Shopper’s Stop – Loyalty Or Disloyalty Program?

Since I wrote Loyalty Or Disloyalty Programs? and Beware Of Losing Sales With Bad Loyalty Programs, a couple of companies have used mobile technologies in very innovative ways to design loyalty programs that truly foster loyalty. But Shopper’s Stop is not one among them. The pioneer of India’s organized retail industry recently introduced a mobile app variant of its … Read more

Omnichannel Fiasco #1: Standard Chartered Credit Card

I recently went through two omnichannel experiences, one that started well but went downhill thereafter, and another that was a disaster right from the beginning. Before I deep dive into my experiences, here’s a quick working definition of omnichannel: Omnichannel is where a single business process is deliberately split across multiple channels so that each … Read more

Three Reasons Why Conventional Résumés Are Thriving Despite LinkedIn

I’ve been asked many times why, in this day and age of LinkedIn, I insist on job applicants sending me conventional résumés in DOC or PDF formats. Well, that’s not strictly true. I’ve been asked only twice, most recently by a man in Pune, Maharashtra*. In my experience of helping a couple of customers with … Read more

When Does Analytics End And Hair Splitting Start?

Advances in Big Data, Internet of Things and other technologies are contributing to an ever-increasing deluge of information in today’s digital world. Not surprisingly, analytics has once again become a hot topic. But I sometimes wonder if there’s such a thing as “too much analytics”. I’m not referring to “analysis paralysis” where no action results … Read more

Coin Solves A Pain. But Is It A 100 Dollar Pain?

In Mobile Wallets Should Fix What’s Broken – And It Ain’t Payments, I’d highlighted why paying with plastic cards comes naturally to most people and why mobile wallets are not offering any compelling reason for people to switch to them instead of continuing to use plastic cards for their everyday payments. I’d also pointed out in … Read more

If Doctors Can Google, Why Can’t Patients?

In this article (click here to read it online or here to download a PDF version) many leading doctors complain that by resorting to Google for diagnosing themselves, patients are eroding the traditional doctor-patient trust. IMO, they have themselves to blame. It’s only a matter of time before the Internet alters the medical profession, just as it … Read more

Google Search – Upheaval Does Not Equal Abuse

Every update to Google’s search algorithm – Penguin and Panda to name the latest two – is accompanied by major upheavals in the rankings of websites on the Google Search Engine Results Page. Take the case of Mahalo for example: After the Panda update, the human-powered search directory found itself shunted off from the #1 position … Read more

Don’t Fall For The ‘Invisible Versus Unseen Ads’ Charade

The author of the Digiday article titled Don’t Fall For The ‘Invisible Ads’ Charade concedes that digital ads are sometimes invisible. Despite that, he urges marketers to spend more money on digital ads on the ground that they’re no more invisible than print or TV ads. Nice try. I’m in general wary of double-negatives but the … Read more

FAASO’s Wins “QR360 Code Of The Week” Award

FAASO’s is the winner of “QR360 Code Of The Week”, the award series we kicked off with Precious Platinum last month.   The winning QR code appears on the upper right hand corner of the quick service restaurant chain’s menu. Scanning it takes users to the app store page of MOBILE wrAPP, the company’s smartphone ordering-cum-loyalty … Read more

Three More Ways How Tech Can Help Banks Accelerate Legacy Transformation

In How Tech Can Help Banks Accelerate Legacy Transformation, I’d described three issues with open systems that hold banks back from migrating their legacy applications to open systems. Here are three more: #4. Sudden Loss of Functionality In this brilliant article titled When Product Features Disappear – Amazon, Apple and Tesla and the Troubled Future for … Read more