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Digital Technologies and Digitized Data

Digitalization has driven major advances and has improvised the lives of the people throughout the world. Being at the top of the priority list companies have been focusing on two aspects – Inventing better solutions with digitalization and delivering superior customer experience. Digitalization has influenced almost all the sectors – Government, Manufacturing, Banking, Health, Service, Fashion, Media. Yes, a decade ago it would have been alien for us to imagine operating bank accounts via mobiles or having a language translator app, have social networking so convenient, having Cloud computing to store and process data rather than your personal computer or have a GPS directing our way when travelling. In short, digitalization has integrated with the society so much that on one side every company is striving to come out with innovative and new solutions via digitized approach to solving old problems. On the other side its benefits and challenges are becoming a focal point of question.

Digital Transformation and Digitalization 

Digitalization provides new opportunities and enhances economic growth. Collaborative business have reduced the production costs, distance education opportunities are available, an increased demand of labor in the service industry has helped job creations, internet platforms like search engines or marketing websites enables the companies and consumers to network. This networking plays a key role in improving the quality as per customers’ demands. With an endless list of advantages there have been debates on the downside as well. Data security and privacy concerns have been topping the list. With so much of data availability how safe and secure is the information of the user. Excessive workload and interruption in personal life has been a concern. Dependability on machinery can cause losing the labor skill which surely is not a good sign. All in all, with all the advantages and challenges, digital technology has revolutionized every aspect of our lives today and it cannot be denied that today’s world cannot do without.

Global Challenges to Cybersecurity

Have you been on news lately talking about the cyber-attacks across the world? Did you know around 21% of computers and phones are infected with malware in India alone and nearly 1/3rd in the world. A great emphasis is being stressed on the Cyber Security to combat the threats estimated in 2019. A lot of Cyber security events are being organized in India, USA, UK and EU in 2019. Cyber Security is a term which is so often used in the world of technology we live in today. With the increasing data flow and dependability on digital world all across sectors the possibility of data loss, theft and damage is immense. In simple words, Cyber Security is nothing but technology designed to protect our hardware, software and data from theft, damage, loss, hacking and phishing. According to Cyber Security Ventures, the damage related to cyber security crime is projected to hit $1 trillion annually by 2021.

Cyber Security Threats

Which also indicates the cyber security threats have taken a new trend which only accelerates the damage. Some of the 2019 trends observed are – Phishing getting more to steal user logins, credit card credentials and financial information, Crypto jacking , state sponsored attacks, cyber-physical attacks, IoT Attacks etc., IT Companies are coming up with latest security technologies to counter these threats like Hardware authentication, UBA (User Behavior Analytics), encryption and tokenization, Artificial Intelligence and machine learning.

TechnoGen offers various solutions as well to protect its customer’s valuable data and ensure their safety.

Every business or corporation in the modern world is keen to keep up with the latest, whether it relates to information, techniques and strategies, tools and gadgets, etc. This helps it to stay in line or even a step ahead of its competitors. Towards this end, establishments keep in regular touch with social media, trends in e-commerce, the Internet of Things, etc. As a result, the volume of data that wends its way into their data stores only keeps growing day after day. This is Big Data, visualized in the form of gigabytes/megabytes/kilobytes/terabytes/petabytes on computer systems. Since the kind of data that arrives is varied in nature, as well as rapid in its pace, organizations face all manner of challenges while dealing with Big Data.

Storage Space

If the growth of data is so quick that its speed of arrival is doubling every couple of years, then, one can well imagine the huge problems created with safe storage. It is necessary to store every bit of information until an establishment finds time to sift through it and differentiate between what is relevant and what is irrelevant. There is further compounding of this problem by the fact that a large part of this information is unstructured data. By unstructured data, we mean photographs, videos, documents, audios, etc.

Currently, several innovative technologies are coming into play for dealing with this issue. For instance, it is possible to scale hardware via the utilization of software-defined facilities. It is also possible to go in for hyper-converged and converged infrastructure. In case the establishment wishes to cut down on costs and space for storage, it can take recourse to a tier system, compression, or de-duplication.

Provision of Timely Insights

Now, it does not enough provide space for storage of big data. It is equally essential for the experts in analytics in any establishment to go through this data as meticulously as possible. This will enable them to provide insights that will help their respective companies to grow. Furthermore, these insights have to come into display in a timely manner. 

Note that every business, big or small, has its goals to achieve. These goals may even need modifications occasionally. Then again, new goals come to take the place of the old, soon after the company delivers them. A few examples of such targets include developing innovative ways of functioning, the cost-effectiveness of each project, providing new products or services to the local and global marketplace regularly, initiate a data-driven culture at the workplace, etc. Therefore, the experts have to be on their toes all the time. They have to remember that the contemporary business world is a highly competitive one.

How are they coping with this challenge?

The analytics department in any organization is taking recourse to tools, such as artificial intelligence, Spark, NoSQL databases, significant data analytics software, machine learning, Hadoop, and business intelligence applications. Researchers and developers of software programs are looking into ways to generate reports speedily, too, such that real-time analytics aids in rapid responses to whatever is happening in the marketplace.

Who are the Experts?

Obviously, any organization will need a team of people who are perceptive, skilled, acquainted with technological advancements and their operations, and eager to keep them abreast of everything that is happening in the immediate and remote environments. They have another qualification, too – a degree in Data Science. In other words, this will be a team of data scientists, who know their worth and will demand high salaries. In fact, one may achieve a degree in Data Science too nowadays. Fortunately, for them, many organizations are willing to set aside a budget specifically for recruiting talented people, as well as training them. At the same time, they are striving to recognize and enhance talent from within the establishment too.

As if this were not enough, companies are exhibiting an eagerness to purchase analytics solutions that are equipped with machine learning or self-service functions. Thus, people without degrees in Data Science may utilize them comfortably too.

Integration of Data

Considering that big data streams into the organization via diverse sources, it is a huge challenge to integrate it. For instance, employees prepare their daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, or yearly reports. Then again, the company avails information from social media streams too. E-mail systems, enterprise applications, mobiles, etc., are other sources. Naturally, the integration of big data for the preparation of factual, precise, and concise reports does not prove to be an easy task at all.

Once again, different tools come into play, thanks to the creative minds of different vendors. They carry the labels of data integration and ETL tools. Regardless, data integration remains a genuine problem, and software programmers are still grappling with ideas on dealing with it successfully.

Closely associated with this issue is the one focusing on the validation of data. Many times, an establishment finds itself viewing similar scraps of data forwarded by diverse systems. To make the matter more complicated, the similar-looking data from one system may not exactly match the one from another system. To illustrate, an enterprise resource planning system and the e-commerce system may exhibit different numbers regarding daily sales. Anyone, preparing a report dealing with sales, will be confused! Therefore, it is imperative to have a team take charge of data governance. This team will be responsible for formulating policies, processes, and technology usage.

Miscellaneous Challenges

After doing so much hard work, if an organization should find its data store hacked or corrupted, it would be akin to a terrible disaster! Therefore, organizations strive to keep their big data safe and secure through the usage of data encryption, identity and access control, data segregation, etc.

Although there are all kinds of technologies to deal with significant data challenges, there are none to deal with the biggest problem of all – human resistance. Surprisingly, the majority of businesses fail to comprehend the importance of managing big data effectively, such that they achieve their goals quickly. If they view and do things differently, software developers will gain the impetus they need to come up with more significant and more practical innovations.

According to Gartner, ever since Salesforce arrived in the year 1999, the concept of a cloud-based enterprise application, or what we call a SaaS model, has picked up speed in terms of global acceptance across industry verticals. A key benefit that any cloud services bring to the table is scalability combined with cost-benefit. Due to the ease of implementation and ease of access, it empowers the organization to bring in efficiency across the board and increase utilization of the application.

The e-commerce industry has been a sector that has consumed the cloud infrastructure to its maximum potential, and the journey has not ended yet. Cloud computing provides immense flexibility to organizations to manage their applications, services, and infrastructure seamlessly. It allows marketers to engage with customers easily. Cloud infrastructure management has become very easy for online retail channels, and to top it all, they can easily harness cloud computing services to develop highly interactive and customer friendly websites for online purchases. Thanks to smartphones and cost-effective internet, today, almost every individual uses a smartphone to buy products online.

With all these, ifs and buts around cloud computing, it is critical to know the importance of cloud computing in the e-commerce industry. This can be done by looking at some of the benefits that it brings to the table

Cost-Benefit

It is an underlying statement that cloud computing is extremely cost-effective. This can be known from the fact that virtualized machines are bringing about a saving of approximately 80% of the total expenditure on IT infrastructure.

Quick Deployment

Unlike an on premise deployment, where there is an installation process involved, a cloud is a plug-n-play option, making deployment extremely fast. This allows companies to expedite their go-to-market strategy.

Security

Security and cloud technology in the e-commerce sector are the two terminologies that go hand-in-hand. However, today, some applications come with 256-bit SSL encryption combined with strong VAPT credentials. The apps come with multi-layered firewall encryption and a robust DARP mechanism.

Process Enhancement

Implementing cloud infrastructure enables organizations to enhance their business processes across the enterprise.

Furthermore, organizations need to understand as to why they should go for cloud infrastructure. The entire crux of this is around the database that is used for the storage of information. Today enterprise application providers are also coming up with their cloud database structures. A cloud database that is distributed across multiple instances is the talk of the town and accepted and adopted by many enterprises across industry verticals.

When it comes to e-commerce companies, there is more than just the front-end interface of their applications. E-commerce companies need to have a platform that will enable them to manage their product catalogs and run complex algorithms to deliver customer experience. Hence, it is compelling for them to go for cloud database tools such as SAP HANA, for instance, which has been doing tremendous inroads in the retail and e-commerce segment. With the cloud database, organizations can

· Get a comprehensive and consolidated real-time view of customer data, customer behavior, and other key parameters

· Deliver personalized experience to their user base and engage with them constantly through various channels

· Communicate effectively through personalized and curated responses for each customer

This is just the start as we see more and more e-commerce companies shifting to cloud computing, leveraging the cloud infrastructure to stay ahead of their competition.

Technology and data are two of the most important things which control today\’s world. A combination of the two helps individuals, businesses, and mega-corporations make critical strategic decisions in their respective fields. This combination is what makes big data analysis work. Moreover, Big data analytics can be defined as the examination of voluminous amounts of data to gain insight into various patterns. Wondering how exactly this helps businesses? Let\’s show you:

Reduced costs: Most companies have to crunch vast volumes of data to gain new information pertaining to their sector. This data analysis yields hidden opportunities that can be harnessed by the business. It could also lead to the conception of new strategic business moves. But it doesn\’t end up just benefiting the company. It helps its customers, too, since it leads to efficient operations and improved products.

Improved decision making: The combination of technology and speed allows one to analyze the voluminous amount of data at their disposal. This leads to new data sources being analyzed faster and with greater efficiency. All this lets businesses make better and faster decisions, which benefits not just the top management of the company but also its workers and customers.

Allowing innovations: Companies are able to very quickly analyze loads of data pertaining to consumer complaints, preferences, and wants. So they are able to give their customers what they are asking for immediately. This lets businesses introduce new variety in their product line, discontinue services, change products, etc. according to the taste of its customers.

Which Companies Make Use of Big Data Analytics?

Big data analysis helps a lot of companies, businesses, and institutions in myriad fields. As such, there are a lot of individuals and enterprises which use this technology to their advantage. Some examples are:

Banking

Banks are the custodians of vast volumes of private data and money. On top of the existing data pile, they also have to deal with loads of new unstructured information on a daily basis. As such, technology used in solving and structuring big data allows financial institutions to make better decisions. This ultimately proves to be beneficial to its customers.

Life Sciences

Everyone knows that any clinical research takes a lot of time to complete or even to get somewhere concrete. As such, using technology to process vast amounts of clinical data faster improves the efficiency of clinical research at every stage.

Healthcare

Medical institutions and hospitals have huge amounts of patient data to contend with. This includes medical history, diagnosis, test results, discharge dates, and more. It is impossible to keep track of such massive data loads. So big data analysis steps in here to help with structuring and streamlining the data. This allows for better diagnosis, results, and more.

Big data technology is nothing short of an innovation that has revolutionized information technology. Companies are improving their data analysis technology every year in a bid to make it more effective, efficient, and, most importantly, precise in detecting patterns.

Human Capital Management is the process of identifying, recruiting, managing, developing, and retaining resources in an organization for maximizing the business value. It refers to extracting the best out of a resource and continuously upgrading their skill for their personal growth and eventually helping an organization achieve its goals.

Benefits of Human Capital Management (HCM):

1. Hires the Right Candidate at Right Place

HCM helps the HR personnel to hire the right candidate at the right place. It helps in analyzing the impressive resumes, tracking candidates, and identifying the best person for the role. The entire onboarding process is streamlined with the help of HCM. It helps in hiring the candidate whose skill or knowledge perfectly fits for the job and who also wants to grow within the organization.

2. Retains the Right Candidate with Proper Training and Development

Training and development programs are essential to enhance the skills of the resources so that they can work efficiently and eventually increase the organization\’s productivity. Most of the resources want growth and advancement in their careers. If they can get trained on the skills within the organization, they will feel engaged and will not look for a new job. Thus, HCM can help in retaining the resources.

3. Focuses on Soft Skills and Personality Development

It is considered that apart from Hard core skills, a resource should be possessing soft skills like Communication skills, Teamwork, Leadership skills, Adaptability, flexibility, problem-solving skills, etc. HCM programs are designed in a way to track the progress of the resources, and thus, it quickly finds out the weak areas in a resource and where it needs improvement. HCM ensures that the resources are trained on those skills, and there is a constant improvement in their personality development.

4. Improves Communication between Seniors and Subordinates

Human Capital Management allows a free flow of information from seniors to subordinates and vice versa. It ensures there is transparency in communication throughout the organization. The seniors should often communicate with the subordinates so that the broader goals and objectives are made clear, and top officials become aware of the problems of the resources. With proper communication, there will be no misunderstandings, and half of the issues will get solved.

5. Improves Return on Investment (ROI)

All organizations invest in human resources in terms of Salary, benefits, perks, etc. HCM makes sure that the resources are adequately trained to give maximum out of their job. Improving the efficiency of the resources by providing them opportunities for growth and advancement keeps them happy and satisfied, which leads to better productivity. If the resources perform better, eventually, the organization will earn profits.

6. Analyzes Performance and Decides Pay Incentives

HCM helps in making the resources self-sufficient so that they can perform better and achieve their personal goals along with fulfilling the organization\’s objectives. HR personnel should have a clear understanding of the core competencies. Once it is defined, the HR personnel can decide which skills are essential and what should be the pay for it accordingly.

7. Tracks Resources: Time, Attendance, and Benefits.

HCM system provides a platform for payroll management. It helps the managers to know the time (hours worked), attendance, and productivity of the resources so that they can analyze their performance. HCM brings scheduling and payroll reporting under one roof. It helps in tracking the accurate no. of hours worked, including overtime and thus paying for only those hours. It also records remote login and logout details of resources.

Thus, HCM is the process of streamlining all human resource activities like recruiting, training, tracking, and retaining. HCM system provides a lot of data that is critical for any organization and helps them in making the right decisions. HCM helps an organization to achieve its goals by upgrading the skill of its indispensable resources and motivating them for better performance.

The concept of healthcare management is quite simple, even when it is broadly described as a complex concept to understand. In simple words, the management of the hospital is related to healthcare management. Similarly, management consulting for healthcare is the obtaining of information regarding the optimal and proper management of the hospital. This consulting is getting from experts in the field of healthcare. A hospital can be a very hectic place to work. Therefore, the management of all the operations in a proper manner is very crucial for the smooth functioning.

Even if there is a vast internal workforce available in the hospital, some issues just cannot be managed. Therefore, third party management services can come in very handy in such situations. The consultants who act for healthcare management services are experts in their respective fields. Thus, any challenging situation can handle so that there is no compromise on the productivity and functioning of the hospital.

Why is Healthcare Management Services needed?

At present, various firms provide such healthcare management consulting services. Different reputed hospitals hire such services so that the normal operations of the hospitals can raise to an even better standard. It also brings developments in technology along with the hospital, as well as a whole, and there is a total improvement in the atmosphere and functionality of the hospital. In present times, the steady rise in the cost of healthcare is one of the major concerns of every hospital out there. With the use of healthcare management services, the consultants can provide insight as to how to cut down the total expenses without compromising anything on the treatments of patients. The existing resources available are used entirely in optimal conditions to do this, such that the most can take out of them. It reduces expenses, as well as improves the quality of healthcare.

Management consulting for healthcare is done by many business institutions, local institutions, and IT organizations as well. These institutions understand the business of the different healthcare organizations in-depth and provide a solution such that everything can run smoothly with the best productivity. One such provider of healthcare management consulting service is Technogen.

Even in management institutions, such courses are quite popular at present. Many students were showing interest in this field as the pay is quite good.

Apart from the regular healthcare management services that are providing in the healthcare industry, extensive management services are also offering. These include medical equipment consultation, quality consultation, certification and accreditation preparation, legal consultation, and so on.

Managing both Business and Quality

It is reasonable that the owners of the hospitals and the various stakeholders have a business aim in mind, both long term and short term. With the workforce, the management of patients, funds, branding, and staffing all together can be tough to deal with. Hence, external help is very much a necessity at present. Therefore, hiring external healthcare management consulting services who are experts in dealing with these types of challenges is also becoming very common nowadays.

Ultimately, a patient is seeking the best treatment for his or her condition. Even with business targets, the main aim of these external healthcare management consulting services is never to compromise anything regarding the timely treatment of patients. Outside help in the management of such things can prevent the slowing down of the standard functions and productivity of the hospital. It is beneficial for both parties.

TQM, or commonly known as Total Quality Management, is an approach that aims at enhancing the performance and improving the quality, which can benefit the customers beyond their target. The business organizations often come up with new concepts that they would like to implement on a business. The main aim of doing so is to get a higher investment return. Therefore, a lot of organizations and institutions are moving towards the implementation of TQM. When the employees understand the situation correctly, it becomes easier for everyone to be able to adjust as per the changes.

Advantages of Implementing TQM

Some of the significant benefits that can come from TQM implementation are-

Operating Cost Gets Reduced

Sometimes, it is not enough to manufacture a product with good quality, provide an excellent service, or to achieve high customer satisfaction alone. When this goal reached, the cost of doing so has to be managed carefully, as well. It is required as the business needs a desirable long term quality cost effect. The various quality aspects which are related to the organization quantified in money terms, which are known as quality cost. When the efficiency of an organization measured in terms of operation and productivity, the perspective of quality cost can be approached to get a valuable analysis.

There are individual failure costs, both internal and external. Some can be detected beforehand; others are noticing after customers have received them. It can lead to extra services such as warranty, repair, and replacement that can damage the goodwill of a company. When such errors reduced, the operating cost also gets decreased automatically. Thus, productivity will increase, and the profits will increase as well with the implementation of TQM.

Employee Involvement Gets Improved

With the practice of TQM, there is a significant improvement on the teamwork of the employees, due to high motivation. Additionally, the employees are also encouraged to improve, manage, and control the processes for which they are responsible.

Company Morale Gets Enhanced

The effort and commitment of the employees are critical to the success of any organization. With proper management, the workplace can be designed to provide excellent performance. Apart from this, activity management is also required. These include the development and selection of employees, work motivation, and evaluation of their performance in a period. All of these can affect the success of an organization. With proper use of education, responsibility, and teamwork among the workers, which can achieve with the implementation of TQM, the work quality will increase significantly. The working environment will be a happy one, as well. Therefore, the morale of the company as a whole will get automatically enhanced, which will improve productivity as well.

Continuous Improvement and Reengineering Of Business Processes Gets Established

Even with the brilliant improvement, there is still room for improvement. There is no end where this road can go. Many are reluctant to go on the process of continuous improvement, as the height of growth can never achieve. Others gifted with more vision, and they take the road for constant improvement and never settling on their success. With the implementation of TQM, the performance of management and the employees can improve continuously. The different aspects of the business which are out of control suddenly can be easily managed in such scenarios. With this advantage of TQM, the company tries to always improve on their current condition. This practice is what can differentiate the good companies from the very best.

There is a tonne of financial services available at any time at one\’s disposal. Financial services assist with several things. This ranges from something as simple as helping clients get their loans to helping huge firms secure mergers and other huge transactions. From the outside, this might seem like a smoothly run operation. But management consultancy has a vital role to play here.

What is management consulting?

Management consulting is a field involved in helping clients understand, analyze, and solve their problems. To carry out this objective, management consultants first frame the issue in a manner that invites a logical and rational approach towards solving it. In the next step, consultants help their clients form appropriate solutions to the problems. But that\’s not all; these consultants help clients implement the predetermined solutions as well. This may sound simple, but it\’s not. The problems which these client companies face are not straight forward. These problems occasionally involve many departments and even other companies.

Types of management consultants or consultancy firms

Specific groups: Just like financial services is an umbrella term for a lot of services grouped under one head, the same goes for management consulting as well. Management consultants who assist financial service providers are divided into specific groups that focus on particular financial niches.

Independent management consultants: Apart from management consultancy firms, some independent consultants are gradually becoming more popular. These independent consultants provide specialized work at competitive rates and that too in a much shorter time frame. These independent management consultants also offer flexibility in work schedules. But traditional management firms are still mostly preferred over independent ones until the need for a highly specialized skill arises. This is because conventional firms can engage in huge specialized manpower for a project in a short period.

Why financial services hire management consultants?

Financial services spend vast amounts of money on hiring management consultancies because:

To assist with digital transformation: Technology is a huge factor that influences the hiring of consultancies by financial services. More and more financial service providers want to bring on a digital change regarding how they carry out their work. Apart from improving their digital work models, many financial firms also want to exploit the digital scenario to grow more.

To engage specific skills: Sometimes, financial services don\’t have the manpower with particular skills to carry out some work. This necessitates the hiring of consultants who have the specific skill set which the firm wants. In these cases, management consultants are generally hired for a short period.

To increase headcount: In times of big financial projects, financial firms might not have the necessary manpower to carry out the job. This is different from hiring consultants with a specific skill set. Here the primary necessity isn\’t a skill but headcount. In these times, firms need the manpower to carry out the work.

Management consultancy is an attractive gig where the demand for both specialized skills and general skills is high.