A study undertaken by Gallup has confirmed that employee engagement is one of the crucial parameters for talent management. As per this poll, more than a fourth of global employees lack engagement at work. A whopping half a trillion dollars are lost annually by American companies for this reason. Even a Deloitte study says that 87% of organizations feel employee engagement is on top of their challenges. Ongoing coaching can help enhance employee motivation levels. Pulse surveys can be conducted periodically to gauge the level of engagement. This can also involve timely reviews made up of beta testing groups. The training to be provided must also involve classroom as well as video sessions.

Source: http://www.hrdive.com/news/how-learning-leaders-can-solidify-the-connection-between-engagement-and-lea/423640/

The benefits of Big Data can now be felt across organizations so must be used for improving the general work culture. This data has now brought in a democracy of information as all kinds of companies, big or small, government or private have the same or similar sources of information. This enables top notch business analysisas the data available is detailed and methods also sophisticated. Decision making has thus improved tremendously now. It also helps track metrics to identify high performers from those performing less than expectations. The talent pool can now be studied deeply whereas earlier just a few keywords or the lack of them could have eliminated certain candidates. As companies now have detailed analysis of individual user types, customized content can be delivered for diverse user personas.

Source: http://insidebigdata.com/2016/08/13/build-a-strong-work-culture-with-big-data/

The fact that Big Data helps marketers in reach the last mile with respect to customer engagement has never been in doubt. This enormous data allows companies to track information regarding customer’s purchase history, media preferences, shopping habits, interests and ambitions. However, in several industries such as telecom, travel, insurance, automobile and music, the gap between competitors’ ability to conduct business analytics has more or less evened out leading to incremental advantages rather than strategic. Thus ways need to be found to optimize this data extracted. Startups are working on innovative solutions whose aggregations benefit unique sets but large number of people. Examples of such may be cited as INRIX, Zillow and In-Venture from Africa.

Source: https://hbr.org/2016/08/use-big-data-to-create-value-for-customers-not-just-target-them

Source:  http://www.forbes.com/sites/theyec/2016/08/01/make-big-data-your-marketing-advantage/#a48b93c62453

In spite of a lot of talk about digital disruption that stage is yet to fully take shape, though we are not very far away. Big Data and Artificial Intelligence (AI) have converged to give us super technology. Future possibilities galore though fears also exist. Decision support systems are improving as a result of business analytics used for crunching massive chunks of data. Without AI, a lot of these will be hampered, so will be self learning platforms. The Internet of Things (IoT) also uses AI based technologies to integrate seamlessly the countless bots across the planet that enable top notch communication and data collection. One of the top innovation hubs, Apple has always believed that co-evolution of technologies is always a better idea than one off inventions as the latter do not allow scaling to benefit substantial number of people. Convergence on the other hand takes into consideration several developments and trends in the market to develop something worthy.

Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/from-big-data-to-artifici_b_10817892.html?section=india

A method which can wed company culture, structure and talent together will have hit the bull’s-eye as that is going to be the next frontier for technology. That will enable more fruitful customer relationships. This will be so because employees will then be able to use social media or digital platforms to directly communicate and address customers’ issues. It will allow for complete transparency to exist between both the sides. Business analytics can also then be effectively used to allow customization of products or services. Customers can then even be involved in content creation through collaboration over projects. It will speed up the process of democratization as co-creation will lead to the boundaries between managers, executives, technicians and customers will get blurred. Employees, customers and other stakeholders can then share the same space working towards unified goal. The company will then be able to keep track of business trends which could prove to be disruptors as such platforms will allow restructuring of jobs or re-skilling of employees. Hybrid approaches involving people and robotics will then be developed by human capital practitioners.

Source: http://finance.yahoo.com/news/culture-structure-talent-practices-next-140000206.html

Agility is one of the top things that marketers focus on while brand building for some product or service. While consistency was the buzzword in the past, where focus was on providing a seven on ten each time, now brands like to be seen as flexible. Brands used to think of themselves as forts protecting a certain ideology but now they wish to appear nimble. Due to the emergence of disruptors across industries, this agility is all the more important for brands to remain relevant. Business analytics forms a major part of the assessment and for this the Brand Asset Valuator contributes massively. It analyses fifty thousand brands across nearly forty eight characteristics in more than fifty countries. Brands also need to be authentic and communicate a similar picture.

Source: http://www.brandingmagazine.com/2016/07/15/what-leading-brand-thinkers-really-think-02-agility-and-branding/