2016

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Digital or Die: The Choice for Luxury Brands

BCG

Focus Thursday, September 22, 2016. It may not be widely recognized as such just yet, but digital technology is probably one of the best things to happen to luxury brands in a long time. Digital is happening fast and forcefully, whether brands are ready for it or not. It enables new products and services. It opens up opportunities to create personalized offers and provide bespoke services to many more customers.

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10 Principles of Organizational Culture

Strategy+Business

Companies can gain a competitive advantage when they focus on changing a few important behaviors, enlist informal leaders, and tap into the powerful force of employees' emotions.

Culture 78
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Obamacare Premiums Up 30% in TX, MS, KS; 50% in IL, AZ, PA; 93% in NM: When Does the Death Spiral Blow Up?

MishTalk

Obamacare premiums are skyrocketing out of sight. A jump of a mere 30% looks like a good deal compared to jumps of over 50% in six states, and 93% in New Mexico. Congratulations are in order for those living in a handful of states whose premiums only rose 20%. (more…).

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When your phone uses you

Seth Godin Blog

Your smartphone has two jobs. On one hand, it was hired by you to accomplish certain tasks. In the scheme of things, it's a screaming bargain and a miracle. But most of the time, your phone works for corporations, assorted acquaintances and large social networks. They've hired it to put you to work for them. You're not the customer, you're the product.

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PowerPoint Best Practices for Creating Stellar Presentations

Mastering data visualization in PowerPoint will help accelerate your career because it positions you as someone who can present data that drives business decisions forward. think-cell's PowerPoint Best Practices eBook was created specifically for professionals aiming to master the art and science of data-driven storytelling. What’s inside: Practical Insights: Uncover valuable tips for crafting engaging and persuasive presentations.

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Employee Engagement Isn't a Sprint; It's a Marathon

1 to 1

Peter F. Drucker said, “Company cultures are like country cultures. Never try to change one. Try, instead, to work with what you've got." The results of a recent study on change initiatives echo Drucker’s statement. “Business Change: From Disruptor to Differentiator,” from Harvard Business Review and Strativity Group, reveals that most organizations struggle with change with an astounding 91 percent saying change initiatives have failed in their organizations in the past.

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Ralph Hamers on Disrupting the Banking Industry

BCG

Video Tuesday, September 20, 2016. Founded in 1991, ING is a global financial services company with more than 52,000 employees in over 40 countries. The bank’s stated purpose: “Empowering people to stay a step ahead in life and in business.” To this end, ING aims to simplify the banking experience, making its services fast, easy, and accessible. R.A.J.G.

Banking 87
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Why Africa Remains Ripe for Private Equity

BCG

Focus Thursday, September 15, 2016. For the past decade, Africa has been one of the world’s hottest growth markets for private equity investment. In the early 1990s, a mere dozen Africa-based funds managed a combined $1 billion; today, more than 200 funds manage upwards of $30 billion. More funds are making more deals in more industries and more countries—and are making more successful exits.

Finance 87
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The Rewards of an Engaged Female Workforce

BCG

Focus Thursday, October 27, 2016. Employee engagement is a critical indicator of a company’s success. Engaged employees feel a bond with their company, are proud to work there, and take steps to improve the company’s prospects. However, BCG’s latest research shows that some of the world’s biggest and best-known companies have lower engagement than they should among senior-level women.

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Building a Better Customer Insight Capability

BCG

Article Tuesday, November 01, 2016. Why is it so rare for customer insight (CI) functions to have a seat at the table when key decisions are being made? Executives in consumer-facing companies know that understanding customers’ motivations and anticipating their behavior can accelerate and amplify growth. Yet most organizations struggle to integrate CI into their strategic decision making and core processes.

Survey 87
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How to Stay Competitive in the Evolving State of Martech

Marketing technology is essential for B2B marketers to stay competitive in a rapidly changing digital landscape — and with 53% of marketers experiencing legacy technology issues and limitations, they’re researching innovations to expand and refine their technology stacks. To help practitioners keep up with the rapidly evolving martech landscape, this special report will discuss: How practitioners are integrating technologies and systems to encourage information-sharing between departments and pr

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Tapping into the Transformative Power of Service 4.0

BCG

Focus Tuesday, September 27, 2016. Digital technology is revolutionizing the provision of services. Consider the following scenario: A Berlin resident we’ll call Paul has recently moved to a new apartment in the city. To initiate phone and internet service, he plugs his router into a wall outlet. Five minutes later, he receives a call from his service provider.

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Why Technology Matters

BCG

Article Monday, October 03, 2016. This is the first in a series of articles on technology economics. More than a decade ago, writer Nicholas Carr caused a stir with a Harvard Business Review article titled “IT Doesn’t Matter.” He argued that as costs fall for infrastructural technologies such as computers and the internet, the technologies would—like railroads, electricity, and telephones—become widely available commodities.

Metrics 111
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Fintech in Capital Markets: A Land of Opportunity

BCG

Focus Monday, November 07, 2016. The financial technology (fintech) phenomenon first started to evolve in the capital markets (CM) industry more than 40 years ago. Today, accelerated both by the electronification of trading in the 1990s and the subsequent thrust of the entire financial services industry toward digitization, fintechs—which we define as firms that use innovative technology at scale to either enable or compete with other financial institutions—have experienced exponential growth in

Marketing 110
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How Frontline Leaders Can Deliver Breakout Performance

BCG

Focus Monday, November 21, 2016. Imagine this scenario: Josh, one of the top-performing employees in a key division of your company, gets promoted to his first management role. Josh is excited by the trust you’ve put in him, not to mention the pay increase and opportunity to oversee a team. But he’s also nervous because he’s never managed employees before.

Agile 87
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Savings Consultants Are Needed in Today's Market More Than Ever

Savings Consultants are needed in today’s market more than ever. With an increase in expenses, businesses are looking for opportunities to save. Often unknown to businesses are savings in expense reduction, specialized tax savings, specialized savings including medical underpayments, health benefits cost reduction, zero cost processing, and more. Blue Coast Savings, with over 20 years in business, assists Savings Consultants in helping these companies move toward more profitable businesses.

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Future of Television: The Impact of OTT on Video Production Around the World

BCG

Report Tuesday, September 20, 2016. OTT encompasses the distribution of video content “over the top” of traditional distribution technologies. At the most basic level, OTT is simply a technology alternative that allows for the replication of the traditional home entertainment “stack” of consumer value propositions in a digital context. In technology terms, OTT is the delivery of video content through fixed or mobile broadband internet connections instead of over the broadcast TV spectrum or dedi

Video 86
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Lessons from the Frontlines of the Agtech Revolution

BCG

Focus Tuesday, October 25, 2016. Quietly, and to a surprising degree, new technologies are revolutionizing agriculture. A seventh-generation Indiana farmer, Kip Tom, described the farm-level changes this way: “A Midwestern crop farmer has 40 opportunities in his lifetime to produce a crop. If we fail, we risk losing it all. So we typically haven’t wanted to experiment with new ways of farming.

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The Power of Technology Economics

BCG

Report Monday, October 31, 2016. Despite its starring role in business and everyday life, many economists openly question whether technology is visible in traditional economic metrics such as GDP, productivity, and corporate profits. In this report, The Boston Consulting Group shows that, on the contrary, declines in technology investment are followed by startling drops in all these measures of economic growth.

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The Factory of the Future

BCG

Focus Tuesday, December 06, 2016. New technologies are profoundly changing industrial production, giving rise to “the factory of the future.” What will the factory of the future be like with respect to its structure, technologies, and processes? What enablers will manufacturers need in terms of strategy and leadership, employee skills, and IT infrastructure to make it a reality?

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TOOLS and METHODOLOGIES for developing DECISION SUPPORT PACKAGES

This White Paper targets opportunities for Management to develop proficiency in the Decision Framing and Analyses element of input to Decision, & Risk Analyses for Major Project Funding Decisions.

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Bridging the Trust Gap: Why Companies Are Poised to Fail with Big Data

BCG

Article Thursday, October 20, 2016. This is the second in a series of articles exploring what really matters for organizations that collect and use consumer data. Companies’ data stewardship practices and consumers’ expectations are fundamentally at odds. Most companies approach privacy and data usage from a narrow legal or regulatory perspective. They ask whether their data collection and management practices are consistent with laws and regulations and meet disclosure requirements.

Data 84
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Five Lessons on Digital Transformation from B2C Leaders

BCG

Article Monday, December 12, 2016. Companies’ lifespans are shorter than ever before. Digital disruption has become so intense that pure players in digital are no longer disrupting just incumbents, they are disrupting other pure players as well: HomeAway has emerged as a strong rival to Airbnb. Apple Music is nipping at the heels of Spotify’s streaming music service.

B2C 83
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Global Payments 2016: The Interactive Edition

BCG

Interactive Monday, September 26, 2016. This interactive explores how regions and segments of the payments market will shift in important ways from 2015 through 2025. The selected stories in chapters 1–4 of the interactive explore four aspects of this evolution.

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Desperate Times Call for Effective Turnarounds

BCG

Article Friday, November 11, 2016. Many transformation initiatives focus on improving a company’s financial and operational performance from “good” (or moderate) to “great”—that is, the company is already doing well in some or most areas, yet management still sees a need to make improvements. Other companies occupy a separate category of transformation because they are in the midst of immediate, urgent crises.

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Why You Need to Use Case Studies in Sales and Marketing (and How to Start Now)

Case studies are proof of successful client relations and a verifiable product or service. They persuade buyers by highlighting your customers' experiences with your company and its solution. In sales, case studies are crucial pieces of content that can be tailored to prospects' pain points and used throughout the buyer's journey. In marketing, case studies are versatile assets for generating business, providing reusable elements for ad and social media content, website material, and marketing c

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Global Payments 2016: Competing in Open Seas

BCG

Report Monday, September 26, 2016. The world of payments remains in constant flux, reflecting an ongoing rebalancing of power among incumbent banks, digital giants, financial technology (fintech) startups, card networks, and, of course, consumers and merchants. At the top of the collective agenda in 2016 is the digitization of payments, which has come with more than its share of hype.

Banking 83
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Why the Technology Economy Matters

BCG

Article Wednesday, October 12, 2016. Despite technology’s starring role in business and everyday life, many observers openly question whether it has really had much of an impact on the global economy. Their skepticism is misplaced. As we demonstrated in the first article in this series, technology plays a vital role in boosting company performance. (See “Why Technology Matters,” BCG article, September 2016.

Metrics 83
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Why Brexit Offers Opportunities for Private Equity

BCG

Article Thursday, October 20, 2016. The United Kingdom’s vote to exit the European Union is already leaving a mark on the country’s economic landscape. The full timing and extent of the break are uncertain and may not be known for several months, but many British companies are starting to reassess aspects of their business. Private equity firms will have to step up their due diligence and accept additional risk in UK investments.

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The New Normal in Global Trade and Container Shipping

BCG

Report Wednesday, November 02, 2016. In our March 2015 report, The Transformation Imperative in Shipping: Mastering the Next Big Wave , we drew on our analysis of events in 2014 to forecast choppy seas for an industry buffeted by powerful forces. In particular, we noted the persistent overcapacity that had been eroding shareholder returns despite reasonably high volume growth.

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The Art of Remote Collaboration: How to Successfully Whiteboard with Remote Teams

Just because we're working with a distributed team doesn't mean we have to abandon time-tested tools and methods like whiteboarding. Digital look-alikes often cramp creativity and all but eliminate the humanity of shared interactions. Hardware solutions are also limiting and, of course, expensive and immobile. In an increasingly digital and remote-first world, it’s important for us to select tools and processes that allow us to mitigate if not eliminate the above problems.