ENTERPRISE 2.0 – SOCIALIZING YOUR BUSINESS

Enterprise 2.0 helps the organizations by involving the employees, customers, suppliers to share, collaborate and organize information for the benefit of the organization using web 2.0 technologies. Harvard Business School professor describes Enterprise 2.0 as “the use of emergent social software platforms within companies, or between companies and their partners or customers”. Some people think that it is bringing something of the kind Facebook into the internal atmosphere of the organization but it is much more than sharing comments and photographs. Social business platforms are now providing features like link to emails, IM tools, keywords and hashtags to find people, discussion forums, corporate blogging and many other features so as to dig out the employee’s brain.

CMSWire, de Gier in an interview quoted the term “creating this type of corporate social business connectivity solutions will help in expanding corporate brains”.

 

 

CEMEX’s Social Business Platform: Shift

CEMEX, a $13.5 billion company, world’s largest building material supplier and the third largest cement producer has taken an initiative in 2009 to blend social networking concepts and the idea of Enterprise 2.0 and develop an internal social network for the employees which became fruitful in 2010 and its results were beyond the imagination. The Shift is being used by more than 95% of the company’s employees. The results were so paying off that they cannot imagine. More than 500 communities were made by the employees and where they come together and collaborate on certain specific task related to a particular subject of the task and the CEMEX has admitted that the working culture and productivity has increased after doing so.

Richard Foo, the Collaboration Director of Nike Inc., has admitted that in just 60 days he has experienced a drastic change in the live production by adopting the social business platform from CISCO based social business network that creates enterprise-wide discussion and information threads. Nike is also trying to make it a Mobile Enterprise Business Solution that is integrating the social business platform onto mobiles and many vendors in the market are trying to provide certain trying to provide certain functionality.

If the organizations truly wants to maximize their benefits then they have to adopt social business platforms and not just that they have to make them mobile friendly as much as possible because this is the era of smart phones and internet.

E-MONEY AND SECURITY

With the advancement in technology and the increasing internet culture has made online shopping an attractive option for many internet users. But the fear of being cheated and fraud is on their minds, are the online transactions safe, will the product delivered will be the same they have seen, and many other questions.

The answer to all these questions is yes. If the site is genuine and the payment gateway tied up with that site is genuine then definitely your transactions are safe. All the transactions are safe because of encryption i.e. your username, password, merchant details, payment to be provided, pin numbers etc. all are in the highly encrypted manner and no intruder can have access to that information.

MasterCard has started MasterCard Online Authentication Service (OAS) that meets the needs of all e-commerce participants by offering flexible and robust solutions for online payment authentication. MasterCard provides high level of authentication to the user. There are choices of different types of authentication at different levels of security like:

Static password: In this most basic approach the cardholder is typically allowed to create his/her own personal password on the hosted, issuer-branded web site, after answering several enrollment questions. Cardholders may also “Activate-during-shopping” at participating merchants.

Dynamic password Via SMS Text message: Cardholder portfolios with high levels of mobile phone penetration are also candidates for this solution which delivers a dynamic password to the purchasing cardholder on a just-in-time basis. The MasterCard service can generate the one-time-password and route the SMS text message to the cardholder on behalf of the issuer, or send the message to the bank to handle with their SMS carrier.

Chip Authentication program (CAP) & AA4C

HOW IT WORKS

 

1. A cardholder submits an order at a participating online merchant.

2. The merchant sends a request to the MasterCard directory server to determine if the cardholder participates in the SecureCode program. The MasterCard directory subsequently forwards this request to the Hosted Service Access Control Server (ACS) to determine cardholder status. The enrollment response is returned to the merchant.

3. If the cardholder is participating in SecureCode, the merchant sends a request to the Hosted Service ACS to perform the actual cardholder authentication. Upon receipt of this request, the ACS will populate an issuer-branded authentication page, which is displayed to the cardholder within the merchant window. This page prompts the cardholder to submit their private SecureCode, which is then validated by the ACS.

4. The Hosted Service ACS sends a digitally signed response which contains the Accountholder Authentication Value (AAV)—back to the merchant indicating a successful cardholder verification session.

5. The merchant sends an authorization request that includes an AAV to the acquirer.

6. The acquirer sends the authorization request through the MasterCard authorization network. This authorization request will contain distinctive information about the SecureCode status of the transaction. A fully authenticated transaction will contain an AAV in the Universal Cardholder Authentication Field (UCAFTM).

7. The authorization request is sent by the MasterCard authorization network to the issuer for processing.

8. The authorization response is returned to the merchant and the purchase process is complete.

INDIA AND E-MONEY / E-COMMERCE

India after being a huge success in social market is all set for the next big revolution that is e-commerce. Indians are always positive when it comes to job perspective and personal financial matters. Moreover exposure and awareness to brand culture, wider market options, changing lifestyles, western influence and many other things are influencing Indians to adopt the e-commerce culture. Recent trends and figures shows the upcoming revolution which has already started, in Australia online purchasing has reached to $10 billion with a 9% growth in online spending. Now is the turn of India to get the colors of e-commerce.

Certain facts that shows the market is booming in India:

·         More that 6 out of ten Indian online consumers plan to do shopping.

·         10% of the users commit that they spend more than 11% of their monthly expenditure on online shopping.

·         71% of Indians got trust from their families while making an online purchase.

·         About 55% of the users take help of social sites to make a decision in order to buy something online.

·         More than 10% of the Indian users post negative comments or posts if they got a bad experience from certain product.

·         In the last six months Indians have purchased books (41%), Airline, Train tickets, Movie Tickets (40%), Electronic Equipments like TV, Camera etc.

Based upon these facts certain prediction can be made for the next six months w.r.t Indian market:

Products and Services People intend to purchase in next 6 months
Books	47%
Music	20%
Videos/ DVDs/Games (not downloaded)	21%
Clothing/Accessories/Shoes	30%
Cosmetics /nutrition supplies	13%
Electronic equipment (TV/Camera etc.)	37%
Computer Hardware / Accessories	25%
Computer Software (not downloaded)	20%
Airline ticket/ reservations	45%
Tours /Hotel Reservations	30%
Sporting Goods	12%
Groceries	21%

 

 

% of spending on online shopping of their total monthly expenditure
% of people	% spend
40	<5
33	6-10
19	11-25
6	26-50
2	51-75%
0	>75%

Age group wise comparison of spending money online
Age Group	% spend
15-20	6%
21-29	48%
31-39	28%
40-49	11%
>50	7%

Enterprise 2.0 – A new way Organizations going to work

As the new technologies are being evolved big organizations is also participating in changing their work culture form a cabin style working culture to collaborative style working culture. Organizations want their employees to be more social on professional as well as personal fronts but within the boundary walls of the company. They want employees sitting in various places to discuss on the same project via some collaborative or social business application of the company so that more and more ideas evolve and the organization to have the best of the results.

The problem these days is that the size of organizations is increasing and employees at one location know nothing about the employees at another location though they are working on the same project. Asian paints, the biggest manufacturer of paints, who has hundred of offices in India as well as abroad tries to solve this problem. They are using a tool names as Huddle, which is based on the IBM suite, Connections. Huddle is an Enterprise 2.0 tool or social business software.

Huddle is just a social business tool. There are other competitors too like AVAYA that provides wide range of socialization from text messaging to video chat to an entire eco system, CISCO QUAD is a platform designed for the professional sitting at different geographical locations, GOOGLE’S app like Google docs, Google hard disk, etc. are already used by professional and a major advantage is that it is totally free, and many other including IBM connections, JIVE, IDEAWORK, KINETIC GLUE, MICROSOFT SHAREPOINT, ORACLE social network, QONTEXT, YAMMER and ZOHO etc.

The main purpose of Enterprise 2.0 is to break the barriers and to create a horizontal system in which everyone can interact with everyone on the ideas and that allows creativity and intelligence to be summed up together which could harness the growth of the organization. Just think a peon or a clerk has an idea that could be fruitful for the organization but he cannot implement that and he does not have access to the employees who can make that idea into product, then what? The idea as well as the innovation gets ruined. So if we have social business software where even a peon or a clerk could be in link with all the other employees, then he could easily deliver the idea.

Many organizations are using Enterprise 2.0 software including Asian Paints, Paragon, Airtel, Dr. Reddy’s Lab and many more. The organizations admitted that after adopting Enterprise 2.0 software they are experiencing tangible but powerful benefits. Many of the employees have started working 24x7 and the time duration of completing a particular task has been reduced. So Enterprise 2.0 could be a boom for the organizations.

E-Wallet / Digital Wallet

When we go on the internet and our activity on the internet increases, there is a rapid increase in usernames, passwords, pins, personalized billing information, shipping information and other sensitive personal information which cannot be shared publically. It is very difficult for an individual to not only just remember hundreds of such things but also to keep them secure and safe.

 The solution to this is E-Wallet or what we call as Digital Wallet. It keeps all our private and sensitive information within it and we just have to remember a single password to access it. We can store infinite number of passwords, credit card numbers, ATM pins, and any other information. Since it is in digital form so the memory of e-wallet compared to human brain will be much bigger. Since our memory could not memorize huge amount of data, that’s why many people used to store their usernames, passwords, ATM pins on somewhere, either on a spreadsheet, or on a notepad file, or may write them onto a paper. But is it safe doing so?? No it is not safe it is quite risky to do certain things. Paper can get lost or gets water locked; spreadsheet or notepad file can be deleted or can be misused by any other person. So the ultimate solution is the e-wallet in which one can keep the data unified, intact and secure. One just has to remember a password to have access to all the encrypted data.

E-wallet is just a software application that can be downloaded into your Smartphone, PDA or on your Laptop. Many retailers in the market sell their e-wallets at a very low cost so you can buy any. If you have a doubt or you cannot trust so easily then you can download the demo version for your satisfaction purpose and if you get impressed then you can purchase the full version.

If you change your smart phone, or your laptop then what will you do? Need not to worry every e-wallet provide a feature of sync and backup. So if you have backed up your data it gives a peace of mind that your data is safe and with you always what so every may be the situation like you want to change smart phone or any other case may be.

Change of Money Technology from Tally Sticks to M-Pesa and Airtel Money

Money is not a feature; it’s a technology rather a tool that defines a way of doing things. In ancient times money was defined as exchangeable goods (gold, silver), now a day’s its paper cash and in future it will be e-cash. So it is clear that as technology is advancing the technology of money is also advancing.

 
In the earlier times “split tally”, a wooden stick is used to record royal taxes in England. Tallies came into existence in 1066 and were there till 1826, a long duration. The sheriff would collect the taxes based on tax assessments and then remit the collected cash to the king. To ensure that both the sheriff and the king knew where they stood, the tax assessment was recorded by cutting notches in a wooden twig. The twig was then split, so that the king and the sheriff each had a durable record of the assessment. When it was time to “tally up,” the sheriff would show up with the cash and his half of the tally to be reckoned against the king’s half
.

Today’s tally sticks are Mobiles. Mobile phones are used for making payments for a decade in Japan and Korea. In March, one out of six Japanese users bought something in a shop using a mobile.

M-Pesa: Africa is doing wonders in this field. Kenya is the home to the development of such a system known as M- Pesa. It was launched in 2007—not by a bank but by the country’s biggest mobile operator, Safaricom, with support from the United Kingdom’s Department for International Development. The system has around 15 million users who can use their mobiles for making the payment in near about 28000 shops around the country who has a tie up with the system. Users can make transactions from their mobiles using an application that is built on the top of text messaging function i.e. user has to just send a text message in order to make a transaction. A third of Kenya’s gross domestic product now flows through M-Pesa. M-Pesa is also being replicated in Tanzania, Uganda, and other countries.

 

Airtel Money: Bharti Airtel has launched mobile money in India which they named as Airtel Money. A user can have an account with Airtel i.e. Airtel Money account or Airtel Money Wallet in which user can load money from any of the bank accounts and then spend the money anywhere, paying bills, purchase of utilities etc. Airtel Money scheme is available in 300 cities all over the India and the user can spend money over 7,000+ merchant outlets.

In spite of this Airtel money can also be used to do recharge of any one from anywhere on the go. One can transfer funds from one Airtel Money account (wallet) to another Airtel Money account and bank accounts. Airtel money does not work on the principle of text messaging, rather user have to dial *400# from their Airtel mobiles and the Airtel money menu will appear.

The Upcoming form of money – e-money

Electronic money or e-cash is changing the way money is perceived as the paper cash had changed the way of buying the things. In the earlier times things were purchased on the basis of barter system or exchange of goods like gold and silver but then a revolution came first starting from coins moving onto paper cash. Paper cash has ruled a lot and now the time is coming when the paper cash may get replaced by the e-cash or e-money. However it is highly doubtful and not so easy to replace paper cash with e-cash.

 With the invent of technology and internet, the way things were purchased has changed drastically and that is happening because of e-commerce. The internet has created a new economic system – the ecommerce, which has become the virtual market place for everything. It has provided a platform where we can quickly and conveniently buy and exchange goods and services globally just sitting at our homes over the electronic systems such as internet. Ecommerce is identified as the facilitation of commercial transactions electronically, using the technologies such as EFT (Electronic Funds Transfer). EFT means transfer of funds from one account to another, either with single financial institution or with multiple financial institutions via computer based systems called the internet or any other computer network.

As per day by day technology is advancing and high-tech hand held devices are emerging which has converted e-commerce to m-commerce. M-commerce means doing any sort of commercial transactions with the help of any mobile device that can be a smart phone, PDA (personal digital assistant), or any other mobile device. According to comScore, upto November 2011 there were 38% of smart phone users who have used their phone to make a purchase at least once which means as smart phones are becoming more popular and is going from hands to hands, so does the mcommerce.

Global Internet penetration rates have an enormous impact on e-commerce and m-commerce growth rates. Currently, more than 30.2% of the world has access to the internet, and hence, e-commerce. Reduced Internet surfing charges, Internet technology development covering expanded bandwidth, and increased speeds & reliability could make e-commerce and m-commerce available to a large pool of emerging market consumers.

As e-commerce and m-commerce will increase, the value of e-money goes on increasing day by day. People will shop sitting at home or on the way using e-money. So, slowly and gradually the trend of e-money is increasing.

Moral Question and Access of Internet in Middle Class Families – part 2

The problem: How to make parents aware of Internet and how they should teach the moral aspects of internet to their children.

 The fact comes that many parents themselves are not interested in going to the cafes or anywhere for the internet coaching classes because they think that internet means chatting, watching videos, listening to songs, etc. but the fact that internet is much more than that and there should be a way out as to get the interest of parents regarding the internet.

The social, moral, cultural, religious and ethical value of internet must be known to the parents. The problem again the same how this should be achieved??

There is a lot off content over the internet which justifies all the values related to internet, but again how it should reach the common man? For that someone has to take initiative on a bigger scale that it reaches every mass in the world. For example Mark Zukerberg did, he touched the social value of the internet, creating facebook which results the involvement of one and all, and even those people have started using facebook who have never touched the internet. This kind of revolution is needed in the other values like moral values, cultural values, and religious values.

What the parents will do, who do not know internet and want their children to learn and access internet, but are worried because of social and moral values. They can’t wait for such a revolution in other sectors of social and moral values. Rather they should join or search for the ongoing revolutions which are unnoticed and can do wonders in the life of their children like what is done and is ongoing in education. There almost all the books related to any subjects are available on the internet. Hundreds and thousands of reference books are available related to almost all the subjects in the world. If parents have no time to study internet then also they can at least motivate their children to study such books and the reading experiences that many of the sites are giving is such that a student who does not like studding also starts doing so.

In spite of only education there is a lot of content related to children’s interest on the internet. If a child likes to play with clay and tries to make something out of it then there are lots and lots of videos and tutorials that parents can follow in order to create more talent out of the child. If a child has good dancing or singing skills then those can also be enhanced by the parents by motivating the children to do things related to their interest. Many children like story books, novels, creative writing, artistic creations, designing (textile, interior, etc.), etc. There is a lot of content related o all such things that if a child wants he can master all such things just sitting at home with internet. What needed is the vision of parents not considering internet as a bad thing and spoiling the moral values of the child, rather considering it as the new way to groom their children and making them multi talented on different platforms.

Moral Question and Access of Internet in Middle Class Families

Internet and the Moral issues have always been the two sides of a coin especially for the Indian middle class families. On one side the mind blowing features of the internet, providing knowledge, instantaneous, worldwide, interactive and the list goes on. On the other hand, the issues related to moral and social values like porn, chatting with strangers, cut out from the outer world, ruining the social life and again the list goes on….

In our middle class Indian families moral values are the assets and no one can beat them in the world. These moral values come into the way when it comes to the internet world. Parents in the middle class families are afraid that if they got internet at their home children will be spoiled by the negative effects of the internet. It’s the tendency in Indian middle class to protect the children from any bad things weather many good things associated with them also goes untouched. Fear of being addicted to porn, fear of being making strangers as friends, fear of being spoiling the social and childhood life and all these fears because a seed of evil will grow 100 times faster than a seed of goodness. Parents are absolutely right because the way kids are getting maturity is a matter of discussion for the parents as well as the society, but that does not mean that the children of middle class families should be deprived of internet just because of other fellow children who do ass such kinds of nonsense activities.

Now the question arises that how moral values be maintained and simultaneously access to internet has also be provided to the children especially of Indian middle class families. For this parents have to come on the front to take it as a challenge. They should take time from their busy schedule to give time to their children and tell them the pros and corns of the internet, give them certain assignments so that their interest related to internet gets built up, fixing their internet usage hours, giving them a platform to read on the internet and lots and lots of things that a parent can do in order to generate energy and good ideas in the mind of a child related to internet such that the other side of the internet remains away from the child. But what if the parents themselves are not aware of internet??? A big question to worry!!!! Children want internet, parents have no knowledge what it is?? But they know that it can harm children in many ways, so NO NO NO NO to internet. This is a major problem in Indian middle class families. This problem can also be eradicated but if parents want so.

Parents could join the internet classes and can have a look at both the sides of the coin before giving the access to children, so that their doubts can be cleared, moral values can be retained and children also gets the access to the internet.

Samsung Galaxy s3 VS Apple iPhone 4s

Well the biggest threat to Apple’s iPhone, Samsung has already stunned the market of smart phones by introducing many smart phones but specifically Samsung Galaxy s2 which they launched last year and it has break the records like anything. Now Samsung is again set to win the battle by introducing another big ball in the market of smart phones just to beat Apples’ proprietary of smart phones and that is Samsung Galaxy s3.

Comparing the two big giants of the smart phone market:

                       

Well the comparison itself shows that Samsung S3 has headed the Apples’ iPhone 4s. Now Apple has to think upon developing something new in iPhone 5 which according to rumors expected to be launched in Oct 2012.