SigmaWay Blog

Starting a small business can seem tough and impossible at first when, there is so much to do on the front end before you even open the doors for your customers . We are now in the age of the art of technology which uses cloud computing to store all of our information and access if from anywhere we are. Not only does this make operating a business easier, but it makes the process much more efficient. The cloud can be your secret weapon to any aspect of the start-up process of your business. Here’s how.

Read more at:  http://www.business2community.com/cloud-computing/6-ways-use-cloud-start-business-01669177#o3OZvYPJyqBGeKit.99

Many entrepreneurs who are about to launch a startup, at the very introductory stage think about what is going to happen at the end. The thought process includes how they will encash the funding in lavish parties or the big checks brought in when the company is bought under some stalwarts of the industry. While keeping up “high hopes” proves to be motivational for them, the experts have expressed this habit to be a mistake.

David Skok is a Boston area entrepreneur who has founded four start-ups and is a regular blogger touching on relevant topics reaching out to people just like him. Skok is one of the experts who is skeptical about using external factors such as accumulated wealth as a driving force for beginning entrepreneurs. He says - “The big lesson I learned was that, in the start-up world, if your primary focus is on making money, you usually won’t make money.”

Know more :  http://www.business2community.com/leadership/the-entrepreneurial-paradox-01689339#Mb6MJc1MVAxSYSjV.99

We all get those helpless looks on our face when a stack of information and numbers are thrown right in front of us which are not only difficult to understand but includes intense labour in order to be managed.

People who are regular at managing and working with data can also get lost in this labyrinth of information and end up drawing farcical conclusions. However, such troubling days are finally over. As the ways to collect and process data increases, so does the insights. So, it is high time that we ditched the traditional method of basing decisions on past experience and anecdotes in order to sell a product, and used the art of big data management to ensure better product management

Read more at : http://www.business2community.com/big-data/use-big-data-sell-account-management-01679323#yhUtXuzWvCDbDYI4.99

Artificial intelligence (AI) could double annual economic growth rates by 2035 by changing the nature of work and ushering a new relationship between man and machine. The impact of AI technologies on business is projected to boost labour productivity by up to 40 percent by fundamentally changing the way work is done and reinforcing the role of people to drive growth in business.
 
“AI is poised to transform business in ways we’ve not seen since the impact of computer technology in the late 20^th century,” said Paul Daugherty, chief technology officer, Accenture, the primary company to have come up with this research result: “The combinatorial effect of AI, cloud, sophisticated analytics and other technologies is already starting to change how work is done by humans and computers, and how organizations interact with consumers in startling ways. Our research demonstrates that as AI matures, it can propel economic growth and potentially serve as a powerful remedy for stagnant productivity and labour shortages of recent decades.”

Read more on the research results of the AI impact at : https://newsroom.accenture.com/news/artificial-intelligence-poised-to-double-annual-economic-growth-rate-in-12-developed-economies-and-boost-labor-productivity-by-up-to-40-percent-by-2035-according-to-new-research-by-accenture.htm

Innovation is a very critical aspect to any business strategy. The ability to think “out-of-the-box”, makes any business stand out among others. While most regard innovation as a necessary stimulus to any business, but they look at innovation milestones as a fortuity in terms of strategy and shy away from further strategic planning or making any formula for success in terms of innovation. This, is however not the ideal way to deal with innovation. Given below are a list of keys to ensure business innovation.

1.       Having a dedicated innovation team: The most important ingredient to induce innovation is to ensure a team of creative, intelligent and dedicated people to be included in the business. To include them will provide the ticket to multitask, collaborate as well as read minds well ahead of time.

2.       Innovation Labs: This is to enhance the ecosystem of our business. With an innovation lab, a group is created that is consistently and exclusively focused on innovation.

To know more : http://www.business2community.com/business-innovation/7-things-must-succeed-innovation-01680313#K5sQRxXK0sCrXcW3.97

All businesses that are able to invest in content development are in for the best investment in the long-run. When people ask that what are some of the biggest challenges of developing tons of content? The answer is mostly organization. The key mantra to effective content management is to manage or organize your own marketing.

Those businesses with a documented content marketing strategy are far more likely to consider themselves effective at content marketing. They will also feel significantly less challenged with every aspect of content marketing, as they will generally be considered more effective in their use of all content marketing tactics and social media channels. All this enables them to justify spending a higher percentage of their marketing budget on content marketing.

Read more: http://www.business2community.com/content-marketing/5-useful-facts-regarding-content-development-01680328#Q5CHJbYX5MZkSVFG.97

Major Tech companies are all set to launch Vendor Security Alliance (VSA) - a new coalition committed to improve cyber security standards. The mission of VSA is to address cyber security risks and to establish cyber security standards that will help businesses to evaluate the security of third party vendors.This initiative is headed by Ken Baylor, Uber’s Head of Compliance. The VSA will work with top security experts and compliance officers and will release a yearly questionnaire to benchmark risk. The questionnaire aims to provide a standardized assessment that can be applied across different industries. It will enable companies to ensure that the other companies they are working with are secure. This will also save time and money that companies usually spend to evaluate the partners they work with. To read more about it, visit: http://www.infosecurity-magazine.com/news/uber-twitter-and-others-join-forces/

Back during the times of floppy disks and tapes, disaster and data recovery used to be two different aspects.  Creating data backups on tapes used to be time-consuming and a hectic job. The disk backup did ease the time-taking aspect, yet backup and recovery of data during times of emergency turned out a tedious task.

In today’s world, Cloud has changed the entire scenario. Not only does it allow data backup facilities, but disaster recovery as well. While off-site backups can take time to retrieve from storage and then deliver, instant Disaster Recovery from a cloud data centre means that anyone can  back up and run data in a matter of hours. This procedure is drastically reducing Recovery Time Objective (RTO) and other factors, as well as obliterating the threat of unstable network configurations or incompatible drives.

Read more at : http://www.business2community.com/cloud-computing/move-cloud-transformed-disaster-recovery-01660795#e0Kg4wwQuDLIAtlq.99

It has always been apprehended by famous persona, celebrities, creators and innovators, that “Morning shows the day”. The routines or habits followed right after waking up, always end up as a stigma for our success.

In the current millennium, people who have continuously been putting an effort for the betterment of the world have set certain ways of turning this dream into reality. This methodology of integrity and goals have been successful, due to various factors like positive line of thought, motivation and a conglomeration of hard work and consistency.

To learn more, Read: https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/282495

Whenever we talk about some advanced applications, we can see that we have moved way too ahead in the field of Artificial Intelligence (AI). Machine Learning (ML), a branch of AI, is a major factor to turn applications into intelligent ones. There are companies which are building such ML/AI technologies and others are incorporating ML/AI technologies in their applications and services to make it smarter and to provide customer better and easy facilities. But for the automated applications to provide better customer experiences, we need to have human beings in the loop. Although we have achieved great success in building many ML/AI applications, but we are still in the early stages of the journey. For more details, check the given link: https://techcrunch.com/2016/07/06/key-trends-in-machine-learning-and-ai/

The Turing Test, proposed by Alan Turing in 1950, is considered as a basic definition of Artificial Intelligence. It was used to see if something is a person or a machine. A computer passes the test if an interrogator cannot tell whether the answers come from a person or a computer. To pass a rigorously applied test, computer need to have certain capabilities like Natural Language Processing, Knowledge Representation, Automated Reasoning and Machine Learning.

But a recent study shows that the Turing Test has some limitations. Co-author Kevin Warwick, a computer scientist at Coventry University in England said that the Turing Test will not work in the case where the person or machine whoever is being interrogated chooses to stay silent. Read more about it at: http://www.livescience.com/55356-flaw-detected-in-turing-test.html

 Many a times we have observed companies quote data to support an argument to a statement. This however has been detrimental to the rise of data in general. How? Let us give an example. According to research it has been found that 2.5 quintillion bytes of data are created on a daily basis. Though that is a quintessential amount of data generation, but it is all the more astonishing to learn that 90% of this existing data has been already created in the last two years. The point is Big Data might be a huge hype in the industry, but the intelligent leaders should understand, that it is not the end-word. Big Data should be intelligently crafted with business strategies to provide desirable results.

To know and learn more, check out: http://www.business2community.com/big-data/biggest-mistake-companies-make-big-data-01645333#lClpgY4wJI7yodbO.97

We have come a long way from coding a simple calculator to programming robots to do our tasks. In the near future, we will be relying on robotic systems that are completely autonomous for tasks varying from driving a car to making life-death decisions like performing a surgery or prescribing medications. But the question arises “Are we ready to entrust the Robotic systems to make life-death decisions? Would we be able to program robots that understand the moral values, customs and rules by which we abide? Roboticists are figuring out the way to deal with the moral or behavioral problems that might arise with the robots. And hopefully, it will go great in the end. Read more at: http://spectrum.ieee.org/robotics/artificial-intelligence/can-we-trust-robots

 Snapchat, a mobile app that launched 4 years ago, have taken the app industry by storm. Over 150 million people now use Snapchat to send photos and videos—called Snaps—to their friends and followers and watch 10 billion videos every day. Snapchat recently launched a plethora of advertisement features for business, with the biggest rollout being Snap Ads-Between-Stories. Advertisements will now appear in between Snapchatters’ stories. Although they can be skipped, and won’t be inserted into the stories themselves, but will occasionally appear full screen with sound when Snapchatters will change from one story to the next. To know more, read on: https://blog.hootsuite.com/snapchat-for-business-guide/

Millennial refers to the population aged between 18 and 34. This makes up the largest chunk of mobile users, i.e. 85%. Thus technology consumption is the highest in this generation and CRM software can help brands to generate profit from this generation.

Social media is a powerful tool. Social media details are becoming more lucrative than communication methods and CRM stores these social media details in one place. It is a well known fact that almost all social media users search for product information and news from brands and also communicate with brands on social network. Most popular social media platforms are Facebook and Instagram.

Real time behavioral tools generate deeper insights into consumers’ purchasing pattern. These tools nowadays are available with CRM software. Real time data help to target precisely and also improves customer satisfaction.

Improving customer service is the key to success.  CRM software helps to track communications between customer and customer representatives and thus helps in resolving complaints promptly. 

To read more follow:- http://it.toolbox.com/blogs/insidecrm/3-ways-to-use-crm-to-target-millennials-74198

Content marketing when synced with CRM (customer relationship management) system increases profit throughout each phase of the sales cycle. There are 3 ways in which, uniting content marketing and CRM systems can generate higher sales.

1.       The case studies, applications and the customer testimonies provided by content marketing pieces bridges the gap between indecisions and confirmation of the customers.

2.       It is also important to keep updating the customers through recent customer successes, trade articles, new customer wins, product innovations, and the latest research. This results in portraying the company in front of the customer in a passive and informative way.

3.       The CRM systems should be used to let the sales department know when a new piece of content marketing is published. This closes down the gap between sales and marketing.

Thus content marketing plays a crucial role that helps to generate insight of a customer and ultimately creating a valuable partnership with the business. To read more follow:- http://it.toolbox.com/blogs/insidecrm/3-ways-crm-can-help-you-close-sales-with-content-marketing-74186

Many a times start-ups fail due to internal communication problems or lack of knowledge on work processes. Here customer relationship management (CRM) systems have an important role to play to manage and promote early growth of the businesses. Here are a few advantages of a CRM system for a start-up business:-

1. Access to automation process by an integrated CRM system saves time and money.

2. CRM is a beneficial tool for marketing as it can handle email marketing communications, following up with sales leads and continuing to promote the messages of the business.

3. CRM enables to tailor the data and make meaningful analysis for the businesses.

4. CRM provides a personalised first-class customer experience that makes a start-up unique from others.

To continue the business in the long run it is very important to have a service system that provides automation process, stores customer information and improves marketing efforts.

To read more follow: - http://it.toolbox.com/blogs/insidecrm/4-reasons-crm-systems-work-for-startups-74141

 To keep the data in electric form is much easier as it does not require physical space. Here are a few ways to keep a safe backup of business data:-

1.  USB flash storage is small gadgets and thus very useful to carry around big business data.

2. A hard drive provides a huge amount of storage, but they can easily break down when not handled properly.

3. Cloud storage is the most recently introduced storage options. It also provides large storage space and doesn’t require high IT knowledge.

4. A solid state drive is a revolutionary technology that offers incredibly high data transfer speeds.

5.A Great option for backing up data is the establishment of a local network. This makes backing up process fast, easy and secure. To use a combination of these solutions is the best way to keep the data safe and secure. To read more follow:-1.     http://it.toolbox.com/blogs/marketing-strategies/keeping-your-data-safe-5-available-storage-solutions-for-your-business-74118

In recent times game designing has become a very demanding job. Here are a few things required to be a good game designer:-

 Essential skills include basic knowledge of coding, solving problems and a have great encyclopaedic knowledge (i.e. they should be aware of different cultures, religions and philosophies).

Good communication skills are of utmost importance in this job. Collaborating and cooperating with teammates it is very important. The game designer is a mediator between the graphic designers and the story writers. Thus, it is essential to respect their ideas and vision.

Learning to take negative feedback is the key to success. The audience is the real judge of the game so their opinions about the game, whether positive or negative, should be taken sportingly.

Having a deeper insight into game mechanics is also crucial. It is important to know what elements are loved by people and which elements are to be avoided.

To read more follow:- http://it.toolbox.com/blogs/marketing-strategies/things-you-need-to-be-a-good-game-designer-74105

Nowadays social influencers are replacing word-of-mouth recommendations as it goes far beyond the typical CRM functionality to add in social network streams, messages and mentions to customer data. It is essential to have detailed information about the influencer. This may include the frequency used hashtags, style of recommending products, brands they promote and company mentions. To make a note of each influencer is the best way to approach the individual and track conversations with them. It is very important to coordinate with the influencer by tracking initial messages, follow-ups and other significant events. It is vital to know whether the influencer is positive, negative or neutral about a topic by analyzing the content for the overall sentiment towards the brand, competitors and products. CRMs must handle the process of influencer targeting in real time as it shows the impact of active marketing campaigns on brand awareness and sentiment. Businesses may also find an influencer among their customers. Connecting social CRM with influencer marketing will definitely prove beneficial for the businesses. To read more follow:- http://it.toolbox.com/blogs/insidecrm/how-to-use-social-crm-for-influencer-marketing-74109