35 Marketing Trends found for Human resources / Outsourcing

... MaaS, will handle it all.

According to UK-incorporated multinational professional services firm Deloitte, MaaS's goal is the creation of an integrated system of mobility so convenient “that consumers opt to relinquish their personal vehicles for city commuting because the MaaS alternative is more appealing.”

Moreover, Deloitte believes that a natural next step would be to capitalise on the popularity of these programs and, combining with trip-planning apps, integrate them into a single platform for customers to plan and pay for travel services.

To work effectively, MaaS would require the following conditions: Widespread penetration of smartphones on 3G/4G/5G networks; high levels of connectivity; secure, dynamic, up-to-date information on travel options, schedules, and updates; and cashless payment systems.”

Collaboration would be paramount between the transportation providers, local governing authorities, and payment processors, among others, who would all enable this to happen.

Read the original unbridged FoxBusiness.com article.

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... five years.

According to a report in Business Insider the company, which currently manages $150bn in funds, has revealed in a note to clients that it will start laying off employees.

The bulk of the cuts will impact upon the company's back-of-the-house workforce, specifically technology, recruiting, facilities, and management services,

The layoffs will also lead to significant changes to processes and technologies.

Moreover, according to MediaPost journalist George Simpson, it might be argued that with algorithms, programmatic and the beginnings of AI continuing to grow, the advertising industry is not long for this world.

Notes Mr Simpson wryly: "And given the quality of most of the Super Bowl ads this year, the whole argument about the need for human creative is pretty much out the window at this point".

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...  pay them the national living wage plus holiday pay and other employment benefits.

The court's ruling could also extend to another highflying online business, the worldwide accommodations site Airbnb.

Commenting on ther court's decision, Andy Hood, head of emerging technologies at global digital ad agency agency AKQA opined: "Technology innovation is ahead of behaviour and behaviour is ahead of legislation".

Mr Hood also maintains that "current laws do not apply well to the gig economy", adding that "people who provide the services that platforms like Uber and Airbnb offer are not really ‘self-employed’ as we would normally understand that term, nor full-time employees – but something in-between".

Moreover, says Hood: "The gig economy (an environment in which temporary positions are common and organisations contract with independent workers for short-term engagements) will be in a state of flux until global legislation catches up with what amounts to a new class of worker."

Read the original unabridged CampaignLive.co.uk article.
 

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... needed to house one.

Cloud computing, or in simpler shorthand  "The cloud", also focuses on maximising the effectiveness of the shared resources. Cloud resources are usually not only shared by multiple users but are also dynamically reallocated per demand.

“All the tools we’re using really pay dividends,” says DigitalOcean Ceo Ben Uretsky. “I think that gives us a leg up.”

DigitalOcean rents out its computers for $10 per month or a penny and a half an hour, a price comparable to or below those at Amazon, Google, and Microsoft, according to researcher Scalyr, a specialist in fast search and analysis of operational data.

DigitalOcean is managing more than 100 million gigabytes of data, about the size of Facebook’s video and photo library when it went public in 2012.

Read the original unabriged Bloomberg.com article.

All data sources are attributed with links to the original insight. The insight is then summarised and, where appropriate, enhanced with additional information.

... its milions of shoppers.

According to UK ad trade journal The Drum, whether it’s data from sales or from marketing, there’s a dense web Mars needs to unravel before it can understand why people are more likely to purchase, say, a Snickers bar on one day than they are on another.

Dan Burdett, global brand director for Snickers told The Drum: “We need to understand why managing and keeping your own data is important”.

“In the past, we, along with other companies, have fallen into the trap of allowing the data and information to be held by third parties, and I think you only get value out of the information when you’re able to interpret and interrogate it in a way that bypasses having to rely on third parties to give you the bits of information that they’re keen for you to see, but are keeping the bits that they think are better for themselves.”

Mars Inc's reluctance to share its first party data – in particular the insights generated by it - is also shared by peers like Mondelez, which earlier this year told The Drum that coming up to a solution was akin to “treading carefully in a land of giants”.

Read the original unabridged The Drum article.

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... attitudes toward vendor-hosted cloud software.

In an article earlier this week the WSJ reported that cost is also also a major factor for deserting outsourcers, citing as an example UK-based pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca which expects over the next two years to halve its previous annual outsourcing spend of $750m, as the company shifts toward cloud software.

To this end, AstraZeneca CIO David Smoley has hired more software engineers to build custom software and implement cloud software in a bid to to enhance collaboration, service desk, human resources and other services.

However this trend is far from universal. IDC analyst David Tapper warns that companies quitting offshore outsourcing in favour of in-house or cloud IT facilities, are likely to see their costs “go way up.”

He also believes that although outsourcing from the US and Europe to offshore facilities in lower-cost countries such as India and Russia is much cheaper than in the US, Wall Street analysts are likely to savage companies whose earnings reflect sharply rising expenditures.

Read the original unabridged BlogsWSJ.com article.

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Prominent among the jobs deemed to be creative are those of artists, architects, web designers and IT specialists. Top among such occupations are ...

1. Translators and interpreters (5.8%)
2. Performing artists (7%)
3. Radio broadcasters (7.7%)
4. Film and TV producers (8%)
5. R&D on natural sciences (10.9%)

While the following five job functions, according to the report, have a "very high" probability of computerisation:

1. Peat extractors (100%)
2. Motion picture projectionists (97%)
3. Copper producers (70.7%)
4. Mailing list publishers (69%)
5. Bartenders (67.5%)

The survey results also suggest a pervasive restructuring of labour markets over the decades to come. The report urges governments to assist workers made redundant through job automation by retraining them for the new creative professions.

Read the original unabridged WSJ.com article.

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... "enable machines to better understand what users are saying to them."

According to a report in cnet.com, Google DeepMind will be working with two of Oxford's cutting edge artificial intelligence research teams.

Cnet.com also revealed that Google has additionally hired the seven co-founders of two artificial intelligence groups, which had also launched startups.

It has also recruited, Oxford professors Nando de Freitas and Phil Blunsom, as well as Edward Grefenstette and Karl Moritz Hermann - all  co-founders in 2013 of Dark Blue Labs and experts in the "use of deep learning for natural language understanding."

Mr Hassabis, who is also an artificial intelligence researcher, neuroscientist and computer games designer is also the co-founder of DeepMind, a UK-based company acquired by Google in January this year.

All of which leads Google-watchers to conclude that the Mountain Springs mammoth intends to add AI to its billion dollar trophy room, replicating its dominance in the field of search.

Read the original unabridged IndiaTimes.com article.

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... there are concerns about China's short-term prospects with GDP growth.

This was slower than expected in Q1 2013, at 7.7% down from 7.9% in the final quarter of last year. 

According to the International Monetary Fund, China still has a significant hurdle to jump if it is to overtake the US, with China's $8.23 trillion nominal GDP reaching just over half (52%) of the USA's $15.68 trillion in 2012.

Nonetheless, the likelihood of matching the US sooner rather than later has certainly increased since Goldman Sachs 2006 forecast that China will be the biggest economy by 2025.

The Goldman prediction was also considered optimistic at the time but might now be seen as a conservative estimate given that the financial crisis has hit the US hard.

Since Goldman's 2006 prediction, China emerged in pole position when in February 2011 it overtook Japan to become the world's second-largest economy.

Mr Hu, who is a professor of economics at China's elite Tsinghua University and the author of no fewer than sixty books, is raising the stakes with his own prediction, venturing further than any forecast either in China or overseas.

He believes that China will be driven forward by what he terms "five engines":

• Accelerating industrialisation
   
• The nation's major role in a new globalized world
   
• Its dominance in information technology
   
• The rapid modernisation of its infrastructure in areas such as electricity supply and high-speed railways
   
• The growing internationalisation of its own economy.

The Chinese national workforce of 780 million is five times larger than the USA's 153 million and it now devotes three million person/years to research and development (twice the USA's deployment), both factors adding to China's growth momentum.

All data sources are attributed with links to the original insight. The insight is then summarised and, where appropriate, enhanced with additional information.

... strategic frameworks and guidelines via surveys of chief marketing officers [CMOs] in Europe, Asia and Latin America. 

The study, Marketing2020 - Organizing for Growth, will be overseen by consultancy EffectiveBrands, with further input from global executive search consultancy Spencer Stuart and business information supplier Forbes.com.

Interviewed by Marketing Daily, the ANA's president/ceo Bob Liodice explained that although the ANA has much disparate survey data on brand marketing structure issues, the Marketing2020 study is its first coordinated, holistic effort to derive a 'Whole Earth Catalog' of marketing strategies that work.

Admits Liodice: "We have a good inventory of insights and perspectives, but there has never been a 'universality' of opinions, no commonality in thought."

"It was all very ad hoc. Since our committee and conference structure did not address this area head on, we decided to take a more direct and active stance."

The program's advisory board is impressive. Chaired by Unilever chief marketing officer Keith Weed,other board members are Antonio Lucio, CMO and Head of Human Resources at Visa; Beth Comstock, CMO at General Electric and Jon Iwata, senior vice-president marketing and communications at IBM.

Study data will be collected worldwide from forty CMOs and senior marketers across industries in business-to-business and business-to-consumer sectors.

Read the original unabridged MediaPost article.

All data sources are attributed with links to the original insight. The insight is then summarised and, where appropriate, enhanced with additional information.