Business & Finance

Mohammad Anas Wahaj | 23 mar 2015

Web design is a constantly evolving field. New concepts, technologies and designs give rise to new trends, that some time stay and catch on user's attention while at other times they just fizzle out in popularity. But there are also designs that stay too long in use due their popularity at one point of time but in actuality they have already lost their shine. Repetition of old ideas and trends just because of being comfortable and familiar with them may lead to loss of customers and business. Ilya Pozin, CEO of Pluto TV and Ciplex, explains why the following five web design trends have become obsolete and should be replaced by new concepts - (1) Mobile versions of websites are not cool anymore. Innovative designers are using responsive design that allows the layout to adjust based on the contextual experience of users. It provides fully integrated experience irrespective of the width of the user's device. (2) Text-heavy websites are unable to hold user attention. More designs now have precise text integrated with visuals like images and videos alongwith interactive functionality. (3) SEO copywriting, which was large part of web design and promotion at one time, is now should be replaced by developing keyword informed and user-centric content. (4) Pay-per-click advertising is losing its popularity as new technology tools are available that utilize new mediums and new targeting capablities to reach precise customer segments. Some new concepts are contextual advertising, online video and highly targeted product ads. (5) Designs below 200 pixels per inch (ppi) is getting obsolete as new devices are adopting retina displays. If the design resolution is low it gives poor quality on these displays. Moreover most web design is now more simplified with flat user interface and avoids use of gradients and shadows that provided three-dimensional look. Read on...

Forbes: Let It Go - Say Farewell To These 5 Web Design Trends
Author: Ilya Pozin

Mohammad Anas Wahaj | 23 mar 2015

Customers are one of the most critical component of today's business ecosystem. Organizations need to understand and analyze customers with diligence and deliver the best customer experience and value to stay relevant and successful. According to Corrine Sandler, CEO of Fresh Intelligence Research, 'We are living in the age of the customer and customers are now the only source of sustainable competitive advantage - and the only thing you should be measuring.' She advocates digital transformation of businesses, use of big data and analytics tools to get customer and business insights and predictive analytics to anticipate customer's requirements. Moreover she emphasizes need of emotional engagement to achieve customer value. She points out an interesting customer behavior - 'About 96% of unhappy customers don't complain; however, 91% of those will simply leave and never come back. It takes 12 positive experiences to make up for one unresolved negative experience.' Read on...

ITWeb: Customer intelligence boosts competitive advantage
Author: Regina Pazvakavambwa

Mohammad Anas Wahaj | 22 mar 2015

The Dutch industrial and product designer, Hella Jongerius, is critical of design purely by profit, design without conscience and design without awareness. She advocates more holistic approach to industrial design with focus on quality and practical economics. She argues that design shouldn't view objects as isolated items and should interrogate their relationship with people. She suggests 6 steps for industrial designers to achieve this objective - (1) Design the materials. (2) Keep the design process hands-on. (3) Celebrate imperfection. (4) Make use of archives. (5) Have a signature style for differentiation and recognition. (6) Research extensively. Read on...

MarkLives: Hella Jongerius calls for new industrial design values #designindaba
Author: Herman Manson

Mohammad Anas Wahaj | 20 mar 2015

According to Project Management Institute (PMI), 'Project management is a temporary endeavor designed to produce a unique product, service or result.' There is a distinction between 'business processes' and project management. Every task is not a project but project is composed of tasks. Online businesses can benefit from the effective implementation of project management as it can help to streamline the process, saving time, leveraging resources, maximizing profit, and meeting the client's and business's needs. The three key constraints that are balanced within project management are - (1) Schedule: Managing time factor or schedule, ensures that least amount of time is spend on a project. (2) Cost: Managing the cost factor can track what the client is paying and ensures that ROI (Return On Investment) is intact. (3) Scope: Managing the client's need or scope ensures that the needs are met effectively. Even if clients are not serviced by an organization, and its a product development entity, then project management processes can assist in increasing the profit margins, improve cost efficiencies and maximize earnings. Small businesses with limited budgets can utilize numerous online resources and services that can assist them in implementing project management. If they have somewhat more to spend they can also hire a project manager or even a project management consultant to guide and work through the project management implementation process. Read on...

Business 2 Community: Why Small Businesses Need Project Management
Author: Deborah Anderson

Mohammad Anas Wahaj | 19 mar 2015

Organizations grow and stay competitive by carefully planning and applying 'Learning and Development' (L&D) strategies and aligning them effectively with their business goals. Frank Jaquez, L&D head for H. J. Heinz & Company, suggests steps to successfully define and create L&D strategies - (1) Develop better understanding of the business. (2) Define priorities and develop the plan: Discuss variety of issues related to the team like its priorities, challenges, skills upgradation etc, with senior leadership and functional heads; Create strategy framework like L&D visions, business goals, L&D roadmap, resources required and project timeline. (3) Align leadership with the developed plan and effectively convince them the importance and need of the L&D plan to bridge the gap between business's strategy and performance. Read on...

ATD: Aligning L&D to the Business Strategy
Author: Frank Jaquez

Mohammad Anas Wahaj | 19 mar 2015

Corporations utilize business strategy to achieve their long-term goals and objectives. Healthcare strategists work towards understanding the pulse of the customers and markets that they serve and mould their organization's actions to provide best solutions. In the process their goal is to grow and retain their customer base and maintain the financial health of their organization. Richard Miller, CEO of Virtua Health Inc, believes that balance of power in health economics will shift to the consumer in future as the Affordable Healthcare Act matures. According to him, 'They'll be buying their products and their insurance, whether in a public exchange or a private exchange. So the relationship to the customer may change when you aren't dealing with large employers insuring people.' The relationship with the consumer will be more direct and participatory. While explaining his organization's recent focus and strategy towards women's health, he says, 'They are the decision makers. So when you talk about economics and the consumer being front and center, I want to talk to the women in the community who are going to make the economic decisions in their families.' Read on...

philly.com: Business strategy - Marketing to women improves hospitals' health
Author: Jane M. Von Bergen

Mohammad Anas Wahaj | 18 mar 2015

As life sciences industry and markets are continuously evolving, managers need to acquire new skills and expertise to adapt, perform and succeed. Health economics, biopharmaceutical supply chain, research & development and innovation are some of the areas that require special consideration in this regard. According to Professor Jan Rosier of Michael Smurfit GSB at University College Dublin, 'For years marketing has been a driving factor when launching new drugs. Now people in the industry need to look much more at how much a drug is going to cost, the impact of this and the effectiveness of the drug in this context. The cost of a drug and how it is linked to the treatment of diseases will come much more to the fore.' Read on...

Business & Leadership: Management skills need to move beyond marketing and profit in life sciences
Author: Sorcha Corcoran

Mohammad Anas Wahaj | 17 mar 2015

According to Pew Research Center data, seven out of ten US adults say that they track at least one health indicator, and 21% of this group use some form of technology to track their health data. With numerous health platforms being launched in the market, that utilize sensors built in smartphones and wearable fitness devices to record physicial activity, the demand is expected to further increase in future. The huge data obtained from such devices will benefit biomedical research, drug development and human health. Professor Ida Sim of University of California at San Francisco says, 'Such technologies hold the potential to encourage the general public to participate in medical studies and make the research community more collaborative and open.' She is the co-founder of non-profit 'Open mHealth', where her team is leading the initiatives to build open source software that facilitates sharing and integration of digital health data. According to her, 'The data can be used to do variety of things like combining genomic information and behavior data from wearables to discover new insights into health and disease.' While explaining some of the challenges related to digital health data, she says, 'Making sense of data from various digital health devices is challenging when the devices don't represent data the same way. Currently, wearable devices and other healthcare tools describe the data they collect using their own languages that are not shared or integrated with other devices.' She further mentions her collaboration with Professor Michael McConnell of Stanford's Preventive Cardiology Clinic, where Open mHealth platform is utilized and digital health data is used to aid in the care of patients with cardiovascular conditions. While mentioning privacy issues related to patient data, she says, 'At Open mHealth, we believe that the focus should be on individual users having ownership of their own data.' Read on...

Stanford Medicine Scope Blog: Harnessing mobile health technologies to transform human health
Author: Lia Steakley Dicker

Mohammad Anas Wahaj | 17 mar 2015

Successful entrepreneurs have diverse traits and skills, belong to different geographies, social and income groups, have different level of educational qualifications and expertise in different fields. But according to Thomas Smale, co-founder of FE International, inspite of all these differences all successful entrepreneurs possess the following common traits - (1) Full of determination (2) Not afraid to take risks (3) High level of confidence (4) Craves learning (5) Understands failure is part of the game (6) Passionate about his or her business (7) Highly adaptable (8) Good understanding of money management (9) Expert at networking (10) Ability to sell and promote. Read on...

Entrepreneur: 10 Traits All Successful Entrepreneurs Share
Author: Thomas Smale

Mohammad Anas Wahaj | 10 mar 2015

Generation Z, cohort of people born after the Millennials, is now getting attention of marketers. According to research by Global Messaging, some of defining characteristics of this generation include - 86% use some kind of social media; 72% want to start their own business; 25% left Facebook in 2014; 66% list gaming as their hobby; 1 in 2 will be university educated; Communicate with images, emoticons and emojis. Marketers have to target this generation with innovative, directed and focused strategies to have an impact. Here are few suggestions - (1) Agile Marketing (2) Programmatic Mobile Marketing (3) Snackable Content Marketing (4) Text Message Marketing . Read on...

The Wall Blog: How to market to Gen Z
Author: Polly Becker

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