The beginning of a new era
The only way to predict the future is to have the power to shape the future. From ancient times, science and religion have always clashed together but the former ends up giving a logical explanation to people’s beliefs, that are usually based on superstition or religion. We have always seen in movies how Gods predict the future, create anything on their own, fly without piloting their planes, cure anyone from diseases, and for doing all this, they do not need wealth or equipment. What if today, humans are able to do that? Imagine if everything in your life is automated and is controlled just by the imagination! With the advent of sharing economic business model, the world has become exposed to new ways of doing business and using resources. Over the last decade, companies such as Uber, Airbnb, Task Rabbit, Lending club, Lyft, and many more have changed the traditional way of doing business. The speed at which industries, technology and business models are changing is very fast. Along with this rapid change, a new buzz word which is being talked about is Internet of Things. It has the power to connect everything around us and make all vivid imaginations real. However, a shift in technology needs a great shift in our approach, way of doing business, and vision. To make this imagination a reality, a change is required in the way we do business today. The big shifts that society has seen in past century were the shifts towards Keynesianism and later on towards neo-liberalism. Earlier, everyone focused on providing health and education, trying to free the markets, and becoming wealthy. Imagine an ecosystem where humans are living in smart cities with digital homes, intelligent transportation system, additive manufacturing with 3-D printing, clean energy, and best in class healthcare systems. A total new system which believes in maximizing human well-being. A new economic model is in the making which will focus more on humanity rather than focusing on wealth sharing. It is going to change the way we see the world today, our relationship with the planet- work and life will change completely. With the introduction of artificial intelligence, neural networks, and internet of things, industrial revolution 4.0 has started to take shape. We have all heard the saying, “With great power comes the great responsibility”. Well, with all this advanced technology, businesses will have great power to achieve the main goal of the future economic model. All of this is going to be true sooner than you think. We are moving towards a new industrial revolution 4.0, which is going to drive all of these changes. In the past, whenever there was an industrial revolution, a huge disruption happened in the way businesses ran. Industrial revolution 1 – 1784 – Steam, water, mechanical production equipment Industrial revolution 2 – 1870 – Electricity, mass production, Industrial revolution 3 – 1969 – IT, Electronics, Automation in production line Industrial revolution 4 – ? - Cyber physical systems However, the main question is, what effects will this revolution have on the way of doing business? Changes in technology will surely push businesses to innovate and adapt to new ways of serving the society. To be sustainable in future every business owner needs to have a vision of maximizing human well-being.To make this possible, it is important to focus more on digitization of businesses. By digitizing, we can give the power to human beings. The impact of digitization will also have an effect on the value chain. Businesses will have to move themselves up along the value chain such that all the work will be done by machines at the bottom of chain and humans can sit on top of the value chain. Although industrial revolution 4.0 will trigger many changes and disrupt the businesses, the key is to understand the implications of this advancement of technology on business. The most important will be a change in customer expectations. Due to the transparency in businesses in today’s world, customers are becoming more aware day by day. They are looking for more and more features, options and personalized products. As companies also have access to the customers’ demands and are able to guess the new patterns of consumer behavior, they will have to adapt according to the new market. Secondly, the companies will need to enhance their products to become more efficient and align it with the new vision of maximizing human well-being. Thirdly, to achieve all of this, they will have to look for collaborative innovation and to achieve this innovation, companies will have to go the open source way. Once technology is shared and accessible to everyone, all human beings will be able to benefit from it. Fourthly, this will have a great effect on organizational structure. To make open source work, companies need to have a very different kind of culture. To achieve that culture, it is very important for companies to focus on their organizational structure and try to implement collaborative innovation. In the end, it all boils down to people. Today, all businesses revolve around humans but with a vision of Keynesianism or neo-liberalism. In the coming years, businesses will have to adapt and will need to start preparing for a vision of maximizing human well-being. This can be achieved if and only if businesses are ready for a change. As we all know, shift happens!
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What we measure informs what we do! How does a marketer claim his campaign or strategy was successful? Well, the answer is simple, by measuring it. In the world of marketing, measuring the success of campaigns and strategy helps us to calculate return on investment. After all it is always about ROI. Today, everyone talks about how cloud technology helps to change the way to do business, but does it really help to change the way to do marketing? The answer is yes and the good news is, cloud technology can also be used in measuring a marketing campaign. So what do we call such type of marketing which includes cloud technology? Well, it is called cloud marketing. Earlier, when internet was not so common, businesses did not have an online presence. Neither was there information available to customers about the various products/services, nor was there much data available to marketers on customers preference. The size of customer data available to the marketer was small. As a result, marketers collected the data about their customers simply with the use of excel sheets and various other CRM software. This was how a marketer was able to track if a campaign was successful and calculated the ROI of marketing efforts. However, today, the situation is totally different. According to Hubspot, 9 out of 10 US businesses have an online presence; as a result, there are 2 billion people present on social media and the number is projected to grow by 25% every year. The internet has given immense power to both customers and marketers. Customers can search information about the product/service they want and marketer can collect petabytes of data about their customer’s preferences. “With great power comes great responsibility”. Marketers have a lot of data about their customer. It becomes a responsibility of a marketer to analyze that data and deduce which campaign worked, so that ROI of marketing efforts can be measured. Now the question is how should marketers analyze this infinite pool of data and measure their campaigns? One would say that why not just use excel and a combination of other software to collect and analyze data. Well, one thing which I have learned in my professional experience is to keep things simple. Why would a marketer prefer working with a combination of software making everything complex when he can just do it with one? With the help of cloud marketing software, marketer not only collect and analyze massive data, but also provide solutions to every marketing function so that any campaign can be run and measured easily. What does cloud marketing software do? It makes every marketer’s life easy. Cloud marketing software helps marketer to actually integrate all their effort to create and collect data and helps them to manage this data from one end point. Now with the help of all available SaaS Marketing software, measuring excessive data has become easier. All the required information is just a few clicks away. CMO does not need to see large excels, but reports which shows customer personas and journeys in a comprehensive manner. Advantages of cloud marketing
As collecting data has become so easy, due to Cloud Marketing software everyone can focus more on analyzing the data to figure out their actionable insights. Cloud Marketing has made it possible for a marketer to leverage the technology to go beyond traditional ways of marketing. This makes innovation possible and will enlighten us to new ways of approaching customers. The Future Proximity marketing - In the coming days, especially for retail industry every marketer will be trying to make full use of proximity marketing. With the help of beacon technology now marketer can leverage the benefit of communicating with customers when they are in geographical proximity. The right way of using proximity marketing is to have 1 to 1 customer interaction by personalizing the messages. To personalize the message, marketer needs to have full clarity on customer persona and customer journey. To create these customer personas and journeys, marketers need to collect every bit of data and analyze it. Role of cloud marketing software - It makes the process streamlined and simpler. With the help of these software marketers can collect the data in one place and then analyze it from one end point. It not only helps the marketer to build customer personas and drive 1 to 1 customer interaction, but also helps to track and analyze the performance of a campaign. Internet of Things - Another advancement in Marketing is in the field of Internet of Things. According to Cisco, by 2020 there will be 50 billion devices connected to each other. When so many devices will interact with each other then there will be a lot of customer data to be collected. Role of cloud marketing software - Helping marketer to collect the intelligent data from the never ending pool of data is one of the most important benefits that this software can provide. By having access to information about how, when, where and why the products are being purchased and used, marketer will be able to better tailor the marketing efforts focused towards specific customers. The refined data will assist marketer to know customer preference in real time. What do they like and what do they not? The marketer will know where the customer is in their journey. Cloud marketing software will make every second of every day count. It will help resolve issues and serve customers the right information that will nurture them to ultimately close a deal. Wearable technology - With the concept of smart skin (world fastest stretchable integrated circuit), wearable technology is showing new ways of reaching and listening to customers. With this advancement there will be a great amount of data to be collected, specially in the medical industry. Role of cloud marketing software - Cloud marketing software can be very handy in such situation. It will not only collect the data, but also make it actionable in real time. With the help of data driven intelligence, software can help us understand where the customers are in their journey and what is motivating them to move further. Once a marketer knows which campaign helped the customer to move further in their journey, then the performance of those campaigns can be easily evaluated. Measuring the strategies and campaigns is one of the most important part of marketing. Specially, from the time when analytics was introduced and data started playing a big role in marketing. In the near future, data is going to get bigger and more complex. Having a huge collection of data is valuable, but not analyzing it is a sin for marketers. Cloud marketing helps the marketer to solve the issue of data management and makes measuring campaigns easy. By giving the power to handle all the customer data from one end point is a great thing. Cloud Marketing is truly taking the expectations of marketers to the cloud! |
AuthorAnubhav Sharma ArchivesCategories |