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Networking is important for entrepreneurs and small business owners. One place you can do that is at networking events. Don’t underestimate the power of networking events if you are a soft skills trainer looking to build your company. A strong professional network will help you achieve more than what you can accomplish on your own.

6 Must-Know Tips for Effective Networking

Don’t be Just a ‘Business Owner’

Yes, you are at a networking event to interact with others and talk about your business. But, don’t make it your only agenda.

People will lose interest if you just keep talking about business instead of showing them who you are. Focus on building new relationships with others. Good relationships and contacts will eventually help you get new business.

Be Authentic 

Don’t put a mask and present yourself at the networking events. Be authentic and honest about yourself. You need to be confident and appear as a leader. Authenticity reflects these traits and will cement your reputation as a soft skills trainer.

It also shows that you are comfortable in social situations, which is important for a soft skills trainer.

Maintain Positive Body Language

One effective networking tip is to watch your body language. Even if you speak pleasantly, poor body language may indicate that you are unapproachable. That will work against you and defeat the purpose of a networking event.

Be approachable and show a genuine interest in others. Your body language must exude confidence and warmth. When it shows that you are welcoming, it will help others open up to you. This way, you will make several contacts and share healthy relationships with them.

Offer Help 

It is normal to want to approach people at a networking event with a problem you are facing. There is nothing wrong with it, but change your approach a bit.

When you meet someone, ask questions, and understand how you can provide value to them. When you offer help, people will remember you and this will help you in the long run.

Stay in Touch with Former Connections

Networking events help in making new connections but don’t make the mistake of forgetting old connections. Your former connections can give you new leads and connect you with influential people. However, this won’t happen unless you share a strong relationship with them.

Keep in touch with your old connections, and you may be surprised by what they can bring to the table.

Use Social Media 

Be active on social media platforms like LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook. Engage with your followers and share content relevant to the industry. This will build your credibility as a soft skills trainer and generate inbound networking.

People may reach out to you on social media to seek help. This will help you build your network without relying on just networking events.

Final Words

Keep these networking techniques in mind the next time you go for a networking event. You can meet people who can help you and whom you can help. Either way, it’s a win-win situation.

About the Author

An award-winning Image Management Professional, Suman Agarwal has helped students, home-makers, women on sabbatical as well as people seeking second career alternatives to explore Image Management and Soft Skill Training as a vibrant professional choice. She is also the co-founder of Image Consulting Institute.

She frequently writes blog posts about the urgent need of image consulting professionals and soft skill trainers in the 21st century and loves guiding people in exploring lucrative career. You can find more about Suman Agarwal from here.

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Project management plays a vital role in proper planning and executing a project and to successfully accomplish a goal within a given time frame. In India, the project management jobs in project-oriented industries is expected to reach 21.7 million in 2027, according to Project Management Institute [PMI]. We should create and monitor project methodology standards, provide advice and create an environment to support our project managers.

Image Source

As per a recent analysis by PMI, project managers contribute to a nation’s productivity, which supports GDP that in turn contributes to the standard of living. It is estimated that the GDP at risk due to the project management talent shortage is US $23.4 billion in India.

Our customers are spending significant services amount on consulting, implementation and system integration. Hence, going forward, our constant engagements would be on how to improve the customer service and satisfaction, enhance employee productivity and shorten project timelines. We should start building assets that can help us align for this and proactively suggest best practices based on what we have learnt from projects with other clients. We need to package our existing thought process that can help bridge gaps between expectations and reality. We need to ensure that our project management capability helps minimize the risks, control costs, improve speed to market and make substantial improvements in our margins.

Let’s delve into some of the best practices that we should implement to enhance the project effectiveness.

Project Governance – There must be a common governance structure and framework at the beginning of each project, outlining day-to-day operations with short term and long-term goals clearly laid out, and certain parties must be tasked with the responsibility of ensuring completion of the said goals. This includes pre-determined points at which the progress is evaluated and decisions about next steps are made. These decisions should be duly recorded and thoroughly communicated down the chain of command, if they are to be effective.

Monitor project management quality – Quality assurance in project management involves regulating and managing the services that the project delivers, ensuring that the quality and consistency is retained. The aspect of quality control incorporates a process of monitoring specific project results to check if they are met or not. The project management team should be aware of the following concepts:

  • Prevention [keeping errors out of the process] and inspection [keeping errors out of the hands of the customers]
  • Special cases [unusual events] and random causes [normal process variation]

Advice project managers on risk management – The risk control phase includes risk management plan which supports to address a risk, based on suitable cost-effective control strategies. Here, the focus is to proactively minimize the risks before it occurs or to reactively recover it from the loss and restore the normal process state. Apart from being advised, the project managers also need to evaluate risks and find out ways to mitigate it. They also must identify potential risks in a timely manner.

Analytics/Metrics development – Analytics in project management provides continual improvement process. It also helps project managers to make tactical decisions, thereby improving project success rate. Project management analytics ensures that the projects are completed on time and according to specifications. Project metrics measures the success of the project. Some of the key metrics that can be used in project management:

a. Operational Excellence Metrics – It is at the core of every project and must be tracked and reported on for every iteration.

b. Business Value Metrics – These are used to determine the business value of a project like Return on Investment that indicates the bottom line of the return on any investment; Earned Business Value which is used to track the value of the requirements being delivered; Net Present Value which is used in capital budgeting and investment planning, to analyze the profitability of projected investment and Internal Rate of Return which is used to evaluate the attractiveness of a project.

c. Human capital – This represents the skills, knowledge, and values of the development teams and their readiness to do their jobs.

Project templates – Project template provides patterns to project deliverables, serving to increase understanding, save time and improve the quality of project outcomes. Project templates need to serve as per customer preferences as different audience have different needs. It acts as a repository for the work products created during project life cycle. Providing your project team with options for what deliverables they use and how they use them provides a fit-to-purpose approach to project deliverables that will improve your project team efficiency.

Best practices to be implemented post project go-live – Post implementation reviews should assess how successful the system is in terms of functionality, performance, and cost versus benefits, as well as assess the effectiveness of the overall project life-cycle and areas of further development. Project managers can gain through historical views of similar projects which will show comparative efforts, cost and resource usage, that in turn provides a wealth of information to guide future projects.

About the Author

Vineet Kumar is the Lead Consultant BI & Analytics, 3i Infotech. You can find more about him here.

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Subscription box services are a huge trend in e-commerce. Whether the contents are carefully selected by the customer [Blue Apron, Dollar Shave Club] or come in the form of a mystery box [Ipsy, Bark Box], people love this business model.

Image Source – Subscription Box Business

Buyers love the personalized surprise every month, while sellers love the predictable income due to recurring fees. It’s also satisfying to source specialty items and cater to a specific niche of discerning customers.

Why It’s a Blockbuster Idea to Start a Subscription Service

The subscription e-commerce market has jumped 100 percent annually for the past five years. According to a recent Forbes article, e-commerce subscribers are in the sweet 25 to 44-year-old demographic and bring home $50,000 to $100,000 a year. Although many current subscribers live in urban environments of the northeastern U.S., the market is growing exponentially. In fact, about 15 percent of online shoppers have one or more subscriptions to get products via monthly box services.

Women make up 60 percent of subscribers, but men are the ones most likely to have at least three active subscriptions to avoid trips to the store. Let’s look at the types of box services currently available in the market.

Three Types of Subscription Box Services

The different box types appeal to the core reasons people love getting them. Some subscribers want a monthly surprise, while others want to pick out each item for an uber-customized package.

  1. Build-A-Box – Customers choose each item from a list. Food and meal plan businesses often work off this model to provide variety and flexibility to clients.
  2. Mystery Box – Subscribers don’t know what they’ll get each month. The box includes regularly available merchandise as well as limited edition products. It provides a rewarding customer experience that increases profits and moves inventory quickly.
  3. Membership Model – This subscription resembles a Costco membership for a monthly fee. It grants access and purchase ability at the store. Membership models build customer loyalty and up-sell capabilities.

How to Build a Subscription Box Business in Eight Steps

Let’s look at each stage of building a subscription box business.

  1. Start with a great idea – Think of products and services that would appeal to a specific market. Common themes are makeup, fitness, or food. When figuring out your niche, get as specific as you can. For example, the categories above can be segmented further into glamour makeup, martial arts equipment, and workout snacks.
  2. Research potential customers – The more honed-in each box is, the easier it is to sell to a specific group of customers. This lets you optimize retention and customer experience.
  3. Develop a prototype box – Try out prototypes in sample markets to get feedback on each component. The idea is to develop a product your target customer will be delighted to receive every month.
  4. Pre-launch by building a community that can get the word out – Use online content, contests, and other strategies to generate buzz and collect email addresses.
  5. Pre-sales phase – This is where you convert test markets and leads to your first paying subscribers.
  6. Show me the money – Presales revenue lets you build and ship the first month’s boxes.
  7. Build – Grow your target demographic to achieve predictable monthly revenue. Use smart tools to manage your inventory and figure out the right quantities to buy. There are free economic order quantity [EOQ] calculators online that can help.
  8. Encourage word of mouth, shares and referrals. If your product is great, people will come back, but it’s equally important to get new customers in the early stages.

Two Manufacturing and Supplier Tips

The production of items for your boxes is a major consideration. Will you outsource this or handle it in-house?

  1. Negotiate – One of the most difficult things to negotiate is what percentage of the subscriber fee the supplier gets. Consider a per unit, per click, or per minute model that’s appropriate for your industry.
  2. Do it yourself – In the subscription business model, the more you can do yourself, the better. In-house sourcing is streamlined and gives an entrepreneur more control over quality and productivity. It comes down to cost and efficiency, but if you have the wherewithal to do so, this is the preferred sourcing.

Two Important Lessons from Successful Subscription Businesses

  1. Price it right – Establishing a price point involves how much you offer and how often, which lets you predict costs. it takes some research to stay competitive and set a realistic margin expectation based on the local market.
  2. Focus on both growth and retention – Customer retention is vital once you establish a steady subscriber base. Business owners must watch competitors and gather feedback from current subscribers. Product development and services should embrace new technology to enhances both the brand image and bottom line. Take Netflix for example. The subscription-based business constantly adapts to ensure growth.

Conclusion

Ultimately, you need to convince your customers that your products or services are worth paying a monthly charge. The way to do this involves maintaining the speed, quality and customer service your subscribers deserve. Then, it’s a no-brainer, and you’re on your way to becoming a sought-after brand with no problem turning a one-time interaction into a continuing relationship.

References – 1, 2, 3, 4 & 5

About the Author

Laura Gayle is a full-time blogger at BussinessWomanGuide. She regularly writes on business, entrepreneurship, & e-commerce. You can contact Laura here.

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Today we must learn to be fast, fair and slow, all at the same time. Project management professionals across geographies, are not immune from these changes. Traditional construction management methodologies are also being replaced or reinforced with new tools and technology.

Image Source – Housing

In the last decade, there has been a tectonic shift in the way the real estate and construction industry is evolving in India. With the Indian construction market set to be the world’s third-largest construction market by 2021, it is imperative that Indian Construction and Design professionals up their ante in terms of delivering technologically advanced solutions.

The industry has seen sporadic improvements but in essence it largely remains a people-intensive industry as compared to the more developed parts of the world. Companies globally look at anywhere between 1~3% of project costs as the budget for software technologies to create cost and time efficiencies, which is a far cry for India.

While traditional project management models focused exclusively on the delivery of products and services, newer project management models are increasingly focusing on achieving results by interpreting the business strategy, providing effective risk assessment and deriving a solution. By embracing continuous innovation in technology, new age PMC firms are going digital by adopting ‘Cloud-based’ storage services and ‘end-to-end’ project management software solutions. Let’s look at some of the prominent technology tools which new-age PMC firms are using in India today.

Building Information Modelling

BIM is a 3D model-based process for creating and managing project information. The building information model is a digital description of every aspect of the build, and objects in the model can be linked to related information such as quantity, images, specifications or manuals. This technology benefits construction professionals by helping them create better plans, produce faster results, and stay within budget. BIM started slow in India. However with the advent of Smart cities, IoT, VR and AR gaining ground, BIM practice is witnessing a strong revival.

CCTV Monitoring

CCTV installation on-site is one of the best ways to protect a site from undue hazard. They help to track events across the site in more than one place at a time. CCTVs on-site also manage thefts and help to monitor employees at work. Client located offsite are now able to get a real-time view of their sites in the smartphones itself.

Unmanned Airborne Vehicles

Drones or UAVs are extensively used today to monitor the construction work for large and complex sites.  They help the Construction management team to have visibility of the workforce operating at heights and keep the site EHS complaint. Analytic software in Drones can help to do thermal mapping and land surveying. It is still not that prevalent in India but will gain ground once the legalities of their usage is formalized.

Project Portfolio Management software

Web based cost effective Project management software is being used extensively to streamline the construction process and increase efficiency. Usually, most of the online software caters to requirements such as maintaining and creating construction schedules, resource allocations, monitoring usage and generating reports.

Cloud-based Document management software

Cloud-based document management system helps to keep all the project related documents in an easily accessible organized manner. It also makes collaborations between teams easier and there are chances of easier recovery of data if it is lost. Most importantly such software has the ability to track deliverables and make the users accountable with well-defined workflows.

Online Conferencing Applications

Considering the fact that large projects have stakeholders located in different geographies, these online conference tools are a boon to PMC firms to bring the team together at an agreed frequency to resolve open issues. Most of this software allows documents to be presented in various formats for quick reference. Virtual meetings are the new reality.

Procurement software

Procurement software contributes to automating the entire tendering process in a project. Such software nowadays is integrated with the Client ERP system and support e-bidding process flows. The workflows are well defined with the necessary checks and balances in place. It helps to maintain transparency and a clear audit trail behind for all orders released against a project.

Web-based Collaboration tools

In any project, collaboration is essential to ensure that all the teams head in the same direction and create an innovative environment. Collaboration tools with real time chats, posting features and group messaging options enable teams to communicate with each other, access information and increase efficiency rapidly.

The flow of real-time information to every team in a project is vital. Amongst the deluge of data, tools which control and analyze the information will become popular. Technology today can create algorithms which help us to take decisions. Every day we are witnessing newer applications and gadgets coming in the market to aid construction professionals. The key is to be aware about the latest advances in technology and adapt them in an innovative and effective manner.

About the Author

Arnab Ghosh is the Director at Synergy Property Development Services. You can find more about him here.

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Mankind’s quest for Artificial Intelligence [AI] has driven development from times immemorial. It dates back to the architectural astronomy instruments in India to Abacus of Mesopotamia; from mechanical triggering of medieval cannons in China to the emergence of the big World Wide Web; and finally to the 21st century when Internet of Things [IoT], Blockchain, Robotics and AI are finally a reality. It’s a marvel to construe that machines of today can actually learn, improve over a period of time with an in-built self learning capability.

Image Source – AI in Banking

AI not only refers to a specific software algorithm but a broad spectrum of capabilities of machines that have cognitive functions, which include speech recognition, machine translation, file reading from a machine, fraud detection prediction, learning and predicting trends and natural language processing.  A recent report suggests that globally over $1 trillion of today’s financial services cost structure could be replaced by machine learning and AI.

Financial institutions worldwide have always been at the forefront of adopting new technology. Closer home, in India, recent reports published by Accenture suggest that around 83% of Indian bankers believe that AI will work alongside humans in the next two years, which is higher than the global average of 79%. 

Lets delve deeper into how AI in set to transform Banking and Insurance of the future. Focus on the how AI would be integrated into BFSI, the many benefits and use-cases to substantiate how the ecosystem would evolve. 

Customer Service Chatbots

Smart virtual agents or chatbots elevate the customer experience to a new level by providing real time round the clock service with natural language to perform day to day transaction. They anticipate customers unique transaction needs and recommend the right insurance policy or right portfolio for investment in fraction of a second, with quick ability to deep dive into the data models. This gives customer personalized services experience and increased customer satisfaction.

Customer & Business Audio Bots

A case in point, is a customer greeted by EVA from Emirates NBD [leading bank in UAE], a audio bot. This is a new face of banking where audio bots are taking over in a quick and efficient way to provide information. Bots can run query much faster and provide results to the customer objectively, without any  emotions attached to it.

There is a growing demand for audio bots within businesses. In a typical scenario, a CEO can be remotely assisted by an audio bot to provide him sales performance data of a branch or a zone, provide instant details about top performers, top claims paid or on business forecast for the year.

Virtual assistants can manage the low-value activities of advisors, such as lead management, scheduling, planning, licensing, etc., enabling them to focus on building skills and providing value-added services.

Companies have transformed from conventional password and I-pin methods to voice recognition with the help of voice prints to automate the process. Face recognition to ascertain account credentials are becoming a norm.

Customer Insights and Risk Management

Risk management is one of the largest opportunity for leveraging the full potential of AI. Using AI in Banking it is possible to sieve through different data sources such as credit scores, financial data, spending patterns help to determine risk scores of a customer, based on his or her nationality, occupation, salary range, experience, industry and credit history. Moreover, AI can be used to reduce the strain of regulatory compliance and to overhaul the way banks/insurers detect financial crimes and frauds.

Similarly in Insurance, risk scores can be very helpful in underwriting policy and adjudicating claims for a individual on basis of various parameters. It could be based on data models during the on-boarding of a customer, agent or a claim risk propensity can be calculated and early warning signals can be triggered.

AI systems can be used to perform research, aggregate, refine and present required information to underwriters, allowing them to focus on core underwriting activities.

In summary, the benefits of AI

Enhance operational efficiency, improve time-to-market, enable a more intelligent way to sell and service, and more. During the last five years, industrial use of AI – in terms of interest, investment, ideation and implementation – has risen exponentially.

The proof of the pudding is in the eating. This can be validated through how a leading health insurance startup leveraged AI by using data and software to build clinical profiles of people to identify gaps in care. These gaps in care were filled with visits and free choice of doctors for patients to avoid costly hospital stays.

Similarly, a life insurance startup used AI to generate quotes for accident death claims which simplified sign-up in less than 2 minutes. There are several such instances that fortify AI as a technology that would revolutionize businesses and the world at large.

About the author

Snehal Desai is the Global Sales Head – Insurance at 3i Infotech Ltd. More details about him can be found here

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Lead generation is the process of attracting and converting strangers and prospects into company’s product or service and it describes the marketing process of stimulating and capturing interest in a product or service for the purpose of developing sales pipeline. Prospects can come in the form of names and addresses, names and phone numbers, email addresses and fax numbers.

Why Lead Generation is Important ?

Lead generation is the fundamental way to provide channels of revenue into any company. In order to effectively make sales, you have to have qualified leads and it is incredibly important in keeping your sales and marketing pipeline alive. Lead generation is a win-win for both the buyer and seller.

Following are the 7 Essential Steps that marketers can use to Improve B2B Lead Generation.

Developing Better Marketing Content – Every content marketing strategy starts with the goal. How are you going to measure the success of your campaign? Is it with traffic? New subscribers? Social shares & engagement? Sales? Your content should be integrated in such a way that it helps you achieve your organizational goals. A content marketing strategy is a road-map that not only tells you what you are going to create, distribute it, and ultimately how to use it to attract and convert readers into buyers.

Greater Personalization – Marketing is all about delivering valuable information about a product or service at the right place and the right time. Personalized marketing is a strategy of its own that you can integrate into your different types of marketing mediums to generate better results. The main benefit of personalized marketing is the ability it gives you to reach specific audiences or prospects.

Personalization depends on

  • Demographics – Age, gender, location, career and more. This also includes their problems, needs, and wants.
  • Behaviors – Data includes the type of content they digest, where they spend their time, how they shop, what kind of information they are looking for.
  • Sources – Defines how your leads find you, or how you are generating and acquiring new customers. Is it campaigns you run? Referral programs? Social activity?

Create irresistible lead magnets – A lead magnet is a tool that you use to incentivize potential leads to interact with your brand. In other words, you’re trading the valuable piece of content for something you want, like the user’s email address. The best lead magnets offer value far and beyond what you might post on your blog. Ideally, they’re immediately useful for your target audience. Whatever you choose, make sure you can pinpoint its value during the lead-generation process.

Some of the most effective lead magnets include the following

  • E-books
  • In-depth case studies
  • Tools and calculators
  • Free demos for your app
  • Free trials for your software
  • Report or white paper

Link your Call To Action [CTA] to a dedicated landing page – The call to action is a core component of B2B lead generation. Call to Actions may have changed over the years, but the goal hasn’t changed: Put the right message in front of the right people at the right time.If you focus on your email newsletter to educate customers, including the call to action is a great opportunity to present them with relevant offers to generate leads and Website visits. Linking your call to action to the exact landing page will improve your customer engagement and number of leads.

Creating word-of-mouth referrals – Word of mouth marketing is not just about creating a message it’s about delivering real human experiences to the masses. Word-of-mouth marketing isn’t easy, but with a little tactical planning, any business can create a real buzz in their local community. According marketing survey 92% of prospects trust referrals from people they know or their relatives, and 80% of consumers are more likely to buy a new product when learning about it from friends or family.

Be Active on Social Media for lead generation – With recent updates, many social media platforms are becoming more important than ever.  Creating great content directly to your followers is one of the easiest ways to gather detailed information about prospects using social media. Social media is great for not only spreading brand awareness but also converting followers into leads. Believe it or not, the tools you already use to establish and promote your brand can become B2B lead-generating machines.

However, don’t discount other social platforms, including the following:

  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Pinterest
  • YouTube
  • Instagram

Chat with your users with live chat – Going live is a great way to directly interact with your prospects or customers and engage with them in real-time. By answering questions and generating awareness about your products or services, live chats give you the opportunity to position your brand as an expert in the industry. You can also drive cross-channel traffic by directing participants to branded content, creating promotional images or banners, landing pages, and offerings.

Final Thoughts

Lead generation is essential for all businesses that wish to drive higher profits and ROI. It plays a role in every business’s marketing strategy. The lead generation funnel allows brands to reach their best leads, nurture that interest, and capture necessary data before delivering truly qualified leads to sales. Hope these tips will increase the effectiveness of your outreach effort.

About the Author

Michael Anthony works as a Content Marketer for USAExeList, a high-end B2B Email Lists provider based in Addison, Texas. He has been promoting high-quality content in select niches for his clients.

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As India gears up to prepare for the next leap in GST compliance – the e-Way Bill, it is time to find out how technology can simplify e-Way Bills for your business. The obvious question on your mind is, ‘Will e-Way bill impact my business?’

Image Source – Eway Bill

The answer is yes, by and large e-Way Bill will impact your business. Whether you run a big or a small business, are registered or not registered, e-Way Bill will be applicable to you in one way or the other. Since e-Way Bill is a GST compliance mechanism, you must become familiar with it.

What is an E-Way Bill?

E-way Bill stands for Electronic Way Bill. An E-Way Bill is generated by the person causing movement of goods in the e-Way Bill portal. It has to be generated for transporting goods worth more than INR 50,000 by any mode of transport.

The e-Way Bill is usually a unique bill number generated for the specific consignment. Any registered business, transporting goods in their own vehicle, hired vehicle, railways, by air or by vessel, the supplier or recipient of the goods should generate E-way bill.

Let the right technology manage e-Way Bills for you

Avoid repetitive activity

The details that are required to record a transaction and generate invoice are required for generating the corresponding e-Way Bill as well. Why would you want to spend time to re-enter all the details again in the e-Way portal? The software you use should help avoid this repetitive activity.

Flexibility

You must be able to record transactions in your software, and export the details together for the purpose of generating e-Way Bills in the portal. This must be possible the other way round as well, i.e., in situations where you have recorded transactions in the portal first to generate e-Way Bills.

Do you have to re-enter the details again in your software to record the transaction? No. The right software will let you switch between systems. From portal to your software, and vice versa.

It is not always possible to generate an e-Way Bill as soon as you have recorded a transaction. You might be supplying goods a few days later. Sometimes, your transporter might not be ready with the vehicle. You need flexibility to generate e-Way Bills any time. Ideally, you must be able to generate e-Way Bills while recording a transaction, or after recording the transaction. You must be able to generate e-Way Bill for a single invoice, or for multiple invoices together.

Ensure compliance

Depending on the nature of your business, you might be recording transactions for transporting goods frequently. How will you keep track of transactions of value more than Rs. 50,000 for which it is mandatory to generate e-Way Bills? Let your software do that for you. Imagine cases, where there are hundreds of transactions recorded.

Print invoices with e-Way Bill Nos.

In a fast-paced business environment, where you are paying money to transporters for moving your goods, time is valuable. Your software must let you print e-Way Bill Nos. on invoices in a short span of time. You can handover the prints to your transporter who needs to carry the documents while transporting goods for compliance purpose.

Manage exceptional cases

What if the vehicle in which your goods are being transported breaks down. You must be able to track the particular invoice quickly and easily in your software, and generate a fresh e-Way for the same from the portal.

Business situations can be unpredictable too. If your supplier is unable to generate an e-Way Bill, you must be able to do quickly. If you make purchases from unregistered dealers, you should be able to generate e-Way Bills on their behalf in your software.

Generate and print consolidated invoices

The commercial tax department allows invoices to be grouped based on mode of transport, vehicle nos., place of supply or State and generate a consolidated e-Way Bill to make life easy for the transporters.

Your software must firstly let you generate individual e-Way Bills for each invoice. It must let you group these invoices as per your preference and then generate a consolidated JSON file of the same which could be uploaded in the portal. The e-Way Bill portal will then generate a single e-Way Bill for the consolidated invoices.

About the Author

This article has been authored by Tejas Goenka, Executive Director, Tally Solutions

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The evolution of digital technologies such as Social, Mobility, Analytics and Cloud [SMAC] is having a significant impact on IT within enterprises. By 2020, a staggering 20+ billion connected devices will be in place, which would be about three times the size of the current world’s population, enabling us to crave for a perfect synchronization with just about everything around us. You will need to decide if you are one of the early adopters of technologies that will drive your business just ahead of your competition, working with the newest and most advanced solutions and leaving your competition to play the catch-up game.

Image Source – Digital Transformation

Transformation today begins with digital Infrastructure and data is the key theme within the orchestration layers of digital infrastructure. Enterprises have been accumulating data and literally have not even come close to exercising the real worth of it. Empowering business with actionable information can fundamentally change the way business can operate and transform. Here is where automating managed services operations will accelerate digital transformation journey within an enterprise.

So what are the areas one can possibly apply intelligent automation within the IT operations framework? Let’s look into the top three areas where automation is already underway.

Automating Service Desk Operations – We need to re-look at how enterprises engage service desk for end-user support. With digital transformation accelerating at very high speed, information technologies are changing rapidly in the way businesses are getting done today. With rapidly changing technologies there are high turnover of services desk engineers that leads to lack of knowledge and experience.

This leads to high risks and low quality of services. Besides providing a 24×7 support takes a toll with the costs going north. Enterprises can look into building AI/RPA into their service desk support operations. In fact, with roughly 30-40% of Level 0/1 services desk support cases being repetitive, you can leverage the power of Natural Language Interpretation [NLI] and cognitive automation in the form of AI bots. AI powered RPA and cognitive automation are quickly becoming the main driving force for digital transformation today. Traditional service desk and being transformed to Digital Service Desk providing end users the flexibility to talk to someone anytime from anywhere with 50~70% reduction of costs to handle each incident.

Automating IT Operations Management – Modern enterprises that are adopting Hybrid-IT will need a solution that will allow them to discover everything they have in real-time. Auto-discovery of IT assets and complete visibility of all your IT resources, no matter where they are will also require automation in management of incidents.

Automation in streamlining the process of creating and managing incidents, as well as notifying the right teams with correlation between the resources in real-time basis, it becomes even more important on how you handle the false positives from here on. Escalation and alert on critical events to ensure rapid problem resolution and consistent service performance will lead to meaningful insights to providing the actionable information to the CIO organization to better manage the business of IT today.

Integration of RPA/AI in IT Operations Management – The network operations center or the digital command center [as I would like to put it in today’s scenario] is the focal point for a 24×7 IT Infrastructure /Application and Data Monitoring and Management. With everything-as-a-service, connectivity becomes the principle driver for any digital journey. Ensuring health of these connected devices to ensure 24×7 availability is the key element for a greater customer experience [CX].

Enterprise will need to plan to bring in RPA that will perform health check [including security checks] of systems & applications and take corrective remedial actions to ensure the environment performs giving the experience that is needed. Automation on service requests post work-flow approvals coming out of IT service management needs to be automated.

Robotic process automation [RPA] is the important step in the evolution of new business models since it significantly reduces the need for IT service agents to perform routine, rule based, high volume activities, enabling them to instead focus on more innovative ideas.

Thinkers, enthusiasts, market researchers and many others place 2020 and 2025 as an important milestone in the coming years. Is this because of ‘conversational‘ banking, ‘self-driving‘ vehicles, and ‘drones‘ to deliver packages? You are talking to ‘robo-advisors’ on market trends and investments, ‘cognitive‘ coach on your phone designing your next day diet based on your previous days workouts and the list keeps adding up. To make all this a reality, enterprises that develop or adopt such innovation must have their IT Services automated to handle the kind of demand in implementing Hybrid IT in their journey of digital transformation.

About the author

Nilesh Gupta is the VP & Global Head – Digital Infrastructure Management Solutions & Strategy, at 3i Infotech Ltd. More details about him can be found here