24 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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... 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.

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... 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.

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... to increase compatibility among devices and make the communication process seamless, the need for professional support will increase as more devices join the connected home ecosystem.”

Adds Ms Samuels: “The growing ecosystem of devices in consumers’ homes has fueled the tech support, home networking opportunity for reasons which include consumers’ desire to have their devices synched to the home network and to have devices on the home network communicate with each other.”

Currently, most people have to rely mostly on their own wits when it comes to setting up new devices.

According to Parks Associates' research, 81% of US broadband households that have purchased a new device have set up a new tablet on their own.

Seventy-two percent set up their own smartphones and 60% set up their home wireless networks. This do-it-yourself ethos, however, is not particularly popular, as only a slim majority (51%) said they would prefer the method for their next setup.

What’s more, nearly three-quarters (72%) of those who expressed a desire to have some professional support wanted that service to be comprehensive in its ability to help with technology setup and workability.

The category is ripe for growth, as Parks estimates tech support revenues in the US will exceed $8 billion by 2017.

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... the year 2030. 

China's ambitions are high. By 2020, it aims to double its 2010 GDP and per capita income both of urban and rural residents.

The nation's economic track record has been impressive. It now has a middle class population of more than 300 million and has experienced the fastest ever economic growth over the past 30 years.

But it may not be able to maintain this momentum unless it overcomes one of its core policy challenges: water, both in terms of quantity and quality.

China's economy runs on water. Water is needed at one stage or another to generate energy. China's industry is the second largest water consumer - it consumes 139 billion cubic meters of water a year - with only the agriculture sector consuming more. And by 2030, Chinese industry's water consumption is projected to increase to 265 million cubic meters.

China is running out of water, which could soon curb its growth unless immediate countermeasures are taken.

The vast nation does not have much water to begin with. It is home to almost 20 percent of the world's population but has only 7 percent of its freshwater reserves. Water is one of its scarcest resources. And it is extremely inefficient in the use of water and a world leader in water pollution.

What exacerbates this shortage is the vicious circle of energy and water - if power-generating plants need water then water treatment and supply facilities need energy.

The Third World Centre for Water Management estimates that the water sector consumes as much as 25 percent of the electricity generated globally.

Though China's water sector is not yet among the country's most energy-intensive industries, it will gradually become so with new hubs of growth emerging in the water-scare western region and the increasing demand for wastewater treatment.

Already, about 52 percent of China's economic output comes from water-scarce regions.

Read the complete unabridged ChinaDaily article.

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