SMAC and the Transformation of Customer Service & Dialogue

"SMAC" is the a acronym for Social, mobile, analytics & cloud the four pillars of the fifth wave of technology as defined by  Cognizant Technology the  Teaneck, New Jersey headquartered ITES company (NASDAQ Symbol : CTSH).
SMAC will change the customer dialogue by leveraging on the collective strength of the Social Media Network, Mobile devices, Analytics driven by Big Data solutions and Cloud Computing as the underlying backbone of affordable and reliable engine for computation. 

Let us look at each of these components and their impact on our lives today:

1. Social Media - The Social Media has seen breakneck growth and significant valuation with the winners, we have the four undisputed leaders in this segment Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest  & LinkedIn with competition from Yahoo, Google and Microsoft and another hundred more social media sites of different hues and aspirations.  

2. Mobility - The way we handle and process information anytime anywhere  is significantly driven by Mobile Devices. Whether it is a mobile phone with two undisputed leaders Samsung and Apple, with two leading operating systems Google's Android and Apples iOS and two fundamental devices a phone or tablet or an hybrid Phablet.  The mobile is the most used device today to access, converse and interact in the internet. 

3. Analytics - Big Data and the ability to bring affordable analytics by use of cloud computing has transformed the way we dice and slice our data and we can do much more in nano seconds with our Terabytes of data to get a better understanding which influences our strategy and decision making. Analytics has invaded every aspect of business, financial markets, banking, healthcare, manufacturing, the potential is endless on how it can add value to bring insight into the way we do business. 

4. Cloud Computing - In a brief period of ten years the cloud computing has taken the world by storm and has been the catalyst for the growth of social media companies like Facebook, Youtube, LinkedIn, Twitter and more.  The pioneer and leader in the cloud computing space continues to be AWS with others playing catch up, the software giant's Microsoft, Oracle, the hardware giant's Dell, IBM, CISCO and HP.  Cloud Computing is today mainstream computing as more government and business adopt Cloud to bring about reliability, efficiency and cost saving. 

SMAC is the future of our digital lives and these four pillars in conjunction will define the way we deal with our customers.

Companies who have the right SMAC strategy will profit and grow in a flat world. 

Banks who shunned the cloud have taken to Facebook for Banking.

Newsprint companies have be on Twitter today if it wants to reach its audience and garner revenue.
If you want a job today the best place to begin is LinkedIn and if you have a pretty picture to share and profit look no further than Pinterest.

Retailers are discovering the joys of growing their business with a SMAC strategy, understanding their customers needs and serving them in more innovative ways. 

With SMAC we need business leaders who understand their customers lifestyle, use digital technology and the live in a world of social media.

A significant number of the customer base with spending power are GEN Y  today and without a SMAC strategy we may not be able to connect with the GEN Y customer.

The customer dialogue is real time and companies need to respond to this changing scenario.  

We will have companies giving away mobile devices free to their customers as a glue to customer dialogue and interface. 

Imagine a scenario of a bank, it is connected to its customer in a mobile world and the customer lives and thrives on Facebook, the Bank today builds its  banking services around the customer in the world of Facebook. A New Zealand Bank (ASB Bank) has been the pioneer in using Facebook in serving its customers and is laughing all the way to the Bank, other banks are playing catch up. 

Twitter announced its public issue in a Tweet and in day one of its public issue Twitter's offering price was $26 but by the end of the day the stock had risen dramatically and closed at $44.90. On day one of its public issue Twitter's market cap was USD 24.4 Billion ; opening value in the morning was USD 18 Billion; a cool appreciation of USD 6.4 Billion. You need look no further to understand the business dynamics of social media. 

Companies need to address SMAC as the most significant business strategy for their very survival in next few quarters, is your company ready to use SMAC to transform the customer service and  dialogue?

Royalty, DNA, Big Data and the new world order

Today's paper's headline states "Hunt is on in Gujarat for a distant cousin who shares Prince William’s Indian blood- Tests have established a direct link between the Duke of Cambridge and a woman believed to have been at least half Indian"

A new social order Based on DNA mapping ?

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/hunt-is-on-in-gujarat-for-a-distant-cousin-who-shares-prince-williams-indian-blood-8658776.html

Maybe this  DNA testing and matching may destroy the Blue Blood of Royalty in the world. 

If all the DNA of all the worlds inhabitants are collected into one big data base and we use BIGDATA to find a relationship and sort people of the world based on their DNA then we will have a new classification of the human race, one based on science, rather then ethnicity, religion, color or nation, could this be the end of our social setting as we known and build over the centuries. 

Could there be a new set of groups who come together based on their DNA and migrate to new planets to settle and start their own DNA based tribes ?

Could we have all descended from a GOD who was from space and we all have strains of the original creators imprint in our DNA, could we find this out by mapping every person's DNA in the planet.  

If DNA became the new world order we may all have a 16/32/64 octal digits as our names which would be our DNA code. 

We have the tools in Big Data to create this new world order, but are we ready for this outcome ???  

Royalty can fund this exercise, Science will work on the DNA and Technology will provide the tools for Big Data Analysis, could this be the basis of a new social classification and new religion and a new world order with no royalty but only DNA supremacy.

Love to get your comments and thoughts. 

Please Note  I am not an atheist. 

3:48pm

Big Data Conundrum

The Big Data Conundrum continues, those who are innovative and know how to leverage it, benefit.
Big Data is not for everyone, just like market research is not used by all enterprises. 
The first answer you will need is will Big Data be useful to my business and can I get the required investment ?
If your Business can benefit, then do you have clean data? the job of cleaning and collating Big Data is a challenging task and is not for the weak.  
You will then need to build a team with complementing skills to work on big data, though the attitude needed will be the ability to sift through chaff for grain, with patience and a need to win. 
Big Data cannot be driven by the CIO rather it should be driven by the leadership team who handle the business strategy, the CIO can help with the technology tools and solutions to make Big Data Reality.

Big Data similar to a Bougainvillea Bush, Beautiful but one needs to manage the thorns!

So who should lead Big Data, the ideal person is the person who leads the  Market Research and Strategy in an enterprise who can use big data fruitfully.
In a  healthcare environment it will be the Core Medical Research team who would lead the Big Data initiative. 
In a Government environment it could be the Department of Economics & Statistics who could lead  the team to take on Big Data. 
The CIO/CTO and Big Data are like Chalk and Cheese, but having stated this the CIO/CTO needs be part of the Big Data team but may not be the right leader to for the Big Data Charge.
So if you think Big Data will work for your organization you know whom you need to address and educate. 

Boston - How Big Data Analytic's of Images could help

It is a sad day for the runners and their friends and relatives who participated with joy in the Boston marathon only to meet with disaster at the finishing line.
Analysis of the Images using Big Data Analytic's could help  in finding a pattern and help in pinning the culprits.
First is creating the unstructured data of the images by collecting as many images and videos in every camera or mobile that ever captured anything before during and after the marathon run.

Then comes the task on getting the best minds in the world to build the analytic engine to scan every image available to analysis the various clues that it could generate.
Though it may be like finding a needle in a haystack, with today's Big Data Analytic tools there is a good probability of even identifying the eye of the needle in the haystack.
Those who work in the area of Big Data Analytics' should come together and analyse  the images and also any other data that could be useful like mobile calls, sms and device tracking data available with telecos to pin the perpetrators of this heinous crime.

Will Social Media kill the Rating Agencies

Rating agencies definition in Wikipedia
A credit rating agency (CRA) is a company that assigns credit ratings for issuers of certain types of debt obligations as well as the debt instruments themselves. In some cases, the services of the underlying debt are also given ratings.Source : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Credit_rating_agency
With the advent of social media and a digitally connected world at almost real time credit rating agencies are under pressure to change they work . Will there come a time when rating agencies will have  a twitter feed on companies as events impact the instruments that they rate, With the convergence of Big Data and the Financial World this seems to be the reality. 
But it appears that these real time rating of financial instruments will emanate from new innovative and agile startups and not from the old established rating agencies.
The rating agencies have not been efficient in the past decade in helping investors in managing their risk  since the markets move faster then the rating agencies ability to   issue guidance in real time. 
OWS (occupy wall street ) was the first death knell to the financial industry, yes OWS was quelled, but its new avatar using social media is crowd-sourcing funds by start-ups also known by some as crowd-funding is threatening established VC fund managers. The day is not fare away when Wall Street which is the bastion of funding by companies is sidelined by social media enabled fund collection innovations, which will lower the cost of capital significantly. . 

Social Media and Crowd funding will make rating agencies obsolete!
How do your rate the turbans in this crowd ! 

Rating agencies will be the first to go, since crowd funding need no rating agency or credit rating symbols. IF you have a business plan that needs funding get your followers online and they will open their purse strings, Social media funding may get tougher once the regulator steps in cheered by the established wall street entities and also the need for governance and risk management. . 
Social Media will kill the rating agencies by the end of the decade and we will have real time risk management tools which will emanate from convergence of Big Data and Risk management tools.. 
Please do share your thoughts about the imminent departure of rating agencies from Wall Street. 

Cloud Computing and Business School Academics

Cloud Computing has been changing the global business landscape and the Academics in Business Schools find it a challenge to keep pace.
Today most of the successful businesses are in the cloud, be it Amazon, Facebook, Twitter , Google, blogs, Rackspace,  the list is endless. These companies have created more wealth in less then a decade compared to the stalwarts in the old economy.
Mobility strategy changes every quarter and yesterday's icons have to jump-start all over with a leap of   faith that their solutions will be adopted by the consumer.
Social media has flattened the world and the distances have just shrunk, solutions like YouTube has changed the way we can learn, Wikipedia has become the world's largest and best knowledge portal.
The challenge for Business School academia is how to prepare their students in this fast changing world .
The students have access to knowledge in their finger tips which challenges their professor  and yesterdays business paradigms are no longer valid in today's digital economy.

Academia will be challenged by the pace of  Cloud Computing Economics!

A long time ago HBR case studies used to be the staple diet, but today the world is moving faster and Business schools offer their students real case studies of business which are failing or growing, most of them using cloud as the vehicle.
In the new digital economy the business school courses will need to be made shorter with more digital teaching, mastering topics like Big Data, Analytics, Cloud Computing Economics, Algorithmic trading strategy , digital business strategy, social media  plus more digital economy concepts for business is  the need of the hour.
As I look around I see many business schools losing the plot and falling on the wayside.
cloud computing is truly the catalyst of the Digital revolution in Business but in a time frame of weeks rather then decades.
We need to rethink the Business School Academics and  start working on curriculum that can keep pace with economic changes brought about by the new digital economy.
Business schools need to ride the clouds objectively in grooming future digital business leaders in their business schools who will add value to the global economy.