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.

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.

The AI Surge

The continued interest of businesses and consumers alike in going beyond the norm has spawned the massive rise of Artificial Intelligence globally. Even if we are ready or not, AI is definitely entering our lives and will not stop anytime soon. Be it NLP, ML, or cognitive computing, AI is providing tremendous gains to businesses in improving their sales and marketing functions, and assist in design of new business models.

Some eye-opening stats indicate the way businesses are embracing Artificial Intelligence like never before–

• Gartner predicts that by 2020, almost 1/3^rd of the companies will use AI in some form within atleast one of their primary sales processes.
• IDC predicts that by 2019 (just two years down the line), 40% of the digital transformation initiatives will involve AI capabilities
• IDC also predicts that by 2019, almost all IOT initiatives will be supported by AI capabilities

Be it self-driving cars or digital PA’s, AI is growing and growing fast. 2017 can rightly be called as the watershed year for AI. There are four primary reasons for this statement:

1 – Decreasing computing and bandwidth costs

Chips are becoming smaller and more cost-effective. This means that in all likelihood there will be a chip or processor in every single thing. This reversal of Moore’s Law will be the primary accelerant for increased adoption of Artificial Intelligence the world over. Also the steadily falling bandwidth costs means that faster speeds can be availed of at a lower price.

2 – Data – The oil needed to run AI machine

Any AI system is as good as the data it generates, analyzes and acts upon. Fortunately, with the rise of Social, Media, Analytics, and Cloud (SMAC), the volume and velocity of data being generated from various sources has literally exploded in the last decade. This data is now being harnessed in smart ways by AI systems to improve their performance and provide a better user experience. It is data that enables machine to learn. Instead of models, we now have actual data to describe various conditions to feed into the AI system.

Google’s AlphaGo Beats a Go World Champion

3 – Connected devices

The parallel rise of IOT and connected devices is also a big boost to the Artificial Intelligence industry.  RFID and sensors have enabled transmission of huge amount of quality data among connected devices that can also receive instructions and be programmed for specific actions.

4 – Improvements in Machine Learning capabilities

On its own, data cannot be used much. It needs to be refined and analyzed so that patterns emerge ad trends arise from seemingly random numbers and figures. With Machine Learning, algorithms and models can be applied to extract this advantage from unrefined data. Some examples include –

• Facebook’s DeepFace,
• Google AI platform, AlphaGo that beat a Chinese player in Go, and
• Google X Labs’ Machine Learning algorithm that picks cat videos on YouTube

As evident, Artificial Intelligence will be a significant disruptor across major industries in the world. The key question here will be – Are you already to adapt to the magical world of AI?

Going Autonomous

No more does the idea of autonomous cars seem as a bleak and elusive a dream for mankind. With the rapid development and advancement in technology, and the vast amount of money, time, and brainpower being spent into this idea; it can surely be said that in the forthcoming years, mankind will be blessed with fully autonomous cars. Today we look at a few trending stories in autonomous cars.

Tesla’s Autopilot

Tesla is much ahead in the run for development of autonomous cars and has already gifted the automotive industry with many advancements. For example, in October 2015, Tesla’s autopilot feature was introduced into their version 7 software, and it can very efficiently assist a driver. In January 2016, the 7.1 version software came with another autonomous update called the “summon” feature, which allows the self-parking of the cars without the presence of the driver in the car. Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla, expects a fully autonomous vehicle to be ready to be used on-road by 2021.

Google’s Self Driving Car

Google self-driving car was a much-talked story of the year 2016. Since August 2012, the self-driving car, developed by Google, has successfully completed driving over 5,00,000 km accident-free. Later on, in May 2014, Google revealed a new prototype which allowed its driverless car to have no steering wheels, brake pedals, and gas pedals; thus making it a fully autonomous version. In December 2016, the technology behind the self-driving car of Google was given to a new autonomous car development company called Waymo. Uber’s autonomous Volvo cars gained much appreciation and popularity, but the autonomous tests were soon put to rest because of an accident in Arizona. But Uber has launched its Advanced Technologies Centre in Pittsburgh which is entirely focused on advanced research into self-driving cars and mapping technology.

Others join the convoy

Apart from these, there have been many other predictions and forecasts regarding the future of driverless cars. By the end of 2018, we can expect to see self-driving taxi developed by NuTonomy in Singapore, Google’s driverless cars back on the market, and a level-4 autonomous driving capacity technology by NVIDIA. Audi has announced that by 2020, driverless Audi’s will be available in the market. Ford will be offering fully self-driven vehicle, to be used by the people by 2021. Similarly, Volkswagen has assured the masses that by 2019, there would be a self-driving car in the market. Tesla’s first fully autonomous vehicle will be made available and ready to be used by the year 2021.

What does the future of self-driving cars look like?

The future of autonomous cars and vehicles will bring about a new era of personal transportation. Although the traditional IC engines will remain dominant in the automotive industry for a decade or so, sooner than we think, there won’t be need of human interference in automobiles. Massive amount of investment is being made by various automakers in this emerging field. The aim and future goal of various companies are now shifting towards developing a fully autonomous vehicle.

Thorough and extensive research is being done for bringing about advancements in various technical fields that are crucial to the development of autonomous cars. These include web networking, sensors, and software. Ford has been making much gossip regarding autonomous cars when it made a recent announcement where it showed what the future of its company’s automobile looks like. For starters, it was missing the steering wheels, brakes, and gas pedals.

To sin off we can say that disastrous accidents caused by human errors and distractions could be wiped out with the advent of a fully autonomous vehicle that can efficiently react to the environment and roadway hazards.

The Best Of 2017 So Far

In 2016, users downloaded around 149 billion mobile apps to their connected devices. In 2021, this figure is expected to grow to around 352 billion app downloads. Searching for best-selling apps on the app store can be cumbersome.  Whether you require a great music app or messenger app, there are always plenty of options. We have curated our list of the best 5 apps of 2017. Go ahead try these on your smart devices –

1. Solid Explorer

Android Play Store

Apple Store

File managers are very common, however Solid Explorer is unique because of its rich features and easy accessibility. It boasts of latest functions for managing and browsing your files, on your phone. It is integrated with cloud services such as Google Drive, Dropbox and OneDrive and FTP servers. So you get an awesome all-in-one solution for superior file management on your smart device.

2. Brave

Android Play Store

Apple Store

Brave Web Browser is a free, fast and safe web browser for smartphones and iPhones. It’s an ad-free browser. Hence, you don’t have to be troubled by annoying pop-ups. You need not install any other extension or have concern about in-app subscriptions. Truly, it’s really a fast browser and comes in very handy while on data plan or roaming. Get this browser today and make your web browsing a much smoother and richer experience on smartphones.

3.Gboard

Android Play Store

Apple Store

The keyboard app from Google is an awesome utility in terms of both features and functionality. You may view it as a simple addition, however having a Google search button directly on your keyboard is incredibly useful. It makes the entire experience of using your smartphone more methodical. It comes in handy, especially while you are in a serious discussion or writing a long report. Besides, you can customize your keyboard with different themes or images. The regular features of emojis, GIFs and glide typing are included in this app. Write swift, type accurate on your smartphone with Gboard.

4. Critical Ops

Android Play Store

Apple Store

Critical Ops is the latest generation of first person shooter games and it’s one of the best. In this game, you’ll battle terrorists in a wide variety of urban-oriented levels .You can play as the terrorist too if you want to. A strong online multiplayer community enables you to play with your friends as well. It’s still a work in progress, but it seems to hit all the right notes for a MMO game and is being updated frequently to elevate the user experience further.

5.YouTube Kids

Android Play Store

Apple Play Store

This app is a must-install app if you have kids in your family. Generally, children love to watch too much videos on YouTube. However, not every content on YouTube is appropriate for them. Google has come up with a kid-friendly app which has an easy interface. It helps to filter out the inappropriate stuff and ensures that they only see what is proper. A word of caution though – No filtering system is flawless, so parents need to supervise.

Thank us later for introducing you to these amazing apps!

The Digital HR

SAP ERP is proven to improve the productivity of the business, lower down the cost and helps in making the strategic business decision. Its new version upgrade released in 2016 makes it more powerful and robust than before. By integrating SAP, you can streamline and automate a major portion of the core HR processes. Right from workforce management and payroll processing to recruiting and time and attendance, SAP seeks to bump up employee engagement in your organization.

Features of SAP

SAP ERP is one of the most powerful enterprise planning software available in the market today. Though it has many competitors in the market, still it has managed to retain its most popular and sought- after position. The main reason behind its popularity is its ability to sync together different business operations in an efficient way. Once installed, it can integrate human resource, customer relationship data, finance, business sales and services, procurement and logistics easily.

How does it affect HR process?

“Human Resource isn’t a thing we do. It’s a thing that runs our business.”

Human resource department is the backbone of your organization. This department has to manage different kinds of data like payroll records, personnel files, administration, compliance records, etc. The SAP HCM (Human Capital Management) module helps you to automate the core HR services.

Some of the ways SAP HCM has a lasting impact on your HR function include –

• Consolidate the HR data

SAP helps to consolidate and streamline the core HR and payroll processes with its cloud- based technology. The insightful reports further help to develop and execute strategies that ultimately benefits the business.

Apart from that, streamlining the legal and corporate compliances at the local level helps to provide the best results for the business.

• Find and manage talent

One of the primary functions of HR is to recruit the right candidate for the job. SAP helps to find, source and manage all kinds of external talent, including independent contractors and flexible talent pools. With its cloud based technology, talent optimization has become easier than before.

• Improved productivity and ROI

Now, there is no need to worry about significant HR data as SAP solutions help to keep it at a single place. This in turn, help a business man to focus on its core activities and neglect the other areas to the concerned department.

• Have a clear picture of your workforce

With a single HR system record; a business can have a clear picture of its entire workforce. Based on that he/she can drive workforce planning (“planning how many people together can help to achieve the results?”, “what’s the revenue from a single employee?”, “is ROI on human capital greater than ROI on working capital?”)

• Amazing reporting capabilities

In a traditional HRMS, reporting is based on the manual feeding of information by HR staff. This leads to inaccuracy and errors creeping in. With SAP HCM, the entire process is automated. Also the rich interactive reports that management uses is accurate and up-to-date. Users can also create custom reports easily without the need for deep technical knowledge.

With these benefits, the SAP HCM module comes across as a real value booster for your organization’s HR functions.

Xamarin- The Developer’s Best Buddy

It is highly likely that your user base will be using multiple operating systems to download, view, and use mobile apps. Be it iOS, Android, or Windows, your company needs to create separate apps for each OS type. The immediate disadvantage for your company is apparent – late time to market and prohibitive costs make this a loss-making proposition

This is where cross-platform app development comes in as a savior. Apps from cross-platform development platforms like Xamarin are compatible with mobile, tabs, iPads, iPhones, and Blackberry. Now that’s an amazing USP to pitch to any customer organization, right?

Why Xamarin?

Xamarin is a technologically advanced cross- platform mobile app that offers the user native like experience. It also provides the developers advantages like fast coding, cost-efficiency, and a lot more. No wonder that Xamarin has emerged as a hot platform with 1.4 million developers across 120 countries. It is the favorite for 15,000 companies in diverse fields like hospitality, energy, and media.

Features that make it worthwhile for developers

• With Xamarin apps become easy to update

One of the greatest benefits of Xamarin is its ability to make the required changes and updates in a relatively easier manner. The new features (support for pre-compiled screens, preview support for Universal Windows, Android Material Design) provide the user a truly native experience to the users.

• Xamarin has a huge user base

Xamarin has a huge community base. Community expertise and availability of anytime support lower down the complexities involved in the project and make it successful. Therefore, it is a current preferred app development platform for app developers.

• Provides seamless integration

For third party interface, API is important and Xamarin is capable of binding various API and UI using its different technologies. Moreover, it has a portable class library that enables the developers to share code across the different mobile platforms in a hassle-free manner.

How does it benefit the web developers?

Xamarin makes the task of web development easy and stress- free. Here’s how:-

• It offers the benefit of C#

Managing code for cross- platform apps is not a cakewalk. The task requires domain knowledge and expertise with native mobile app development. Fortunately, Xamarin supports C# language for programming, which itself is a native language for Microsoft operating system. It helps to utilize the advantages of native UI and access to device- specific features. It also enables native performance, thus, driving up the user experience of a mobile app user.

• OS-agnostic app logic

Multiple app logic components like web service calls, input validation, and backend- frontend interaction are coded just once in C#. As much as 2/3^rd of this code can then be used across multiple mobile OS. This helps in providing advantages in terms of shorter development cycle, lesser iterations due to bugs and errors, and faster time to market.

Developers are increasingly relying on Xamarin for their cross- platform mobile app development needs. In an age where Gartner predicts almost 268 billion app downloads in 2017, cross- platform app development through Xamarin is certainly the correct path to take for developers and business owners alike.