In the future even more amount of work will be done online than at present. Thus seven sources have been identified which are sure going to provide enormous content for future work. The first of them is Work Life Hub as it possesses enormous breadth and depth of information. Then there is the Library of Alexandria which has curated content from across the globe but more importantly it focuses on grooming contented plus productive people at the workplace. Gautam Ghosh is proving to be a thought leader on social media as his Twitter account is immensely popular while his Asian roots add a much needed diversity. Flowing Data has managed to generate a sense of interest into topics such as statistics and business analytics. Lavoro Futoro is actually ‘Future of Work’ in Italian and translates very easily into English. It provides enormous content in economic issues especially concerned with Europe such as ageism, unemployment or sharing economy. Future of Work Is run by NOBL is a content aggregator on talent management, recruitment and retention trends. A thought leader considered an expert on existing and upcoming leadership trends is David Slocum.

Source:  http://www.forbes.com/sites/kaviguppta/2016/07/06/the-7-best-sources-for-future-of-work-content-online/#2c925e2d33da 

Onboarding of new customers is a tricky aspect. If not done well, they may look elsewhere. New customers require instructions which some prefer using documents, while others may prefer emails or webinars. Some of them are presented with business analytics in order to prove how good their purchase has been while many may not understand the same. Thus some methods have been highlighted to conduct the same. Pre purchase, some potential customers have been allowed free trials. Post purchase, some have been subjected to high touch point onboarding with lot of involvement from sales team while others have opted for low touch point onboarding as they do not approve of too much involvement. At times, the sales team keeps an administrator to help consumer address operational issues, but at other points the latter directly use the same. Onboarding can also differ where a new user has been issued instructions once at the very beginning as opposed to repeated communication each time new features are added.

Source: http://customerthink.com/the-mechanics-of-onboarding/

Agility is one of the main ingredients for employees to be successful at modern innovative companies. Following some patterns will help employees embrace agility. First of all they must be able to leverage existing work patterns such as tele commuting or cloud based time tracking to their advantage. They must make use of LinkedIn to advertise themselves and source leads for working with. All employees may not be experts in but must have basic understanding of business analytics. Most work processes these days require a minimum appreciation of analytics.

Source: https://smallbiztrends.com/2016/07/organizational-agility.html

The trends of marketing were recently discussed over a conclave held in Las Vegas. It emerged that brand trust equates to credibility and ultimately good for the business. Marketing is not about selling numbers, but in fact serving customers. Brand advocates are now extremely influential and businesses must invest aggressively in order to leverage them. Three decades back when a lot of today’s marketers started out, there was little in the way of marketing knowledge. But today there is deep understanding of data through extensive business analytics which has crunched minute chunks to produce detailed information. This has enabled marketers to understand customers like never before. People have realized that the present era is about people centre marketing. Today’s consumers do not have such depth of product loyalty as earlier generations and do not trust the national level politics. The only way to sell to them is by generating trust. Products or services need to be optimized for individual uses.

Source: http://marketingland.com/the-what-how-who-and-you-of-the-future-of-marketing-180399

It is extremely critical for organizations to embrace digitization. And unless one is among the top tier companies such as Amazon, Google or Facebook, chances are pretty high that not enough talent has been identified ready to work with the organization. Thus as a first step it is important to have a data savvy HR team. Business analytics using data must be enforced as one of the pillars of the organization. Data must form a part of corporate culture. The culture will in turn help during talent recruitment of the best. Before recruitment though candidates’ skills with data related functions must be tested. Also, the job descriptions created must be realistic. Acute importance must be paid when data references come up. Employees’ training and development needs to paid top importance. But such training programmes must be customized depending on people concerned. The top management of the firm must themselves be data savvy so that others can learn simply by observing them. The progress of the team in this regard must be timely monitored. Finally, what is really important to create a digitized firm is to break down all information silos as knowledge must travel freely.

Source: http://www.informationweek.com/big-data/12-ways-to-cultivate-a-data-savvy-workforce/d/d-id/1326178

A survey conducted by Clutch has provided interesting insights on the role of business analytics. It has been found that it is the best source for extracting business intelligence (BI) in the industry. Data is now increasingly being churned at breakneck pace to derive results from which informed business decisions are made. The fields which use BI to their greatest advantage are logistics, sales, product development, customer service and marketing. HR continues to be the laggard in this field with the least usage while finance is a distant second from bottom. Maximum respondents clarified that analytics allowed improved efficiency and data management. Among other benefits customer behaviour insights can be tracked, business processes maybe streamlined and regulations can be better complied with.

Source: http://www.komarketingassociates.com/industry-news/b2b-marketing-news/31652-3033/

In spite of huge chunks of data now being available, very few companies are utilizing this for business gain. Instead business analytics is remaining the preserve of the technology teams. Some organizations such as Uber are exceptions. Uber uses real time Big Data to process information and take decisions on live pricing, supply, driver / client ratings and servicing. Traditional processes such as HR or sales are also supported using the same. Some companies have started employee Chief Data / Digital Officers (CDOs) as part of the executive suite. They are being increasingly integrated with business functions and not just analytics which would be a more hardcore technology based role. A study by Gartner confirms that by 2019, 90% of companies would boast of a CDO within the ranks.

Source: http://www.information-age.com/it-management/strategy-and-innovation/123461642/why-corporate-structure-needs-change-age-big-data