channels like internal job boards, and then make it easy for employees to shift between teams. This keeps employees engaged and provides managers with the right skills at the right time.

We will share similar tips in the coming days as we completely understand the hiring process. This makes us one of the best options for contract staffing and staff augmentation options.

 The Key To Customer Retention

McKinsey says that 70% of the buying experiences are determined by how the customer feels they are being treated. If you have a good customer retention strategy in place, this number can shoot up to provide a substantial amount of revenues in the form of repeat business. Also, it has been proven that pitching for a new account costs far more than taking steps to nurture an existing client account.

Here are some tips to enhance digital customer retention to a new level altogether

• Capture audience data

You will roll retention improvement plans only when you have the necessary information to analyze in the first place. The good news with the digital medium is that it offers a lot of potential footprints/crumbs that can help you collect a wealth of information about your customers.

By getting to know your customers better, you can tailor deeply personalized marketing campaigns. You can also create buyer personas and group customers under a similar persona. Once this is in place, you can push targeted ads to appeal specifically to them and increases the chances of conversion.

• Be S.M.A.R.T.

Defining your goals is the 2nd step in improving digital customer retention. You can set your retention goals around the S.M.A.R.T principle (specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and timely). You achieve a better clarity when you have volume, intensity, and time associated with the goals. For example – Upsell 17% of existing customers to make a repeat purchase within 3 months through the company website.

• Use content marketing to improve digital customer retention

A common tendency of digital customers is to go with products or service they may have heard from someone or came across on the Internet. The only way to drive sales from this KPI is to ramp up your content marketing campaigns. This form of inbound marketing help convert strangers to engaged sales prospects, and then to loyal customers, with the help of smart content marketing. With quality content marketing you can easily reach out to a bigger audience online. You will also enjoy a top of mind recall value.

• Marketing automation

Some concrete measures to use marketing automation to improve customer retention include –

–       Response automation

With real time response to customer queries in chats or phone calls, they know they are being taken seriously

–       Rewards automation

Repeat customers who achieve specific milestones can be sent rewards or incentive automatically.  This not only boosts customer satisfaction but also keeps them loyal to your brand.

–       Social media

With automated posts put up regularly on social media, you can increase your customer engagement, improve retention, and create a personable visage of your brand

• Pick up the phone

The importance of a personal conversation can never be undermined in marketing. With a phone call you can get to know customer pain points when they use your product or services. You can also show that you care for them with this one-on-one interaction.

By 2020, customer experience is poised to overtake price and product as the key brand differentiator. With these handy tips, you can easily amplify your customer retention strategy with great outcomes.

The New Ransomware Threat

“On June 27, 2017 organizations in over 65 countries reported they had been infected with Petya ransomware. Petya ransomware was first discovered in March 2016, and like most malware, it was primarily spread via email phishing attacks. After a user was infected, the ransomware would encrypt data files on the systems and hold them hostage in exchange for a ransom payment. Once the ransom was paid, the attackers would typically (but not always) provide the decryption key so that users could restore their files. This ransomware is still in the wild, and users can still fall victim.

Notably, however, the initial Petya ransomware is very different from the Petya variant that was released in June 2017. This new Petya variant is not truly ransomware. Instead, it’s wiper malware disguised as ransomware. The wiper malware does not hold data hostage in exchange for a ransom; it’s sole purpose is to destroy data and corrupt systems. There have been no new reports of this Petya variant following June 27, 2017, but this and similar types of malware can (and will likely) spread at some point in the future.

While you can’t predict the next attack, you can take steps now to protect your IT resources from similar future attacks. Some of those steps include:

Train users to be suspicious. Don’t open email attachments or click hyperlinks in emails that you’re not expecting. If you don’t know the sender, delete the email immediately. If you do know the sender but the message is unexpected or suspicious, verify via call or text that the email is legitimate. If it’s not legitimate, delete it immediately.

Keep systems patched and up to date. Always apply the latest software patches and make sure antivirus signatures are up to date. In relation to this Petya variant, Microsoft patch MS 17-010 would have largely stopped the malware’s ability to spread using Eternal Blue and Eternal Romance vulnerabilities. Regular patching significantly reduces the attack surface and makes it more difficult for the attacker to get in.

Block specific ports. Block SMB ports (particularly ports 139 and 445) from external hosts to reduce the attack surface. Also Block UDP ports 135, 137, 138 to prevent lateral movement within the network.

Disable PsExec and WMIC. PsExec and WMIC are legitimate administrative tools, but they’re commonly used by attackers in a variety of attack types. In the case of this Petya variant, disabling these tools can help prevent the spread of this malware throughout the environment.

Backup data. Backup critical data on a regular basis, and make sure those backups are available offline. Be sure your backups are not always kept on the network; leaving them connected can expose them to encryption and destruction.

Segregate duties and isolate critical data. Segregate duties between user and administrative accounts, and make sure that no one account (including Domain Admin) can execute commands on all systems on the network. In addition, identify your critical data, and isolate and segment it from the rest of the network.”

Be Secure. Be safe.

Economic Times Features GoodWorkLabs CEO

Our CEO Vishwas Mudagal’s LinkedIn article got picked up by Economic Times recently. The post he wrote on the pitfalls of not being truthful in interview process received massive response on Linkedin and social media.

ET Wealth ran the story yesterday which re-emphasizes the fact that lying in an interview will not take you far in your professional career.

In the article featured on Economic Times he reiterates his belief of being completely honest in an interview. He recalls one of the interviews he took on Skype where the interviewer was constantly searching for answers on Google.

Vishwas goes on to say that an interview is a two-way decision-making process. We should be using the opportunity to understand as to how the parties will benefit mutually. If we are not honest with each other, then the interview process seems pointless.

Being successful in an interview with fake attributes might get you the job, but sooner or later the truth will catch up with you.

Employers would eventually verify your credentials after the initial interview. They may possibly contact your previous employers and references. You definitely do not want to be caught lying about your professional history. The consequences are horrific and may lead a black stain on your journey as a professional.

Click to read his entire article on Economic Times.

The Mobile That Went Out Of The Window

Microsoft, one of the most iconic names in software, suffered a setback as a mobile phone and Windows OS manufacturer even after unveiling a slew of mobile phones. Was it because of its juggling merger with Nokia? Or because of its fussy updates? Or did it execute a wrong decision to appoint Steve Ballmer as Microsoft’s Chief Executive?  Well, in this blog post we examine the reasons why Microsoft struggled to build a sustainable place in the market in Windows mobile and phones.

• Not responding means no response

Contrary to its personality, Ballmer proved himself to be a laggard. He didn’t respond well enough to the market changes.  While Apple and Google were taking up the lion’s pie by updating and bringing new mobile applications and devices in the market, Microsoft remained surprisingly slow.

• Sometimes things don’t go right

Though a lot of hopes were pinned on Microsoft and Nokia’s merger, the deal proved to be a nightmare.  Instead of becoming a financial milestone, it axed down its profitability substantially.

• Google’s salvo

Google had a strong head start in this space and soon it captured the heart of millions with its “over to you” strategy. This strategy not only lowered the cost of operations, but also helped the users to make applications as per their own convenience.

• Missed the Windows Mobile ‘update’ and ‘release’ bus

“Run, run, the lion comes in the village” and when it actually comes, no one believes you. Yes! The same happened with Microsoft. It announced its launch date and kept missing it and finally when the D-day arrived it totally missed the mark in getting significant worldwide coverage.

• Apple created a halo effect that was difficult to break

Microsoft and its associates over the years have delivered a range of nice looking products, but still, no one of them has been able to get it right the way Apple has. Apple, coupled with its IOS platform, has created a strong fan base in the market, but even after consistent efforts, Microsoft has not been able to build the same momentum. It has definitely failed to move the needle.

• Windows failed to build on apps

It is said a well-constructed mobile app helps the customer to interact with the mobile devices effectively- it helps you to pin point the user requirements and demands and better serve them. Windows, failed on this front too. The company took much time to release its apps, thus leaving the ball in the court for Google and iPhone.

Does that mean Microsoft can’t succeed?

Well, all these factors created a bruise on Microsoft’s reputation as a mobile phone maker, but it doesn’t mean the story has ended. Microsoft’s new CEO Satya Nadella is still adamant to accept the failure. He hints that with his statement, “So when you say ‘when will we make more phones’ I’m sure we’ll make more phones. But they may not look like phones that are there today.”  These statements definitely make us believe that Microsoft has some ace up its sleeve, but whether that translates to a successful product – only time will tell.

Predictions For 2017-18

Disruption has moved from an infrequent inconvenience to a consistent stream of change that is redefining markets and entire industries. In 2016, we saw the astonishing rise of Pokémon Go, which demonstrated accelerated digital change in areas such as augmented reality. Gartner’s top strategic predictions for 2017 and beyond describe not only the disruptive effects of digital business innovation but how secondary ripple effects will often prove to be more disruptive than the original disruption.

Three high-level trends emerge from the predictions:

• Digital experience and engagement will draw people into non-stop virtual interactions
• Business innovation will create extraordinary change from mundane concepts
• Secondary effects will be more disruptive than the initial digital change

Gartner’s Top 10 Predictions for 2017 and Beyond

1. Immersive Shopping Experience – By 2020, 100 million consumers will shop in augmented reality.

Whether they allow you to try on makeup or place virtual furniture in your home, immersive technologies such as AR increase consumer engagement by enabling them to fully explore features and conveying additional information that can aid in a buying decision. Popular applications, such as Pokémon Go, will help propagate the technology and bring it into the mainstream. 1 in 5 global brands will use AR for shopping by the end of 2017.

2. Voice First Browsing – By 2020, 30% of web browsing sessions will be done without a screen.

Many teens already use voice search daily and new audio-centric technologies, such as Google Home and Amazon’s Echo, are turning “voice first” interactions into ubiquitous experiences. By eliminating the need to use your hands and eyes for browsing, vocal interactions extend the web experience to multiple activities, such as driving, cooking, walking, socializing, exercising, operating machinery, etc. By the end of 2017, watch for room-based screenless devices to be in more than 10 million homes.

3. Mobile Apps Decline – By 2019, 20% of brands will abandon their mobile apps.

Many brands are finding that their mobile apps are not paying off. They simply haven’t delivered the level of adoption and customer engagement that companies expected. App stores are crowded and the cost of application support in not only maintenance, upgrades and customer support but also marketing to drive downloads, exceeds original ROI calculations. Google’s effort to make the mobile web more “app like,” will gain traction, and companies will opt to reduce their losses by allowing their apps to expire. Watch for Apple’s reluctant embrace of the mobile web as a vehicle for customer engagement.

4. Algorithms at Work – By 2020, algorithms will positively alter the behavior of over 1 billion global workers.

Employees, already familiar with behavior influencing through contextual algorithms on consumer sites such as Amazon, will be influenced by an emerging set of “persuasive technologies” that leverage big data from myriad sources, mobile, IoT devices and deep analysis.

JPMorgan Chase uses an algorithm to forecast and positively influence the behavior of thousands of investment bank and asset management employees to minimize mistaken or ethically wrong decisions. Richard Branson’s Virgin Atlantic uses influence algorithms to guide pilots to use less fuel. By year end 2017, watch for at least one commercial organization to report a significant increase in profit margins because it used algorithms to positively alter its employees’ behaviors.

5. Blockchain Grows Up – By 2022, a blockchain-based business will be worth $10 billion.

Blockchain technology is established as the next revolution in transaction or event recording. A blockchain ledger provides an immutable, shared view of all transactions between engaging parties in a distributed, decentralized network. While the Bitcoin blockchain ledger is itself well-understood, blockchain remains an immature technology. By 2020, new businesses and business models will emerge based on smart contracts and blockchain efficiencies. These smart contracts automate at a reliability, customization level and speed not achievable with traditional business systems.

6. Digital Giants Everywhere – By 2021, 20% of all activities an individual engages in will involve at least one of the top-seven digital giants.

Many of us interact with at least one of the digital giants (by market capitalization: Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon, Baidu, Alibaba and Tencent) in our digital worlds of web search, mobile, social networking, messaging and music streaming. As the physical, financial and healthcare worlds become more digital, many of our activities will be connected and within reach of the digital giants. Note that collectively, the digital giants will have direct and indirect knowledge of what we do as individuals and the fundamental issue will be what they do with the data.

7. Innovation Requires Greater Investment – Through 2019, every $1 enterprise invest in innovation will require an additional $7 in core execution.

Many organizations have adopted a bimodal style of work to jumpstart innovation. While exercises are designed to experiment and “fail fast,” those that do receive approval for implementation involve a level of complexity, scale, and business change ramifications that may not have been considered in the initial planning stage.

8. IoT Saves Trillions – By 2022, IoT will save consumers and businesses $1 trillion a year in maintenance, services, and consumables.

Digital twins capture real-time data, allowing smarter maintenance and service schedules for physical objects such as large pumps, airframes, and turbines. When the sensor-enabled real world twin sends data to the digital twin, it can simulate the physical state, allowing the digital twin to be inspected instead of the physical object. This would be helpful for a submerged sewage pump or any other asset in which on-site inspection is inconvenient, costly or hazardous.

Consumers, too, will benefit when they can extend the life of the oil in their cars from a prescriptive replacement “every 5,000 miles” to replacement triggered by a measurement of the engine’s performance.

Emerging and established companies need to keep in mind these predictions, especially the tech leaders during hiring and procurement. Investments need to be smarter, better and more calculative in nature.

Source: Gartner

What is Design Thinking?

Gone are the days, when the performance of end user satisfaction was measured by GMV or revenues. Today, user experience has emerged as a separate discipline in itself. It focuses on solving the end user problems. This way companies can develop products and solutions that fit the user’s needs.

Design Thinking is nothing but a whiff of change in the mindset of the companies to align themselves with the end user requirements. It beautifully combines creative and critical thinking that helps the companies to develop products meant to solve real customer problems.

Many examples have proven how design thinking can steer business growth in the right direction. Here are 3 interesting examples of how companies have benefited from this new age design philosophy.

1 – Uber

Remember those days when taxi hiring used to be a cumbersome job. You need to call several hours before to reach the destination on a timely basis. But, Uber disrupted the market in 2012 with its cab aggregator service focused on user-centred design principles. What did the company do? It created a visualization of a taxi’s approach and solved many customer grievances with its ride hailing app, such as:

• Completely eliminated the risk of fake dodgers by creating a cashless payment drive.
• Put the responsibility on driver for exemplary customer servicing by giving customers the power to rate drivers and the ride

By focusing on customer requirements, Uber was able to bring a massive change in the traditional business model.

2 – m-indicator

Residing in Mumbai and commuting by local trains is not a piece of cake. A lot of challenges are faced by a common man face including train schedules, arrival times, route changes and delays. M-indicator app is the solution to all the customer woes. Its owner, Sanjay Teke launched this app while he was still working in a firm. What he actually did? He visualized the problem that a common man faces to avoid peak hours. By providing the train commuters a view of the upcoming trains the app completely eliminates second guessing and loss of time. No wonder that today, it is the most trustworthy app that provides detailed information about how to go around in Mumbai.

3 – Burberry

Once known as a fashion brand of the bygone era, the company pushed the envelope and created a niche market for itself by applying the design principles. What did the company do? In order to boost the revenue growth, the CEO of the company Angela Arhendts joined the social media bandwagon to convert millennials to its most loyal customers.

Burberry cultivated a social media environment of digital democracy, where users and the brand could collaborate freely on its designs and new launches. It not only attracted new customers but also strengthened its goodwill. The outcome? From 2011 to 2015, Burberry had posted a revenue growth of 68.1%

Conclusion

Design Thinking is nothing but putting yourself in the customer’s shoe to gain empathy and awareness about their needs. With such principles, you can bootstrap the business the smart way, acquire users quickly, and take customer retention levels to its peak.

Integrating CRM & BI

Gartner expects that CRM software revenues will touch $37 billion this year. Imagine the massive volume of customer information available to businesses worldwide. This gigantic explosion of customer data has the potential to put you firmly in the driver’s seat when it comes to building brand reputation, personalizing your marketing campaigns to the tastes and preferences of your customer, and reducing customer churn.

However this won’t happen on its own. You will need the insight generation prowess of BI to be plugged in to your CRM solution. Together, BI and CRM analytics can support your organization to find correlations, which would allow you to determine patterns and trends in customer data.

How CRM and BI are driving modern marketing?

• Pricing Consideration

Big data helps you to do away with outdated practices. Exploiting the loads of data available from customer interactions enables companies to price a product correctly. BI can help manage dynamic pricing to improve revenue generation, with the use of real-time inventory and supplier data and correlate it with financial forecasts and customer behavior analysis.

• Decision Making

With CRM data, BI can help unlock various trends around marketing. You get to serve your customers based on their personas, buying behavior, and industry influence. This way you can engage better with them and influence their opinions in favor of your brand.

• Effective Customer Care

With the huge volume of data available with your organization, you can personalize your marketing messages and outreach programs for maximum potential of success. With BI, you can craft multi-channel marketing techniques. This in turn, increase customer engagement, prompt upsell/cross-sell, and improves customer retention.

How CRM can use BI

• Better Data = Better BI

Once the CRM application is synced with a BI solution, you can extract gold-level insights to aid your decision making. If the input CRM data is clean and appropriately consolidated, you will be able to generate intelligent and useful data. The reverse is also true. Hence, CRM data that is maintained diligently can lead to better BI and actionable insights. This can be achieved by incorporating rigorous processes to consolidate the multiple databases in the CRM application.

• Evaluate what you need

The next step is to describe where you are, on the CRM-BI planning and deployment metric. Focus on what supports your business and what impacts your customers. You need not be overwhelmed by fancy BI and analytics technologies if they don’t suit your business objectives.

Take for example, predictive analytics. With CRM data you can add a lot of value to behavioral intelligence and come up with personalized marketing tactics to improve cross-sell and upsell of products

• Plan and grow

You CRM and BI system integration needs to be well-thought of in order to work seamlessly and deliver expected outcomes. You may have constraints of budgets or time, but no rushed implementation can yield the results you are expecting. Hence the integration needs to be a well-planned affair.

CRM applications have the power to work with BI and provide you with a 360-degree view of the customer. Only a word of caution – just because you have the resources with a shiny new CRM-BI solution, don’t go to the extreme and target customers repeatedly in a way that will put them off your brand forever.

How to make IOT

Internet of things (IoT) has proven to be a tremendous influencer in driving the fortunes of businesses across the globe. From kitchen appliances and coffee makers to security cameras and air quality sensors, every device or appliance now holds the potential to spew valuable data by connecting to machines or systems. The number of such connected devices too is set to witness a substantial jump in the next few years. Projections range from moderate (IHS predicts 30.7 billion connected devices by 2020) to aggressive (Intel projects 200 billion connected devices by 2020). Whatever the number, the truth remains that IoT is pervading our lives whether we are ready or not.

What can a company do for IoT analytics readiness?

Here is what a company can do:

1. Factor in the intricacies of an IoT environment

The IoT environment spans multiple networking architectures like 3G/4G and peer-to-peer networks. It also covers protocols like MQTT, CoAPP, or BLE. These intricacies of the IoT environment means that your IoT analytics planning needs to have the flexibility to scale up or down depending on the load of inbound data and analytics needed.

2. Gateway level IoT analytics is needed

Inter-connected devices can grow very big very quickly. Hence, rather than overloading servers and networks, some analytics need to be done at the edge, at the gateway level. This allows faster recognition of patterns to act upon.

3. Factor in uncertainty in variables

Variables like nodes failures due to low bandwidth, duplicate messages, and latency in data collection can alter your analytics plan substantially. Be prepared and more importantly, factor in these uncertainties into your IoT framework for better management of real-time data. This means re-configuration of components like algorithms and sequence based queries to ensure the correct proportion of inbound data coming in through IoT nodes.

4. Embrace the power of prediction

IoT implementations need to go beyond basic mathematical functions and bring in predictive analytics. This will yield amazing outcomes to sectors like proactive maintenance, fraud detection, and predictive healthcare. Machine learning too can be used to complement statistical models to see patterns and learn from it.

5. Have a Plan B ready

Because of the huge data explosion from multiple sources and connected devices, we are faced with a crucial question. “Do we know which data needs to be accessed and used, to know the ‘what’, ‘where’ and ‘how’ of connected devices?” IT admins will see a quick jump in the number of devices and things that will be accessed in the IT infrastructure. Hence you need to have a Plan B in place to ensure that such load spikes can be accommodated without compromising budgets or processes.