Showing posts with label #NewBeginnings. Show all posts
Showing posts with label #NewBeginnings. Show all posts

Sunday, June 21, 2020

Grab Your Cheese with Data Science!

Who Moved My Cheese? An Amazing Way to Deal with Change in Your Work and in Your Life, shares amazing principles to live by and drive change in your businesses. The book published in Sept’1998 describes change in one's work and life, and four typical reactions to those changes by two mice and two "Little people", during their hunt for cheese.

Well, the four characters symbolically teach us the 6 principles to deal with change and transformation.

The “new normal” post COVID19 and the other socio-economic changes happening around, has certainly led many companies to deal with lot of mess! It has become pretty much “new normal” news in media these days of enterprises shutting down, people losing jobs and SMEs grappling with ideas for the new business models. To sum it up, CHANGE HAPPENS, pretty much inevitably! 
That brings us to the Principle #1: They Keep Moving the Cheese. (Change happens)

With the sudden halt in regular and even visionary planned activities, industries were left with nothing less than chaotic and turbulent times of lack of resources to tap new customers, envision future growth and even mobilize their own employees. Tough times don’t last, but tough businesses do! The companies who saw the evolving trends in direction of digital transformation, still saw a breather. However, the laggards in initiating digital transformation faced the brunt of the being in “Hem & Haw” mind-set. In the dynamic world we live in, the second principle is food for thought for leaders driving businesses in any industry at any scale. Principle #2: Get Ready for the Cheese to Move. (Anticipate change).

Digital Transformation is a journey to become excellent in what you deliver to consumers, at the minimal costs. The transformative process includes change management and thought leadership to define the boundaries and metrics of the process. These can only be defined by taking a top-down approach on exactly what value you want to deliver. It, hence, becomes phenomenally essential to know where you stand and where you want to reach. Companies starting anew with their digital transformation strategies, need a support arm to pivot their commandments to maximize their efforts for key offerings.

Principle #3: Smell the Cheese Often so You Know When It’s Getting Old. (Monitor Change). The support arm required to aid the leadership is deep dive look in data and make data-driven decisions with help of Data Science. Data Science provides the patronage to take calculated risks and informed decisions. Being a subset of bigger picture of digital strategies deployed by the businesses, data science improvises the processes, automates wherever required and gives constant support to monitor the key metrics using analytics. It helps in devising the action plans to be adopted with lesser cost and higher benefits.  

Based on the recent report shared by Gartner - It should also be noted that if nearly 50% of enterprises are looking to invest in analytics, another 50% are not. In fact, the CDO survey found that less than 50% of documented corporate strategies don’t mention data and analytics as key components for delivering enterprise value. The reason for this? According to Mike Rollings, Research VP at Gartner, the real reason is the limitations of traditional analytics offerings.

This calls for need of Principle #4: The Quicker You Let Go of Old Cheese, the Sooner You Can Enjoy New Cheese. (Adapt to change quickly). That is because traditional data and analytics strategies overlook the demands of digital business. Modern data and analytics serve a broader enterprise purpose and are more integrated into the ways people work than ever before, causing a new approach to data and analytics strategy to emerge. “IT leaders need to look at data first to succeed in their digital initiatives, rather than treating them as an afterthought to help with ad-hoc projects,” Rolling said during the Gartner IT Symposium in Orlando.

With the new changes in the market scenario, it becomes vital to walk with the times and think beyond traditional ways. Principle #5: Move With the Cheese. (Change) – asserts the same to change and upgrade with the times. Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence have unfolded the new reigns of customer satisfaction, employee productivity improvement and governance to improve as and when new trends emerge. To deploy Data Science in your organization, following things pointers aid for better execution –

  1. Build Organizational Structure and processes to be able to quickly and automatically collect, analyse, and act on available data.

  2. Develop Analytics Leaders who bridge both data science with company strategy. Analytics leaders need to know enough about the business to ask the right questions of data.

  3. Focus on Better Data, Not Big Data. Too often we see companies that are collecting data for data's sake, rather than taking a lean approach where they only collect data when it helps optimize the experience for their target customers, or better prediction of future behaviors.

  4. Separate the Signal from the Noise as too many organizations ingest huge volumes of data without cleaning it, and then get garbage out from the garbage they put in (i.e., GIGO). The proliferation of new types of unstructured data adds fuel to the fire. This quandary can be avoided by developing a data quality plan and methodology.

Mindful approach towards implantation of Digital Transformation with Data Science and continuous learning with the emerging times is the only way to Principle #6: Savor the Adventure and Enjoy the Taste of New Cheese. The transformation from "HEM" mindset to "HAW" mindset, by acquiring the skills of "SNIFF & SCURRY" surely won’t qualify to be the sweet path to success, but certainly a worthy one and help you to grab your cheese.

Further reference: Summary of “Who Moved My Cheese” is best explained in this video.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2QmeWe2KoDs


Sunday, June 14, 2020

Digital Awakening during the times of #Atmanirbhar Bharat

Digital Awakening during the times of #Atmanirbhar Bharat 
Featuring Education Sector

Amidst the foreseen economic crisis and its obvious impacts, PM Modi announced economic packages for ‘Atmanirbhar Bharat Abhiyan' or 'Self-Reliant India Mission' on 12th May, 2020. The hashtags #AtmanirbharBharat and #VocalForLocal became an overnight trend on twitter. Well, they did receive a bag full of mixed reactions from Indian Janta; some criticizing, some wondering, some celebrating and some just ignoring! Many new reforms and policies were announced by the government to make things easier, but the inquisitive me just wanted to get into depth of how much are we already ready for this “Atmanirbharta” stuff.

Hogging on numerous debates and opinions flooding the internet, I went on a quest to understand how much “Digitally Atmanirbhar” are we really are? And, to my surprise, there is a lot to share on my findings!

Well, to start with, going by the history of Indian Government digital initiatives, the first step was taken as part of e-governance during ‘90s. However, the impact and sustainability of those reforms were short lived citing to various reasons. Of late, there has been a deep plunge taken by government of India in transforming economy digitally. Going by the latest trends, mobile apps like Arogya Setu, Umang, DigiLocker, PAYGOV, etc. have seen a big thumps up by many in MSME and Rural- agricultural sectors. Initiatives like “Digital India” have made to news bulletin across the globe. Also, interday and intraday updates on COVID-19 Cases on Telegram channel, flyers and posters on preventive measures and YouTube Channels to teach yoga or entertain with creative arts have added different colors to advancement made in analytics and digital marketing by the government.

Amongst all the different sectors, education sector lies close to my heart. Probably because being a teachers’ daughter has made me see its virtues and vices pretty closely. It became my first obvious choice to analyse the Digital #Atmanirbharta in Education Sector.

The Digital #Atmanirbharta in Education Sector

Of late, I have been intrigued by the idea of ‘School from Home’. Seeing my mom learning new tools and technologies to cope up with the new digital era, has made me wonder on various questions like What is in it for the under-privileged students, students who have face lack of infrastructure issues and there exist a huge digital divide? Why is government not doing much on providing the required infra? What could be possible solutions to cater those ‘Bottom of Pyramid’ students’ educational needs?

To my surprise, there are few answers draped in webpages of government sites! Although they do not answer all my questions, yet it is a pleasant surprise to discover them. There are plethora of web/mobile apps, tools and resources to help the stakeholders of education sector. Listing a few of them –

a)     SWAYAM PRABHA – An initiative of the Ministry of Human Resources Development started since 1989 to provide 32 High Quality Educational Channels through DTH (Direct to Home) across the length and breadth of the country on 24X7 basis. It has curriculum-based course content covering diverse disciplines. Pretty much, reminds me of our SSC past-paper questions being published in Indian Express, just that this is on TV.

b)     SWAYAM – Extension of above program with a dash of sophistication, SWAYAM (Study Webs of Active-Learning for Young Aspiring Minds) App is an Indian Massive open online course (MOOC) platform in collaboration with 7 esteemed institutes inclusive of IITs and IIMs. The content is free for everyone, certification comes with proctored test at nominal costs. Feels much like Desi version of Coursera/EdX, certifying professional courses by Indian Institutes. Do visit this app at this link for learning more about it!

c)     DIKSHA: NATIONAL TEACHER PLATFORM – MHRD’s DIKSHA is one stop solution for teacher’s experience delivering aid as 7 verticals – Content Creation, School leadership skill development, teacher’s professional development, Assessment, Innovation in Pedagogy, Teacher profile registry and learning content. Download and experience it here


d)    E-Pathshala: Learning on the Go – With several NCERT textbooks uploaded, this platforms adds value to students, teachers, educators and Parents. Experience it here.

e)     Miscellaneous - Artificial Intelligence (IndiaAI) Website and many more government websites from different ministries of Indian Government to accelerate learning and adoption of digital technologies by everyone.

A single step in right direction is much more important than taking leaps in wrong direction. These initiatives might be rookie in EdTech sector, but seems to be promising. However, a fear creeps in going by the past experiences, usually government reforms start with great rigor and enthusiasm but soon fizzle out.

Requesting the readers to feel free to share your views on these enhancements in comment section J


Saturday, June 6, 2020

“BIG BANG” DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION



The word “DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION” appears to be a colossal process that only MNCs and big corporations can afford. The clamor around it by CIOs has resulted in coining of a new term as “DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION FATIGUE”- A state where leaders of world class companies have put brakes on digital initiatives to save themselves from the chaos of ever emerging technologies in this field.

However, no matter how ironic it may sound, the fact is Digital Transformation is here to stay. Not for being some trendy buzz words, but to revolutionize the way our businesses work.

In simple words, “Digital Transformation (DT or DX) is not just a simple change, it is a thought driven process”. Driven by people oriented processes, it involves untiring effort for change management and talent management. Communication and involvement of all stakeholders is the key to success. Digital Transformation leverages tools and various technological platforms to accelerate the scalability of business and elasticity of customers.

Digital tools play a vital role to make the information accessible to all employees and stakeholders. It doubles the odds of becoming a successful market leader in your sector. When done right, digital transformation has the potential to enable your business to reap significant, and well-documented, benefits.

Digitized SMEs are capable of diversifying consumer segments in a short period compared to offline businesses by

  • Increasing revenue
  • Providing access to higher customer base
  • Increasing operational efficiency
  • Enhancing customer experience

The success story of Chitale Dairy is a prime example of how a strategic digital implementation plan helps in getting the best of the market available. By “taking cows to cloud and farms to fridge”, Chitale devised its way to become India’s one of the top Dairy companies reaching across India. The business owners wanted to scale their family business to thousands of satellite farmers across India. With a vision to boost animal health, which results in higher milk production, higher quality, and the need for less land, RFID tags were attached to more than 50,000 cloud-connected cows. They used these tags to build analytics around health of cows, milk production, nutritional needs, and other parameters. The data is uploaded to the cloud, interpreted by the dairy’s veterinarians and then shared with about 10,000 satellite farmers via SMS messages sent to their mobile phones on a daily basis so they can better manage their livestock and operations. The ability to monitor, react and predict cow behavior and health in real time is providing Chitale Dairy with extraordinary results.

Indian Governments have taken a step forward for putting the cherry on the cake for Small Medium Enterprises. During the difficult times of COVID-19 Locked down government has started taking reforms to help local kirana stores to become e-tailers from retailers. The digital transformation in Kirana stores would soon foster, with Facebook acquiring 10% stake in Reliance Mart to make their orders online using a mix of collaborative tools like WhatsApp. With these emerging trends, local kiranas need to re-think their business models. Either invest and adapt a technology or help in building ecosystems by collaborating with tech-savvy startups like Swiggy Genie or Dunzo, resulting in increased employment in retail management sector.

With such advancements, we are a step closer to becoming a robust economy and probably more structured markets.

Becoming Digitally Awakened is no more a choice, it is a must.