Machine learning is progressively transforming the way we work, live and interact. It is effectively applied in almost all sectors with beauty industry being no exception. Machine learning can help the beauty industry in several ways. It is expected that computer vision would help recognize facial features, analyze the data obtained and come up with a prediction or conclusion about the appearance. At present, data scientists are working on AI systems that have the ability to understand human face. If it works out, we no longer require to physically test out new looks and products. Data analysis will lead to better cosmetics. Leveraging data means better, long-lasting formulas. Nowadays, startups and industry leaders are offering machine-based advice on finding one’s personal style. For instance, Sephora and Mira uses worldwide tests and computer vision helping customers choose the perfect combination of foundation, complexion, etc. Some businesses like Olay have developed applications to determine skin needs of customers and come up with personalized products. Thus Artificial Intelligence with its machine learning and computer vision can go a long way in ensuring customer satisfaction. Read more at: https://medium.com/sciforce/machine-learning-changing-the-beauty-industry-ab3a2fa0aaf

Reputation management deals with maintaining and controlling a group’s, an individual’s or a brand’s reputation. The reviews that the customers give on a brand greatly impact how search engines and prospective customers make decisions about that brand everyday. Every business tries to take its reputation management strategy to a next level. Sentiment analysis determines the nature of response to a particular product or brand- if its positive, negative or neutral. It helps to analyze customer feedback or how they feel towards a brand. Besides, competitive intelligence is the key to winning and maintaining business. Understanding one brand’s performance relative to others is necessary. Generating new reviews help businesses to stand out which in turn helps in maintaining the reputation. This can be done by simply asking customers at checkout to write a review if they are willing to. However asking for reviews too often is not a good idea as this can annoy the customers. Hence businesses must learn to create an effective review response. Read more at: https://www.thedrum.com/industryinsights/2019/06/25/how-take-your-reputation-management-strategy-the-next-level

Merging entertainment with data is a well-known concept. The marketers and content-creators have always focused on strategies that will resonate with the audiences and keep them engaged. Over the past few years, there has been an evolution of AI in the marketing strategies of content creators, brands, networks, etc. AI uses the deep learning algorithms that can digest, asses and contextualize unstructured data quickly to derive actionable insights. AI can analyze millions of pieces of content at a time, with the help of deep learning which is undoubtedly beneficial for the content creators and marketers. Deep learning helps in predicting whether a campaign will be successful even before it starts. Thus marketers are increasingly turning to deep learning algorithms to make better sense of the contents. Read more at: https://www.thedrum.com/industryinsights/2019/04/03/the-evolution-ai-entertainment-marketing

Over the last few years, industries have become more sophisticated due to the increasing demands of influencer marketing. Many companies are planning to increase their influencer marketing investments to develop long-term partnerships with creative influencers on social media. Influencer marketing is nothing but a hybrid of old and new marketing tools, taking the idea of celebrity endorsement and placing it into a modern day marketing campaign. However the Influencer marketing faces a lot of challenges. Due to inconsistency in data, companies tend to jump from one influence marketing provider to another. However, we can expect to see an evolution in gathering and usage of data in the coming years. Brands are increasingly becoming more educated and competent. Marketers and brands want tools that gather all metrics relevant to value generation and tools that can track the performance from multiple social media platforms. Those providers that fail to deliver these requirements often fall behind as the market evolves. Moreover influencer industry is built on trust and authenticity, so the rise of fake followers erode business and consumer trust. Hence in order to protect the customers, the influencers must take a stand against the rise of fake followers. Read more at: https://www.thedrum.com/industryinsights/2018/12/21/why-we-need-get-little-smarter-about-influencer-marketing

Gender pay gap in the workplace is one of the most relevant issues which can be solved by data driven decision making. On taking a closer look, it has been found that gaps in pay structure arise from unconscious biases and strategies that benefit one gender more than the other.  Research shows that there is no connection between the fairness of a raise and the effect of that raise on the gender pay gap, making it a complex issue. This can be solved with Data analysis and visualization. Rather than raising the salary of every female employee by the same percentage, building algorithms using companies’ data is more effective to eliminate the gap. This approach also brings the manifestations of unconscious bias in the pay structure to the forefront. Thus, data driven solutions can test salary decisions before making them thereby closing the gap.

Read more at: https://insidebigdata.com/2019/06/26/addressing-demographic-pay-gaps-with-data-driven-solutions/

Having entered the era of Data Analytics, lately it has been realized that even the shipping industry is driven by Big Data. Companies track KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) to measure its performance and spot areas that need improvement. KPIs can be applied to shipping logistics as well and this monitoring can be done easily by Big Data. Shipping Damage is a vital metric which Big Data tracks during transit as it’s important to identify and curb damages of shipments. Big Data helps monitor Shipping Time and identifies the causes of delayed deliveries. It also ensures that customers’ expectations are met by tracking Inventory Accumulation. Owing to its versatile nature, Big Data can also monitor Shipping Costs. Thus given the profound impact that Big Data has on shipping, it’s important that shipping companies incorporate data analytics to save themselves from higher costs and other damages.   

Read more at: https://www.smartdatacollective.com/data-analytics-optimizes-shipping-through-kpi-tracking/

The AI World Government,a three-day forum that started on June 24th, gathered leaders in the government,academic and industrial sectors to exchange views on the challenges and possible benefits of AI in the automation. According to leading companies such as Gartner and McKinsey,AI has cognitive abilities,and tends to imitate human performance by learning, understanding complexities, predicting and providing solutions.Intelligence and defence government agencies are heavily relying on AI for its application and growth in the areas of healthcare, transport, commerce and administration. It is clear that the government is investing heavily and wants to explore the capabilities of AI .The methodology of developing tools and applications of AI came across as a public-private partnership supported by investment which is looking at combining human and computer power.

Read more at: https://www.aitrends.com/ai-in-government/government-an-integral-partner-for-exploring-ai/

Implementing Big Data in Manufacturing innovation, the integral part of our economic success, allows for great industry gains. With respect to the objective of the manufacturers of improving their systems, big data reduces inefficiency by probing meticulously into the supply chain. Big data solves the trade-off between managing reduced cost supply and customization. It provides real-time insights to customer data which improves order-to-fulfilment times and delivers demand predictions looking at historical data sales trends. Predicaments like breakdown of manufacturing assets can be avoided using big data’s power of predictive maintenance. Big data replaces guesswork with connected supply line thereby improving strategic decision making. Before extracting the advantages of big data, it is essential that accurate data is gathered and stored, cleaned and analysed, mined and monitored besides ensuring that it is actionable.

Read more at: https://www.smartdatacollective.com/heres-how-to-implement-manufacturing-analytics-today/

The herculean task of shifting to the new digital regime of taxation is making the country abuzz with the over explosion of information. This has mostly bewildered the entrepreneurs and SMEs as to how to make a business compliant to GST. Few GST compliant software solutions that can be used by a GST-ready entrepreneur are listed below.

·         CLEAR GST SOLUTION BY CLEARTAX- Priced at Rs. 10,000, the first cost effective well built cloud GST solution software released by Cleartax solutions is Clear GST. However it has few weaknesses including the need for separate accounting software for financial statements, is useful for small businesses only, no availability of offline backup and so on.

·         TALLY ERP 9 BY TALLY SOLUTIONS- Priced from Rs. 18000 to Rs. 54000(GST feature free if already having a license), Tally ERP 9 will be easier and more delightful to use than others with the only weakness of having no basic accounting system of debit and credit.

·         GEN-GST BY SAG INFOTECH- Priced at Rs. 2500, this software is different from others in the sense that it is available on all platforms like desktop, cloud, SAAS and so on. Some of its weaknesses involve its application to small businesses and need for separate accounting software for financial statements.

·         PWC INDIA- A GST solution with end-to-end automation aimed at helping companies to become GST compliant has been recently launched by PWC, the company which targets big business corporations instead of people.

Read more at: https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/297307

It has been more than a year since the biggest and the most comprehensive indirect tax reform, Goods and Service Tax (GST) has come into effect in India from 1 July 2017. This phenomenal task of shifting to the new digital regime of taxation is aimed at streamlining and consolidating indirect taxes in order to unify the market. This transition accounts for changes in all areas of business, tax rates and tax payment schedule, logistics, delivery, marketing and sales and so on. In this context let’s look at the few ways by which organizations can make the best use of GST.

·         Understanding and assessing the impact of GST on each aspect of the business.

·         Taking advantage of the integrated and unified system of taxes to streamline operations and rationalize prices.

·         By taking advantage of the single registration and seamless tax-credit flow mechanism, businesses can expand to other states/parts of the country.

·         Reaping out the benefits from increased at par competitiveness under unified GST which has replaced multiple tax systems levied by different authorities.

·         Increasing profit margins and reducing operational costs by ensuring all expenses where ITC can be claimed.

       Read more at: https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/308667

In countries where legacy systems, paper-based processes and outdated transparency are disarming both governments and citizens alike, Government-Tech, a $400 billion market is a promising take which is slowly giving attention to new age startups and venture capitalist for bringing in efficiency and transparency into the age-old problems. It has the potentiality to disrupt the age old delivery system of the government and provide much better and faster services at reduced costs. Coming to the Indian context, Government-Tech is still at a nascent stage and involves lot of risks but it can provide solutions to the problems involving obsolete technology, lack of information of processes and slow delivery due to bureaucracy which mostly happen to curb the government and the public sectors. For example, a solar powered IoT Air-Quality monitor called, “Polludron” is a low cost, eco-friendly and compact Oizom Instruments Solution which solves the problem of increasing commercialization. Despite the bright potentiality of the Government-Tech Start-Ups in India, there are also many challenges and problems that are rooted in the procurement processes of the government and bureaucratic mind set. Although technology continues to evolve, the unskilled and untrained workforce in the government/public sector results in sub optimal solutions as consultants have no practical exposure to the actual problems thus compromising the expected overall efficiency.

Read more at: https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/316558

With heightening popularity of Instagram among other social media platforms, creating an interactive link in one’s business bio is likely to attract interested people. Portraying a positive profile of a business is critical to its success on such a social media platform that engages its users on a visual scale. However grabbing someone’s attention within the limited space and among hundreds of other attractive posts demands a catchy bio for the business. Being the best platform for promoting physical products for most e-commerce sites, keeping one’s company’s bio original and engaging is crucial as this will not only enhance the company’s personality but also persuade the potential customers to join the circle.

Writing a perfect Instagram Bio should involve the following dimensions:-

·         A Profile Photo relevant to the business that would awaken the visual senses on visiting the page.

·         A proper named Username that will be displayed on top of the profile page and which will be easily searchable on Instagram search field.

·         Choosing appropriate words to summarize about the company and its activities in a Bio.

·         A Website Link which will allow the users to visit the company’s website page on one click.

·         An Email button which when clicked by a user would prompt the Instagram app to open its default mail app on the user’s phone.

Read more at: https://digitalagencynetwork.com/how-to-write-the-best-instagram-bios-for-businesses/

A simple yet effective way for restaurant owners to promote their restaurants’ brand and increase their clientele is by introducing SMS marketing in their market strategy. It helps their customers to stay updated about their favourite restaurants in the following ways:-

·         SMS marketing strategy gives customers insider information which makes them feel special and engages them in a unique manner. This information includes behind the scene pictures of a restaurant’s kitchen or messages about a sales event. This can be quite an effective way to show customers that they are valued thus increasing clienteles significantly.

·         It can be used as reservation reminders.

·         An effective use of SMS marketing is for making offer deals, promotions, coupons on a daily basis.

·         Mobile coupons are an effective way to use SMS marketing and can be modified to suit the customer list.

·         Making bulk SMSes can make restaurant owner to have edge over the cut-throat competition. More customer engagements would imply more traffic to the doors.

Read more at:  https://www.clickatell.com/articles/customer-relationship-management/sms-marketing-restaurants/

For any budding company or an industry, the ultimate driving force that can help them survive the thorny path of competition is ‘growth’. A particular company may not last long without growth fuelling its fire of success. It not only ensures easy and faster cash transaction but also makes ways for new project, satisfied customers and talented new hires. However if growth halts once, a company’s future is fully dependent on its founder’s ability to restart the engine of success. In fact in many cases half of the new businesses close down in five years in absence of the driving force.  Question arises on how to take up a company from the path of despair and jumpstart growth again. Let’s look at the following tips:

·         Adding empathy screening to hiring process- A better understanding among the workers of the company can lead to better anticipation of needs and improving productivity thus inevitably leading to faster growth processes. In fact empathetic behaviour helps to evaluate others’ agendas and deliver something that meets the needs of all.

·         Investing in relationship not in sales- Where authenticity is craved by the modern customers, one should promote content in such a manner such that it leads people to have a deeper connection to the brand. Just a mere commercialisation with clever camera edited marketing skills won’t help accelerate growth of the products much if it doesn’t make any sense for the brand.

Hence putting together a strong team and leveraging the most attractive features of a company can put off the stagnating growth and initialise the processes of success again.

Read more at: https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/316088

Insurance companies, over the decades, have been overwhelmingly dependent on credit scores for judging customers’ credit worthiness. Analysis of credit scores are in practice long before big data acquired a firm foot in the consumer analytics industry. However, they have often been criticized of being biased against the most credit-worthy individual. Not neglecting the obvious imperfection of these credit score based actuarial algorithm models, to make nuanced decisions regarding the credit risks of their customers, insurers have resorted to using big data. There may be certain variables incorporated in credit scoring algorithms that overstate customer dependability. A person with a good credit score, even if he faces a couple of repayment defaults due to sudden financial breakdown, would have his current credit score unaltered. Several other reasons have made insurers skeptical of using credit rating in the era of big data. With the help of big data Insurers now recognize that credit based insurance policies have increased the risk of unjust racial profiling. Limitations and fallacies of credit-scoring are being continually exposed by analytics modeling compelling insurance actuaries to upend existing policies and have greater reliance on data-intensive approach.

Read More at: https://smartdatacollective.com/big-data-causing-insurance-actuaries-move-away-using-credit-scores/

Nowadays, you can find the influence of economics in your favorite sports. The sports industry is using data and research to evaluate players, strategies and even leagues that are particularly driven by the rise of game theory in economics as game theory in sports industry uses models to figure out optimum strategies like what kind of Baseball pitches to be made or whether American Football teams should pass more. Some teams hire economists to solve specific strategic problems. The rise in sports economics is continuing as the data gets better and teams compete for a strategic edge. Want to know more about sports economics, visit: http://theconversation.com/how-and-why-economics-is-taking-over-sports-88574