The first milestone in cloud computing history was marked by the arrival of Salesforce.com in 1999, which is the pioneer of the concept of delivering enterprise applications via a simple website. . The next development was Amazon Web Services in 2002, started providing a suite of cloud-based services including storage, computation and even human intelligence through the Amazon Mechanical Turk.In 2009, as Web 2.0 hit its stride, Google and others started to offer browser-based enterprise applications, though services such as Google Apps. According to Dan Germain, chief technology officer of Cobweb Solutions, “The most important contribution to cloud computing has been the emergence of "killer apps" from leading technology giants such as Microsoft and Google. When these companies deliver services in a way that is reliable and easy to consume, the knock-on effect to the industry as a whole is a wider general acceptance of online services.” To know more about the history of cloud, go to: http://www.computerweekly.com/feature/A-history-of-cloud-computing

Cloud Computing connects large pool of resources through private or public network and this technology makes infrastructure planning easier. Cloud Computing provides dynamically scalable infrastructure for cloud based applications, data, and file storage. Businesses can choose to deploy applications on Public, Private, Hybrid clouds or the newer Community Cloud. Public clouds are provided to the public by a service provider who hosts the cloud infrastructure. Public cloud providers like Amazon AWS, Microsoft and Google own and operate the infrastructure and offer access over the Internet. With this model, customers have no visibility or control over where the infrastructure is located.All customers on public clouds share the same infrastructure pool with limited configuration, security protections and availability variances. Private cloud is cloud infrastructure dedicated to a particular organization. Private clouds allow businesses to host applications in the cloud, ensuring data security and control, which is not ensured inn a public cloud environment. Hybrid Clouds are a composition of two or more clouds (private, community or public) that remain unique entities but are bound together offering the advantages of multiple deployment models. A community cloud is a multi-tenant cloud service model that is shared among several organizations and governed, managed and secured commonly by all the participating organizations or a third party managed service provider. To know more go to: https://blog.zopim.com/2013/11/20/3-ways-analytics-transforming-customer-service/

Customer service is the key element which decides the fate of a business. If the customers find the employees rude or they don't know what they are talking about the organisation will start losing customers. Irrespective of the business type, customers make phone calls and may want to know the hours of operation or they may have a query about a recent purchase. The customer service department should always follow up with customers in order to show that they care about their customers and they make sure that the product features matches the demand of the customer.Helping them to the car when they have an arm load of products is a good way to show them you care. Helping them decide on which products to purchase and helping them to understand which products will complement each other is another way. To know more go to:http://www.coursepark.com/blog/2012/07/4-reasons-why-customer-service-is-important-for-your-business/

Nintex , the world leader in workflow software, announced its integration with Salesforce.com and Microsoft Dynamics CRM, the two market-leaders among CRM platforms. Nintex is the first workflow company which enabled business users to connect critical ECM and CRM systems through the cloud, and allowed customers to quickly and easily automate processes between departments in a customer-driven environment. With the new integrations, users can accelerate a variety of processes which involves frequent interactions between customer-facing teams and internal business operations. Nintex’s integration with Salesforce.com and Microsoft Dynamics CRM lets organizations:

• Drive business processes in SharePoint in response to events in CRM so work flows better between previously siloed systems

• Automate the process of creating, updating, retrieving, and querying records in Salesforce or Microsoft Dynamics using simple drag-and-drop workflow actions

• Post status updates, links and polls to Salesforce Chatter or Microsoft Yammer, and progress workflows based on user responses in social channels

To know more, go to: http://www.marketwatch.com/story/nintex-announces-integration-with-salesforcecom-and-microsoft-dynamics-crm-2014-07-14

It’s the customer service and experience the customer that help businesses to retain customers and grow.  The companies which deliver a good customer service and experience are customer-centric putting the customer in the centre of decisions, ideas, marketing, system design and more. Companies like apple manufacture products that people don't even realise they need, and the packaging of their products adds to the customer’s experience, which makes them the leader in customer service. A company that delivers only a great customer experience won’t survive if the product or service the company sells doesn’t work or do what it’s supposed to do, so they have to manufacture high quality products as well as provide a great customer service. It’s the combination of the two, a great product and an amazing customer service experience, that can meet the expectations of the customers and make a company grow to the top of their industry. To know more go to: http://www.hyken.com/customer-experience-2/product-experience/#more-5264

Email still remains one of the best communication methods for buyers and consumers. Marketers should use the benefits of email marketing given the ease with which emails are delivered in the inbox. Certain variables which should be considered before sending an email, like send times to subject lines. The following are the six essential steps foe email creation:

1. Segment Your Audience: The marketer should have a clear idea about the target audience before deciding on a send time and the content of the email.

2. Create Your Content: The content of the email should depend on the interest and need of the target customer.A compelling subject line  and call to action is must.

3. Build Your Email: After creating the content the email template should be created. Images and call to action buttons to break up text should be included if possible.

4. Conduct Deliverability Tests: It’s important to conduct an email deliverability test to avoid the possibility of the email not getting delivered to the customers inbox.

5. Choose Your Send Time: Send times are not fixed, and they often  varies from one customer to another. As a general rule of thumb, emails should be sent during business hours in the morning or in the early afternoon, right after lunch.

6. Track and Analyze: Open rates, click-through rates, and email bounces should be tracked to see what content is resonating with the audience, which subject lines work best, and which areas could use improvement.

To know more, go to: http://www.exacttarget.com/blog/email-campaign

Social Media Participation has been limited to younger population and is rarely used by the older population. This has been a prevailing argument again social intelligence.  According to New Media Trend Watch 33 percent of the 80 million people born between 1946 and 1964 use social media, among which only US accounts for 26 million individuals. For Facebook and Google+ the population between 45 to 54-age is the fastest growing, seeing a 46 percent jump for Facebook and 56 percent leap for Google+. This growth has not been contained to the mainstream social networks and has spanned online communities, blogs and open comment sites, aside from the massive networks. According to Pew,presently 67 percent of Internet users between the ages of 50 and 64 are using online social circles. Beyond this, the segment of Internet users 65 and older who use  social media has significantly increased from 13 percent in 2009 to 43 percent in 2013.To know more go to: http://www.listenlogic.com/2013/11/senior-moment-social-media-shifts/

The performance metrics for ads shown against brand and generic queries can differ majorly, many advertisers choose to analyze these two categories separately. Many advertisers with paid search campaigns advertise on queries mentioning their brand (e.g., “Motorola smartphone” for Motorola) and also on generic searches (e.g., “smartphone reviews”). A new feature is introduced, that automatically identifies brand-aware paid search clicks tracked in Google Analytics,to make analysis of brand and generic performance easier. It involves a combination of signals (including the click through-rate, text string, domain name and others) to identify query terms showing awareness of the brand. Back in 2012, George Michie from the Rimm-Kaufmann Group, a leading online marketing agency, called analyzing brand and generic paid search together “the cardinal sin of paid search”. To know more go to:http://analytics.blogspot.com/2014/06/segmenting-brand-and-generic-paid.html

 According to a survey of 900 business and IT executives from 70 countries by IBM Institute for Business Value study, Eighty percent of respondents are evaluating the impact of their analytics investments, 60 percent already have predictive analytics capabilities, and "leaders" who were perceived to be proactive in engaging analytics in their organizations were more than two times likely than average to have formal career paths for analytics professionals.The next generation of IT workers will work in highly automated environments that combine both in-sourced and out-sourced technologies that businesses will expect to get immediate value from. “We hire many of our people right out of college," said the CEO of a healthcare cloud analytics vendor. The intuition behind is that the company already possessed the internal analytics expertise to train these recruits, and the added advantage of hiring freshers is that it also gives the company an opportunity a to train these recruits in to customer service that is valuable to the company. To know more about this, go to: http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/big-data-analytics/better-training-in-search-of-next-generation-it-workers/

Cloud solutions can help businesses lower total costs and transition from a fixed cost structure to a variable one while freeing up critical IT resources for strategic initiatives and innovation. In case of Cloud applications cloud providers are responsible for the maintenance, operations, and bandwidth of the software and not the cloud customers. Finally, cloud applications are accessed through standard web browsers, providing scalability and agility to the customer. Unlike traditional on premise software applications, cloud applications are located and managed remotely and built with a single code-base customized to the company's needs. Some advantages of cloud computing are: Increased speed in responding to unforeseen events, Easy to get the latest updates, adoption is quick and simple, improved information security, deployment time decreases from years to months, lower risk with subscription based cost model. Increased strategic agility, short deployment times, lower risk and costs - the advantages of cloud computing are compelling. To know more, go to: http://blogs.sap.com/innovation/cloud-computing/6-benefits-of-cloud-computing-032893 

Customer relationship management deals with all types of interaction between a company and a customer, whether it is sales or service-related. Customer relationship management is generally used to explain the relationship between business houses and customers. CRM systems are also used to manage business contacts, clients, contract wins and sales leads. Technology Advancement have changed consumer buying behavior, and today there are many alternatives in which a company can get in touch with its customers and collect data about them. Technology and the Internet have changed the way companies approach customer relationship strategies. There are various benefits of CRM strategy like it helps  understanding the customer, retaining customers through delivery of better customer experience, attracting new customers, win new clients and contracts, increased profitability, decrease customer management and helps the companies to know what the customers and the general market want. To know more about CRM go to:http://www.webopedia.com/TERM/C/CRM.html

A recent survey by The Economist Intelligence Unit found that those who were polled believe that customer service and marketing is expected to gain most from analytics, but customer service is unprepared to deal with big data. Proper analytics of the brand will enable business houses to understand how their business is performing, whether they need any improvement or not.  An October 2013 Gartner report, Market Trends: Leveraging Analytics in Vertical Industries, identified four major categories of analytics: Descriptive, Diagnostic, Prescriptive, Predictive. Three ways in which analytics is transforming customer service: Analytics is encouraging organizations to break down barriers

Analytics is changing perceptions of important measurements

Analytics is allowing brands to get ahead

To know more about the three ways in which analytics is transforming customer service, go to:https://blog.zopim.com/2013/11/20/3-ways-analytics-transforming-customer-service/

Cloud computing includes using a network of remote servers hosted on the internet as opposed to a local server. This helps schools and educational systems to manage their content in a simpler way and it helps to cut IT cost. In fact, it is said that within one year, cloud computing in K-12 schools is expected to consume a quarter of the entire IT budget; four years from now, that figure will grow to 35 percent. Benefits of cloud to students and educators:

Storage: The Cloud allows its users to store almost all types of content and data including music, documents, eBooks, applications, photos, and much more

Accessibility: Any data stored in the Cloud can easily be accessed from almost any device including mobile devices such as phones or tablets.

Collaboration: Because the Cloud allows multiple users to work on and edit documents at the same time, it enables effortless sharing and transmission of ideas.

Resource and Time Conscious: With the availability of content online, it is no longer necessary for teachers to spend time and resources printing or copying lengthy documents or lesson plans.

Assignments: Cloud allows teachers to post assignments online. Students are able to access these assignments, complete them, and save them in a folder to be reviewed later.

See more at:http://www.pearsonschoolsystems.com/blog/?p=1507#sthash.Mmt9pOFt.dpbs

Digital enterprise, associated with the design, development and delivery of innovative products and services through online channels, is the result of a long, multi-year journey that includes cloud computing as a vital component. Saugatuck Technology analyst Mike West in a recent post says Business and IT leaders still have plenty of work ahead of them — even if they are well along in their cloud implementations. With its inherent ability scale, as well as providing immediate, on-demand access to the latest solutions and approaches, cloud provides ready-to-deploy environments for creating and delivering the innovative business strategies and products that are part of digital enterprise.  A separate Saugatuck survey of 203 enterprises finds at least 60 percent are now creating and delivering new digital products and services to customers and nearly 70 percent are enhancing or updating traditional products and services as a digital experience. Most organizations are still in the early stages of their digitization efforts, but Saugatuck expects digital enterprises to accelerate over the next three to five years. The ability to effectively deploy cloud will shape the speed at which enterprises go digital. Digital business success depends on “the availability and utility of increasingly powerful and flexible cloud-enabled, and cloud-delivered, technology and business services,” Guptill analyst at Saugatuck states. To know more go to: http://www.forbes.com/sites/joemckendrick/2014/06/29/are-digital-business-and-cloud-computing-joined-at-the-hip/

In-order to perform better and earn more profits a company should take help of data analysis and CRM analytics to find correlations, patterns, and find out trends that will serve up the type of information to tailor customer experience. According to an article by Marianne Cotter at CRMSearch. According to Forrester analyst Kerry Bodine “Despite its economic power, customer experience remains the most misunderstood element of corporate strategy today,” In a soon to be published book called “Outside In,” Forrester Research argues that customer experience is a fundamental business driver. Five reasons to integrate big data analytics to CRM are:

• Better customer understanding

• Better understanding of the customer-facing operations

• Decision support

• Predictive Modelling

• Benchmarking

To know more about the five reasons to integrate big data analytics to CRM, go to:http://spotfire.tibco.com/blog/?p=12660

The integration of cloud technology and advanced analytics allows organizations to find and use information to save money, deliver on the mission more effectively, create new value and make better decisions. Through Cloud Analytics, Booz Allen( a leading provider of management and technology consulting services to the US government in defence, intelligence, and civil markets) helps organizations gain valuable insights from large data sets, and—in the critical next step—strategically use that knowledge to drive mission success. Cloud Analytics is a data driven frontier; the term for a set of technological and analytical tools and techniques specifically designed to help clients extract information from massive data. For Booz Allen’s clients, cloud analytics involves more than algorithms. According to Booz Allen “we leverage our firm-wide expertise to provide clients with end-to-end solutions”. This includes bringing in teams of experts who understand the underlying issue to be solved, can make sense of the data for a specific organization, who can help the organization use it effectively, and who can develop tailored applications to maximize the value of the data. To know more about this, go to:http://www.boozallen.com/consulting/technology/cloud-computing/cloud-analytics

Cloud computing can help companies reduce their e-waste in several ways. John Biggs of TechCrunch recently discussed the effect that a design change of Apple’s devices would have on the amount of e-waste.The company will switch from its current 30-pin port (the rectangular outlet that connects iPods, iPhones, and iPads to docking stations and chargers) to a smaller 9-pin or 19-pin port. According to Biggs 45 million devices will become “partially” obsolete as a result of this minor change. The United States throws away about 3 million tons of e-waste every year, including about 30 million desktops, 12 million laptops, and 30 million computer monitors. The amount of e-waste increases year-to-year at the highest rate (5%) of any category of trash. E-waste accounts for 20-50 million tons or 5% of all the world’s solid waste. With cloud computing  companies no longer have to purchase, repair, or replace hardware for an on-site IT infrastructure when they sign up for cloud-based solutions. They will not have to dispose of all of their obsolete or broken servers, storage devices, networking hardware, and cables every year. Second, cloud hosting companies utilize hardware more efficiently. They can host multiple applications and infrastructures per server. As a result, cloud hosting providers purchase relatively small amounts of hardware and fully utilize their servers, storage devices, and networking hardware before disposing of them. Third, companies that adopt cloud-based solutions do not have to frequently repair or replace their end-user hardware such as desktops, laptops, keyboards, mice, and monitors. To know more about reduction of e-waste using cloud computing visit:  http://www.onthenetoffice.com/blog/2012/08/e-waste/

CRM (customer relationship management) analytics comprises all programming that analyzes data about an enterprise's customers and presents it so that better and quicker business decisions can be made. CRM analytics can be considered a form of online analytical processing (OLAP) and may employ data mining. As web sites have added a new and often faster way to interact with customers, the opportunity and the need to turn data collected about customers into useful information has become generally apparent. As a result, a number of software companies have developed products that do customer data analysis. According to an article in InfoWorld CRM can provide customer segmentation groupings, profitability analysis, personalization, event monitoring, what-if scenarios and predictive modelling. One of the major challenges implicit in CRM analytics is how to integrate the analytical software with existing legacy systems as well as with other new systems. To know about CRM analytics go to: http:http://searchcrm.techtarget.com/definition/CRM-analytics

5S is a methodology used initially to organize workplaces to be more efficient and streamlined thereby consistently striving for more outputs, lower costs and less waste. So in essence, as this is what Continuous Improvement is mostly about, 5S is one of the commonly used Continuous Improvement tools. 5S is widely believed to have originated or least initially widely used in Japan and the term 5S is derived from 5 Japanese words- seiri, seiton, seiso, seiketsu and shitsuke which loosely translated into English stand for: sort, simplify, shine, standardize and sustain. The principle activities taking place at each of the stages are: Sort - All unnecessary items, parts, files, supplies are removed from the area

Simplify – (or Set in Order) – A place is created for everything and everything is stored in its place

Shine – (Sweep) – Clean up the area

Standardize – Apply the same standard throughout (to other similar areas)

Sustain – Maintain the new standard and avoid slipping back to old habits

To know about practical recommendations to make 5S a key part of the Continuous Improvement machinery, regardless of the type of business visit:http://smallbizkaizen.com/index.php/2010/08/5s-business-benefit

The service sector constitutes 62% of the world’s total GDP. It has grown by leaps and bounds over the last two decades. The service sector employs around 40% of the global labour force. The four unique features of services are Intangibility, Inseparability, Perishability and Variability. Service operations are often labour intensive and susceptible to variations. These variations often lead to complexities and customer dissatisfaction. The big challenge is to deliver consistent quality of services across all platforms.  Demand Planning is another big challenge. Services are dynamic and perishable in nature and this can often lead to instances of idle capacity or opportunity loss. Further, the quality in service environment is an experience and not just a measurement against specification so defect definition can tricky. To overcome these challenges, as in other industries, the service industry needs to innovate and continuously improve its processes. Here are four suggested process improvement techniques for services industries:

• Develop a Process Manual

• Automate Processes

• Reduce Failure Demand

• Conduct a Service Blueprinting exercise

To know more about the four suggested process improvement techniques visit:

 http://www.processexcellencenetwork.com/innovation/articles/four-key-process-improvement-techniques-for-servic/