Using the right technology is immensely important, not only it adds value to the business but also it increases efficiency of the work force of the company. Most of the employees feel that mobile technology is important to get their job done. A recent study shows that employees are more comfortable using applications downloaded from public stores, despite having IT departments in their company. It seems that the IT department in most of the business houses are not being able to deliver high quality business applications which can increase the efficiency or unleash the true potential of the existing apps. The demand for fast and customized business applications are increasing and it is high time for them to deliver. Read more at: http://www.cio.com/article/2939933/mobile-apps/when-it-comes-to-mobile-apps-it-is-slow-poor-and-weak.html

The rapid growth of e commerce has been a hot topic in recent years. With e- commerce flourishing, digital marketing has also become popular. New technologies are emerging and helping companies to sell their product and find new customers through web marketing. Marketers have found a way to boost digital marketing. They are using behavioral triggers. This is a way to find out the customer’s internet search history, particularly window shopping details and detects the customer`s potential demand for a particular product and links them with the seller through pop up ads or banners.  To know more, read: http://www.cio.com/article/2941358/marketing/digital-marketers-look-for-behavioral-triggers.html

Social media has been in the center of attention when it comes to web marketing, yet many business leaders are skeptic about it. Some business leaders believe that customers do not respond or interact with them through social media. But this gives a wrong impression that the popularity of their products is not increasing. Just because people do not comment or like their product in social media, does not mean that they go unnoticed. According to a recent study, social media is the most effective way of marketing, when done in the correct way. So the effectiveness is dependent more on the user than the tool itself. To know more read: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/casey-cavanagh/its-not-facebook-its-you-_b_7270892.html?ir=India&adsSiteOverride=in

Marketing without social media is impossible nowadays, as it was found that over 72% adults use social media. Marketers are also utilizing B2B and B2C markets. But, marketers are also of opinion that it is harder to measure the benefits from social media. Mark Gadala (digital marketer), in his article talks about some social media tools that will help marketers to measure social media marketing and also help in accountability.  To know more, follow: http://www.socialmediatoday.com/marketing/markgadala/2015-05-30/3-targeted-tools-roi-driven-social-media-marketing

 Customer Relationship Management (CRM) is the approach of managing a company’s interactions with customers. It involves various technologies that organize and automate marketing, customer service and technical support. Companies employ Business Intelligence (BI) tools for the same. A BI tool is useful when it has rich, in-depth data to analyze from a CRM system. It helps companies organize and manage customer data by improving tactical and strategic decision-making for company growth.

Objectives of integrating BI and CRM:-
1. Collecting and consolidating data, lowers overhead
2. Missing data is lesser as it stores data in a central location
3. Duplicate data can be detected easily.
The methodology for the above integration follows Review, Analyze, Plan, Implement, and Deploy (RAPID). Read more at: http://searchcrm.techtarget.com/tip/Integrating-CRM-with-business-intelligence-tools

It is the age of mobile devices and users spend most of their time in apps than they do mobile web. So, nowadays, brands are capitalizing this trend, and aggressively going for larger in-app budgets. According to a forecast by eMarketer, projects in-app ad which spends $29.66 billion now will be triple i.e. mobile web spend will be $10.84 billion by 2016. Mobile video is another fastest growing segments in digital advertising and it is expects it expects revenue of $4.4 billion in ad revenue in the US alone. Southeast Asia is another growing smartphone regions in the world, and specifically in India, where broadband internet is scarce and mobile penetration is high, it is expected to reach over 250 mm mobile devices this year. To know more about latest mobile advertising trends, follow:  http://venturebeat.com/2015/04/21/10-mobile-advertising-trends-for-2015-and-beyond/

Purchase behavior of consumers are changing. Nowadays, consumers are more informed, connected and empowered than before. But, some retailers are not applying new retail strategies and technologies. Retailers respond to customer preferences, overtake their competitors, lower their total cost of ownership (TCO) and grow company revenues when an integrated mix of retail strategies are well coordinated. To know about future of retail, follow Chuck Schaeffer (Vantive Media CEO & Blogger) article link: : http://www.crmsearch.com/chuck-schaeffer.php

Social media is becoming popular. Social media answers millions of users nowadays. These users want their personal news feeds and timelines is full of interesting content. Digital media marketing analysts have conducted numerous studies on what kind of content performs best on social media platforms, especially Facebook and Twitter.  Answer? Photos and videos. Pinterest, despite being new in social media field, is actually the second-largest social media traffic referrer behind Facebook. To know more about the reasons why images will increase social media research, follow: http://www.socialmediatoday.com/social-networks/2015-04-04/6-reasons-why-images-increase-your-social-media-reach

Consumers become frustrated when they don’t see content which is not according to their taste. According to a study it was found that 61% of consumers feel better about a company that delivers custom content. A study conducted by Accenture found that while 86% of surveyed consumers said they were concerned that their data was being track, 85% said they realized that data tracking make it possible for retailers to present them with relevant and targeted content. 88% of marketers are also considering adding content marketing personalization to their plans according to another study. Read more at: http://www.socialmediatoday.com/marketing/2015-04-04/content-personalization-its-what-consumers-want

Public cloud has many advantages. They provide flexible and affordable virtual machine deployments and can boost an organization's data backup and workload-scaling capabilities. But, there are some drawbacks of public cloud. One of the biggest disadvantages is its multi-tenant environment. Another disadvantage is that public cloud providers own the hardware and control the software associated with it, so that they can make some changes at will. Running virtuak machines in the cloud make them costlier is another disadvantage and last but not the least disadvantage is how public clouds can complicate backup processes. Read more at: http://searchcloudcomputing.techtarget.com/feature/Understanding-public-cloud-risks-and-costs?utm_medium=EM&asrc=EM_NLN_41550237&utm_campaign=20150407_Cisco%20Intercloud%20banks%20on%20hybrid%20cloud%20prosperity_nrando&utm_source=NLN&track=NL-1814&ad=899900

In a recent research, it was found that annual revenues from connected healthcare and fitness online services will approach $2 billion by 2019 i.e. nearly six times the $320 million value estimated for 2015. The study also found out that connected healthcare devices and the data they generate will benefit consumers of these new products.  The study further found that the importance of hardware will diminish at a much faster rate than other IoT market segments and demand for analytics software (that can extract meaning from data) will increase. Read more at: http://www.socialmediatoday.com/technology-data/2015-03-31/demand-big-data-apps-fitness-and-healthcare

Big Data means a huge amount of data and is characterized by 3Vs: Volume, Velocity, and Variety. Big Data has become very clumsy. So, the trend is shifting towards Fast Data, which means processing of massive data in real time to gain instant awareness and detect signals of interest on the spot. Another trend is Actionable Data, which synthesizes the predictive analytics and what-if analysis which enables you to take actions with feedback. Another new trend is Relevant Data which is critical to identify pertinence in the data set, and which leads to understanding of unrelated events and sequence. The last trend is Smart Data which is meaning-based computing and cognitive analytics that make solutions intelligent and self-improving. In a nutshell, Fast Data, Actionable Data, Relevant Data, and Smart Data (FARS) are replacing Big Data. Read more at: http://www.socialmediatoday.com/technology-data/2015-04-04/big-data-really-dead

The key elements for a business to succeed are a well-articulated strategy and well-defined goals and every business activity should contribute to move the organization in the right direction and thereby achieve its strategic goals. Nowadays, firms spend a lot of time on consulting strategic planning to support sales, marketing and operations across the enterprise but, they don’t include social business activities which sustain the firm’s digital footprint. Social business activities are an automated version of a firm’s identify, thought leadership, relationship and value drivers and also means looking at social business as more than marketing campaigns. To know more about social business strategy, follow Vanessa DiMauro (CEO, Leader Networks)’s article link: http://www.socialmediatoday.com/social-business/2015-04-03/social-business-strategy-how-prevent-digital-muddle?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Social+Media+Today+%28all+posts%29

Customers always want good customer service and like timely support and excellent customer service drives repeat business. Customers can pay a little more for products or services if they receive good customer service. CRM system helps to improve customer support and increase sales through automated e-mails, quotes, and invitations to sales events. Anthony Ortega (Analyst with Studio B) writes in his article link about how to turn great customer support into sales. Read more at: http://it.toolbox.com/blogs/insidecrm/turning-customer-support-into-future-sales-opportunities-66195

Organizing an event? How to spread the word about the event? This is where marketing comes into the picture. Nowadays, while promoting an event, you have to include social media. It has become unavoidable in today’s world. But social media is used in different ways for different events and one must follow a unique process of marketing while promoting one’s event on social media. William Johnson (Web designer), writes in his article link about some tips on how to promote an event on social media. Read more at: : http://www.socialmediatoday.com/social-networks/2015-04-01/top-7-ways-use-social-media-make-your-event-successful

In a manufacturing process everything is volatile and the main driver of that volatility is demand. Customer relationship management (CRM) system is the best place that reveals to us whether a product is in demand or not. The CRM system shows what will be bought and by whom. Earlier, assistants would gather data from people or reports, combine these data into spreadsheets, and then make the calculations. But, nowadays, dashboards are used to reduce the workload. David Gillman (Analyst with Studio B), writes in his article link about some common metrics that manufacturers need from the CRM system. Read more at: http://it.toolbox.com/blogs/insidecrm/crm-dashboard-data-that-matters-most-to-manufacturing-executives-66197

User Experience, also known as UX has become important and it impacts everything from app design to social media. UX designers work with digital marketing teams and this will only increase in 2015. Digital marketers will benefit when working with the UX design teams as it will provide loads of ideas that revolves around how they position the product for sale and marketing. Tara Lifland (Content marketing manager), writes in her article about why UX is important and where. Read more at: http://www.socialmediatoday.com/marketing/2015-03-26/5-reasons-why-user-experience-important

Nowadays, most contact center uses cloud technology and a report by Frost & Sullivan forecasted that this number will increase to 90% by 2016. The reason for shifting to cloud solutions are that they are cost-effective, easier to scale alongside a growing business, and can be deployed in days or weeks, provides flexibility and enable them to be more responsive to customers. Read more at: http://www.callcentertimes.com/Home/tabid/37/ctl/NewsArticle/mid/395/CategoryID/1/NewsID/957/Default.aspx

According to a report from Gartner, it was found that 40% of CRM applications are hosted in the cloud and nowadays businesses outsource their customer relationship management (CRM) software to another company. But, question arises that do businesses outsource CRM operations like customer care or sales programs? The answer is no because it is always better to manage CRM operations internally than outsourcing to another company. But, if you don’t have that option, you have to weigh the pros and cons of outsourcing. Petra Jorgenson (Studio B Analyst), writes in her article link about the pros and cons of outsourcing customer relationships to a third party. Read more at: http://it.toolbox.com/blogs/insidecrm/outsourcing-crm-do-the-risks-outweigh-the-benefits-65986

Data is important in any business and customer relationship management (CRM) systems collect volumes of data, plan for the future, learn from the past, and is also a target for hackers. The most important reason that hackers are target CRM data is that it allows them to conduct fraudulent transactions. Phishing is another reason. Hackers target CRM data for the purpose of social engineering, also called masquerading. Jerri Ledford (Analyst with Studio B), writes in her article about why hackers want CRM data. To know more, follow: http://it.toolbox.com/blogs/insidecrm/3-reasons-hackers-want-your-crm-data-66053