Invest in Talent Management and Outperform your Competitors

“Employees are a company’s greatest asset - they’re your competitive advantage,” said Anne M. Mulcahy, the former CEO of Xerox. An organization which has better talent has a competitive edge over its rivals. It is therefore extremely important for a company to invest in hiring the best talent in the market and nurture and retain them. Sure, hiring and training employees involves time and cost. Therefore, a robust talent management system must be deployed to retain trained employees. 

The maintenance of a talent management system that takes care of the employee recruitment, development and retention is easier said than done. It is an expensive process, however, one worth spending on to justify the recurring monthly expenses on the talent pool. There are four important fronts which need to be tackled for the talent management system to be effective - 

●     Recruitment: The first area that requires assessment is the recruitment processes itself. Every aspect of the process must be evaluated, for example, whether the job postings are being targeted to the right candidates, whether the selection process follows a standardised method and whether the HR managers are equipped with the best tools for evaluation of prospective employees. It is necessary to hire people who fit with the company’s culture. All this requires the recruitment team to have special skills and hence, investing in a skilled talent management certification is extremely desirable.

●     Development Post Hiring: The job of the talent management team extends beyond hiring. The hired employees must be acquainted with the company goals and vision. Apart from this, they must also be provided with learning opportunities to grow within the organization. Hence, the talent management team must possess the relevant tools to manage everyday performance, goals and learning opportunities of employees. The senior management must be proficient employee performance metrics and the employees must have a career growth plan in the organization. All these things must be handled through a single portal - the talent management system. 

●     Leadership: Good leadership is an important asset for all organizations. Good leadership skills are different from the skills of a good manager. It is important that the talent management system recognises and promotes awareness of leadership skills with a 360 approach whereby the overall personalities of employees with leadership skills blossoms. This is important for the future growth and direction of the organization.

●     Bottom-Up Communications: Feedback from the lower working classes is extremely important for the growth of any organization. While most organizations follow an 80/20 rule, whereby, 80% of communication has a top down approach and only 20% communication happens from bottom up, it is most important for futuristic companies to have a bottom-up communication channel. The talent management system of the company must ensure that appropriate feedback is collected across all levels. 

Thus, investing in a great talent management system is similar to investing in building the backbone of an organization. Any organization which is looking to have a competitive advantage must have a functional and above par talent management system because the only true differentiator for any organization in the long run will be its employees.

Financial Models that you can Create with Excel

All those of you who have graduated in Finance and are looking for careers in finance, must know how to create financial models with excel. This will provide a great boost to your resume whether you wish to pursue further financial management studies or you wish to join the workforce. Learning macros on excel will provide you with great options for creating financial and/or analytical models on excel. Some of the financial models you can create using excel are:

Company Financial Models 
 

All companies have financial data which can help predict their future performance. An analyst can create company financial models which are generally a large number of spreadsheets that contain these data and the analyst’s views with regard to this data and the estimates he/she creates from these. These estimates could relate to revenue, cost of goods etc. 

These financial models usually have time on the x-axis and the value for revenue or cost of goods sold etc. on the y-axis. To create these models, you as the creator must input estimates for the line items eg. revenue. After this, you must ensure that you use the right formulae. This will serve as the base for further interconnected models such as cash flow, balance sheets etc. Learning about excel macros will help you create more sophisticated scenarios for bull/bear markets. 

Valuation Models

 

Whether or not you build company models, building one’s own valuation models is highly recommended. You can create simple models such as EV/EBIDTA, price earnings etc. or go for creating more complex models such as discounted cash flow for more rigorous results.

  

Discounted Cash Flow  

A discounted cash flow model is highly regarded for valuation. Several analysts and companies consider discounted cash flow very important in the absence of corporate financial performance report. The excel sheet can be created to hold year-on-year cash flow estimates on a single row, whereas on the other rows/columns below it there can be growth estimates, discount rates etc. The first estimate can be used from your company’s  financial model and the rest can be built by creating growth rate estimates year-on-year or using bulk estimates. The other details such as discount rates have to each be entered in separate rows. After inputting all details, the NPV function on the spreadsheet must be used for processing the estimates for growth and discount rates. A terminal value must also be calculated at the end. 

Remember this 

By creating the above models yourself, you will learn a lot about a company’s functioning and what it might need to do in order to grow. However, use of detailed financial models does not discount human discretion and understanding. You can also learn to create these models through short online finance courses.

Online Brand Management: What, Why, Where are When?

Online brand management has become a buzzword in the marketing world during last decade and business organizations, including start-ups and established ones, today consumes a lion’s share of their marketing budget towards creating a strong visibility and reputation in the digital channels. So what’s this entire buzz about online brand management? Let’s analyse the basic facts about online brand management here.

What is Online Brand Management? 

To define it in layman’s language, online brand management is about monitoring and guiding the way the audience views or values your brand in the web platforms which includes your website, social media, online reviews, third party blogs, etc. The activities in online branding include creating or enhancing your online identity, effective communication of your brand message online, establishing a connection with your customers, devising effective brand communication strategies to establish your online presence etc. 
 

Why Online Brand Management matters?
 

Online brand management is extremely important in a scenario in which people move towards online review sites to reach a decision about a brand without much of critical thinking. Nevertheless to mention, a bad online reputation will reduce your business in the current scenario while positive online brand reputation can take your brand to newer heights. Keep in mind that your brand is susceptible to be judged any time by your prospective customers, hence positive online reputation is essential. 

Where for Online Brand Management?
 

Marketing and brand management online includes several activities, out of which owning an authentic website and managing an active representation in the relevant social media channels is crucial for a brand’s success as a large percentage of your prospective customers encounter with your brand in such platforms according to the latest studies.
 

When Online Brand Management?
 

You should begin executing your online brand management strategies consistently right from the start.
Set your goals, determine the appropriate channels, strategise your online brand management activities and start execution without delays while monitoring the results closely. Start-ups can effectively leverage the benefits of online brand management and set a strong foundation for future growth.
 

Are you enthusiastic about learning digital brand management? Wait no more to join an marketing and brand management courses offered by a reputed university. Know how you can get the competitive advantage over peers in online brand management.

Fintech: Changing the Start-Up Landscape

Fintech is one of the prominent breeding grounds for the business innovation in the recent past. Scholastically called as financial technology, it has contributed to the start-up explosion significantly, across the world. The financial technology is likely to value its business at 300 billion pounds in Britain alone. The pace at which the Fintech is disrupting start-up scenario in India is also unrivaled.

The Indian Scenario

The start-up landscape in India was largely focused on developing e-commerce and technology related products before. Fintech was never considered as a game changer. However, the scope for fintech is huge and is never denied. The fintech startups have became talk of the town after the government declared demonetization and it was also fuelled by the changing trends in shopping of urban customers.

Making Life Easier

Earlier, one has to go to an agency to buy an insurance policy. Today, the agents and the bankers are replaced by the online portals. The number of people embracing digital payments, online banking, bill payments, etc., is consistently growing in India. This has created a huge room for the young innovators to launch their start-ups and offer their services to the customers. Subsequently, there is a huge rise in professionals with fin-tech background and professionals who opt for online finance courses.

Earlier, applying for the loan was a tedious job. Today, you can simply log on to the portals of Lending Kart or Vistar Finances, fill the particulars, and get a loan for your Small and Medium Scale Enterprises.

Third Party Vendors

There are scores of technology providers in India and abroad who are acting as the third party vendors to the banks and the financial agencies to create financial applications and online technological solutions.

Relying on Data

The most important aspect of the fintech solutions is data and they efficiently take advantage of data mining techniques. However, the fintech companies have the user data which helps the analysts understand the customer’s buying patterns. There is a huge scope for professionals with data analytics training in the fintech arena as well.
 

This data is the gold mine for any business and is likely to help the start-up industry evolve from innovation to understanding the market volatilities. This trend is likely to increase the impetus towards entrepreneurship in the country and ensure India’s position as one of the world’s fastest growing start-up economy.

The Importance of Content - Paid Content v/s Consumer Generated Content

Gone are the days where the thing that is broadly visible, is also easy saleable. Today, consumers are smart, and thanks to the bloom of various social media platforms, they are updated as well. Therefore, to be in sync with the consumers, the companies have changed their marketing approach. The companies now believe in content marketing in order to sell their products. Content marketing is not direct marketing, but in fact strategic marketing; so as to understand the consumer and market to him accordingly.

One cannot deny that content is very important for any company or a business. Therefore, in order to get better ROI, companies often go for paid content. Paid content is the content on the Internet (maybe video, graphics, texts and so on) that is paid for and is usually copyrighted. The other way to market any product via content is by the approach of consumer generated content. The consumer generated content means using the consumer presence in social media to market the products.

Both ways of content marketing - paid content and consumer generated content - have the same goal i.e. to increase the sale of the product in order to benefit the company or business. However, these approaches are different from each other. Paid content is generally written or designed by professionals, although it has all the necessary information but sometimes it may still not be able to match the width of the consumers. On the other hand, the consumer generated content is from the consumer itself, or it can be said that it is straight from the heart of the consumer, so it relates to the other consumers easily.

Given a choice between paid content and consumer generated content, the latter is appreciated more. There have been many recent cases where even the big companies have chosen this mode to connect with the consumers. They have launched big budget campaigns where the consumers upload their picture with the product and get prizes, and many more similar campaigns are being run every day. These campaigns have proved to be very effective for the companies.

We are in the century where it is common practice that whenever we plan to buy anything expensive or even economical; we prefer to check the reviews and ratings. The consumer today trusts reviews and ratings from fellow shoppers; so, getting a product marketed by the consumers itself will give best results. The very common example of consumer generated content is the review of any movie. There have been many cases where after the movie release, despite a bad rating by a critic, the movie still gets good reviews from the common people. Since, the review by consumer is good, the people will go and watch the movie. Therefore, it is safe to say that consumer generated content is more beneficial than paid content.

In digital marketing, content marketing is the most important channel to promote both paid and free content. But you have to have the proper knowledge to develop the right content which interests the consumer. And to gain knowledge, a digital marketing course or digital marketing certification is a necessity.