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Friday 15 June 2012

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.

Sunday 10 June 2012

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.

Friday 8 June 2012

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.

Thursday 7 June 2012

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.