In this new age of social networks, people are transmuting into data agents who share even the smallest aspects of their day to day life activities on social media. There is about 2.5 Exabyte of social data being shared online, every second, loaded with an endless stream of information. This information can be discovered, projected and analyzed intosocial media analysis reports to uncover new opportunities in business and technology for advancements.

 

Definition: What is Social Data Analytics?

Online Social Networks (OSNs) stir out data in enormous volumes with every brief second. According to global scenario, individuals are accountable for proliferating the data into twice the amount, as much for every new year. Figures divulge that 5 billion people own different mobile devices which are utilized to share billions of online texts, videos and search comprehensively every single day.

 

What is the Role of Big Data In Social Data Analysis?

To scrutinize this bulk of data being shared online, and to channelize them further into correct direction to generate analytics to influence strategic decision making is becoming one of a key criterion to sustain businesses shortly. The analysis of data collected from social media sites can be used to unearth hidden information patterns that can be utilized further for industry transformations.

Socially savvy consumers are expressing their opinions transversely across the Internet. Companies listen and answer back, some even in the real-time. Those that don’t apply or follow this key tactic will tumble behind others who are collaborating and communicating realistically with their prospects or customers through relevant social media platforms.

Further with an implementation of analytics, companies are offering their employees a factual understanding of customers’ requirements, thereby boosting a cohesive view of their business’s operations and the direction of their mission in relation to their exploration for dynamic data.

Importance of Big Social Data Analytics

Big data social network analysis is a part of an imperative tool which can be used to apprehend the insights behind the data or information publicized by an individual on social media. It is a tactic which syndicates numerous data mining techniques, statistical methods, sentiment analysis and machine learning for forecasting, predicting and analyzing the current trends & social data intelligence.

Top Social Media Data Analytics Tools

The application of precise software tools is needed to utilize information and derive analytics from social data to the fullest. These insightful and influential analytics can drive brands to line up actions and enlighten business strategies. Social data analytics assist companies in revealing innovative opportunities as well as in discovering incompetence in their business services. This can be drawn from conversations related to specific products, the brand, and the management of their customer services.

Apache Hadoop, the principal technology utilized for data analytics is an open source, influential and steadfast tool which consists of two constituents, namely, Hadoop Map Reduce framework and Distributed File System.

Apache Storm and Apache Spark are utilized for real-time distributed computation. Facebook utilizes Presto, which is again open source engine that assists in querying data using Cassandra and Hive. Twitter acquired Gnip, a social media analytics tool which assembles the tweets, filters and further resells this data which is highly valuable for marketers and advertisers to execute digital campaigns. IBM bring together the data distributed on Facebook and Twitter about human thoughts, comments and complaints about a definite subject to derive real-time data analytics. This assists in improving their promotional campaigns, discount and pricing offers.

How social data analytics drive content strategies and customer segmentation

Digital marketers can utilize social media data analytics to know more about the content which works and which not in the online marketplaces. By analyzing how and where their target audience’s read, share and converse about content, marketers can twist content tactics and the strategy for achieving both the quality as well as the increase in content reachability. With the upsurge of geo-location data, online marketers can determine whether or not to focus their efforts on the specific technology or business domains.

Conjoining customer data with key social media metrics discloses powerful analytics and insights as profiles develop richer. Buying personas turn out to be flawless as marketers can now segment customers more precisely. Social data analytics can help in tracking your targeted prospects and the customer journey in the marketing and sales cycle and can add stimulus on where, when and how they want to be reached out. It can assist you with lead generation, demand generation and prospect nurturing and assist where marketing dollars should be invested.

How social data analysis can reveal what is missing in a business and how to fill gaps

Competitive research through social media analytics tools can reveal what is missing in a business or industry, and what can be strategized to fill the gaps build by your competitors. Analytics can also reveal a business’s own slip-ups and make known insights that may have stayed suppressed until they become outward through big data analysis.

The Fortune 100 retailer Sears, that delivers home, apparel and automotive merchandise use analytics for its 1000+ retail stores to better manage business crunches, endorse its stores, services, and different products, getting assistance in taking better business decisions.

The retailer selected an all-inclusive social management platform for its corporate and enterprise workflows that empowered them to discover, trace and direct social data analytics straightforwardly to fitting audiences helping improve the multifaceted dynamics of dealing with social media and social data analytics across the organization. The in-depth social data analytics, insights and intelligence assisted the retail giant work on a deeper indulgent of its prospective audience, industry influencers and on its new competitive markets.

 

Key Takeaways

Social networks are working on bringing the world nearer. Automated data extraction and intelligence through social networks are exceedingly substantial. The social data analytics fetched can assist in boundless ways for business growth, tailored marketing and adapted promotions. Highly innovative and pertinent technologies are needed for enhancing the elegance in the industry and business data-driven expertise, through social data analytics.

from
http://www.outsourcinginsight.com/social-data-analytics/

Outsourcing your coding needs has always been a miracle from heaven,  Back in the old days when you have to hire a full team of developers in-house just to take care of one singular software was the way to go, needless to mention it’s a royal pain in the neck to take care of these “geeks” and their constant yapping for what can only be described as a “babysitter” to tend to their needs. You’d think that would be the end of it but no, you still have to hire a project manager to oversee them and make sure they are meeting deadlines and what they produce is just what you asked for and not something they think is ” more convenient ” to their current code so they wouldn’t have to put up the effort of changing it or redoing a considerable part of it.

 

Well, now there’s an alternative to that awful process, a better way to go about it without the hassle of this whole ordeal, you can Outsource everything to us, and we’ll take care of it. Software companies will take care of all your software needs, especially PHP which is one of our strongest points. Out system is entirely different from anything you were used to before, you don’t have to keep us on monthly retainers or give us a part of your company for doing the work for you. It’s a very simple transaction that happens only once, and that’s it, we’re settled, think of it like visiting a doctor, when do you do it? When you’re sick, and you need help, well that’s exactly how our system works, you give us a call with all your needs, and we’ll handle everything for you, get paid, and that’s it, no need for further retainers or anything.

 

And here’s the fun part, it costs around half as much to outsource it than to do it locally, domestic developers are known to charge an exorbitant amount of money for their work, so much so that you’d think they’re curing cancer not writing some lines of code. Well development firm will provide you with the same quality of work you get domestically (if not better) at half the price you pay them or even lower, because It simply Costs less when you outsource it to a dedicated company like us with a complex infrastructure that can provide you with top of the line quality at a fraction of the cost because we know how to allocate capital and distribute workload to get the maximum quality with the minimum price.

So why outsource to Software Development Company?

• Access to our entire team with the same cost of one project
• Massive saving in capital
• Little to no effort required on your part
• Available 24/7/365 as our team runs shifts to ensure we’re online all the time
• Time zone accommodation to set you up with a team who’s up the same time as you
• Support that goes far and beyond

 

Companies also provide with one extra unique service that no other company offers simply because they lack the complexity, which is integral coding.

8 out of 10 times when you hire a PHP developer he’s gonna do the job for but you’ll feel like something is missing, the page will look stale, that’s because PHP is simple a more stable language than most, but then you’ll have to hire Java developer to add the final touches for you, and you go about the hiring and screening process all over again. But that’s not the case with us, when you hire our company, you GET our company, which means other developers majoring in other languages can help and pitch in to improve the overall quality of the project which is something that saves you 40% of the time it would take just to get a new developer familiar with your current project enough to dabble with it and add his own work to it, and speed up the testing process by over 300% as both developers will be in the same room trying to match their codes to each and debugging their work other till they have a stable version.

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http://www.outsourcinginsight.com/hire-php-web-developers/

We are living in the Rise of the Machines. No, Skynet and its hordes of Terminators haven’t materialized just yet, but there are many that fear that advances in automation and Artificial Intelligence are a serious threat to humanity in at least one aspect: jobs. In America, more jobs have to robots and automation than to China, Mexico or any other country. But the global impact of these systems will be felt even more strongly. I believe that the proliferation of ‘virtual talent’ will have a profound effect on intellectual offshoring and business process outsourcing, one that will be especially pronounced for emerging countries.
Traditionally, outsourcing and offshoring has primarily been conducted as a cost reduction measure. After all, why spend more on an expensive local worker sitting at a computer when the same tasks can be performed at a dramatically lower cost by an overseas worker sitting at the same computer, all while maintaining the same level of quality? In the pre-AI world, that thinking made perfect sense. But what if you could make the computer do that same job, without a human operator? The cost savings would be massive, and the business decision obvious.
Advances in AI technology are rapidly making this hypothetical a reality. Recent research from Gartner found that by 2018, 40% of outsourced services will leverage smart machines, “rendering the offshore model obsolete for competitive advantage.” And this market is only going to grow. The same report states that over $10 billion worth of these systems have already been purchased from the more than 2,500 companies providing this technology, while more than 35 major service providers are investing in the development of “virtual labor” options that leverage AI-driven service offerings.
All of this means that the intellectual offshoring we’ve seen since the 90s will no longer be needed or even viable, as there won’t be any business requirement for these services or economic incentive to move these tasks overseas. AI and advanced analytics allow for the automation of many tasks that are currently outsourced. That’s an extremely attractive option; automating tasks that are currently performed by hundreds of overseas employees will enable businesses to hire more expensive local talent who can focus on the difficult tasks and strategic decisions that make bigger business impacts. 

AI not only softens the incentive of cheap foreign labor, but it also negates the advantages of lower offshore operational costs. If you can locate the machines that are performing these tasks anywhere on earth for basically the same cost, why not keep them close to your home base of operations and save a bundle on travel, audit and compliance costs? 

These shifts might take a few years as technology develops, but they are coming, and they will fundamentally change the way the world does business. Intelligent machines are here, and companies that continue to rely solely on outdated offshoring models out of fear of the risks and challenges of being early adopters of these systems do so at their peril. Virtual labor technology can offer potential cost savings of between %10-%70, so business leaders must begin planning now for how to adopt this technology and adapt their organizations to maximize its potential to survive and remain competitive.

 

Please feel free to leave a comment if you think Artificial Intelligence enhancement will end outsourcing business?

Source: https://www.gooddata.com/blog/how-ai-will-end-offshoring

from
http://www.outsourcinginsight.com/will-ai-end-outsourcing-business/

Dear reader,

If you’re reading this article now, that means you made up your mind and you’re looking for a CPA. Don’t worry, you made the right call. The guy who prepares your taxes if the one who can make or break your business stability. If the CPA doing your tax returns messes up, you are the one responsible. Even though it wasn’t your fault. So “choose wisely.” Most accountants while sleazy and annoying, they are honest professionals. Keyword here is most. There are also those take advantage of people and provide them with low quality service. So how can you find the right one? And make sure you find a CPA that is just right for you.

 

Let’s start it off by with the basics and cover everything that you may need:

Where would you normally find a CPA?

Your friend’s CPA or having one referred to you is normally the best way to go. That’s true in many things in life, sadly not for accounting. Give some thought to where people search for one. Yelp? Angie’s list? It costs $2 a month to be listed on Angie’s list as a CPA. Anyone can be listed there in a matter of minutes. Does that sound like someone you want to hire to take care of you numbers? Really?

The American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA) : while its full of professionals and financial specialists. It’s a very encompassing directory. That means it’s got everyone from the good to the horrible.

Always look for individual or freelance based accountants. Work with them with an outsourced model. Because people who accept to work with you on such terms are very results oriented.

 

What to do before you hire a CPA?

 

1) Verify credentials:

The IRS gives out Preparer Tax Identification Number (PTIN). Every CPA gets one, make sure to ask him about it. If he doesn’t provide one, it’s a fair chance that he’s not licensed. All types of harm could come from an unregistered person. Such as selling your private info and filing wrong claims just to get the fee. And as mentioned before, you’re held accountable for all filings done for your company. Even if you outsource it to a 3^rd party organization.

 

2) Background Check:

It was recently reported that many CPAs forged their client’s tax returns without even telling the client about it. All for the sake of getting illegal refunds. So they could show their clients an ROI on their services and stay in business. Always do a background check to avoid dealing with such criminals.

 

3) look for partners:

Being a highly qualified tax pro and being reputable is just the bare minimum for entry now. You want someone who you’re comfortable with. Someone you can put your trust behind him and take his recommendations under consideration. An aggressive accountant can really hurt your business with un-reasonable deductions. For example, a highly aggressive accountant once tried to write off “dental floss” as a medical expense (which is not legal according to the IRS.)

 

You should always ask these questions when hiring an accounting firm

1. Do you have a PTIN?

this should be your #1 question above anything else. Anyone that’s going to be so much as touching your federal tax return should have a valid PTIN before preparing returns. Any taxes prepared by someone who isn’t licensed will not be accepted and may be subject to legal action.

 

2. What is your tax background?

Having tons of letters behind your name on a card doesn’t amount to anything these days. It simply indicates you passed the basic training, not the real world experience. So when you pick a CPA make sure he has actual real world experience under his belt and never be in AWE of his letters.

 

3. Have you worked before with xyz ?

When you’re a doctor, you want a CPA who specializes in working with doctors. An accountant that works with plumbers will never be able to maximize your returns as he doesn’t know the Ins and Outs of the industry. You need to make sure he has clear experience in your respective field to gauge the amount of trust you have in him. There are many varying regulations from a field to another.

 

4. Are you fully aware of the requirements of the state and localities where I am required to file?

You’d think all states are similar when it comes to forums getting filled. But some states do have a singe in the middle. A form unique to them that must be submitted. It can be even more complicated if you’re established at one state but doing work in another. You have to be certain that your accountant is fully aware of (and can handle) all the filing requirements.

*at this point you’re sure that you have a good guy on the phone. The rest of the questions are here to make sure you make an informed decision about hiring him.

 

5. What documents will you need me to supply?

It would be a horrible idea to just shove everything you have in your office at the CPA. The amount of information that could be drawn from those files is really valuable. Just imagine if your competitor would get a hold of our CPA and offer him money for a copy of your files. So you should always be careful what you give out. Generally a decent accountant would insist on you giving him the W-2, 1099, 1098 and any other proof of income and expenses. Make sure they have a deadline on their form submission. If he isn’t up to do the necessary due diligence in the begging, don’t even consider hiring him as your CPA, Won’t end well.

 

6. How do you determine your fees/ what do you charge?

It’s not just about the question, it’s about how you phrase it. You need to be as blunt and clear about this as possible. Prices often vary depending on the complexity of your return. Getting a large bill at the end of the year can leave a scar on your bank account. Many complications can arise in such conditions, like capital gains and losses. Schedule C and rental income and losses. Any out of the ordinary items on the return will be an additional charge so you have to be fully aware how are the tax accountants calculate their fee. Is it per hour? Per project? You need to ask all these questions and make sure that includes phone call inquires.

 

7. When and how can I call you? Are you available after the April due date?

There must always be a direct link between you and your CPA. Be wary of those tax shops that appear during tax season with a ton of hype then go missing for half the year. Most business owners receive requests from tax authorities in the end of the year around October or November. But guess what, the tax accountant is nowhere to be found. Make sure you can always be in touch with your CPA whenever you need him. If he’s not willing to comply with that, you might want to consider taking your business somewhere else.

 

8. What other services do you provide?

Another very good idea is to ask that question. Having all your papers done under one roof is both cost effective and time efficient. Services such as financial planning can be done also by a pro CPA. If you chose to opt-in for another service you will be amazed. It’s a whole lot easier for this accountant to do other services for you. He’s already aware of everything there is to know about your financials and can make highly informed decisions in a fraction of the time it would take someone just getting started with your process. Accounting and financial planning are normally requested at the same time from the same firm just for the ease of dealing with one entity,

 

9. Do you do E-filing? Or are all your files sent out in paper form?

 

1 billion+ tax returns have been processed since the kick-off of the electronic filing system in 1990. This is not a coincidence or a fluke. It is by far, the fastest way to get your taxes processed and your refunds issued. Not even mentioning the beauty of simplification, it leaves very little room to math errors. So for those reasons alone, make sure to ask your CPA of his method of filing. And always make sure that he is open to filing yours electronically so you can get quicker returns and reduce the chance of rejection due to errors.

 

10. What would happen if the IRS decided to come and audit my business?

God forbid the day comes when the IRS agents knock on your door and tell you they’re here to audit your business. But you always need to keep in mind that this is something that may happen and prepare for it. Get on a call with your CPA and be crystal clear on the process you should go through during an Audit. Find out how he prepares for handling examinations from the IRS. Will he respond to their questions? Is he going to train you on what to say? Or will he be the front man and represent your company in front of the IRS authorities or Tax Court? Is he taking responsibility for any mistakes and does it plan to fix it free of charge? If not, how will the cost of that be determined?

from
http://www.outsourcinginsight.com/find-cpa-firm-nearby/

In the present scenario, organizations face irresistible volumes of data, managerial complexities, quickly changing customer behaviours and amplified competitive pressures in almost all the industries or business domains. New technologies and business innovations, have further created stress with increasing operational channels and professional platforms, which needs aggression to survive in the existing environment.

 

With data worldwide being steadily growing at 40 to 45 percent annually, Big data analytics can be a prime game changer in the year 2017. Big data has initiated a paradigm shift accompanied by an affluence of data and information. It has left no industry intact as it is continuing to transform the way we think about everything from technology to human resources and sales or marketing are no different.

 

Market research and advisory firm Ovum, assessed that the big data market will nurture from $1.7 billion in 2016 to $9.4 billion by 2020. As the market is maturing, innovative encounters are changing, technology requirements are transforming, and the vendor criteria are also adapting. The year 2017 looks to be a demanding one for big data opportunities and prospects.

 

Here are some key diagnoses for big data analytics in year 2017 from industry viewers and technology performers.

 

Three categories of big data which are significant for sales and marketing advancements

 

1. Customers: Without accurate customer data no company can survive in this competitive world. The customer big data grouping is most relevant to sales and marketing, comprising of instinctive, behavioural, and transactional customer matrices from sources such as digital marketing campaigns, websites, points of sale, social media, customer surveys, loyalty programs, online communities and forums.

 

2. Operations: This big data grouping comprises of objective matrices that quantify the quality of sales and marketing procedures in relation to resource utilization, asset and budgetary controls.

 

3. Finance: With measuring the company’s financial systems, this big data grouping controls revenue, profits and financial health of the company.

 

Three categories of big data significant for Human Resources (HR) management

 

1. Hiring: With this big data grouping, HR professionals have enough data driven opportunities to turn out and be more analytical and tactical in attaining good candidates, assisting employers to avoid bad hiring. According to a CareerBuilder survey comprising of 6,000+ HR experts, 27% of employers said that a bad hiring experience cost them around or more than $50,000. Thus, Big data inhibits big mistakes.

 

2. Training: This big data grouping helps employers focus on procuring data associated to training program participation and development, which can further assist them and HR department to enhance effectiveness of their professional programs.

 

3. Retention: By applying big data within workplace, open opportunities to understand why employees leave and stay in organizations. Taking Xerox, as example, using big data and analytics, it reduced its attrition rate at call centers by 20%. By evaluating numerous sources of employee data, HR can more precisely recognize problems that lead to lesser employee commitments, and how they can improve employee engagements.

 

As the big data analytics market is swiftly expanding to add mainstream customers, many technologies assure the advancement potentials.

 

Three categories of big data which are significant for technology advancements

 

1. Predictive analytics: This big data grouping includes software and hardware solutions that consent companies to optimize and deploy predictive data models by evaluating big data sources. It helps to increase business performance and reduce risks by informed business decision making.

 

2. Data virtualization: This big data grouping includes technologies that provides information from multiple data sources, even comprises of big data sources like Hadoop as well as distributed data stores that too in real-time.

 

3. Data integration: This big data grouping includes tools for data scoring for modernizations across solutions like MapReduce, Amazon Elastic MapReduce (EMR), Apache Spark, Apache Hive, Couchbase, Hadoop, MongoDB and Apache Pig.

There are some of the Big Data source types, in compliance to mining techniques that are applied to search your gilt nuggets.

 

Four categories of big data which are significant for data mining techniques

 

1. Social network profiles: This grouping helps exploring user profiles from LinkedIn, Facebook, Google, Yahoo, and different social media sites, extracting professional profiles and demographics capturing like-minded network information. This requires an API integration for mining and importing pre-defined values and data fields.

 

2. Cloud applications and Software as a Service (SaaS): Software solutions like Netsuite, Salesforce and SuccessFactors represent professional data that’s stored in the cloud. With the help of distributed data integration tools a company can merge this data with the internal data to drive business results.

 

3. Legacy documents: Archives of business and insurance forms, statements, medical records and customer communications are still an untouched resource for data mining. Countless archives are completely filled with old PDF documents and files that comprise of multiple records between customers, organizations and even with the government. Software tools such as Xenos are used for parsing this semi-structured legacy information.

 

4. Data warehouse appliances: EMC Greenplum, Teradata and IBM Netezza tools scrutinize transactional data that is already made ready for analysis through internal operational systems. They help in improving the parsed data and refine final results from the gigantic Big data installations.

 

Key Takeaways

As mentioned, data globally is growing at a great pace every year. This rate of growth is alarming for any sales, marketing or technology leader. However, many business managers may feel that this data size has always been big and its correct in one or the other ways. Imagining about the customer data gathered twenty years ago, it included coupon redemption, point of sale data, replies to direct mails or campaigns. Then coming to customer data collected today, it includes online buying data, social media communications, mobile data or geolocation data. Relatively speaking, there’s not much difference.

 

So, having big data doesn’t mechanically or automatically lead to improved results. Big data and analytics are a secret weapon, which have to be intelligently utilized to derive actionable insights, to boost informed business, technology or human resource decision making, that can further create the real difference. Visit Hello Soda India if you are looking for Big Data Analytics.

from
http://www.outsourcinginsight.com/how-big-data-analytics-can-be-a-game-changer-in-2017/