Monthly Archives: January 2018

Economic Consulting

Technology Innovation for the Bottom of the Pyramid

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Perhaps Mr. Franklin D. Roosevelt, the U.S President himself, would not have imagined while coining the term “Bottom of the pyramid”, that the poorest yet largest socio-economic segment would be one of the most lucrative segment for entrepreneurial innovation. The modern strategic mastermind, Dr. C.K Prahalad, however, in his book titled “The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid” foresaw this driver of change and growth.

It has been 84 years now since the term first came into being, and as technology rapidly earned its place as the 4th factor of production by modern definition of economics, technopreneurs are creating massive value catering to the “Bottom of the pyramid”. By serving the underserved, they are the real winds of change.

Today, approximately, there are a whopping 3 billion people living on less than $2.5 a day globally. As a major pie from this statistic, India, being an agriculture driven economy, constitutes about 70% of the population living by such a metric. Thus, even though such a segment would largely depict a fairly low purchasing power & limited intellectual capital, they would, infact, also represent the largest demographic market segment by per capita income.

But why should an entrepreneur target the bottom of the pyramid? What are the underlying opportunities?

Digital innovation is transforming lives by impacting and enabling human functions, and human emotions. While most of the urban agglomerations are ideal to market testing, the semi-rural and rural markets are not invested upon, hence not impacted enough. There is substantial need and evidently more buyers than sellers, only if the right tools reach the right hands. Out of a billion mobile phone users, only 250 million are smartphone users. Out of which again, only a mere 30% have access to 3G networks, the rest, 2G.

Though counterintuitive, low purchasing power means high business opportunity. The  massive chunk of human capital in our target segment can be engaged in semi-skilled opportunities, which in turn can provide traction in areas of logistics and outsourcing for high growth and well funded startups.

Venture capitalists are investing heavily in technology startups while large corporations are launching startup accelerators in emerging economies. The objective? Reach & Market expansion. And when the thought leaders foresee holistic growth, bottom of the pyramid provides a bouquet of opportunities in terms of scale.

With opportunities galore, let’s think about some of the key growth drivers in today’s world of rapid disruption in this segment:

  • With growing secondary & tertiary occupations in semi-rural & rural areas, the dependence on farming is witnessing a decline, thus ensuring steady income which bears a positive effect on disposable income.
  • Better infrastructure, increased investment, good monsoons, farm-loan waivers and improved income levels are increasing spending propensity.
  • Government initiatives like PMRDF, PMKVY, Jandhan Scheme, transactions using UIDAI & Swachh Bharat campaigns are drivers to economic upliftment in areas which need the most.
  • There has never been a greater impetus from NGOs, CSR programs of large corporations & self-help groups which are working towards alleviating deep-rooted socio-economic issues in this segment.
  • Public infrastructure projects like enhanced road connectivity is improving employment quotient due to improved commutation.
  • Technology adoption intermediaries are the agents of change who serve as a bridge between the bigger picture and implementation at the grassroots.
  • The Digital India program initiative by the Government of India which is striving to making every citizen have access to information at their fingertips.

Are there role models from the large firms who follow a rather traditional innovation approach? Precisely, yes, and very effective:

Organization Segment Innovation Why innovative?
Godrej & Boyce  Consumer durables  ChotuKool refrigerator  Battery powered, does not require regular electricity supply
 Vortex  Banking  Low cost ATM  Very less power consumption, reliable cash dispense module
 TATA Chemicals  Consumer goods  Water purifier  No running water or electricity, low cost of access Rs. 899
 HUL  FMCG  Khushiyon ki Doli  Affordable multi-brand home care & hygiene products
 Nokia  Software  Nokia Life Tools  Windows OS non-smartphone utility suite
 ITC  Agriculture  Choupal  Empowers farmers with up-to-date agricultural and marketing information through access to internet and computers.
 GlaxoSmithkline  FMCG  Asha (milk food drink)  40% cheaper than the regular variant of Horlicks, affordable health drink
 IFFCOTOKIO  Financial Services  Microcredit  Loans to individuals and SME proprietors without CIBIL
 Uber  On demand cabs  Self-employment  On-demand cab service to urban customers, semi-skilled rural workers migrating to cities, better livelihood
Big basket, Swiggy Hyperlocal delivery Logistics On-demand home grocery semi-skilled rural workers migrating to cities, better livelihood
Facebook, Ola Digital 2G services Enabling customers to book cab services using 2G networks, Facebook Lite version for 2G networks

Source: www.oifc.in

While large corporations are setting new standards to innovation by constantly striving to maximize reach, several new kid-on-the-blocks (read startups) are also embracing innovation in their own capacities, thus, setting examples for others to follow and create social value, beyond mere business figures. Some of the notable ones deserve a mention below:

  • Selco solar – Provide sustainable energy solutions
  • Nanopix – Have developed proprietary lot sorting algorithms for farm produce
  • iKure Techsoft – Enable selling accredited medicines, tracking doctors, attendance, prescriptions
  • Ampere – Provide affordable electric vehicles, e.g, scooters, cycles, trolleys
  • Boond – Aid in alleviating social issues
  • Paani –Enable mobile commerce even for non-smartphone users through mobile-based loyalty programs for underserved communities
  • Bempu – Infant warming solutions using a wristband
  • Samasource – Creates employment by outsourcing (BPO/KPO), customer support skills that can be easily trained and delivered.
  • Digital Empowerment Foundation – Provides rural areas with digital literacy, access to digital tools and information-rich knowledge.

Source: www.yourstory.com

Now, how well does Zivanta Analytics fit into the social innovation bandwagon? Are we doing our bit as a corporate citizen? In the last couple of years of our existence, we have catered to several niche social sectors as consultative partners of large corporations and NGOs alike, empowering them with cutting edge technology services & analytics. With the help of our social consulting verticals that we work in, our clients are able to make sense of large unstructured data sets, unregulated information systems, unevaluated social program investments emanating from the bottom of the pyramid.

Some of our major clients are ACC-Holcim, Save the Children, Voltas, Ernst & Young, Ministry of Small & Medium Enterprises, Govt. of India. Projects delivered range from reporting, surveys, fieldwork, MIS, dashboards, web development, implementation interventions, content & documentation, metrics measurement, bid & procurement management, etc.

Riding the wave of social change using technology and digital innovation, Zivanta Analytics, with its yearn and drive to create an impact through value at the bottom of the pyramid, believes the day is not far where empowerment will weigh heavier on the scale against disparity & lack of exposure. That is the day when communities will unite, for the greater good, irrespective of the pyramid.

 

Technology Solutions

My Internship Experience with Zivanta Analytics

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One balmy morning, I stood in front of the Zivanta Analytics office. With one year of the MBA course behind me, I was at Zivanta Analytics for my internship interview.  Professors had cautioned that this was the real thing, much removed from the presentations at the business school in familiar surroundings.  I was forewarned that at the internship interview I was to be quizzed by battle-hardened professionals who over the years have honed their skills on separating the wheat from the chaff.  In business school professors help you to add value to yourself, but as an intern I was to position myself on how I was to add value to the company and in the bargain learn something in the real world situation.

For comfort I had this brilliant piece of advice which does rounds at my business school during the internship and placement seasons “do not feel bad when interviewer rejects u, people usually reject expensive things because they cannot afford them”. With these lines in my head,  written by one of the greatest (albeit anonymous) philosopher of all times, it gave me  a momentary sense of false confidence, As I entered the Zivanta Analytics office,  I felt like David, out to slay the Goliath.

At the interview table I was certainly the David, but where were the Goliaths. The two-member team who interviewed me did not appear at all intimidating. They asked the usual questions- about academics, my future plans and about me as a person. What impressed me was that the interviewers at Zivanta Analytics went at length to explain the pick of projects which I could choose from if I were to be selected, and how such experience will help in my career in the long run. The entire process was interviewee centric and was about my benefits and gains.

The mail next day followed with a telephone call informed me of my selection. It felt good to have cracked the interview. I looked forward to attending office; the interviewers had certainly left a very positive impression on my mind.

First day I was introduced to my mentor for the internship period at Zivanta Analytics.  My mentor,  who has a string of impressive degrees including those from abroad and a formidable work experience, spoke to me as a colleague and not as a supervisor of a boot camp.  My colleagues in the business analytics team at Zivanta Analytics were a cheerful lot, always helpful and very humane.

The sense of humour even during the toughest of delivery schedule was impressive. When tight deadline would come up, the refrain from the supervisor would be “guys let’s get into the pressure cooker and blow the client up”.

My first assignment was to assist the team lead in one of the projects which involved developing an algorithm to rank credit cards. That was my first hands-on experience in data analytics, which I could never have learned from only studying books. I eventually got involved in many subsequent projects for Zivanta Analytics. Even though I was an intern, my opinions and suggestions were always taken. I was always included in crucial business meetings and my supervisors encouraged me to come up with new ideas.

The responsibility and flexibility during my internship days in Zivanta Analytics helped me find my bearings and helped transition from business school to work life seamlessly.

In a nutshell, I was the David who never had to slay a Goliath, for there are no Goliaths at Zivanta Analytics.

Today I work as a full-time staff at Zivanta Analytics and the learning curve for me remains steep as ever.

Analytical Solution

How Data Digitization Can Help Real Estate Hedge Fund Managers

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Since its invention back in the 1990s, digitization has diffused its way into every conceivable sector of commerce; specially the service industry. In financial services the rise of digital technologies has dramatically changed the manner in which institutions deliver information to their clients. Zivanta Analytics has helped in data digitization of a leading real estate hedge fund company which has brought more efficiency in their work there by shortening the TAT for their bidding for each deal.

The company’s primary objective is to deploy capital for pools of real estate assets that contain a title, document or compliance issue which impacts the marketability of that asset to the current owner. It utilized an asset based due diligence review which encompassed the legal curative strategy, property value and cash flow analysis data points needed to secure the assets with an appropriate equity position to protect a potential investment risk.

The objective of the company is to acquire real estate pool which came with thousands of scanned collateral documents which told the story about the constituent properties, its lien and title status, default details, assignments and other key variables which determine the risk profile of the property. For taking a price position for bidding for a Deal, the risk profile needs to be determined.

To create the risk profile of these properties, the relevant data had to be culled out from the collateral documents for each property. Zivanta Analytics had been retained by the Hedge fund company to sift through thousands of collateral documents and the key indicators. Zivanta Analytics has also built an analytics engine which uses the key data to build the risk contours of each individual property in a deal.

The company selected a specific deal and had transferred the entire collateral set to Zivanta Analytics in pdf format. Analysts at Zivanta analytics who are trained to look into the real estate collaterals, sorted the documents and looked at the completeness for building the collateral datasets. Accordingly the digitization strategy for a given deal was decided.  The collaterals which could be machine read were sent to the technical data scraping team who wrote codes to digitise. The remaining collaterals which were not machine readable were sent to the data associates who keyed in the data for each property from each collateral using either voice or key board based data entry method. As the data were entered, the data quality team concurrently checked the  data for quality using proprietary checking  tools and analytics.

The cleansed data was then processed by the Zivanta proprietary analytics engine to create a risk profile for each property.  The data could be queried by the hedge fund company experts through a custom interface developed by Zivanta Analytics. A dashboard to help analyze the risk profile was also developed.

With the help of this newly developed process the hedge fund company got quality data on tight deadlines at very economic costs. The risk profile created using the data from the collateral documents helped make an informed decision regarding the bid price for acquiring a deal. Once a Deal is acquired, the  experts  at the company are now using the data set to identify and mitigate the risk associated with each individual property  thereby making the property marketable at prevailing  market rates.

Analytical Solution

How Big Data Is Helping The Banking Industry

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The 80s and the 90s made a revolution in the banking industry when IT systems virtually revamped the whole banking process. The use of the internet  made it a lot easier to assess and evaluate the progress of a bank beforehand. It even had enhanced the service provided by the banks.

Banks always have a lot of information regarding their clients. With this information they can learn newer ways to provide better services. With the insights they have, they can make sure their customers are always provided with resources that are beneficial and not available elsewhere. The use of Big data has now opened up a new way for banks to be more profitable. The very use of Big data is enabling the banking sector answer a simple question in seconds which is not possible without harnessing the power of Big Data.

Big Data is an extensive system that can help banking industries simplify their system and work better. It helps them in developing a sincere clientele. Following is a list of ways in which the banking industry is affected by the use of Big Data:

Customer Segregation:

When a bank is provided with the insight to track and trace the habits of their clients of where and how they spend their money, it becomes easier for them to understand the clients’ needs. Once the results are analysed, clients can be categorized into different segments. This will suggest their banking needs and the marketing campaigns can be drawn up accordingly. This will also promote a healthier customer relationship.

Cross Sell Opportunity Enhancement:

With the use of Big Data, the banking industry can improve their relationships with their clients and understand them better. Big Data provides a more personal assistance and helps banks with detailed information on their clients. This information helps banks come up with schemes that are direct and personalized. These schemes gain maximum attention and are able to make sure they can come up with similar plans for the future. As their ability to analyze and assess the situation increases, their ability to deliver according to the expectations of their clients increases as well.

Efficiency Improvement:

Big Data helps banks avoid all situations that can be embarrassing for them. When a client asks a question that can only be answered by assessing the database, Big Data comes handy. The clients no longer have to wait to be answered because of a system failure. Their queries are solved immediately. By entering the name of the customer, banks are provided with all his important details. This also increases the level of satisfaction received from the customers. It also develops a sincere number of clients that learn to rely on their banks more.

 Fraud Detection:

Internet no doubt has made life simpler; however, it has also made fraud easy. When banks come up with newer ways to stop fraud, people come up with newer ways to commit it. This makes it impossible for banks to be able to trace the fraudulent convicts. The use of Big Data rids them of this problem. It makes it easy for banks to immediately be able to trace a fraud and put an end to it. The installation and use of this system makes it easy for banks to identify where the fraud is being committed. They can stop it immediately without delaying or experiencing a loss.

Risk Management:

With help of Big Data information is easily located on a single large scale platform and it becomes easier to reduce the number of risks. Everything that is needed by the banks becomes available at a central platform. This reduces the chances of them losing any information. It also helps them avoid being ignorant towards a fraud. They can easily detect them and in turn reduce all kinds of risks.

So in a nut shell Big Data is very beneficial. If it is taken up by industries it can be utilized with the right kind of knowledge. It assists the banks in taking steps and coming up with initiatives that provide guaranteed benefit. Big Data not only helps banks attract a larger client base but also helps them markedly reduce all frauds and secure their system.

Technology Solutions

Digital Marketing as a tool for Brand Building

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A brand is all about what people say about you when you are not in the room. The million dollar question here is “Can we in any way influence and shape the conversation that takes place in our absence?”

Michael William Krzyzewski is an American basketball player and coach at Duke University. He is regarded as America’s most successful basketball coach of all times. He interestingly was able to link his stakeholders comprising of recruiters, players, and fans to the brand promise. Michael William was able to deliver on his promise of a path to a career in basketball and even winning championships with the help of his website and adhering to techniques of digital marketing.

In today’s technology driven era, digital channels provide a positive environment to building a brand. One of the very basic activity associated with digital marketing is helping to ‘bring a brand to life’. As dependency on technology is increasing globally, digital marketing tools are gaining immense popularity as a fantastic tool for brand building. A basketball, baseball or rugby coach in order to have a solid brand has to first focus on enhancing customer experience through the help of digital marketing.

The advantages of utilizing digital marketing as a tool for brand building are:

  • Get targeted results:
    Online marketing can help in focusing on the important issues like zeroing on the right market and right consumer. A dedicated approach aimed at the targeted consumer can help make things easy. A regular update on social media, web content, SEO can be profitably used to reach out to specific demographics and particular geographic regions.
  • Increase of digital footprint:
    The use of technology has greatly increased over the past few decades. People are accessing more content digitally using their laptops, mobile phones, tablets etc. A brand can be easily brought to live by using the proper content, user experience and engaging with the audience through social media to name a few.
  • Delivering on promise and purpose:
    For a coach, the target audience should feel connected to the common dream of winning championships, a path to an NBA career and riches to name a few. They should be able to relate that a brand connection is the doorway to their individual’s goals of landing with top colleges, top recruiters, or becoming a great player. Proper digital branding can create an environment that will help bridge the gap.
  • Enhancing Brand Loyalty:
    Digital marketing helps in building brand loyalty. It makes stakeholders aware of the reason behind accepting and sticking to the brand. In order to build brand loyalty reaching out to the hearts, minds and lives of the stakeholders is necessary. Creating more exciting ways to engage with target audience should be a priority.

Digital brand building is a tool that helps garner faith right from the first visit to the website, to email newsletter to the Facebook or LinkedIn page. A brand is far more important than just a logo or an image. It is something which creates an imprint in the mind of customers.

Technology Solutions

How Digital Marketing can help your business grow

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Digital marketing has become an essential part in today’s world. With both competitors and potential customers constantly online, digital marketing is the only way to proceed ahead. When you’re a small business owner the online world can seem intimidating. Here is a list of five simple digital marketing strategies that any business owner can implement to help their business grow.

1.Setting a Goal:You’re looking for ways to help your small business grow. You might want more customers, more recognition or maybe you’re looking to get ahead of the competition. Whatever the case may be, starting with a solid goal in mind greatly increases your chances of success. Digital marketing is a great way for small businesses to prosper, but going into the process blindly can leave you with a jumbled mess. A lot of strategy and precision goes into digital marketing and having a goal helps you know what to focus on.

2.Creating a Marketing Funnel:The most successful businesses have an effective marketing funnel in place. A marketing funnel is when you map out a customer’s journey from when a customer is a complete stranger to when they become a lead, and then put certain strategies in place that will encourage them to move through this funnel. Things like lead magnets, calls to action, opt-ins and offers are all effective pieces of a funnel.

Having an effective marketing funnel won’t just get you more leads, it can also help you turn leads into repeat buyers. If the customer has a good experience they might return to purchase from you again or even tell others they know about your business. The elements of a marketing funnel can seem like a lot to put together, but they’re simple concepts when broken down. You’ll see that numbers 3,4 and 5 help to break down and explain the different aspects of having a marketing funnel in place on your site and how to put together some of the most important pieces of it.

3.Developing a call-to-action:We talked about using a call-to-action in the second step as a part of your marketing funnel, but what is a call-to-action exactly? A call-to-action (CTA) is an image or text that prompts visitors to take action, such as subscribe to a newsletter, view a webinar or request a product demo. CTAs should direct people to landing pages, where you can collect visitors’ contact information in exchange for a valuable marketing offer. In that sense, an effective CTA results in more leads and conversions for your website. This path, from a click on a CTA to a landing page, illustrates the much desired process of lead generation. In order to increase visitor-to-lead conversion opportunities, you need to create a lot of calls-to-action, distribute them across your web presence and optimize them. A good CTA should be attention grabbing and help lead a potential customer further into your marketing funnel.

4.Creating an Effective Lead Magnet:A lead magnet can be used alone or along with a CTA. This will also be used either within your marketing funnel or as a way to drive potential customers into your funnel. Supply them with something relevant to your product or service that they want. Use your offers as a way to gather more information about a potential buyer while driving them further into your funnel at the same time. This brings them closer to becoming an actual quality lead who will spend money on your product or service. The idea behind a lead magnet is to trade information. You supply something like a free download of a white paper, but in order to complete the download the individual has to fill out a form that will provide you with more information about them. You’ll use the information you gather to interact with them more as they progress through your funnel.

5.Driving Traffic:In order for there to be people to drive into your marketing funnel, there first has to be traffic on your website. There a variety of ways you can drive traffic to your website. Here are a few of the recommendations:

  • Quality Content: Use content such as blog posts, press releases and articles on authority websites. Insert links to various places on your website within this content to build your brand name through exposure and drive traffic to your website.
  • Keyword Strategy: Inserting related keywords into content will help your content and website show up in more search results, this leads to higher volumes of web traffic.
  • Website Optimization: Ensuring that your website is optimized and functioning at it’s best is essential. People don’t want to visit a website that doesn’t work properly.
  • Social Media: Use engaging social media posts to attract more traffic to your site. Using pictures, video, and other relevant media will help your posts get more engagement.
Technology Solutions

How Credit Card Can Help When You Are Jobless

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A new study from the National Bureau of Economic Research have  examined how credit access affects the way Americans look for new jobs. It turns out that credit can often help job seekers in a marked way especially those with lower income and fewer savings.

The study found that when workers lose their jobs, a higher limit on their existing card allows them to take longer to find a new one. The study linked up an employment database with millions of Trans Union credit reports from 2001 to 2008. It showed that a credit limit increase equal to 10 percent of a person’s prior annual salary can translate into their spending as many as three weeks more looking for a job.This situation is ideal for people who do not have any debt burden on their shoulder. Moreover you have to use your credit card sensibly in such situations.

Longer unemployment might sound like a serious situation as people are anxious about their finances and future. But it’s also a mistake to jump at the first job opportunity that comes your way because you’re desperate for money. It is observed that when unemployed people have access to more credit they become choosier regarding jobs. Most often they end up with better jobs a year later, both higher-paying and at larger, more productive companies.

The study found that it’s not really credit-card spending that makes people to be pickier. It’s the fact that they knew that cash was available if they needed it, which gives them confidence to hold out longer for better opportunities.

For the unemployed a credit card with a generous limit can work much as unemployment insurance or emergency savings. These extra resources give them the ability to apply for jobs, network, get retrained, or even move to cities with more promising job markets.

The problem, however, with relying on credit-card debt after a job loss is that banks are notorious for cutting off credit just when customers need it most. In 2009, the average credit-card limit dipped about 40 percent. So when lots of people lose their jobs, that credit-card cushion can vanish.

In other words, job seekers and government policymakers have similar, difficult choices to make during a recovery: If people rush out to find any old job as quickly as possible, they can hurt their finances and productivity in the long run. But if they have the opportunity to wait for the right job to come along their way it can surely help them avail the right job at the right time.

Marketing Services

Sports Coaching – in the Digital Era

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Change is the law of life. The rapid rise in digital advancement and communication platforms along with the increase in human interactions has changed the face of sports coaching.New coaching needs are coming up as the requirements of the athletes are changing. Today the role of a coach is many and varied. It encompasses the job of an instructor, assessor, facilitator, advisor, supporter, organizer, motivator, and counselor all rolled into one. Coaching today is all about improving the overall experience and to connect digitally with the stakeholders.

The big question is how a website can help increase the digital visibility of a sports coach. Digital marketing helps promote a website and makes it visible during online searches. Digital Marketing comprises of techniques like blogging, social media promotion, search engine optimization, content marketing, and video marketing. Being seeing online is now an important aspect for engaging with supporters and customers irrespective of the sports a person is pursuing. With the advent of new technologies, it has become tough to advertise without an effective online presence.

The importance of a Website to build Brand Image:

  • A coach can customize his website according to his needs in order to promote the services provided by him online. It is also convenient to add a photo, a photo gallery – an assortment of photographs, testimonials from customers and even a YouTube video.
  • A website will help in getting online bookings as timings of sessions and other itineraries can be easily published online.
  • A website provides a single platform to communicate, manage and store information about client’s database.
  • A calendar marked with all the session details and schedules can be made available easily. There is also an option of sending notifications and timely reminders to clients.
  • A website also allows easy tracking of players, their attendance, payment status, coaching hour completed via a simple dashboard.
  • Real-time chats with clients and assistance can be made available to players, guardians all stakeholders.

Technology plays an important role in helping people to stay connected and communicate easily. It is now essential for coaches to stay connected and engage with clients using digital tools. Digital Marketing is all set to change the sporting world.

Important Digital Marketing tools are:

Social Media – Social media platforms such as Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook can be utilized to promote exclusive content and reach out to all stakeholders. Be it live coverage during a particular sporting event, experts commenting on Twitter- user engagement is the key focus.

Blogging – Blogging by coaches can be used to motivate players and even counsel them. This is a great medium to highlight the trials and tribulations of a sportsman and bring to the forefront a more human aspect of the sport.

Brand Management using search engines – An important tool to promote is by using SEO for brand management. This is a technique where only positive listings appear in internet searches. This means that when a particular name is being searched, the first few pages will only showcase the positive or quality on brand links. The negative listings will be pushed down the result pages. This helps in creating and building the goodwill of a brand image. A sports coach can use this effectively to his benefit.

Sports Coaching is all about people, passion, and progress. A proper balance in communicating with the people with passion for the sport will bring about progress and hence build a great brand image

Technology Solutions

Herfindahl-Hirschman Index : Using the Regulator’s Tool to Marketers’ Advantage In Title Insurance Industry

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HHI (Herfindhal – Hirschman Index) is an accepted measure of market concentration. It approaches zero when a market is occupied by a large number of firms of relatively equal size and reaches 10000 (max) when a market is controlled by a single firm. E.g. the search engine market with three players Google (64%), Yahoo(18%) and Microsoft(13.6%) has an HHI index of 4624 indicating a very concentrated market. In a similar vein the Title Insurance Market has an HHI index of around 3000.

Typically, an HHI below 1,000 indicates an un-concentrated index, an HHI between 1,000 and 1,800 indicates moderate concentration and an HHI above 1,800 indicates high concentration. The market is concentrated with four large companies namely Fidelity National, First American, Stewart Title, Old Republic.

Zivanta Analytics prepared a market penetration strategy report for a large Title Insurance subsidiary. As a part of the exercise, Zivanta team used an innovative methodology to build a case wherein market concentration (HHI) in the Title Insurance industry in the various States, presented a unique market penetration opportunity.

The suggested methodology is demonstrated in this paper using the publicly available data ( ALTA) for Fidelity National, by far the largest Title Insurance underwriter in the United States.

The market was segmented into four quadrants wherein HHI index of each of the States in the United States is plotted on x axis and the market share of Fidelity in each of the states in (on y axis). Plotting the States by its aggregate HHI and Fidelity market share brings out four interesting scenarios.

Technology Solutions

5 major trends in Data Analytics

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Companies have been talking big data for years now, but it is only now that they are using big data to drive insights to enable sharper business decisions. Data has become an inherent aspect of every business, now that storing and processing data has become even more economical. Processors of an iPhone today are faster than the supercomputers of the 1980’s. The advent of social media and online customer engagement channels has led to exorbitant quantum of information being exchanged every minute across the globe. This in turn has led to a huge potential in mining meaningful data and making sense of it for organizations who want their brand and marketing efforts to be focused and return out of the marketing investments.

As we ride the wave of this new information age, we are driven my certain trends in data analytics. We have tried identifying some key ones out of the many and have listed them down here.

  • Wearables Take Center-Stage: With an ever increasing demand and use for data across several industry verticals, it has become imperative for organizations to drive innovation in the most untapped of all verticals, i.e, biomedical. The extent of information that can be put to use from the human body knows no bounds, thus serving right for the launch of a diverse range of wearable devices which use the biological functions of the human body to collect and transmit analytics that can be used to track various functions like movement, energy, vitamin levels, blood sugar levels, etc. This would support and encourage preventive rather than curative measures of human diseases.
  • Omnichannel Brand Experiences: Consider Apple. The day when a customer will consistently complain about an iPad and praise an iPhone is the day when Apple will defy its own philosophy of creating an omnichannel ecosystem. The same goes with data. A marketing manager allocates his / her budget across numerous brand engagement channels. The power of data analytics is harnessed to its utmost potential when a customer is able to associate with the brand across all the channels, at an equivalent level of satisfaction.
  • Data Risks: Analytics is driven by data, and the more it gets accessible, the riskier it gets to keep it secured. With an ever evolving internet penetration and access to information, data fraud has been proven once and again that as the gatekeepers of data grow in number and credibility, the number and skill of gatecrashers are growing by the same rate. Though information security protocols have been around for quite some time, now is the time when the compliance and protocol standards will need to improve and evolve constantly.
  • Widespread: Analytics is not constrained to a specific industry or vertical, but put to use across all industries, where data serves as the backbone for business growth and transformation. Of late, the primary industries that have put big data to use are Financial Services, Retail & FMCG, Biomedical Applications, Real Estate & Mortgage, etc. Data sets are different, analysis different too, but the conclusions help drive business decisions, all of which are data driven. Thus it leaves no space for assumptions or erroneous budget estimates. With a growing base of applications that are using analytics today, the list is sure to go up steep, and that need not follow a trend.
  • Data Scientists & R: With data comes analytics, with analytics comes big data. Big data and analytics go hand in hand while there are powerful analytics software and tools that are helping analysts to churn & tease insights out of data. While SAS and SPSS have been around for a while now, it is the open source analytics programming languages that are taking center-stage, like R. The R programming language is so powerful that it can generate complex charts and graphs that many time tested applications like SAS and Tableau take a hard pill to show up. With the advent of R, these analysts have been nomenclatured in the age of analytics as Data Scientists. While data scientists who code in R are not mere programmers like the earlier days of Java or Fortran, they are also equipped with sufficient domain knowledge along with strong statistical skills. According to Google Trends, Data Scientist as a career and R as a programming language is here to stay, and ahead, for a very long time.