Alok Nayak's Blog

2025-10-28T22:03:00.002+05:30

Will AI Replace Teachers in the Coming Decade?

As artificial intelligence (AI) continues to evolve and integrate into various sectors, its role in education has become a focal point of discussion. With advancements in machine learning, natural language processing, and data analytics, AI is rapidly transforming how educational content is delivered, assessed, and personalized. From intelligent tutoring systems and automated grading tools to adaptive learning platforms that cater to individual student needs, AI-powered technologies offer significant potential to enhance learning outcomes, improve accessibility, and reduce administrative burdens on educators.

However, as these innovations gain traction, an important question arises: Will AI replace teachers in the next ten years? While AI can certainly augment educational environments by streamlining routine tasks and providing students with on-demand support, it is unlikely to replace the multifaceted role of human educators in the foreseeable future. Teaching is not merely the transmission of knowledge—it is an inherently human endeavour that involves emotional intelligence, mentorship, moral guidance, and the ability to inspire, motivate, and connect with students on a personal level.

Moreover, education is deeply contextual. Teachers adapt their methods to suit the socio-emotional needs of diverse learners, navigate cultural sensitivities, and respond to unexpected challenges in real time—complexities that current AI systems are not equipped to handle with nuance or empathy. While AI can provide valuable insights through learning analytics or simulate conversation-based practice, it lacks the authentic human connection that fosters critical thinking, creativity, collaboration, and character development.

Rather than viewing AI as a replacement, the more constructive approach is to see it as a collaborative tool—an assistant that empowers teachers to focus on what they do best: cultivating meaningful learning experiences. The future of education will likely be shaped by a synergistic relationship between AI and educators, where technology complements human strengths rather than competing with them.

In essence, while AI will undoubtedly redefine aspects of teaching and learning over the next decade, the role of teachers as mentors, facilitators, and emotional anchors will remain irreplaceable. The classroom of the future will not be devoid of human presence, but rather enriched by technology that enhances human potential.

The Rise of AI in Education

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is rapidly transforming the educational landscape, offering innovative solutions to long-standing challenges such as teacher shortages, lack of personalized instruction, and administrative inefficiencies. Educational institutions around the world are exploring AI-driven technologies not merely as enhancements, but as essential tools to future-proof learning systems. By automating routine tasks and enabling tailored learning experiences, AI holds the promise of redefining both the role of educators and the way students engage with content.

A striking example of this shift is China’s ambitious nationwide initiative to embed AI into every level of its educational system. This strategic move is not only aimed at modernizing the country’s classrooms but also at cultivating a generation equipped with the skills necessary to drive innovation and sustain long-term economic growth. Through AI-assisted tutoring systems, adaptive learning platforms, and smart content delivery, China envisions a learning ecosystem that is both efficient and inclusive.

In the West, experimentation with AI in education is also gaining ground. Some schools in London, for instance, have piloted "teacherless" classrooms—spaces where students learn autonomously with the support of AI-powered learning platforms. These classrooms are overseen by learning coaches who provide mentorship and emotional support, while the AI systems deliver content, assess progress, and adapt instruction to each student’s unique learning trajectory. Such experiments challenge traditional notions of classroom instruction and hint at a paradigm shift in how knowledge can be disseminated in the digital age.

Prominent voices in the technology and philanthropy sectors, such as Bill Gates, have underscored the transformative potential of AI in education. Gates has emphasized how AI can alleviate systemic pressures, particularly by reducing educators' administrative burdens. By taking over time-consuming tasks such as grading, scheduling, and data entry, AI enables teachers to focus on what matters most: engaging with students, fostering critical thinking, and nurturing creativity.

As the adoption of AI in education accelerates, the global conversation is shifting from whether AI should be used in classrooms to how it can be ethically and equitably deployed. The goal is clear: to build an intelligent, adaptable, and inclusive educational future that empowers both learners and educators.

AI as a Supportive Tool, Not a Replacement

Despite the rapid advancements in artificial intelligence, a resounding consensus remains among educators, psychologists, and technologists alike: AI cannot fully replace the multifaceted and deeply human role of teachers. Teaching is not a transactional process confined to the mere transmission of information. Rather, it is an intricate, dynamic interplay of mentorship, emotional resonance, and the capacity to ignite curiosity and passion in learners.

Human teachers bring to the classroom an emotional intelligence that AI systems inherently lack. They detect subtle cues—like a furrowed brow or a hesitant tone—that signal confusion, anxiety, or disengagement. They respond with empathy, encouragement, or a change in approach, tailoring their methods in real-time to suit the individual needs of each student. This level of responsiveness and care is rooted in human experience and cannot be coded into algorithms.

Moreover, teaching is about more than facts and formulas. It is about shaping minds, nurturing values, and building character. Teachers serve as role models, guiding students not only academically but also morally and socially. They cultivate critical thinking, foster collaboration, and help learners navigate complex life situations—capabilities far beyond the reach of AI.

Institutions like the World Economic Forum have reiterated that while AI holds great potential in automating administrative and repetitive instructional tasks—grading, scheduling, or even delivering personalized content—the heart of education lies in human connection. The true essence of teaching involves dialogue, inspiration, and the co-construction of knowledge, all of which demand a level of insight, creativity, and ethical judgment that machines cannot replicate.

In essence, AI should be seen as a powerful tool to augment the capabilities of teachers, not replace them. It can enhance efficiency and accessibility, but it is the human touch—compassionate, perceptive, and inspiring—that remains irreplaceable in shaping the learners of today into the leaders of tomorrow.

Challenges and Ethical Considerations

Integrating Artificial Intelligence (AI) into education holds immense promise, offering tools for personalized learning, real-time feedback, and administrative efficiency. However, this transformation is not without significant challenges that must be thoughtfully addressed to ensure that technology becomes an enabler rather than a divider.

One of the foremost concerns is the issue of equitable access. Globally, more than 2.6 billion people still lack access to basic internet services. This stark digital divide raises the risk that AI-driven education may deepen existing disparities rather than bridge them. Students in underserved regions, particularly in developing nations and remote rural communities, may be excluded from the benefits of AI-enhanced learning due to the absence of reliable infrastructure, affordable devices, or digital literacy. As educational institutions and governments adopt advanced technologies, the gap between the digitally connected and the disconnected could widen, reinforcing systemic inequality.

Beyond access, data privacy emerges as a critical ethical challenge. AI systems thrive on vast amounts of data to generate insights, personalize content, and predict learning outcomes. Yet, the collection, storage, and use of sensitive student data raise serious concerns about consent, surveillance, and potential misuse. Without robust safeguards and transparent data governance policies, the deployment of AI in education could compromise student autonomy and trust.

Furthermore, AI models are inherently data-driven and often lack the capacity to grasp the nuanced, diverse, and evolving needs of individual learners. Education is not merely about delivering information—it’s about fostering curiosity, emotional intelligence, creativity, and critical thinking, all of which are deeply human experiences. When AI tools adopt a one-size-fits-all methodology based on generalized patterns, they risk oversimplifying complex learning journeys. This could marginalize students who do not conform to algorithmically defined norms, including those with learning differences, non-traditional educational backgrounds, or unique cultural contexts.

Ultimately, while AI has the potential to revolutionize education, its implementation must be grounded in equity, ethical responsibility, and a learner-centred philosophy. Only then can it serve as a transformative force that uplifts all students, rather than leaving many behind.

The Future: A Collaborative Approach

The consensus among educators and experts is increasingly clear: the future of education is not about replacing teachers with technology, but about creating a synergistic relationship where artificial intelligence (AI) amplifies the human element in teaching. AI, when used thoughtfully, has the potential to revolutionize classrooms—not by removing the teacher, but by empowering them to do what they do best: inspire, connect, and cultivate critical thinking. Rather than viewing AI as a disruptive force, forward-thinking institutions are beginning to see it as a catalyst for innovation, enabling a shift from rote instruction to more meaningful, student-centred learning experiences.

One of the most promising contributions of AI is its ability to handle time-consuming administrative tasks—such as grading, attendance, and performance tracking—with speed and precision. This automation not only increases operational efficiency but also gives teachers the invaluable gift of time. With these routine burdens lifted, educators can devote more energy to the relational and creative dimensions of their role: mentoring students, facilitating rich discussions, designing engaging lesson plans, and adapting to diverse learning needs in real-time.

AI can also serve as a powerful ally in personalizing education. Intelligent tutoring systems and adaptive learning platforms can analyse a student's strengths, weaknesses, and learning style to deliver customized content and feedback. This kind of tailored support, when coupled with a teacher’s emotional intelligence and pedagogical expertise, creates a dynamic and responsive learning environment that caters to individual growth.

However, the successful integration of AI into education hinges on one essential investment—equipping teachers with the training and tools to harness AI effectively and ethically. Without proper professional development, the risk is that AI tools may become underutilized or misapplied, leading to frustration or even harm. Educators must not only understand how to use AI applications but also cultivate a critical awareness of their limitations, biases, and implications.

Ultimately, AI should be seen not as a replacement for human instruction but as a partner in pedagogical progress. When teachers are empowered with the right training, supported by robust policies, and respected as the architects of learning, AI can serve as an invaluable extension of their capabilities—enhancing, not diminishing, their central role in shaping the minds of the future.

Conclusion

While artificial intelligence is poised to revolutionize many aspects of education—from personalized learning pathways to real-time performance analytics—it is unlikely to replace human teachers in the foreseeable future. The next decade will almost certainly witness AI becoming a powerful tool in the classroom, but not a substitute for the profound human connection that lies at the heart of effective teaching.

Teachers bring to the classroom something that no algorithm can replicate: the ability to empathize with students, to intuitively adapt their approach based on subtle cues, and to ignite curiosity and passion for learning. These uniquely human qualities—empathy, creativity, moral guidance, and the ability to inspire—are fundamental to the developmental and emotional growth of students. AI may be able to deliver content efficiently or assess learning outcomes with precision, but it lacks the emotional intelligence to understand a student’s unspoken struggles or to offer encouragement at precisely the moment it's most needed.

Moreover, the classroom is not just a place where knowledge is transferred; it is a space where character is nurtured, values are imparted, and social skills are developed. Human educators serve as role models and mentors, guiding students not only in academics but also in navigating the complexities of life. These relational dynamics cannot be outsourced to machines.

The most promising path forward lies not in pitting AI against teachers, but in fostering a synergistic relationship between the two. When deployed thoughtfully, AI can amplify the impact of educators by automating administrative tasks, providing data-driven insights, and enabling differentiated instruction tailored to individual needs. However, this integration must be guided by a strong ethical framework that prioritizes equity, privacy, and the human dignity of both students and teachers.

In essence, the future of education will not be determined by AI alone, but by how wisely and compassionately we choose to integrate it—enhancing, not replacing, the irreplaceable role of the teacher.

(This was earlier posted in my weekly newsletter Tech Talk.)

Ego Is Virtuous

2018-03-08T17:38:00.002+05:30

Divergent to the popular belief that ego is the reason of your demolition, in metaphysical world ego is the only incentive to transcend from the lower echelon to the higher ones. Why then the global scriptures or seers, be those from Hinduism, Christianism or Islamism sects, potentially deliberate on the annihilation of ego at personal level to achieve the spiritual growth or even salvation? In religious or political ecosystem, the leaders always want the followers. So, from the day of initiation of followers into the system these leaders indoctrinate the belief that ego is an obstacle to the growth of human being. That’s absolutely false and preposterous. The only reason why they spread these canards is to ensure that their followers are subservient to their causes. In these circumstances, a person with ego can think independently and may not think in consonance with the ulterior motives of these leaders. Thus, from many thousands of generations of human settlement in social milieu, these leaders are propagating false values to their followers on cultivation of ego.

Let me first scientifically deconstruct the theory of continuity in human evolution process before delving into the cultivation of ego theory. As everybody knows the evolution of mankind has taken billions of years in the chronology of genesis of universe, for a lower species to surpass the original genetic construct and move to the category of higher species is mostly sublime and gentle. Normally, this process takes millions of years. What actually prompt the living consciousness to passage from one terrain to another are self-realization and an intemperance of extrapolation. In a specific realm of life, the growth of life is compounded with the awareness of higher self – a state of conscience that unfailingly triggers the quantification of actualization of life – which we colloquially connote “the more, the merrier.” The ego starts from there. When a person with many virtues and few vices vacillates in moral dilemma during a decisive moment of truth, his or her ego plays a cardinal role to bolster the thought that what in a societal dynamism he or she is representing. A person with real ego for his social position and status will think twice before taking a wrong decision. On the contrary, a person sans ego will move on with his or her instinct.

Why crimes of any kind or wrongdoings are happening in this world? Is this happening only because of ignorance or disrespect for law? No, not really. Even the white-collar crimes are carried out by highly brilliant minds – educated and well-off. The reason is these people don’t have conscience or moral ego to fight against a wrong decision. Real ego differentiates a person from the crowd on various attributes such as knowledge, wealth, beauty, righteousness, integrity, honesty and social position. People who actually cultivate these attributes by convincing their ego will always uphold their position and social value system vis-à-vis to those people who don’t have an iota of ethical ego.

Ego is never a deleterious factor either for your spiritual or mundane growth in life. Ego is the preserver of your value system that stimulates you to be superior to other mortals. Ego is your self-esteem. You are nothing without your ego. Your true self is your ego. Cultivate ego in a more subtle way to transform yourself from a lower moral to a higher mortal. In Hindu philosophy, the Sanskrit verse “Aham Brahmāsmīti” translates to “I am of Brahman” or “I am the Infinite Reality”. This actually guides us to transcend from mortal to immortal, finite to infinite and mundane to celestial. This is the ego of being human with virtues, which propels you further up in spiritual cycles to the highest order. Remember when you leave this mundane world your soul is only accompanied by your ego, nothing else.

Blockchain: Thwarting the Possibility of Frauds

2018-02-27T12:42:00.003+05:30

Why do frauds crop up in a system? Sounds hackneyed? Maybe, but the provenance of fraud is pretty premeditated and intrinsic in any society. Innately frauds are a symptomatic manifestation of diluted accountability, inefficient compliance system and condescendingly low-slung trust levels in any institution, be it public or private. The recent unfolding of banking frauds only corroborates the fact that the lack of transparency, trust and traceability in banking operations has led to such deafening denigration of integrity. As media reports suggest, a few low-profile authorities in PNB have managed to manipulate the system by resorting to alternate means for allowing free flow of credits to a client who is also a big-time defaulter in debt repayment. And all these happened without the knowledge of the key stakeholders. Though sounds gross and sordid a closed system has always been the epicentre of genesis of frauds.

Now picture this. If the credit disbursement system would have been distributed or decentralized, trust-worthy, transparent and compliance-ready, these frauds perhaps won’t have happened during the life time of a bank. Beyond an idealistic consideration of non-occurrence of frauds, we must converge to an argument that let fraudsters play their dirty tricks in a system, but the system should be robust and dynamic enough to transpire the truth to all the stakeholders associated with the system. Then these frauds could be nipped in the bud without snowballing into massive swindles. In the light of modus operandi of frauds in any system, blockchain technology based solutions could be the de facto measures.

How can blockchain solutions really avert these frauds? Well, before getting down to brass tacks of fraud management, let’s first understand what blockchain technology is. Technically, a blockchain is a decentralized, distributed, digital public ledger that stores records of transactions across many computers so that no record can be transmuted retroactively without the amendment of all subsequent blocks and the complicity of the network. For a layman, a blockchain is a public distributed ledger. It’s a value-exchange protocol authenticated by mass collaboration over a peer-to-peer network of computers and distributed timestamping servers. The central point of blockchain is that it can’t be conned by few authorities having access to the system. Being a distribute ledger, blockchain thrives on the mechanism of consensus, which requires all stakeholders (here globally distributed computers or nodes) to be in collusion. Furthermore, the anonymity of computers throws the toughest task to hackers or bad actors to mutate the veracity of data.

Juxtaposed to a centralized system, which is managed by a select few, a blockchain is distributed and carries the consensus of anonymity. Each block in a blockchain, which registers valid transactions, includes a cryptographic hash of the previous block linking the two in the blockchain. Thus, the current block is linked to the previous block and this iteration is all the way connected to the genesis of original block. In a sense, blockchain is a tautology which always converges to the truth. Even separate blocks maybe produced concurrently, the inherent algorithm of blockchain ensures the highest-scoring version supersedes the others making the originality of data inviolable. The orphan blocks are automatically weeded out from the mainstream ensuring the sanctity of information is kept intact.

While discussing fraud prevention we must not forget the role of blockchain in immutability of information. A piece of information validated by collective consensus of stakeholders can’t be altered. This feature of blockchain prevents counterfeiting of documents. In financial domain where the complexity of transactions is surreptitiously high with multi-stakeholder approval processes, blockchain can enviably reduce the probability of fraud to almost insignificant level.

(This article was originally published by me on LinkedIn Pulse)

Amazing Customer Experience

2016-04-28T11:17:00.000+05:30

In every management discourse “amazing customer experience” spins off more questions on the customer engagement program. Earlier companies hardly care about what customers think about their products or services because the marketing function was busy transforming the negative experiences of customer through various marketing gimmicks and tactics. But today the emergence of social media has altered the game. The customers are more empowered to express freely their honest opinions and views about a product or service offered by a company on any social media platform. If any customer’s negative opinion is supported by similar views of other customers, this becomes a major concern for the company. Once the discussion transforms into a more participatory forum, it not only impacts the future business of the organization, but also it destroys the brand.

The role of social media has been predominant in empowering both businesses and customers. The marketing team can explore new avenues in the digital ecosystem to boost their marketing strategy. While earlier customers had little choice for selecting a channel to interact with a company, today the upsurge social media has brought in a plethora of options to reach out to the company representative. It’s not only a unidirectional communication that hides behind the carpet; rather a more participatory discussion that attracts many stakeholders to engage with customers.

An amazing customer experience doesn’t come out of blue. The company needs to understand the customers’ needs, engage with them, and deliver exceptional value in whatever form of offering. But the primary task is how to understand their actual needs. According to a survey conducted by IBM, just 35% CXOs really understand their customers well. This indicates that maximum CXOs don’t understand the customer needs.

In a customer-centric business environment, companies need to engage with customers through various communication channels and must endeavor to deliver value in concrete terms. Today, a number of companies send a survey form to customers and expect them to provide exciting feedback. That’s the inherent problem in customer engagement. You can’t dictate customers to be servile and expect good reciprocation. There are many players in the market and it won’t be too harsh to say that customer has always a choice.

The tricky part of customer engagement is how effectively companies can drive the customers to act as per their strategy. It’s not a marketing gimmick at all; rather it’s a cohesive customer engagement program. For example, a company’s sales representative can even gather precious information in an informal way while attending to a customer. It’s not a one-off incident. Companies should build up an engagement strategy in an implicit manner. A better way of doing this would be building the trust among customers and employees. Human relations can deliver amazing business value.

If you want your customers should respond to certain questions, then don’t send a formal survey link or questionnaire to millions of customers. In fact, train your employees to build an environment in which customers could be tempted to respond to many open-ended discussions. During those discussions employees can keep exploring the opportunities or help driving the customers to a point where the discussion points can provide huge insights.

The best customer engagement policy should hinge on the fact that a good listener is the most successful achiever. Try not to intimidate the customer by repeatedly intervening in the discussion. Give the customer free hand to open up and come out with as many points, which in turn will provide a gigantic customer datasets to explore the treasure. But the company representative shouldn’t forget the role of moderator; else the customer will drive his or her own agenda and the information collected will have no use.

Let’s consider the efficacies of social media engagement. Today, all young customers have a social media account and they are quite active in social media discussions. Anything and everything is discussed threadbare on social media. But the crux of the problem is that companies are not equipped with the right technology solution to decipher the discussion points. With millions of customers posting their views on a specific issue, it’s a gigantic task for the company to get the desired insights.

What’s required to analyze these engaging discussions is a technology solution, which would enable companies to derive powerful insights. However, to achieve the optimal outcome the companies should integrate all customer-facing applications – be it customer portal, corporate website, social media sites, CRM, or business analytics tool. The synergy among the tools will manifold the power of analytics.

As mobility is taking the lead in disruptive technologies, the companies can leverage its capability to boost the customer engagement program. With millions of smart apps readily available, companies can move their CRM and other customer applications into cloud and build a mobile strategy for business workflows. This will improve the quality of 24x7 operations. As customers will be exposed to a response mechanism round the clock, it will drive more customer engagement. But here is a caveat! The employees responsible for customer engagement should be distributed across various time zones and they must internalize the local culture to be more customer-friendly.

Remember, cohesive communication can only resolve 40% of the problem, but it requires the support team to accomplish the rest 60% task in a responsive manner. Although the companies have a mandate like SLA to take care of issue resolution process, there is no harm in building a smart system wherein support staff can reduce the resolution turnaround time in a proactive manner. When a customer issue is resolved with due diligence within the SLA, there is no substitute to the customer satisfaction level achieved in that process. A satisfied customer can be a reference point for many customers down the line.

Moreover, a satisfied customer can be open to share his or her views without a second thought. So, it’s a tactic for customer support representatives to collect the feedback of customers when they are really satisfied with the service of company. A unified system can enable the company to collate customer data from various geographies and eventually help derive generate meaningful customer insights. A data-driven company can bring in customer service excellence and deliver amazing customer experience in every customer engagement.

Marketing Optimization for Building Better Customers

2014-10-26T11:28:00.000+05:30

Today’s businesses are more concerned about acquiring better customers, a segment that sustains the repeat business of a company. But the ground reality for the companies is that these customers are not acquired shortly. This requires a comprehensive customer engagement process. From attracting customers to the business to nurturing their expectations across the customer life cycle needs huge marketing efforts. As new channels of communication are evolving, the marketing department is getting the heat of channel optimization. For example, if some customers are eager to connect through social media, some prefer a more direct communication through phone or chat. The diversity of customer interest is another hurdle for the marketers to roll out an optimized marketing campaign. Although personalized communication is the best option to transform a stranger to customer, the logistics of execution sometimes restricts a marketer to adopt a particular channel.

In real-world scenario, companies face many constraints while executing an optimized marketing program. Multiple channels, various offers, and diverse customer segmentation increase the complexity of marketing optimization. However, smart marketers prioritize campaigns, channels, and customers singularly or in groups depending upon company’s business objectives. For example, a company desiring to increase the number of customers in a particular segment would certainly like to prioritize the customer segmentation, but at the same time it can’t ignore the campaign and channel. For any marketer, the judicious balance among the three elements – campaign optimization, channel optimization, and customer optimization - is the key to successful marketing optimization.

In each optimization process, a company wants to measure the returns on investment. As marketers define a strategy to acquire a customer base for a new product, the first thing that triggers off the debate is customer segmentation: knowing more about their priorities, buying behavior, and brand affinity. For instance, customers consistently using a product for many years are difficult to be trapped by a mere campaign. Here the marketers need to understand the priorities of the customers, the reason behind brand loyalty, and if they need a better product within the same price range. Well, the customer prioritization depends upon a number of factors: the offerings, the pricing, and most importantly some opinion leaders to claim the value of the product. With competitive market intelligence a company can develop a better product to enter a particular market; design a campaign to address the customers’ expectations; and prioritize the channels to reach out to them. In marketing optimization, the marketers should focus on the following best practices to optimize the results.

Invest on Quality Data

Data plays a major role in marketing optimization process. Trusted data can multiply the power of marketing campaign. Any marketing campaign requires information about the demographic information, risk information, prior customer response to a campaign, and profitability. While these data sets can be availed from different sources, the credibility of data plays a critical role in the success of a marketing campaign. If a company can access to the workable data, programmatic marketing can deliver the desired results. Thus, businesses should invest judiciously to aggregate customer data. If the quality of data gets jeopardized, the investment made in the marketing campaign will be at risk.

Prioritize Optimization within Constraints

Every company has certain constraints; however, the business objectives are always kept sacrosanct. In marketing optimization, a marketer may find some limiting factors while strategizing a program, but these factors should be considered as the parameters of innovative disruption. For instance, when a particular factor doesn’t support the marketing program, a new factor should be considered to play a viable alternative. If a company wants to launch a campaign within a low budget, the marketers shouldn’t lower their business target, but they should apply different methods of low-budgeted campaign methods to target the customer base and derive the expected results.

Select the Right Technology

Today’s marketing is increasingly technology-centric. The evolution of social media platforms, mobility, big data, and CRM has transformed the marketing automation process. But there is a catch. Though all new technologies can magnify the intensity of a marketing program, a specific technology can always deliver better results. A campaign that needs real-time response from the customers can’t be done through print media, but it can be effectively managed through social media. Based on market demand, the CRM vendors are coming out with feature-rich products to ensure exceptional customer service. The marketing heads should focus on the right technology to optimize their marketing efforts.

Increase Customer Contacts

Customer contact information is critical for launching a marketing campaign. Larger the customer base, customer segmentation can be more meaningful. Recently, the social media platforms such as Facebook and LinkedIn are the largest source of user information. Using these network exchanges companies can roll out a programmatic marketing campaign and can achieve the desired results. Companies can also leverage big data to access to these contacts and derive a predictable buying analysis.

Leverage Existing CRM

An existing CRM is the primary source for customer touch-points. A company can use the CRM to analyze customer behavior, buying habits, spending modality, etc. The customer data available in the CRM can be used to propel a marketing campaign. Before adapting to a new CRM, the companies should devise a data transition plan so that no historical data is lost.

Pilot and Replicate

Large marketing programs need huge investment. Without verifying the marketing returns, investing on a new program could be risky. To avoid such risks, companies to start a pilot on any marketing program and analyze the returns on investment. If the program is successful, then the companies can replicate the strategy and scale up the execution.

Cloud-based CRM systems dominating market

2014-10-18T11:36:00.003+05:30

Cloud-based CRM application vendors are brimming with boundless excitement. The good news for them is cloud-based CRM systems are receiving faster adoption. According to a recent report published by Gartner, 41% of total CRM systems sold in 2013 are SaaS-based. With growing investment in digital initiatives and customer experience management, the media and IT services companies are leading the CRM spend globally, with manufacturing segment is holding the second place, and banking and securities industry retains the third position. Gartner finds that companies across the board are looking for a hassle-free, easy-to-deploy CRM system with capability to scale up or scale down depending upon the business requirement.

Gartner further predicts that the CRM growth will be visibly sustainable in 2014-15 like the last three years’ journey. With CRM revenue touching USD 23.9 billion in 2014, the cloud-based CRM revenue is projected to account for 49%, and this will touch 50% in 2015. Thus, a steady growth in the cloud-based CRM systems adaptability is an indication of bright future in this segment. According to an analyst at Gartner, the largest spenders of CRM will include banking, securities, high-tech, telecommunications, media, pharmaceuticals, consumer goods, and IT manufacturing and services verticals. All these industries require a better customer experience even during slump period.

As customer relationships are shifting faster from transaction- to context-based scenarios, the growth in the CRM market is determined by the integration of social media and many other third-party applications. Today, every company has a social media strategy to enhance the customer relationships. The contextual mode of customer conversations happening widely on social networking channels provides a reason for the companies to integrate the customer data (along with conversations) into CRM strategy. In fact, the customer-driven communications is transforming the deployment model of CRM systems. As cloud CRM vendors are offering advanced application programming interfaces (APIs) for businesses to integrate with a number of innovative technologies such as mobility and social media, the demand for cloud-based CRM systems is gaining ground.

For a cloud-based CRM, the integration process is faster and easier compared to premise-based CRM systems. When a business requires a customization in sales and marketing process, the cloud-based CRM systems allow vendors to integrate lightweight APIs without halting the operations. Various functions such as social feeds, geo-centric customer touch points like usage of Google map, and mobility of users can be integrated with social media exchanges and smart apps. The growth of smartphones is another trigger for the cloud CRM vendors to provide with mobility feature as a default offering to clients. Along with mobility platform, custom smart apps are adding a new dimension to the utility of cloud CRM.

Cloud CRM allows the businesses to access customer data anywhere, anytime. As multi-national companies are operating in multiple geographies, the real-time accessibility of customer data is an important aspect of customer service. Improved collaboration, mobility, and flexibility of usage offer a better edge to the cloud CRM. Since cloud CRM systems are hosted in a data center, the cost of deployment is also drastically reduced. The hassles of managing capital-intensive IT staff are also significantly lowered in cloud CRM implementation.

While businesses are unequivocally moving toward cloud-delivered IT solutions, the CXOs are seriously considering the short- and long-term business benefits. Apart from lower IT investment, cloud CRM delivers a plethora of benefits comprising operational, technical and financial.

Here are some benefits that cloud CRM offers:

Lower cost of ownership: Today, companies opine capex (capital expenditure) a bad operational strategy and hence they convincingly follow the opex (operational expenditure) model that cloud CRM delivers. The immediate business benefit that cloud CRM offers is the lower total cost of ownership. Since the cloud CRM is hosted in a public or private cloud, the infrastructure cost including servers, office space, and IT resources is significantly reduced.

Scalable system: The cloud CRM inherently possesses the software architecture that can be scaled up or down depending upon the business requirement of the client. Being multi-tenant and modular, cloud CRM provides a huge leg room for the business owners to customize their licensing requirement.

Global access: As the CRM system is deployed on data center it can be accessed by users anywhere, simply through an Internet connection. This feature of cloud CRM allows business owners expand their geographic reach without much difficulty.

Smart collaboration: Collaboration is the new normal of a customer-centric application. Since CRM needs a huge interfacing between service staff and customers, the cloud provides the opportunity for the business to integrate with various social media networks and external application. This helps develop a collaborative environment wherein the customer can effortlessly reach out to a service representative during business exigency. Furthermore, the social CRM requires a qualitative interaction between customers and service agents. The marketing, sales, and other functions can collaborate among themselves without requiring any technical handholding.

No maintenance: Cloud CRM requires minimum to no maintenance efforts. This allows higher uptime and lower expenditure on maintenance staff.

Multi-layered security: Today, tier-1 data centers deploy multi-layered security measures to avoid any kind of untoward situation. Since cloud CRM is a multi-tenant system, the vendor provide security measures at various levels such as physical, network, application, server, and database. Data center service providers follow the global security standards to ensure the optimum safety to critical customer information.

Easy upgrade: Software upgrade is common feature in the life cycle of a product. However, in case of on-premises CRM system, the normal software upgrade takes a toll on operation. During upgrade the live application is curtailed from use. On the contrary, cloud CRM doesn’t need such formalities. The software vendor can upgrade the system without disturbing the operational schedule of the clients. Sometimes the CRM vendors also don’t charge for the upgrade, as these features come as a value-add options to increase subscriptions.

Quick customization: In a normal CRM system, any customization requires more time as the complexity of architecture takes the vendor to use more IT resources. However, in cloud CRM the customization is more flexible, and it doesn’t impact the operations of the client. Regarding the cost of customization, the cloud CRM provides option to reduce the customization cost depending upon the usage.

Faster implementation: In a cloud CRM, the implementation is almost done in real-time, if there is no complex client business requirement.

Increased productivity: The cloud CRM offers better reliability in comparison to on-premises CRM. The 24x7 accesses and flexibility of operation allow employees even work while at home or in transit. Customer information can be retrieved from any place using mobility devices. Since the office-centric work expand beyond the premises, all the functions can work independently as well as in a collaborative manner. This gives more opportunities for the employees to reach out to the customers and resolve their issues.

Reliability: Today, the public cloud vendors offer 99.9% uptime for the hosted applications. A higher uptime is highly reliable for the business to ensure sustained operations.

Agility: The promptness of accessing customer information from cloud CRM provides a better competitive edge to the clients. The client employees can easily access the system via Internet. The independence of IT infrastructure adds more flexibility to the employees to leverage the speed of access.

Globally large enterprises are also looking for moving toward cloud CRM. But the strategy is a bit different from what SMEs are adopting. Given the security of critical customer data, the large enterprises trust the private cloud instead of public cloud. The large enterprises also leverage the same benefits such as reduced cost, mobility, high automation, server redundancy, flexible and scalable operations, quality of service, and certainly the security of customer information. Greater control over private cloud provides enterprises more flexibility to deliver quality customer services.

Justice Doomed

2013-12-13T22:27:00.000+05:30

The recent verdict dispensed by the Supreme Court of India on Section 377 of IPC has generated huge clamor in public domain. The major point of conflict is the wordings of the verdict that reflect a mediocre, medieval, and regressive mindset of judges who risked their sensibility in addressing a larger democratic and human rights issue, in rather the most imbecile way possible. Articulating this judgment, first, they have contradicted the fundamental rights enshrined in the Constitution of India, and second, misread the universal democratic principles.

Decriminalization of homosexuality has nothing to do with culture, religion, law and state; it's a consensual act between two free adults who have every right to do whatever they want to in a liberal society. Keeping an archaic, meaningless, orthodox piece of penal code, which has no relevance in the current social dynamics is another reference of state crime, and, simply, it reflects how vulnerable is India as the largest democracy of the world – the democracy that doesn't uphold the basic principles of human rights. This judgment is perhaps the most regressive one in the recent history and, beyond question, it degrades the democratic index of India in a modern world. In all modern democracies of the world, civil liberty takes the front seat of progression, and in India, it's almost invisible in action.

While political classes are now squarely blaming the verdict and reacting to this judgment in the most opportunistic way, they have hardly done anything significant in all these years. And the most incredible point in the context of this judgment is that even after 67 years of independence, India is still servile to the laws enacted by the Britishers some 150 years ago. As a parliamentary democracy, India has not only failed to imbibe the principles of modern democracy, but also it has aborted the mechanism of delivering fair justice to its citizens. Whether political, judicial, or bureaucratic, each organ of state has proved inefficient, indolent, and digressive to the modern democratic principles. Now is the time to overhaul the system in letter and spirit.

Building Your Brand in 10 Simple Steps

2013-10-19T21:41:00.000+05:30

Your brand is perhaps the most valuable asset of your organization. However, many business owners don’t understand its importance completely. And that could be the reason why many companies still struggle to create a niche market segment for them. Before venturing into brand development strategy, you should understand the concept of brand. Brand is your company's reputation and visibility in the market place.

Many business owners think spending a lot on advertising and publicity can create a better brand. Wrong. Brand is not what you just publicize to your target customers; it's more than that. The history of advertising also reveals that many companies leverage the advertising route to build their brand in public memory, but that has a limited impact. Today, consumers are educated and smart. They can easily differentiate between the real and fake publicity. So what matters here is what you promise must be delivered, else consumers will never follow you.

A highly successful brand needs a synchronized operational and marketing approach. If the marketing department doesn't correctly understand the values of your products or services offerings, the chance is that you will unmistakably land into trouble. Successful brand doesn't happen overnight. It needs consistent efforts from all departments. For example, a service company offering software services should focus on the quality of service vis-a-vis pricing strategy to edge over its competitors. You should know what your competitors are offering, what's their pricing strategy, what's their post-sales strategy, etc. Without that you will fail to deliver a solid brand strategy.

10 Simple Steps for Brand Development

Develop your brand story. Your brand speaks about your products/services, your corporate culture, your identity, how you care about your customers, and how you are different from your competitors. Consumers always need a compelling story that matches with their requirements. If your products or services won't deliver that vital value to them, they won't care whatever you do.
Consider your business strategy. Your business and brand are inseparable. They are like body and soul. While formulating your branding strategy, don't forget to include some of your business strategies. For example, if your company is planning to reduce the price of a product, then ensure that this specific information be a part of brand communication.
Identify your target customers. This is the most important part of brand strategy. First, find out who are your target customers. Everybody can't be your customers, if you are not selling products like salt and sugar. You must carry out extensive research to clearly identify your target customers. For example, if you are selling diamond necklace, your target customers should be women with high income group. When your focus becomes narrower, you can ensure faster growth. Be specific while addressing your target audience.
Build your brand positioning. Once you define your target customers, the next step you need to execute is categorizing the customers. You should know which customers groups need your services or products the most. If your competitor is targeting a specific customers group, you can create your own and address them with specific benefits that they would receive. A typical brand positioning statement comprises three to five sentences and captures the essence of what you wish to deliver. Just remember, you must deliver what you would like promise.
Develop your messaging strategy. Messaging is the most powerful tool that translates strangers to you customers. Your messaging should address to your various target audiences such as potential clients, potential customers, opinion leaders, employees, and other stakeholders in you business. While defining your core messaging strategy, you should consider the interest of each audience group. For example, the messaging for your employees should be different from that of your customers.
Develop your corporate identity. This comprises your company name, logo, and tagline. If you are an established organization, you need not to change your name or logo; but if you are a new entrant into a business or at the stage of merger and acquisition, this is very important. For any major business transition, you need to redefine these identity parameters. Remember, while doing all these tasks, ensure a semblance between what your business does and how these corporate identities satisfy the ethos of your business.
Develop your content strategy. Content is king, and always it remains. Content is not just written text, this also includes images, graphics, audio, video, and other multimedia elements. Apart from the type of content, the breadth and depth of content should include the interest of target audience. If the target audience doesn't perceive any worth in your content, your strategy fails. Depending upon the medium, your content structure should change and it must drive your brand visibility.
Develop your web and social media strategy. With the rapid surge in internet population, websites and social media sites are becoming indispensable tools for a business. Your website is the gateway to your products and services. Your audiences generally visit your website to explore everything about you – who you are, what you do, how you do, and for whom you do. Other than your website, your social media sites talk a lot about your activities, and the conversation there goes viral from a loyal customer to the external world. With technology innovation, you can even do wonders through your social media sites. But remember one thing: any wrong message will completely destroy your brand in seconds. So, the content strategy should be the central to your web and social media strategy.
Build your marketing collateral. When your website is ready, you need to publish various sales-driven information to engage your customers and clients with your brand. This task is achieved by marketing collateral, which includes brochures, case studies, feature lists, data sheets, videos, and multimedia presentations. While developing these, keep your brand positioning clear and intact. Never dilute your brand in any sense.
Monitor and modify. This is the last step in the brand development process. While you execute previous nine steps with a great deal of research and deliberation, you never know how the real world would react to all these activities. Now, the step 10 exposes how your brand strategy is performing, how your target audience is reacting, and how your customers are accepting you. At this stage, you need to monitor the performance of brand, and if there is a gap in your strategy and real world needs, you should rectify here and implement the next version of your brand strategy.

Build a Strategic Framework Through Strategic Planning

2013-09-19T13:23:00.000+05:30

The success of an organization largely depends upon the vision of the leadership. More importantly the vision should be supported by a strategic framework, which would guide individuals and teams to achieve both tactical and strategic goals set by the management. While building a strategic framework, you must focus on every bit of strategy and execute a dry-run on the outcomes. Moving straight from the strategy document to operation is not an easy job because implementation of strategy needs a real-life environment where ideas will be translated into actions. In that process, some pieces of strategy though initially may sound high, during implementation stage would experience certain snags. So, what exactly you need is a full-proof strategic framework through which you can articulate your vision, mission, and values, strategies, and how would you leverage those ideals eventually. You can also deliberate upon tactical steps to materialize a strategic goal, including the methods, processes, tools, and calibration of success. Everything should be well-documented. In case you deviate from the defined path or a specified process, the rationality of deference should also be articulated. Let's first understand what's a strategic framework and what does it capture.

Strategic Framework

A strategic framework is a master plan that defines the structure, aspirations, limitations, design and delivery of a product or service that an organization desires to deliver. On a broader perspective, a strategic framework is a top-level guideline defined by the management as how to achieve the vision of the organization. Every organization starts with a vision. The vision is achieved through mission, values, and strategies. Although you can define your vision, mission, and values very idealistically; without right strategy, you won't be able to achieve those ideals. So, you need strategic planning in which you can set your priorities, quantify your existing resources, and leverage organizational processes, technology, and skills of employees to achieve those common goals. Here is how strategic planning helps achieve your business objectives.

Strategic Planning

Strategic planning is a process of defining organization strategy through which you can analyze the current position and determine the future course of action and how you would do it and for whom you would do it, with due diligence. Strategic planning is fundamentally a deliberations of decisions and actions those could be implemented down the line. An effective strategic planning not only talks about a specific action plan, but also it defines the parameters as how to achieve it successfully. Thus, strategic planning ensures a strategic framework work in a flawless manner. The core components of strategic planning encompasses an understanding of the vision, mission, values, and strategies of an organization.

Defining Vision Statement

A vision relates to the future of the organization – it covers the long-term aspirations. This articulates the dreams and hopes of the promoters and employees as well. A vision statement provides continuous inspiration to all the stakeholders of an organization. While crafting the vision statement for your organization, you must think futuristic and expand your imagination to articulate where do you want to reach or what do you want to achieve in the lifetime of your organization. Let's examine some vision statements of top global companies:

Walmart: To become the worldwide leader in retailing.

Chevron: To be the global energy company most admired for its people, partnership and performance.

GE: We bring good things to life.

Ford Motor: To become the world's leading consumer company for automotive products and services.

City: To be the most competent, profitable, and innovative financial organization in the world.

Well, what do you observe here? All these statements talk about the long-term aspirations of the organization. These statements don't explain how the organization will achieve that vision. And to enable vision work for your organization, you must define your mission statement.

Defining Mission Statements

A mission statement focuses on the purpose of an organization. It explains why the organization exists and how it would achieve the vision. For instance, the mission statement of Walmart states: “To help people save money so they can live better.” Let's now decipher how this statement is supporting the vision of Walmart, which states, “To become the worldwide leader in retailing.” While the vision of Walmart is an inspiration for the organization, the mission clearly putting the purpose of its existence.

Defining Values

Values are the core belief system of the organization that drive its employees to live by those high ideals to deliver results unfailingly. Values explain the collective behavior of the organization. They describe the organizational culture, business ethics, and relationships amongst different stakeholders of the organisation. Let's look at some value propositions that organizations alike believe in. For example, competency, integrity, respect, diversity, teamwork, quality, efficiency, and collaboration. Sample these values of Coca-Cola, which emphasizes on seven parameters:

Leadership: The courage to shape a better future

Collaboration: Leverage collective genius

Integrity: Be real

Accountability: If it is to be, it's up to me

Passion: Committed in heart and mind

Diversity: As inclusive as our brands

Quality: What we do, we do well

You can also check the Philosophy of Incrego, which focuses on seven values:

Innovation – Explore groundbreaking technology solutions to address client’s problem
Nurturing – Encourage a culture of professional excellence and continuous innovation to always exceed our client’s expectations
Commitment – Ensure our “clients first” ideology tops our priority
Reliable – Emphasize on the robustness of our services and solutions to ensure peace of mind for our clients
Effective – Assure our clients get the desired results of our services every-time
Growth – Dedicate our efforts for sustained growth of our clients’ businesses
Open-minded – Listen to our customers, employees, and partners without any bias

Defining Strategy

Strategies are the methods or approaches through which an organization accomplishes its mission and eventually lives up to the vision of the organization. Each piece of strategy defines a particular goal and the corresponding action plan to achieve that goal. For example, the strategy to achieve a sales target of $100 million in the first quarter can be achieved by strengthening the sales pitch and converting every lead into a sale. Similarly, for HR function, the strategy to bring in transparency in the organization can be achieved by ensuring a continuous top-down communication and developing channels through which employees can post their honest feedback about the organizational decisions. Organizations use various tools and processes for strategic planning. For example, SWOT analysis helps you analyze the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats in the current situation of the organization and define corresponding strategy to improvise the conditions. Similarly, Balanced Scorecard is a performance management tool that helps managers to track the staff performance.

How to retain your best employees

2013-09-18T21:15:00.000+05:30

Regardless of constricting job market, the top talents of an organization are always on high demand. For them, switching a job even during intense job market slowdown is like performing a gimmick. However, most organizations ignore this fact and think everything is hunky-dory.

Before getting down to brass tacks, let's quantify the contribution of these top talents for an organization. Various polls and surveys on employee performance and contribution reveal that the top 20% of best performers create 80% value for the organization. Thus, it's quite unthinkable for HR and top management of an organization that they can afford to ignore it and let the top talents part away.

As an HR head or a senior executive of a company, your contribution towards talent management doesn't restrict you to go an extra mile and delve deeper into the issues that your best employees often try to speak out in different forums. For instance, a growing conviction has been established across the board that employees never leave an organization, rather they leave their managers. However incredible the fact may sound, the employees are always on a loggerhead with their managers on different issues, be it personal or professional. Here, you shouldn't blame a particular band of managers because a manager is also a subordinate to her of his superior up in the hierarchy. So, if you look microscopically, you may discover the root of the problem lies somewhere else. This is just one dot of the problem line, there are many such examples.

Well, before zeroing in on the solutions as how to retain your top employees, let's first understand the reasons why employees leave an organization. Some pressing reasons of top talents being dissatisfied with the organization include lack of professional growth, lack of recognition and rewards, missing long term strategy of the organization, and poor work-life balance. Now, you can address these issues and ensure your best employees stay with you so long as they outperform. Here are the ways!

Ensure Growth

In general, employees aspire for continuous growth in their career and the best employees need it more often. Top talents achieve their target faster than an average employee. For them, professional growth is the top priority. If they notice growth opportunity is stymied in the current organization, they will search it elsewhere. Thus, it's imperative for you to chalk out a sustainable growth plan for the best employees and promote them to the position they deserve, so that they can add more values to the organization.

Recognize and Reward their Contribution

Who doesn't need a pat on the back after a good job? The best performers have more appetite for rewards and recognitions. The key aspect of a sustained employee satisfaction program lies in recognizing and rewarding the best talents and setting it as an example for others. This not only elates the spirit of your employees, but also builds up an ecosystem of fair competition amongst the real talents of your organization.

Articulate the Long-term Strategy

The best talents mature faster than the organization does, and they need more opportunities and challenges to prove their mettle. Show them the big picture. If the management of the organization lags behind the thought leadership of the best talents and fails to craft a long-term strategy for the organization, the top talents will be impatient and eventually leave the organization. So, before they take a hard decision, just articulate your vision of the organization and walk the talk. If possible, involve these top talents to shape up your strategy.

Maintain Work-life Balance

Here just one exciting thought of William Henry Davies sounds appropriate:

“What is this life if, full of care,

We have no time to stand and stare.”

After all, the best talents are human beings, not robots. If an organization fails to provide a proper work-life balance for the employees, they will look for some better organizations where they can experience it. The best solution is develop a flexi-hour culture and map rewards and recognitions with actual contribution, not with the amount of time clocked by an employee in the office premise. With the advancement of technology, the concept of workplace is changing faster. Be a change agent of this trend and provide employees the power of flexibility without neglecting the organizational goals.

Perils of Cloud-based ERP

2013-06-28T22:10:00.000+05:30

While majority of ERP systems are implemented on premise, the rising cost of IT infrastructure, upfront investment on software licenses, and the complexity of implementation have compelled CIOs and CTOs to adopt innovative ways to optimize IT operational excellence with minimized cost. As a major tectonic shift in IT operations, the innovations in cloud computing have contributed significantly to the acceptance of cloud-based software systems in general, and cloud-based ERP systems in particular. Although the early adopters, mostly small and medium enterprises, are leveraging the benefits of affordability, accessibility, and manageability of cloud-based ERP systems, the large enterprises are still skeptical about the long-term benefits because, for them, ERP system is not just another piece of fringe software which would meet their short-term objectives, nevertheless it's a key driver of their long-term strategic goals.

This white paper attempts to touch upon various aspects of cloud-based ERP systems and deciphers the myths around realized benefits that are usually advocated by the software vendors and product evangelists. With changing business landscape, emerging customer needs, and evolving best practices in securing customer data and privacy, the large enterprises are focusing majorly on the right kind of deployment of ERP systems that would not only accelerate business productivity, but also it would ensure their business future ready and full-proof during any disaster. This paper unfolds the fact behind increasing concerns over cloud-based ERP systems and why the large enterprises are still not ready to move into cloud computing in a decisive manner.

Overview of ERP

The genesis of enterprise resource planning (ERP) solutions emerges from the requirement of management in accessing information regarding the performance of all departments and business processes in any organization. In an enterprise structure, as different business functions, such as finance, human resources, sales and marketing, customer service, manufacturing, quality assurance, and IT, are integrated to translate the organizational goals into top lines and bottom lines of the enterprise, similarly an ERP system supports the data flow of all functions in a seamless manner and provides a holistic view of enterprise-wide information in terms of reports and charts. Since its early adoption in industry in the late eighties and early nineties, the ERP systems have evolved along the ever changing business requirements of organizations.

The latest breed ERP system framework comprises modules like HRM (human resources management), SCM (supply chain management), CRM (customer relationship management), FAM (finance and account management), MRP (manufacturing resource planning), project management, and BPM (business process management), which are loosely coupled with the core ERP system database. A client can opt for an all-inclusive system or even can demand a lean system with fewer modules depending upon the business requirement. Furthermore, the ERP system vendors are smartly designing industry-specific ERP solutions, such as for manufacturing and service industries.

While integrating various functional processes, the ERP systems ensure businesses eventually increase productivity, reduce turnaround time, improve customer satisfaction, increase transparency and accountability, speed up decision making process, and save money and time.

When it comes the deployment, the real fight begins amongst the decision makers of the organization. While cost becomes an alpha factor for deployment type, the management team often deliberates upon various sensitive issues including privacy, control, data security, dependency, performance, and integration. Depending upon client requirements and organizational conviction, the ERP vendors provide flexible options like on premise, hosted, and SaaS-based deployment.

Understanding Cloud-based ERP

Cloud computing has opened new avenues for delivering an array of IT services over the Internet. With the advent of service oriented architecture (SOA) and Web 2.0 technologies, software vendors have started offering various cloud-based services such as IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service), PaaS (Platform as a Service), and SaaS (Software as a Service), easing the upfront investment required by any client. Multi-tenancy, hardware virtualization, and flexible software architecture contribute to the drastic cost reduction in cloud-based offerings. And that's the vantage point which prompts many leading technology behemoths like Amazon, Google, Microsoft, IBM, and Apple to provide cloud-based services to enterprises across the geographies.

With changing business dynamics, market competitions and sheer economic reasons are becoming more palpable to the management. This endorses a paradigm shift in the managing of IT and software services in any organization. Most small and medium enterprises (SMEs) are now shifting towards the cloud-based services for the singular reason that initial investment becomes a pain area while acquiring enterprise-grade software; however, with a fraction of that cost they can even realize immense benefits, if they adopt cloud-delivered services. In fact, a typical ERP solution, which is a huge capital-intensive product, for a small company with 100 users, would cost around $500,000 plus the investment on IT infrastructure for on-premise deployment; whereas, the same system on cloud-based delivery would almost cost half of that price, and that too without infrastructure burden.

Apart from initial investment point of view, cloud-based ERP systems have a number of tangible advantages that appeal to SMEs. Some core advantages include:

Decreased infrastructure cost
Reduced maintenance staff
Quick implementation
Lower implementation cost
Faster customization
Easy integration with other systems
High scalability

However, large enterprises where user base accounts more than 10,000, the implementation of ERP on cloud gets extremely cumbersome. Adding further, data security, control, and customization are other critical areas that turn stumbling blocks for the decision makers to promptly switch over from on-premise mode to on-demand implementation over cloud.

Challenges of Cloud-based ERP

While cloud-based software services are defining new dimensions in IT offerings, large enterprises are still not fully convinced about the future trajectory of these offerings. Although many SMEs are taking the lead in adopting cloud-based ERP solutions, big organizations are treading with a caution. The major point of concern is data security. When the entire business-critical data are stored on cloud, the management is doubly skeptical about the control and portability of data. Irrespective of big assurances of cloud service providers regarding the security and privacy of information, the large enterprises are yet on evaluation mode. Here are some challenges that restrict large enterprises to adopt cloud-based ERP solution.

Data Security & Privacy

The biggest fear about cloud-based services is the breach of data security and privacy. Despite continuous assurances from cloud-based service providers, the large enterprises are still doubtful about the measures taken by data centers. And to exacerbate their doubts, the growing incidents of cyber attacks across the world only add more distrusts. According to a report published in Security Week, last September noticed a number of cyber attacks on top US financial institutes including Bank of America and JPMorgan Chase. The fact that people generally believe that client machines are more vulnerable to attacks; however, in this case the denial of service was originated from the servers in data centers. According to Internet Security Threat Report Volume 17, Symantec, April 2012, 93% of data theft identified in 2011 were from the companies in the computer software, IT, and healthcare sectors.

Since enterprise-grade ERP systems capture the business critical data from all functions of the organization, exposing them to a third party service provider would not only sometimes breach the SLA between the company and its clients, but also it jeopardizes business secret when they become vulnerable to large scale cyber attack. For big enterprises, the security of customer information, business strategy, and business-sensitive data weigh more than the growing trend of cost optimization. Although cloud service providers come out with innovative methods such as data encryption techniques, multiple authentication process like dual password system and sequential log-in, and multilayer fire-walling, today's hackers are smart enough to intrude into data centers quite easily. Certainly, there is no 100% guarantee from the cloud service providers that their data centers would never be vulnerable to such attacks.

Data Control

When cloud service providers take control of enterprise data, it becomes imperative for the enterprises to agree upon various service level agreements (SLAs) to accommodate service requests. However, once the data are moved into data center servers, enterprise control gets diminished. Any request for accessing a specific type of reporting or maintenance of data becomes binding to the SLAs. As large enterprises place thousands of requests from various functions, these requests turn out to be additional cost overrun. Moreover, when an enterprise wants to change the cloud service provider, the real trouble arises because data migration from one data center to another data center is the toughest task they have to handle.

Integration

For large enterprises, cloud-based ERP system is not the only program that they entirely bank upon; there are scores of other critical software programs that run on the premises are also equally important. Synchronization of data lying at the local servers with the data available on cloud sometimes becomes difficult. When integration of data sources becomes essential, the inability to do so or inordinate delay in execution impacts the business.

Portability

All cloud service providers are not in a democratic structure, which would enable transitioning of data from one data center to another smooth and painless. When a large organization invests hugely on cloud-based ERP solutions, it doesn't essentially corroborate to the fact that the business relationship would last for eternity. Sometimes, the services provided by the cloud service provider won't suffice to the relevant needs of the business. In this case, a shift in vendor becomes indispensable. However, simply shifting the vendor won't resolve the issue because the huge corporate data lying with the previous vendor might not be migrated to the new vendor's data center as it is. Then the real crisis begins.

Dependability

In comparison to on premise deployment, cloud-based ERP has a major bottleneck, which essentially represents the dependability on the vendor for all and sundry. Even a small report, which might have some urgency for now, can't be retrieved at the moment because everything needs a proper process and it takes time to execute. Too much dependability on the vendor for everything sometimes hampers the decision making process of the client as well.

Conclusion

The evolution of of cloud computing combined with the power of Internet technologies and the service oriented architecture (SOA) has opened a floodgate of opportunities for cloud service providers and software vendors to expand their services. From multiple deployment opportunities to flexible services to easy customization, the cloud-based software services have already made their marks in the SME segment delivery. However, the large enterprises are not fully convinced about the benefits articulated by cloud service providers. Especially, in case of cloud-based ERP solution, the short-term benefits may seem quite exiting, but for many good reasons such as data security, privacy, super control, integration, and data migration, the big companies have a valid point to differ with the service provider's views. Vulnerability of business-critical data, customer information, and strategic corporate information is not a mere narrative, but the stark realities of today's cyber attacks. While hackers are stealing millions of customer data from the data centers, then it dismantles the real vulnerability of cloud service providers, as how helpless they are. And all these ground realities only substantiate the skepticism of large enterprises on the promises made by cloud service providers. There is a long way to go for the cloud-based ERP solutions for large-scale deployment because the unquestionable risks attached to data security and privacy shouldn't be undermined.

Real Fight Begins Now

2012-08-03T10:17:00.001+05:30

After hobnobbing with anti-corruption movement for over a year and half, Team Anna is poised to float a new political outfit or some kind of alternate political force to translate Jan Lokpal Bill a reality. And that too only after 22 eminent citizens like former army chief VK Singh pleaded them to end their fast and think of a political alternative to give a new dimension to their fight. The fun part is that till evening of August 1, Team Anna was decisively against joining politics, and specifically the mascot of Team Anna, Arvind Kejriwal, rubbished the speculation of their political intention as reported by some news channels. And what's more shocking that on July 27/28 Anna in an exclusive interview to CNN-IBN and NDTV on two different occasions had already revealed the political intention of his movement. On replying to a specific question that whether his team members would like to take electoral route, he improptu said if good people like Arvind and Kiran would like to contest elections, he would support them whole-heartedly; nevertheless, he underlined the fact that he will never fight any election. What's going wrong with Team Anna is a fitting anecdote of rolling stone that gathers no moss.

When the anti-corruption movement was started last year by Anna Hazare, the whole nation supported him because the issue of corruption was quite hot and live in public domain. Reports on huge scams like CWG, 2G, and Adarsh were heading the front page and consuming significant amount of prime time and the entire country was fed up with the connotation of corruption. That was a coincidental moment Team Anna leveraged for a life time. Once newspapers and news channels shifted their focus to other territory, the public memory disappeared instantly. Moreover, internal conflict among Team Anna members and digression from the core issue of Jan Lokpal Bill impregnated a sense of distrust among the same citizens who supported Anna last time. And that rationally generated a low turnover of supporters this time. The government was equally smart to ignore this agitation and preferred not to initiate any dialogue with Team Anna and that became a breaking point for them. With deteriorating health of Arvind and other two members after nine days of fast, Team Anna was completely flummoxed to understand as what's the logical conclusion of this movement when government turned stone wall. When they were thinking of an exit route to save their face, the pleading of few eminent citizens to end “fast culture” and begin an alternative political force to deal will corruption was just a transitory point of victory for them. Maybe Team Anna had always a hidden agenda to eventually launch a new political outfit, but it was looking for the right time to unfold it in public domain.

Now the larger question here is whether Team Anna can ever be successful in electoral fray where money and muscle play a much bigger role in winning elections? Forget about money and muscle power, does Team Anna have even the minimum resources and network to run a national political party? What's the certainty that Team Anna won't fail in politics as they shamefully did in social activism, which was their forte? Moreover, politics is not sloganeering or fasting unto death. It's about managing diverse aspirations of people. A single issue like corruption, however pressing maybe in the present context, can't touch the imagination of 1.2 billion citizens of this nation. There are far more important issues that hurt a common man everyday than corruption does. Championing anti-corruption movement is another thing and running the largest democracy of this world is altogether a different ball game. Can Team Anna first come out with a vision paper as how they want to see this country 20-30 years down the line? Then only the citizens of this country would be able to read their true intention.

Virtual Classes: Changing Face of Education

2012-07-31T07:00:00.000+05:30

When Saumya Tandon (name changed), a software developer, was eagerly waiting for her annual appraisal in July this year, her manager called her into his cubicle and silently passed the appraisal letter and urged her to go through and express her concerns, she anxiously sneaked into the bottom line, and the immediate expressions on her face were laced with sadness. The thoughts that she carried out with her before entering into the cubicle vanished into the thin air and she was crest fallen. The reason: the appraisal was far below her expectations. The manager soon broke the ice and tried to keep her enthused by citing few other appraisals as how they have fared equally badly. When she mustered courage to question why this has happened to her and her peers as well, the manager in his sangfroid mood got down to brass tacks – the company has steered a policy to encourage continuous learning and earn necessary diplomas and certifications which would help improve their performance, and that was the reason why she and others were deprived of a certain percentage of benefits in their annual appraisal. This is not just the story of Saumya and her colleagues who fared badly in their annual appraisals, rather it's a ground reality that has affected many employees who forgot to brace up them with the latest degrees or diplomas required to excel in their professional journey.

Being employed and getting diplomas and degrees are not hard nuts to crack these days. The virtual education system of late has transformed the landscape of learning methods. Virtual education is now an integral part of both corporates and educational institutes those are vying for democratising education, training, and professional skills across the board. The emerging trends in the evolution of Internet have brought about significant changes in the way people think about the concepts of education, campus, curriculum, courses, learning processes, credentials, and diplomas.

With a growing number of people opting out for both continuation of education and simultaneous employment, it has become imperative for institutes and universities to tread the path of innovation and fulfill the needs of virtual students. Online education has certainly changed the way people think about education today. What's more encouraging for students that the flexibility of virtual classes has attracted people from all walks of life. Whether they are housewives, working professionals or students engaged in part-time employment, the 24x7 accessibility to the virtual class rooms allows all to complete their study with a greater flexibility. As technology enables virtual students to access pre-recorded lectures, assignments, online forums, whiteboards, and online tests, the learning process has become hugely interactive and engaging for students.

What's more rational for people to opt for online education largely depends upon the low cost of program along with myriads of opportunities to participate in virtual classes. With powerful pedagogy backed by virtual community learning, virtual classrooms have eventually harnessed technology for nurturing social simulations, helping students to interact with fellow learners and exchange views, and finally engaging them in an environment that they can feel the presence of real classrooms. The technology that once thought to be a prerogative of elitists has finally broken down that myth and the universalisation of education through virtual classrooms is a pointer that signifies the importance of thinking beyond the obvious.

Linux Cloud Hosting: The New Shift

2012-07-30T13:13:00.000+05:30

In an extremely competitive environment where enterprises are forced to achieve more from less, the adoption of cloud computing has become the new paradigm shift. To leverage flexibility, speed and cost advantages, the enterprises are not only moving towards cloud computing, but also increasingly they are depending upon the ubiquitous technology called Linux. Undoubtedly, the lethal combination of cloud computing and Linux has become the unusual steroid for business transformation. The advent of IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service) has brought along a whole new set of considerations. Apart from flexibility, speed, accessibility, higher availability, and lower cost, the most critical consideration is an open-source technology that supports the all other parameters. In true sense, Linux has taken over many proprietary technologies used in cloud hosting because it offers economy with scale in a more calibrated manner. Perhaps, that's the reason why the top-tier cloud computing solutions such as Amazon EC2, ElasticHosts, Mozy, Google Apps, Blue Cloud, and vCloud are powered by Linux.

Why Linux?

Linux has become the de facto technology for cloud computing. It's not just the cost advantage that attracts the global players to run cloud infrastructure on Linux, but there are a number of other important factors that support this trend.

Architecture

While a technology offers flexibility for customization, it adaptability becomes universal. And that's the core strength of Linux kernel. The configurability, compotentization, customization, and high availability are few parameters that drive the whole business of cloud computing. With Linux at core, the architecture of cloud computing becomes robust and flexible for disparate customer requirements.

Compatibility and Standards

In a cloud computing ecosystem, the customers prefer open-source service architecture because they benefit hugely while extending their local data center to cloud. With thousands of open source applications available in the market, the customers bank on Linux for hosting and administration. Thus it becomes imperative for cloud service providers to bang on a common standard for better usage.

Manageability

Adopting to a technology becomes faster when its manageability becomes easier and cost effective. As Linux becomes a core common skill for infrastructure administrators, the cloud computing solutions providers trade cautiously. And here comes the rationale for the cloud players to leverage the demand for Linux.

Cost

Apart from licensing cost of proprietary platform, the running cost guzzles out huge money on power consumption. Where as Linux-based platform can be run on scale-down hardware which require lower power consumption in comparison to other high-end hardware. So, from managing a data center to administering client units, Linux offers a credible cost-saving option for customers.

Conclusion

With growing adoption of cloud computing in next generation businesses, the leading solutions providers are considering critical parameters including but not limited to cost optimization and technology delimitation. The flexibility of usage, scalability, affordability, and faster replication have added more reasons for solutions providers to engage Linux with cloud computing. Perhaps, the technology leaders like Amazon and Google have internalized this truth.

Engaging Audiences for Optimum Learning Output

2012-07-29T13:43:00.000+05:30

Great online trainings not only cater to reaching out to maximum audiences across geographies at any given point of time, but also they offer superior learning experiences, which even can be rated higher than the conventional learning model in terms of quality and effectiveness. With increasing competition in this space, the challenges for the training solutions providers have been manifold, partly because the faster innovation in learning technologies infuses unlimited expectations in learners' mind. That in turn pitches a war path for training solutions providers to seriously optimize the crafting of online training in a manner that could even engage the audiences more effectively than that of a physical training environment. Here are are some important pointers for an engaging online training model.

Online Icebreaker

In an online training environment, audiences don't expect a boring, high-sounding introduction speech. What they want is a compelling, warmed-up starter, which would drive their curiosity and engage them for a longer duration. So what do you do then? Start with a great anecdote? Bang with a survey poll? Or surprise them with some amazing facts, not available to public easily? The call is yours. Different audience groups have different tastes, but the single fact that bind them all is pure emotion. Charge them with a hot starter that would transform their enthusiasm into a riveting life-time experience.

Peer Partnership and Team Activities

Online environment offers a wide range of possibilities for collaborative learning. Engaging students in collaborative learning can significantly increase their learning standard. According to a research, students remember only 10% what they read by themselves; however, they can remember 70% what they discuss with others, and even remember 95% what they teach to others. Thus a collaborative learning with with peers and team-based activities can help improve the learning standards of students. With a range of new technologies available, you can adopt some pertinent ones like micro-blogging, discussion forums, instant messaging, interactive white boards, and audio and video conferencing to enrich their learning experience.

Reflective Activity

Online learning environment can be transformed into a pure reflective medium in which students can express their thoughts through various tools such as blog, wiki, and email. As a reflective activity takes some time to cogitate and deliver the task, the solution provider can assign them with complex questions, which would require a fair amount of brainstorm and reading from various sources before expressing their thoughts on a collaborative space. Moreover, you can ask online participants to create a movie by themselves and post it on YouTube and send the link for trainer review. This way students can group them and pitch in for a better creative output.

Authentic Activity

Activities are an essential part of any learning model. In online model, during any coursework or session or post fact, you can engage students with random instant questionnaires from a master question bank. With various types of ratings and ranking systems, you can ensure students are both learning and also getting incentive. This will certainly optimize the learning process of students.

Games and Simulation

Games and simulations are a great incentive for online learning. Learning with fun is the new truth. While designing an online learning coursework, you can embed videos, games, and simulated stories to enrich the learning process. With advanced software on gaming and simulation hitting market every other day, the learning solution provider can offer a comprehensive teaching model by adopting to various tricks, and they work as well.

Learner-led Activity

When learners take the lead in designing and delivering various activities, they feel empowered and responsible for their actions. This model provides online learners an element of authority that in turn helps the learners contribute to the learning community in a great measure. However, there is a significant amount of responsibility from the solution provider. While engaging audiences through learner-led activity, you should ensure that the objectives of the activity are clearly articulated, scope of creativity is highly encouraged, and gradings are explicitly explained.

Conclusion

Learning is a continuous process and certainly it doesn't happen in vacuum. For an engaging online learning environment, innovation always drives the lead. A combination of creativity and technology can even do wonders. In fact, there are many ways making this possible.

Future Perfect

2012-07-27T22:50:00.000+05:30

The perception towards teaching is rapidly changing. The pure, conventional, dreary face-to-face teaching is now a thing of past. With educational institutes and private companies increasingly promoting and preferring the learners to take online education, the online teaching has today emerged as a new drift, a newfangled vocation for smart teachers who in all probability could be super task masters. The online education as an industry has also shown tremendous growth both in enrollment and turnover. According to forecasts of Marketdata Enterprises, Inc., the market size in the US can grow at 7.7 percent per year from 2012 to 2015 touching $78 billion. The same report further suggests that the enrollment status for online education is proportionately promising. From a current estimate of 6.4 million enrollment in 2012, the figure can even reach 7.4 million in 2015.

The proliferation of innovative learning technologies blended with evolutionary social web engagements are fast transforming the landscape of online teaching to the super green venture of future. Of late the semantics of online teaching strikes the right chord with the changing mindset of new-age learners. Who does like a boring face-to-face classroom teaching? The advent of highly collaborative and exciting online learning environment powered by a barrel of modern technologies has metamorphosed the exposition of learning. The journey of online teaching is just poised to take a big leap. Ready to grab the opportunity?

The Paradigm Shift

Teaching today is not a sheer linear, one-directional method in which one preaches and others faithfully listen. With evolution of technology and ever growing new demands of learners, teaching has been a more complex subject. Earlier teachers used to believe in a limited aspects of teaching process; however, today the role is more demanding than it was ever before. The intervention of state in education system, growing public-private partnership, proliferation of technology, customized learning, and multi-level evaluation process collectively define the complexity of new-age learning and equally so the pressing role of an online teacher.

Role of Teacher

The academic version of teaching is expanding rigorously. The functions of teachers are not limited to coursebook completion, rather a number of pertinent parameters are being added. First, the accountability of learning outcome has become a major concern for teachers. And this opens up many avenues for the role of a teacher. For example, diagnosing learners' needs, customization of program based on individual learners, keeping learner-centered environment, innovating instructional strategies, planning lessons, evaluating quality of content, program effectiveness, continuous evaluation process, site-based decision making, allocation of technological resources, monitoring learners' performance, and assessing learning outcomes are some new responsibilities that a teacher should discharge to stay competitive with the changing time. Teaching now evolved into an exciting and challenging profession.

Role of Technology

Technology is a key enabler of modern teaching process. From lesson planning to content creation to distribution to evaluation, each stage has been jazzed up by the touch of technology. Notebooks, pens, and pencils are nearly discarded and being replaced by high-tech gadgets like laptops, tablets, and smart phones. Learning is becoming more exciting with the advent of many interactive tools and social webs. Tech-savvy teachers are increasingly banking on Google Apps, Skype, Wiki, Blogs, and YouTube to grab the attention of students. A modern classroom can be compared with a high-tech laboratory.

From Classroom to Virtual Learning Environment

The landscape of learning is transforming faster than the mindset of learners. In an extremely connected world, where knowledge and information are easily accessible, the learning environment has crossed the border of classrooms. Thanks to technological innovation. In an age of globalization, technological advancement has proved to be catalyst in bringing in novel nomenclature in education, be it “virtual learning”, “online classes” or “virtual classroom.”

Huge investment in education sector to democratize learning process has developed a universal ecosystem for virtual learning. Historically, in the US, University of Phoenix started country's first online degree program in 1989. Today, more than 150,000 students are enrolled online for various programs including Bachelor's, Master's and Doctoral degrees. Matching with the industry requirement, University of Phoenix produces latest course curricula and delivers quality education over web.

University of Phoenix was the icebreaker. Now over 2500 colleges and universities in the US offer online programs. According to a survey conducted by Babson Survey Research Group, in 2010 alone over 6.1 million students at least opted for one online class, a stark 10.1 percent rise over the previous year. “Nearly thirty percent of all college and university students now take at least one course online,” says study co-author I Elaine Allen, Co-Director of the Babson Survey Research Group and Professor of Statistics & Entrepreneurship at Babson College.

The growing numbers of online enrollment in various global colleges and universities suggest that the time has come for a tradeoff between learners and teachers. The erstwhile monopoly of classroom teachers is gradually collapsing and simultaneously the demand for online teachers is moving northward.

Need of Online Teaching

The growing need of online education among students and working professionals has profound implications on online teaching. With emergence of internet and other collaborative technologies, the teaching landscape has been ever changing. The online environment provides a number of advantages over traditional, face-to-face classes. Along with real course-ware, for instance, the online teachers can integrate many informational resources via a web page, which could be a blog/article, a video, a multimedia presentation, or a threaded discussion forum. Imagine the benefits the virtual learners can achieve. This also expands the scope of responsibilities of online teacher. Now the online learners communities expect their teachers should not only meet their expectations, but also in most cases they should exceed. The fun of learning lies in its engaging characteristics. Apart from the richness of learning, there are other dimensions, discussed in this section, as well that propel the growth story of online learning, and online teaching as a demanding profession.

Breaking the Barrier

As education is an investment-intensive program, many bright students often shed the idea of getting enrolled in a reputed US college. However, the online learning programs offered by various colleges/universities in the US and other countries have allowed students to go for learning even from disadvantaged locations with a fraction of cost that's normally incurred when one opts for regular courses. So, the online education first dislodges the rich-poor divide while spreading quality education in a democratic manner. Primarily, online education is easily accessible anywhere in the world if the learner has a computer and an internet connection at home. Moreover, students find it convenient to get course materials such as homework, exam schedules, test scores, and certificates without struggling.

Accessibility

The popularity of online education lies in its easy accessibility. For face-to-face learning, students normally wait for a specific time when the instructor/teacher is available to take the class; however, through online education, they can find all information regarding a subject by simply browsing the desired website or even can start a live chat with an expert in that field. What's more interesting that students can also consult peers via a web chat. This whole exercise provides a meaningful way to enhance the overall learning experience of students. Furthermore, online teachers can disseminate information to thousands of students in real-time, which is hardly possible in face-to-face teaching.

Quality of Learning

Many online teachers also invite experts such as researchers and authors as guests to their virtual classes. Sometimes, eminent professors and industry professionals also join various web-casts to enrich the learning program of students. Although this happens in physical classrooms, the difference in online environment is that a student/learner can be multitasking while attending to any such program. As technology continues to advance, teachers can invest time to build various scenarios and case studies to enhance the learning process of students. Apart from a SCORM-based curriculum, teachers use various other mediums such as Wiki, Blogs, Forums, Chat, and Videos to deliver quality content.

Higher Student Engagement

The online learning becomes more engaging because it evokes both deeper and boarder discussions when learners willingly participate in the learning process with their peers and teachers more actively. Each student gets exposed to an array of debates and thought-provoking discussions, which in turn permeates a psychological impulse for a non-participating student to break his or her silence and contribute to the learning process.

In an asynchronous learning environment students get sufficient time to go though threaded discussions posted in a forum and post their own after deep analysis. This increases the participation of students in comparison to classroom teaching where the constraints of time is a major dampener.

Anonymity Brings Empowerment

Anonymity plays a major role in online education. It creates more equality among the students in an online class. Normally students feel free to ask any question to an online teacher without any inhibition because there is no direct eye contact with teacher. At the same time, the online teachers also find it quite easy to respond to any query as there is classroom disturbance syndrome, which is quite common in a face-to-face teaching environment. So this is a win-win both for students and teachers.

Communication Matters

The most unique aspect of online teaching is that teachers and students rarely see one another, and this specific feature brings in a major responsibility for online teacher – comprehensive communication. So, online teachers should focus on the communication part of teaching, whether it's related to coursework designing, evaluating students academic progress, responding students' queries through emails/chats/discussion forums, or posting a blog/article on their website. The basic requirement is online teachers should write and communicate well, unfailingly. And they should understand the nuances of words and verbiages so that there is no communication barrier.

Future of Online Teaching

Education sector is experiencing an overwhelming degree of transformation with the emergence of digital age. From social web to high-touch apps to tablets and smart phones, today's education embraces the digital revolution wither greater emphasis on mass collaboration and faster communication. With cutting-edge learning technologies, teaching and learning now become more demanding than ever before. Especially in higher education segment, the adoption of new technologies and innovative methodologies is visibly prominent. This is backed by “2010 Sloan Survey of Online Learning” report that underlines the fact that enrollment in online courses in the US colleges almost increased by one million students from the previous year. And the most revealing fact of this survey is that approximately 30 percent of all college and university students now take at least one online course.

Students are increasingly opting out for online education because of flexibility of timing, customized learning packages, easy accessibility, and a value for money. Also the education service provides such as public and private institutes and universities are heading towards a deep competitive regime. The players in online education space would only sustain the growing competition provided they adopt new technologies, encourage innovation both in pedagogy and delivery, and engage smart teaching staff to deliver the best learning package. While new technologies are popping up every alternate week, their applicability and acceptance largely depends upon the opinion leaders and evangelists and in this case they are the new-age teachers and instructors who can bridge the gap between learners' adaption and the desired outcome of industry expectations. And this evolves more responsibilities and greater accountability of teaching staff. If technology plays a significant role in the transformation of online education, equally so the online teachers, and for them staying afloat during the journey is more relevant than anything else.

Bringing in Enhanced Pedagogy

In online education, the primary element that drives the tempo of popularity is pedagogical strategy. An effective pedagogical strategy for online teaching can ensure richness in learning, student engagement, and desired learning outcomes. Here comes a tribe called subject matter experts who decide the online instructional strategies. According to a survey on higher education in the United States, the respondents who are mostly teaching staff opine that the best instruction strategy is the one which supports and encourages the learner's inquisitiveness, widens the learner's perspectives on the subject matter, infuses critical and creating thinking, and brings about sustained growth in overall experience. Hence the onus lies on the online teachers who are supposed to carry out research and suggest the desired changes in the instructional practices.

Using New Technologies

Technology plays an important role in the success story of online education. In last two decades, an increasing number of universities and colleges in the United States have adopted new technologies while delivering learning. The evolution of Internet has transformed the learning process in higher education. According to an online survey conducted through the members (both teaching staff and administrative personnel) Multimedia Educational Resource for Learning and Online Teaching (MERLOT) or the Western Cooperative for Educational Telecommunications (WCET), the respondents opine that several emerging technologies for online education have found their acceptance for course management. Whether it's online test tools, online library, streaming videos, live chats, discussion forums, and wikis, they have all contributed significantly to the learning experience. The adaption is increasing proportionately with dawning of new technologies. Even today many universities have gone beyond the formal teaching methodologies. Gamification, social web, synchronous conferencing, and real-time collaboration have marked an increased adaption.

Meeting Spiraling Demand of Learners

One interesting factor that still holds a precious position in online education arena is that the demand of online education is revving up. And this aspect drives the industry crazy. When demand is rising, it's certain that the online educational players foresee a better future. But that doesn't singularly excite them because in that comes a whole lot of hard works. Online learners are gradually tasting the demand-supply churning. It's quite tricky a scenario. Very similar to customer service market. More the service providers, happier the customers. Because the competition among various educational players at least ensures the services are competitive in quality and cost. And this aspect of competition is a never-ending cycle. So what comes out from this churn is an array of new demands like pedagogical competency, technical competency of teachers, course and content quality, quality of service, worth of certification, industry acceptance, and not the least a competitive pricing structure.

What Do You Need to Be an Online Teacher?

Teaching face-to-face and teaching online are altogether two distinct subjects. It's not necessary to claim that a very good conventional teacher who has received scores of applause from students could be a successful online teacher. The first and foremost challenge faced by an online teacher is understanding the online environment. Many bright teachers who are engaged in face-to-face teaching even feel reluctant to teach online. On the contrary, teachers having sound knowledge of pedagogy and a fair amount of understanding online technologies can deliver better results. Barring technology there are other dimensions as well which play key roles in the making of a successful online teacher.

Understanding the Environment

The chief characteristic of online teaching environment is that it's driven by technology, so it may require an adequate knowledge of contemporary technologies to stay competitive. An online teacher should understand that the flexibility of classroom teaching is limited in online teaching. Hence it requires more planning, organizing, commitment, preparation, creativity, time management, discipline, empathy, and detailing to optimize the learning experience.

Comfortable with Technology

While many teachers believe that a formal understanding of computer and Internet would bail them out in online teaching, the truth is just contrary. It's much beyond the connotation of computer literacy. For online teaching, a high degree of comfort with various tools and applications marks the premium. It finally boils down to how efficiently you use the technologies at your disposal to optimize the entire learning experience of students. Here are some essential technology skills that online teachers should possess:

Working knowledge of collaborative documentation tools, for example, Google Docs
Hands-on experience with web conferencing tools, for example, Mikago, Skype, etc
Email management skills
Online presentation skills
Videoconferencing skills
Social media skills including blogging and handling online forums
Website building skills
Knowledge of unified communication tools
Knowledge of SCROM-compliance tools for designing courseware
Content management system skills

Teaching Strategy

Although many classroom teachers are well-versed with face-to-face teaching methodologies, when it comes to online, they often mess up. While teaching online, the teachers should practice the following strategies to ensure effective learning environment:

Define student-centered activities to evaluate learning effectiveness
Facilitate and moderate online discussions
Encourage problem-based and collaborative learning
Provide timely feedback
Use interactive/simulated tools to enrich learning

Online Teaching Certification

While most of the teachers have teaching certification/diploma, online teaching requires a lot more than that. Given the technological and pedagogical skills required by online teaching, the aspirants in this profession should possess online teaching qualifications. There are many universities and colleges in the US such as Drexel University which offer exclusive online teaching training for teachers. This training offers critical skill development such as pedagogical skills, interfacing with online technologies, mentoring and moderation skills, instructional strategy skills, and social web skills.

Tools and Connectivity

The fundamentals of online teaching are that they happen in a virtual medium where learners may be sitting at any corner of the world. So to interface with learners the online teachers should have the following tools and gadgets.

A standard desktop loaded with basic applications such as Word Processor, PowerPoint, Spreadsheets, course authoring tools, collaborative white boards, collaborative working tools, designing software.
Peripherals such as webcam, headset, external storage drive
Broadband Internet connectivity
Subscribed to web mails and chat apps

Best Practices

Online teaching is one of the smartest vocations of 21^st century. With growing needs of online education, the scope of online teaching has been widened in the past decade. The new-age online teachers though are bedecked with many skills, here are seven best practices that would certainly value add to the overall skills.

Best Practice 1: Be Regular

Regularity breeds contempt, but here the contrary works wonder. An online teacher who maintains the predefined schedules and keep the learners updated about programs, announcements, discussions, and postings becomes the most popular among online learners.

Best Practice 2: Be Supportive

Online teaching needs a fair amount of continuous support in terms of developing online course community; posting lectures, videos, audios, and blogs; attending to forum questions; developing social we ecosystem; and setting up support groups.

Best Practice 3: Set Expectations

Setting right expectations for students and yourself can make the learning process practicable. Here you can create a sharable document pointing out the rules for communication, instruction for students, feedback response time, and specifically your schedule.

Best Practice 4: Develop Community

Online teaching can be more engaging when it's supported by a variety of teaching communities with broad-based experiences in online teaching. This encourages brainstorming among students.

Best Practice 5: Judicious Use of Synchronous and Asynchronous Tools

Online education originally started with asynchronous way; however, with influx of new technologies, it has become synchronous. As an online teacher you have to decide to draw a line where you need to go for what. Both are important, but in a collaborative world every method has an edge.

Best Practice 6: Continuous Feedback

Faster feedback helps students save their time in correcting themselves. Don't wait for tomorrow. Make it a practice to provide real-time feedback, and this will amplify the degree of learning enthusiasm.

Best Practice 7: Create a To-Do List

Prepare a To-Do list for students by clearly articulating their tasks, activities, and other necessary information that they often require.

Skills Required for an Online Teacher

Online teaching requires more complex skills than conventional teaching. When medium and environment of learning change, it becomes imperative for teachers to concentrate on a number of factors simultaneously. Apart from the common teaching skills, the online teachers need a set of competencies in various domains such as technology, administrative, pedagogy, and communication. Here each skill set is elaborated based on teaching requirements.

Technology Skills

Sound understanding of emerging technologies is an essential requirement for online teachers. As medium of instruction changes in online teaching, technology takes over the manageability of dissemination. Thus it becomes important for online teachers to gain multiple skills which include, but not limited to the following list:

Understanding operation of computer
Knowledge of operating system
Knowledge of basic application pool such as Word Processing, Spreadsheets, and PowerPoint
Database management skills
Project management skills
File management and storing
Hands-on experience in online collaborative tools
Social media and blogging skills
Online research skills
eLearning management system
eLearning content authoring system
Content management system
Email management system
Working knowledge of unified communications suite
Network management skills
Web designing skills
HTML authoring skills
Scripting skills
Data storage management
Knowledge of modern computer peripherals such as webcam, digicam, scanner, bluetooth
Common software installation

Administrative Skills

While conventional teachers have the luxury of using institutional support/administrative support, the online teachers badly need those skills to develop. Here are few skills that you should develop before embarking on the online teaching job.

Schedule management
Audio/video conference setup
Student information management
Account management
Payment management
Mail response

Pedagogy Skills

Online teaching is as much technological as pedagogical. A teacher with good pedagogical skills has a better edge than his/her peers. Here are certain skills that you should learn before jumping in to the fray.

Learning analysis
Instructional designing
Community building
Reflective teaching
Creative teaching
Brainstorming
Forum management
Lesson planning
Activity designing
Knowledge of Shareable Content Object Reference Model (SCORM)
Test evaluation

Communication Skills

Communication is the key to become a successful teacher. In online teaching, good communications skills saves time and even enhances the quality of learning. A teacher with bad communication skills often creates confusion in learners mind. An online teacher should consider the following aspects of communication.

Structure of communication
Cross-culture communication
Procedural communication
Technical communication
Cooperative communication
Personal communication
Strategic communication

Challenges You Face for Online Teaching

Although online teaching seems to be a very exciting career, it comes with a fair amount of challenges. However, these can be addressed effectively to ensure smooth sailing. The primary challenge an online teacher faces is to become “jack of all trades”. You need to wear many hats during teaching – teacher, mentor, facilitator, tech geek, and administrator. Sometimes online teachers find it difficult to switch from one train of thought to another due to lack of multi-tasking skills. Secondly, an online teacher needs to innovate constantly and it requires sufficient time to develop this mindset. Constraint of time and loads of responsibility often hard presses an online teacher to repeat the learning methodology. Apart from the intellectual aspect of challenges there are other physical challenges as well. For example, while taking an online class if your Internet connectivity fails, it mars your reputation, in which you don't have any control. A similar problem happens when you use a specific online tool and the server goes down. Here are some top challenges that an online teacher faces.

Establishing the resonance with online students
Adapting to the cultural practices of various origins
Calibrating learning outcomes with efforts
Transforming learning theories into practice
Zeroing on appropriate learning models vis-a-vis learners' requirements
Being hands-on with latest tools/applications to meet growing expectations of learners
Addressing emerging ethical issues in virtual medium
Understanding the evolving role of techno-academic profession
Handling data security issues

On a conclusive note, even you can manage mastering skills and stay competitive, other external challenges can be sometimes irksome, though not difficult to assuage.

Tools Required to Teach Online

While teaching online, teachers require a number of tools for various purposes. Starting from defining a pedagogical strategy to lesson planning to course-ware authoring to delivery of content, online teaching is a complex task and more specifically you can't do it with a single tool or application. To deliver successful online teaching programs, you need to master a number of tools and applications. And the best part is that they are available free or at a very nominal price, which can be easily affordable.

Here is an exhaustive list of tools that can help you excel in your profession. You can visit each website and learn more about the product.

Animoto
Assign-A-Day
Audacity
Blogger
Blogmeister
Boolify
Box.net
Calendars.net
ClassTools
Classroom 2.0 Ning
CommonCraft
Curriki
Delicious
Diigo
Dropbox
Facebook
Flashcard Exchange
Filamentality
Flickr
FreshPond.net
Gcast
Gliffy
Glogster
Goodreads

Google
Google Apps
Google Calendar
Google Docs
Google Earth
Google Maps
iGoogle
Jing Project
Kuler
Lesson Plans
Library Thing
Library 2.0 Ning
Librivox
Meebo
MyT4L
Netvibes
Ning
Notesake
Open Clip Art Library
Picasa
Picnik
Personal Educational Press
Project Based Learning Checklists

QuickTopic
Remember the Milk
RSS Newsfeed Generator
RubiStar
Rubric Machine
School 2.0 Ning
SchoolTube
Scribd
Skrbl
Skype
Slideshare
Study Stack
TeacherTube
Trackstar
Twiddla
Twitter
VoiceThread
Web 2.0 Tutorial Videos
Wikis
Wordle
xTimeline
Yugma
Zamzar

Earning Potential of Teaching Online

A common myth that sticks to teaching profession that it's not at all a lucrative profession. However, this is not true. A recent news on the earnings of a kindergarten teacher by selling lesson plan online rightly discards this false notion. According to this news report, Deanna Jump, a kindergarten teacher from Georgia, US, has earned mindbogglingly $700,000 from simply selling lesson plans on Teachers Pay Teachers, a startup ecommerce platform where teachers sell their lesson plans to fellow educators. This is just tip of the iceberg. In the US, a fairly experienced online teacher can earn $50-150 per hour.

The salary of online professor in the US is quite competitive; however, the earnings vary based on various parameters such as location, institution, position, domain, teaching experience, and level of expertise. According to a survey conducted by the American Association of University Professors in 2008–09, salaries for full-time teaching staff averaged $79,439. Further classification by ranks reveals that the average salary of professors was $108,749, for associate professors was $76,147, and for assistant professors was $63,827.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) 2009 data, the average annual salary for high school teachers, both classroom and online teaching, was $52,200; however, the highest-paid teachers in the 90th percentile earned more than $82,000 annually. The salary also varies based on cities. For example, the highest-paid high school teacher in New York, Illinois, and Alaska earned $68,010, $67,960, and $67,640 respectively. Moreover, the salaries also vary in a particular city based on specific locations. For example, in the metropolitan areas such as

Nassau-Suffolk in New York, Chicago-Naperville-Joliet in Illinois, and Santa Ana-Anaheim-Irvine area in California, the top salary was $83,560, $74,530, and $73,890 respectively.

At the post-secondary level, the salaries are even visibly more. According to BLS report, the post-secondary teachers even get more than $128,330 at the top level. The highest salaries in Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New York, California , and the District of Columbia were $115,130, $87,820, $87,780, $84,930, and $84,270 respectively. Although there is no striking difference between the salary of classroom and online teachers, the salaries vary according to industry, institute, and subject. For a deserving professional sky is the limit.

Conclusion

The changing educational environment, technological evolution, and market demand have equally contributed to the growth of this industry. The growing need of flexibility, accessibility, quality of learning and meaningful results have supported the journey of online education. As innovation is the cornerstone of technological evolution, the future of online teaching is certainly going to be more engaging and enriched. The aspirants for this profession need to focus on the core aspects of online teaching – the medium, the strategy, the enabler, and the market. The ecosystem for online education is abuzz with ideas and their realization. It's just a matter of conviction as how effectively you transform yourself from a conventional view point to radical approach through which you can explore the world of opportunities in this domain.

A Slice of Oprah Winfrey

2012-07-26T13:43:00.002+05:30

Oprah Winfrey has of late sparked hullabaloo in media circle post her recent telecasting of two-episode Next Chapter, based upon her experience gathered from the sojourn visit to India this January. Though the talk-show to some extent has put India in poor light from cultural point of view, what's more outrageous than Oprah's understanding about Indian culture and tradition is Indians' inherent barometric intolerance culture, so thin-skinned than a whimper of whisper can create patches of rashes almost instantly. Barring certain vituperative remarks such as “I heard some Indian people eat with their hands still?” the episode attempts to decipher the glaring contrasts of India. From slums of Mumbai to incredible Taj Mahal, each talking point has touched the conscious deliberation of Oprah.

Whether a bunch of people live under the same roof in a cubicle size room in Mumbai slum or majority of Indians still eat with their hands, the narrative purely reflects Oprah's typical story-telling style. And bringing the ground reality to public scrutiny has moved many into tears especially in Oprah's talk-shows. However, as a renowned television anchor Oprah has unwittingly exposed her pseudo-intellectual underbelly, a syndrome that has infected many prime time anchors in India as well. The pith of problem here is not what's packaged, but the real issue is much deeper. An anchor can't be a master of all trades what's otherwise popularly projected by media. Every anchor has limitation of understanding the real problem. Even a layman can put better perspectives on a contemporary problem than a great anchor.

Making superficial comments on five-thousand-year old Indian culture is the most bizarre thing that can be least expected from Oprah, but the reality is sitting at 100,000 feet height and facetiously explaining the ground zero is equally derisive. Irrespective of her multi-billion media empire and huge experience in talk-shows, she has a vulnerable side as well - Oprah lives on the surface of human wisdom. There is much underneath. Subtle and profound. She must explore, analyze, and then express. Probably she can then become the most adorable anchor, beyond the cobweb of seductive statistics that she currently grandstands.

Mission BYOD: Are Risks Worth Taking?

2012-07-20T13:31:00.000+05:30

With growing proliferation of smart mobile devices in the consumer market, the new age professionals have quickly shifted from PCs to laptops, tablets, and smart phones. According to IT Consumer Survey conducted by IDC in April 2011, while 88 percent consumers surveyed use a desktop to access Internet for business or personal use, 91 percent use a laptop, 80 percent use smart phone, and 36 percent use a tablet for the same purpose. This is an indication of how fast the smart devices are being penetrated into consumer space. Driven by this trend enterprises are compelled to introduce bring-your-own-device (BYOD) model in the organization. In the first place, this trend not only helps enterprises save spiraling IT infrastructure cost significantly, but also it improves the productivity of employees. Nevertheless, this comes with a caveat – challenges associated with enterprise data security. Now that the enterprises can't reverse the trend of smart work culture, the limited option left for them is to evaluate various dimensions of risks associated with BYOD model and smartly implement an enterprise-wide data security program.

Here are some major concerns that pose serious deliberations before allowing BYOD program in the organization.

Does the organization have a full-proof BYOD policy?
Does the organization have a stringent security policy related to critical data exchange over employee devices?
How will these devices be connected to various data servers in the organization?
What if the employee leaves or gets fired?
What if the employee device is lost or theft and passed to a rouge element?
What are the IT infrastructural limitations for mobility programs?
What are the monitoring programs for keeping a tab upon a variety of heterogeneous devices?

Advantages of BYOD

Every technology revolution has its fair share of advantages. And the growing trend of smart mobile device adoption by employees at workplaces has more edges. According to a study on BYOD conducted by Cisco, 76 percent respondents said that adopting to BYOD was somewhat or extremely positive for their organizations. The same study reveals that BYOD apart from operational excellence there is a significant cost benefit. As per some estimation done by Cisco, an employee engaged in BYOD can benefit the organization in the range of $300 to $1300. Primarily, the companies allowing BYOD accrue the following benefits.

Optimized employee performance: Smart devices provide more flexibility to contemporary work culture. They also increase collaboration among employees, management, and customers. Employees can be equally productive while they are traveling or working from home.
Enhanced employee satisfaction: While employees are allowed to bring their own smart devices to work place, they never crib about obsolete desktop, as often provisioned by the organization. Since they are convenient with their own devices and also they understand the nuances of usage, their independence from the buckles of IT helpdesk provides a sense of contentment.
Increased client satisfaction: Mostly employees working in the sales and support program quickly respond to customers' concerns, which ultimately elevates customer satisfaction.
Significant cost savings: With employees taking care of their own devices, companies save a significant portion of IT spending on purchase of hardware and other allied devices. Moreover, companies can save on phone plans, SMS plans, Internet services, and helpdesk overhead.
Reduced management intervention: Allowing BYOD to employees, the management eliminates a number of additional responsibilities such as selection of vendors, monitoring of employee data usage, and purchase decisions.

Risks Associated with BYOD

While enterprises leverage the benefits of BYOD, there are some genuine concerns as well. According to a survey conducted by Mimecast in 2012, 74 percent respondents emphasized that the biggest challenge of BYOD is information security. By allowing employees' own mobile devices to premises, companies open a floodgate of security and privacy issues that could cost them huge amount of money in terms of fine and critical data loss. Here are some critical risks that spring from the BYOD program.

Security threats: Mobile devices, especially smart phones, are often vulnerable to hacking. Since mobile platforms are not matured yet the security risks associated with them are not well articulated by device makers. When an employee downloads a new application there is enough chance that the software might be a malware or a tracking program that can eavesdrop any conversation taking place over the device.
Spreading of malware in the network: If the device is connected through a Wi-Fi or Bluethooth, there is a larger possibility of that the device can play a dumb to tricks of hackers who can spread malware in the entire network. Malware can cause a huge loss of enterprise data and customer information.
Loss or theft of devices: Since mobile devices are small and easily portable, they are prone to loss and theft. That threatens the loss of critical enterprise data.
Lack of enterprise-level security controls: As employees use a variety of devices and all that operate on different platforms, it become quite cumbersome for the organization to streamline a single security blanket policy.
Spamming: Unsolicited messages and contents eats out the bandwidth and storage. Although spams can't directly pose threat to data, any response to that can create otherwise.
Phishing activities: Phishing is a serious concern for mobile devices as users can't detect it right there as often they can do in PCs and laptops.

Managing the Risks

Risks are often thwarted when they are understood well. In case of BYOD, organizations not only face security challenges, but also they come across with a slew of legal challenges as well. For example, loss of customer information, which is protected under privacy act, can draw huge legal complications for the organization. In the recent time, companies like Facebook and Yahoo have lost millions of customers' personal information to hackers. That indeed reflects how vulnerable the large technology enterprise are. But for any organization, small or big, a comprehensive policy on data security and framework for workable BYOD model can ensure the benefits of smart work culture. A report titled “Five steps to a successful BYOD program” published by Forrester, emphasizes that the more an employee has access to privileged data, the more powerful should be the information security rules.

The organizations can consider the following strategies to avoid susceptible risks and leverage the advantages of BYOD program. Before allowing employees to bring their own mobile devices to the workplace, the companies should enact a comprehensive BYOD policy, which would address major BYOD concerns.

The BYOD policy should include, but not limited to the aspects such as employee usage, mobile security, data protection, data encryption, password protection, identity and access control, wireless access control, social media usage, internet browsing control, anti-virus/anti-malware software provisioning, anti-spam procedures, anti-phishing procedures, application security, incident reporting, and above all an enterprise-wide employee training on all these issues.

Conclusion

Technological revolutions in the past have brought both opportunities and risks on the same platter. Not a single technology invented till date is absolutely free from some genuine challenges. Organizations encouraging their employees to adopt BYOD must consider the key challenges first and then devise a comprehensive BYOD policy across the organization in order to optimize the benefits of this program.

The Independent's Goof-up

2012-07-16T21:58:00.000+05:30

It's quite hilarious that The Independent, a UK daily newspaper, that carried a political critic on India's prime minister Dr. Manmohan Singh on its website, could only able to settle the final headline “Manmohan Singh - India's saviour or just 'the underachiever'?” after faltering twice. The other two headlines were “Manmohan Singh: Saviour or Sonia's Poodle?” and “Manmohan Singh: Saviour or Sonia's Puppet?” Such a glaring editorial blunder though not uncommon in media, the pith of the problem here is internationally media houses have lost their editorial intellect. Rather a newspaper or a news channel is more like a consumer product with the shortest shelf life. You can have many versions of a story throughout the day with changes here and there. No wonder then a small-time daily like The Independent having a circulation well below two-hundred thousand deliberately modified the headline twice before taking a cue from Time magazine's cover story. And Andrew Buncombe, the Asia correspondent for The Independent and the author of this story, might not feel embarrassed at all, for “the err is human.” Journalists can commit mistakes, blunders, report misguided stories, and in the next moment come out with a rejoinder, admitting to the fact that it's “an inadvertent error.” But the politicians don't have that journalistic privilege. Any wrong decision taken by them are unforgivable.

The story may have many merits while blaming or accusing Dr Manmohan Singh given the current state of governance, but do these journalists ever question their own intellectual paucity? Whatever reported in the story has nothing new in it. It's rather a patchwork of scores of news stories published in Indian media over last few years. By the way, what's the score of Mr Andrew Buncombe, as a correspondent – ethically should be a seeker of truth? Hasn't he been stifled under pressure to overshadow the ethics of a journalist and behave “poodle” or “puppet” of management? Hasn't he ever made disservice to the profession by planting stories or blowing a story out of proportion in his life time? He might have done many times, but those are unreported, censored from the public eye. Because the mistakes of a journalist, even if reported, can't generate hullabaloo or public outcry. That hardly impacts our society. People are list interested what journalists do, how they do, and why they do. The only interest they keep in the actions of hero or villain of the story. In this case, Andrew Buncombe might have portrayed a hero as a villain and that short-lived contrast is the essential doping that many journalists have overused to give a new soprano to readers' imagination.

The “Underachiever” Conundrum

2012-07-10T13:15:00.000+05:30

The man who has been lauded long for his epochal economic liberalization in India is finally burning out his last trace of fuel. The gargantuan thrust once achieved by him in a time when India was struggling hard with economic devolution has of late lost its sparkle. Perhaps that's the ubiquitous pattern of any economic progress irrespective of geography. But the Time magazine's Asian edition has taken a deeper dig at Manmohan Singh and flaunts its next cover with a photograph of Manmohan Singh coupled with a funky title “The Underachiever” and a more flaky subtitle “India need a reboot. Is Prime Minister Manmohan Singh up to the job?” And that has as if pronounced the gospel of god, the entire media circle and politicians from the Opposition have gone berserk on a normal political commentary of a magazine that aspires to penetrate further during a time when the print magazine industry is receiving a tight competition from its digital and electronic siblings. There is nothing unusual in this piece though. Whatever reported there is nothing more than the essence of myriads of reports on the prime minister published in Indian media during last couple of years. Two things that catches up instantly are the intent and the timing. Though Time is a popular magazine for its unusual coverage and fantastic research on any subject, the usual sin with this media as well is a passion for circulation and undoubtedly that prompts the editorial team to pump in offbeat stories week after week relentlessly.

It's true that India is passing through a turbulent economic phase and for that matter all other countries whether developed or developing are experiencing the same pain due to global recession. The US, the UK and the entire Euro zone, Russia, Brazil, and China are on the same bracket as far as macroeconomic indexes are concerned. So what really prompts the Time magazine's editorial team to zero in on Manmohan Singh is another media scoop. Historically, the Time magazine has a culture to weigh “timing” above the “issue”. Here the issue is about economic fledgling, widespread corruption, and policy paralysis in India. And this hasn't erupted overnight. It's a long process and one wrong decision begetting another. So why then Time has chosen July 16 issue of Asian edition to carry this bomb? Certainly, it's more about the opportunism and like hitting the iron while it's hot. The Time's editorial team has been observing deeply on the economic slowdown of India for a long time and now that it senses the boiling point of commoner reactions is reaching the peak, it chooses the opening of pandora's box. That's a media strategy often used by all and sundry. Although the message is clear and circles around hard facts, the intent is otherwise. Time is no different either.

Can Dr Manmohan Singh do the magic again?

2012-07-06T13:42:00.000+05:30

Who doesn't know the growth story India achieved during early nineties when Dr Manmohan Singh joined the cabinet as finance minister? Scenarios then were different. The foreign currency reserve was in a complete disarray (a mere $1 billion), balance of payment was a huge problem, fiscal deficit was nearly 8.5 % of GDP, current account deficit was close to 3.5% of GDP, and the license raj was at its peak. India was just dolloped with crisis and more economic crisis. Dr Singh along with then PM Narsimha Rao focused on a major agenda – economic liberalization. Despite immense opposition from political and bureaucratic circles Dr Singh paved the path for privatization. From a socialistic economy to a capitalist one, India has achieved a lot in these two decades of transformation, but this transformation is not complete yet.

What Dr Singh achieved in those five years as finance minister has overshadowed his role as prime minister. As a prime minister, his achievements are not worth mentioning except civil nuclear deal. In the last eight years he had hardly intervened in the financial matters and the results are thrown on the face. Both P Chidambaram and Pranab Mukherjee have failed to influence the sentiments of FIIs. The reason: coalition politics. This has just propelled huge corruptions in the system.

With Pranab Mukherjee leaving the MoF and racing for presidential poll, what's more pertinent now for Dr. Singh is to first keep him insulate from the effects of coalition politics. And literally he should behave like a superman and forget politics for sometimes. Instead he should first move FDI bill for the retail and insurance sectors. Similarly, FDI in agriculture, infrastructure, telecom, civil aviation, and media should be opened up. At least the foreign investors can come forward to invest hugely in these sectors. And of course there in an inherent problem in our system – the bureaucratic hurdles. To transform India to the next economic superpower, we must do away with absurd business procedures. That could be possible only when PM will act in tandem with other ministries. Let's see how our PM is playing his magic wand.

The Fallen Star

2012-06-18T15:45:00.000+05:30

A perfect storybook example of American dream, Rajat Gupta crafted his illustrious journey in global corporate world by sheer endeavor and meritocracy, and he was the first Indian to be the CEO of McKinsey and Company at a time when heading a global MNC by any Indian was literally unheard of. With his meteoric success stories Rajat Gupta became an epitome of corporate hero who despite being orphaned at 18 earned degrees from elite institutes such as IIT and Harvard and joined McKinsey in early 70's. Since then he never looked back. Mr Gupta also became the board members of global corporate giants like McKinsey, Goldman Sachs, Proctor and Gamble, and AMR. But one fine day his understanding of ethics on corporate governance got blurred and he divulged insider information of Goldman Sachs board meeting to his friend and business partner Raj Rajaratnam, founder of Galleon Group. And the rest is an open book of trials and tribulations that he yearned from pumping out his affinity for greed.

Sometimes, I wonder why these demi-gods of society fall prey to mundane traps? Few more million bucks, more greed, and what not? Is that a gold standard of life that drives us crazy to do the unthinkable? Mr Gupta may be a brilliant Wall Street executive who has garnered both puffs and prestige for his meritocracy, but as a lesser mortal, he is no different than an ordinary criminal who springs into unlawful action by the trigger of a small bait. Why I am becoming a little harsher here is that today I just listened into the wiretap of FBI and the evidence against him for passing inside information is unmistakeably overwhelming. As a trusted board member of Goldman and Sachs he has breached the fundamental code of ethics. What it evokes now as how he could able to rise and rise for over three decades without any hurdle and the secret here is his dirty networking skills that propelled his tempo of corporate journey. For all his magical networking skills and relations with high and mighty in the corporate world and beyond he reached the acme, but the nadir was not far behind.

When FBI tapped the suspicious conversations between him and Rajaratnam, his facade broke into pieces like a piece of glass. Although Gupta was not directly involved in the trading in which Rajaratnam heaped one million profit; nevertheless, the modus operandi was more than suspicious. As a responsible corporate citizen he established a bad precedent, which is unforgivable. But here is a contrast, when Gupta was convicted for his crime on last Friday (June 15, 2012), another Indian-American Preet Bharara, the US Attorney in Manhattan, was the man who probed into this insider trading crime and stood unperturbed by the stellar image of Gupta. And the pointed difference is a matter of honesty and integrity, not the mundane achievements.

President Pranab Mukherjee

2012-06-16T14:34:00.001+05:30

The long speculation about UPA's candidature for the 13^th President of India has come to an end post announcement of Pranab Mukherjee's name by Sonia Gandhi. Why the chief troubleshooter of UPA II is chosen over many significant others for the presidency during a period of utter crisis has many political reasons. Whether it's making a smooth passage for Rahul Gandhi to be the next PM in 2014 or transforming the stigma of policy paralysis in the North Block or even engineering a stable constitutional solution to handle uncertainties in the outcome of 2014 general elections mandate, Sonia Gandhi has predictably resolved all issues at one go by nominating Pranab Mukherjee for presidential candidate. The kingmaker Sonia Gandhi has always outwitted her opponents by her sheer political acumen. And that's tried and tested in last two decades on many occasions.

Now that the country is seriously heading towards an economic downturn, especially in last two-three years, the UPA II is urgently looking for a finance minister more plaint towards to the market forces and bring about significant changes before 2014. First, as finance minister Pranab Mukherjee hasn't performed up to industry expectations and the recent tax rows with Vodafone is a dampener for further foreign direct investment in Indian market. Second, being a longtime Congress loyalist, Pranab Mukherjee is obviously an aspirant for the top job of the government (read PM), which is literally impossible in the current political scenario. So, the best option left for him to move to the Rashtrapati Bhavan. In that lies many blessings for the UPA. As a diehard Congress loyalist, Pranab Mukherjee will bail out UPA in case there is a fractured mandate in 2014. Moreover, the speculation of an early poll will be diminished.

As far as the electoral process goes, Pranab Mukherjee will win the contest with great margin. Despite TMC's opposition for Pranab Mukherjee's candidature, other political parties including SP, BSP, JD(U), Left and certain allies of NDA will unanimously support him. And that could bring well over 60% votes of the electoral college.

The Magic of Guava

2012-05-28T16:12:00.000+05:30

Have you ever thought guava can be more salubrious than orange or apple? Rich in dietary fiber, vitamins A and C, folic acid, potassium (contains more potassium than banana per 100 g of fruit weight), copper, magnesium, and manganese, guava is a unique tropical fruit that contains about four times the amount of vitamin C that an orange normally contains. Guava is a storehouse of a number of nutrients, low in calories and fats, but contains several vital vitamins, minerals, and antioxidant poly-phenolic and flavonoid compounds that play important role in prevention of cancers, diabetes, and high blood pressure.

Fresh guava is an natural source of antioxidants and vitamin C. The outer thick layer contains higher levels of vitamin C than the pulp stored in the pith. With high vitamin A content and flavonoids like beta-carotene, lycopene, lutein and cryptoxanthin, guava possesses excellent antioxidant properties, which are essential for good health. Moreover, vitamin A is also required for maintaining healthy mucus membranes, good eyesight and skin. Since guava is rich in carotene, it helps prevent lung and oral cavity cancers. A specific study on the lycopene content in pink guava suggest that taking a fresh pink guava everyday can prevent skin damage from UV rays and also protect from prostate cancer.

Major Health Benefits

Lowers the Risk of Cancer: Rich in vitamin C content, which is approximately 400% more than oranges, guava protects cells from free radical damage.

Prevents Diabetes: Rich in fiber, guava helps prevent diabetes by decelerating the assimilation of sugar in the body.

Regulates High Blood Pressure: Guava reduces cholesterol in blood and prevents it from thickening, thereby maintaining fluidity of blood and reducing blood pressure.

Improves Good Eyesight: A rich source of vitamin A, guava promotes better eyesight.

Promotes Healthy Thyroid Gland: The absence of iodine and good sources of copper in combination play a crucial role in controlling thyroid.

Provides Healthy Skin: It can improve skin texture because of the abundance of astringents in the raw guavas. In addition to the astringents, guava is also rich in vitamin-A, B, C and potassium which are very good source of antioxidants and detoxifiers that keep skin glowing and free from aging, wrinkles and many other skin disorders.

Promotes Fertility: With a substantial amount of folate content, guava bears fertility-promoting properties. So try this out as a passion fruit!

Relaxes Nerves and Muscles: Having guavas can relax nerves and muscles as it's a good source of magnesium.

Keeps Brain Healthy: The vitamin B group plays a major role in the functioning of brain. Rich in vitamin B3, a component that stimulates brain function, and vitamin B6 that acts as an important vitamin for brain and nerve function, guava certainly can be a radical agent in keeping your brain healthy and powerful as well.

Cures Diarrhea and Dysentery: The rich astringents in raw guava which are alkaline in nature and have disinfectant and anti-bacterial properties help cure diarrhea and dysentery by inhibiting microbial growth and removing extra mucus from the intestines.

Ameliorates Constipation: One of the richest sources of dietary fiber, guava seeds, if ingested whole or chewed, serve as excellent laxatives.

Cures Cough and Cold: Since guava is rich in vitamin-C and iron which are proven to be preventive against cold and viral infections, juice of raw guavas or guava-leaves provides relief in cough and cold.

Promotes Weight Loss: Being very high in roughage and very rich in vitamins, proteins and minerals, but with no cholesterol and less digestible carbohydrates, guava is very filling and satisfies appetite very easily.

Cures Scurvy: As a rich source of vitamin-C, guava can help cure scurvy.

So next time you go for shopping fruits, don't ignore guava!

Pomegranate: The Wonder Fruit

2012-05-21T14:37:00.000+05:30

Often touted as the emblem of prosperity, fertility, and rebirth, pomegranate has lived many millenniums across the globe, with its humble beginning in Transcaucasia dating somewhere around 4000 BC. For many initial centuries, pomegranate was rather dull and overlooked fruit; however, recent studies have unfolded some prominent health benefits which now attract significant public attention. Firstly, pomegranate has a miraculous ability to not only protect against atherosclerosis – a medical symptom in which arterial walls become thickened thereby triggering heart attacks and strokes - but also it reverses the thickening process and transforms arteries to a more natural state. Moreover, pomegranate bears the ability of lowering systolic blood pressure in addition to which it can effectively reduce the levels of bad cholesterol and help increase the levels of good cholesterol. An article published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition in 2000 states that a clinical trial of pomegranate juice on healthy adult men and unhealthy mice showed a significant increase of antioxidant levels that resulted in 90% drop in bad cholesterol.

A recent research on the health benefits of pomegranate shows that certain cancers such as prostate cancer and breast cancer can be prevented by taking pomegranate juice regularly. A specific substance in this fruit that has been effective in decreasing the levels of PSA (prostate specific antigen), is a wonderful medication for treating prostate cancer patients. A clinical study shows that 80% of the men having pomegranate juice daily found their PSA level decreased dramatically.

Pomegranate has also a greater impact on men with problems of impotence. The powerful antioxidants found in pomegranate improve blood flow in all areas of the body and thus dramatically lower the risk of heart attacks, strokes and impotence.

10 Health Benefits of Pomegranate

Consuming pomegranate juice regularly can help prevent acne and eliminate its root causes by correcting digestive problems and promoting healthy circulation of the blood. Rich in iron and vitamin C, a constituent part of hemoglobin that helps absorb oxygen, it acts as a powerful antioxidant that is known to protect the skin from damaging free radicals.
Drinking pomegranate juice is also a good remedy for skin damaged by sun exposure. It helps increase the life of fibroblasts, which are responsible for producing elastin and collagen that keep the skin tone healthy and enhance the skin’s elasticity.
Pomegranate is a rich source of various vitamins including vitamins A, C and E as well as folic acid.
With quantum composition of antioxidants, pomegranate helps prevent formation of bad cholesterol, which is a primary reason for many fatal diseases like heart disease, heart stroke, and high blood pressure. So, a glass of pomegranate juice daily can certainly guard you against these lifestyle ailments.
Taking pomegranate juice can help correct male impotence.
Studies show that drinking pomegranate juice daily can prevent dental plaque.
A specific research has stated that pregnant mothers who consume pomegranate juice can protect the neonatal brain from damage.
In Ayurveda, pomegranate is specifically mentioned for reducing symptoms of diarrhoea.
Some studies show that pomegranate can reduce the possibility of developing Alzheimer's disease among older people.
Pomegranate juice is great elixir for youthfulness as it prevents cell damage significantly.