NH School of Management & Technology

Redefining Education!

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Videos everywhere: The future of marketing

Some Interesting Facts

YouTube, the most popular video hosting site, is the second largest search engine just after Google.

As per a NYtimes report, more than 70% of all web visitors watch online videos.

20 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube every minute and 4 BILLION videos were being watched every day.

 According to Cisco, in 2012, Internet videos will account for over 50% of all Internet traffic.

A picture speaks a thousand words. And a video– it engages the viewer’s senses like no other medium does.  Successful marketing is all about getting a positive response from a set of potential customers. Text articles, however beautifully written, do not provide the same connect as one feels in a video. Video is the most compelling of all mediums. Today’s consumer has a very short attention span and a video can deliver a lot of information in that short span of time which text articles fail to do. Videos can help a marketer in demonstrating the products more easily and it also adds huge amount of credibility to the marketing campaign.

According to a Gartner report, the online environment will continue to expand, and thus marketing organizations will have more opportunities to be effective on the web.  The same report says that 6.7 billion devices will be connected to the Internet by 2014. Seeing the wide presence of internet, every company should be utilizing its resources for online marketing.

Today, all video campaigns can be shared in the social media. Social video is a great tool for increasing the search rankings. In fact, Google has also confirmed that Tweets and Likes on a post or a video influence organic search rankings.

Social videos also provide the marketer an opportunity to have a direct relation with its customers. Today, the customers spend their quality time on different social media networks and talk about the interesting campaign that they have seen. If a marketer provides compelling video content, the customers will share it amongst themselves without being asked to.  Sharing on social media is an easy but effective tool for promotion.

If we talk about the latest internet sensation, Kolaveri Di, in the first four days, the video had four million views, swelling to 19 million in three weeks. On Facebook 6.5 million users had shared it within a span of few days. This is the power of social media.

Even in the past, the iPhone’s ‘Will it blend’ campaign , Dove’s ‘Evolution’ campaign, Nike’s ‘Touch of Gold’ campaign, Vodafone’s ‘ZooZoo’ campaign and IBM campaigns have been highly successful because of the engaging video content.  Video marketing doesn’t only benefit corporate in selling of products, even the US President Barack Obama used videos as an effective medium for his election campaign.

The objectives of video campaigns can be different for different marketers. A survey from Digidayand Adap.tv including more than 600 companies found that almost three-quarters of respondents viewed brand engagement as their primary video campaign objective.  Marketers are interested to find out the click through rate (CTR) and the completion rate of the videos. According to a Vindicoreport released in April 2012, users who complete an online video ad show greater interest in brand pages than those who arrive at the page by click.

A KPMG report on media & entertainment estimates the online advertising in Indian market to grow to INR 34 billion by 2015. But to handle this big a market, do we have enough manpower at our disposal? Most of our colleges have an outdated syllabus to teach the students. With our focus on traditional marketing, can we really ensure India’s whole hearted participation in the game of Internet? We need to change the teaching methodology to suit the changing environment. We need to prepare ourselves for the world in 2020.

About the author

Ms. Sujata Veenapani is the co-founder of NH School of Management & Technology (NHSMT India). She holds a Post Graduate Diplolma in Management from an IIM and a Bachelor of Engineering degree from B.I.T Mesra. She can be reached at [email protected]

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User Experience: An evolving phenomenon

User Experience (UE) is omniscient; it can be traced back to 8 bit video games, Disk operating system, modern HD capacitive screens on our mobile phones and easiness of Face book. Every generation has tried to improve the user experience, hence making lives better and simpler. The scope of this industry is huge and only growing with time. It is an integral part of most of the companies and easily it will be the biggest market in the next 5 years.

So what exactly is user experience? User experience is the medium through which the user interacts with the system. It is the user’s interaction with the company, its services, and its product. User experience is quite different from User Interface. In fact user interface is a small part of user experience. User experience includes interface, graphics, industrial design, physical interaction, and the manual.

As we have seen in the recent past, companies like Amazon, Google, Face book have dramatically changed the way users interact with the internet. They are just enriching the user experience through their website and their services. Amazon with its neat user interface, its suggestions and past searches’ options has simplified the buyers’ need. Also the credibility attached with Amazon lets everyone buy from their website because of people’s belief in their superior product and service quality. Google came up with white background which enabled the site to load quickly and hence more and more people started using it. Face book is the first social networking site to incorporate AJAX in their website. AJAX enabled users to submit on the page without refreshing it and hence saving time and bandwidth.

These days’ companies are hiring professionals to design User Experience. A UE expert is quite different from a website developer. A website developer develops the website based on the wireframe provided. A User Experience expert not only creates the wireframe but ensures that user should look at the USP’s of the website. Their focus is to develop positive online customer experience which means customer should have top of the mind awareness of the website.

It is also very important to have better user experience on the website because the trend is moving towards online shopping and more and more people believe in e-commerce. According to IMRB and IAMAI, the e-commerce market is expected to be valued at 31,598 crore by 2010 which is further projected to grow to 46,520 crore by 2011. As more and more people adopt this medium of shopping, the only way to engage the customer, apart from low pricing, is through user experience. If a user has confidence in the website and is thrilled by the user experience, then it is more likely that he will return back for repurchase. Low pricing is quite prevalent these days but as the market saturates, the prices will stabilize and at that time only the companies with superior user experience will survive.

It takes time to give an almost perfect user experience; the job of a UE expert is to minimize the time taken to give the perfect user experience as it is practically impossible to give a perfect UE on the first go. Different users interact differently with the interface; hence it becomes necessary to take the views of a majority of the users. A UE expert has to consider user expectations, interaction design, and information architecture and apply usability engineering to get the perfect user experience.

About the author

This blog has been written by Mr. Sumit Singh, co founder of NH School of Management & Technology (NHSMT India). Mr. Sumit Singh holds a post graduate diploma in Management from an IIM. He also has a B.Tech degree in Computer Science. He can be reached at [email protected]

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The changing face of marketing

The 21st century has seen changes in the technological sphere at a pace like never before in history. The revolution has implications for all sectors including business. The way companies market themselves to their customers, clients and the outside world in general will undergo a stratospheric change with internet becoming the major media for all parties to wage their marketing battles. Already we have seen the first decade of the 21st century showing signs of the growing importance of internet as a marketing media, and the trend will only intensify in the coming years.

In this article, I would focus on one of the important aspects of internet marketing which is search engine marketing. It involves promoting websites by increasing their visibility in search engines’ result pages. Depending on the context, SEM can be an umbrella term for various means of marketing a website including search engine optimization (SEO), which modifies or rewrites website content to achieve a higher ranking in search engine results pages, or it may contrast with SEO, focusing on only paid components, including pay-per-click advertising.

In 2008, North American advertisers spent US$13.5 billion on search engine marketing. As of now, SEM is growing much faster than traditional advertising and even other channels of online marketing. Businesses which have invested in SEO over the last few years have consistently outperformed their competition, and a strong rise in budgets is predicted through 2012, as the recession-busting trend of bringing in budget from other marketing channels continues.

We have seen hundreds of real life business examples where SEM has changed the entire picture for the company, and brought business and revenue growth like never before. An example that comes to my mind is that of Private MD Lab Services.

The company’s goal was to sell more blood tests to individuals wanting STD testing, as well as other specific blood tests. To achieve the goal, more prospects had to find the site with search terms like STD testing, blood testing, CMP blood test, early signs of HIV and anonymous STD testing. After arriving at the site, prospects had to convert to customers by purchasing a blood test at a higher rate of conversion. The company used Capture Commerce, an SEO specialist to design an internet marketing campaign for them. Their strategy to accomplish this goal involved paid search consulting on an as-needed basis, conversion rate optimization for specific landing pages and search engine optimization for the entire site.

One of the more challenging aspects of this project involved reducing the shopping cart abandonment rate – because completing an order required numerous steps. Capture Commerce was able to cut the number of steps involved, as well as educate the consumer along the way about each step in the process. They also performed A/B split testing on key landing pages using Google Website Optimizer to increase conversion rates for high demand products. Thus, they established many links from quality sites by publishing articles and press releases, deploying widgets and link exchange, and reorganizing the navigation across the entire site.

The result of all these was indeed splendid. Private MD Labs also reaped substantial benefits from their internet marketing campaign with Capture Commerce:

Increased organic search rank and traffic for competitive search terms by 319% 16,268 visits from organic searches during the first half of 2008, Capture Commerce’s campaign yielded 68,091 visits from organic searches during the same period of 2009.

Increased conversion rates for high demand products by 80% More than 4,400 conversions occurred during the first half of 2009, compared to roughly 2,400 in the same time period of 2008.

Reduced shopping cart abandonment From being 71% in ’08, the campaign brought abandonment rates down to 65.5% in 2009.

We would find myriad such examples in the west. What we are observing in the west is a shift from traditional marketing methods like print and TV advertising to online marketing as the tool for attracting customers because of the obvious benefits involved. So, I feel that there’s a great need to bring internet into the educational sphere, and make that an integral and essential part of all management education in India. It is here that search engine marketing comes into picture in a big way.

All future marketing battles would be fought on the net, and we need to train our students from now on wards, so that India becomes a powerhouse of internet marketing knowledge. Let’s pack our belts for a thrilling ride into the unknown territory, and the masters of that terrain would be sure to rule the business world in the future.

About the Author:

This blog has been written by Mr. Manish Kumar Verma, the co founder of NH School of Management & Technology (NHSMT India). Manish holds a post graduate diploma in Management from an IIM. He also holds a B.Tech degree in Civil Engineering from N.I.T Durgapur. Manish can be reached at [email protected]

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It’s never a bad decision to invest time to acquire a good education

“It is not just important to do the right things, it is very important to do it in the right way.” Advice from a seventh grade teacher to a group of seventh graders, might not have sounded that significant then but now when I look back at it, it was the right piece of advice, given at the right time, to a group of people who would be making a crucial decision of their life in a few years from then. The decision of what to do with their lives, what to become?

Whatever the answer may be, the route to almost everyone’s answer is usually through a college or vocational education. Be it a lawyer, a business administrator, a doctor, a film maker, a nurse; almost everything is through a proper education. And when I say proper education I emphasize on the word proper, more than I do on education. Sadly, education is highly commercialized in our country. Anyone with money can be anything they want; all they have to do is choose any college which shells out a degree or diploma for a price.

Technically, on paper, they serve the purpose, they make you an engineer or a doctor, a lawyer etc. but do they actually make you one. Do they provide you the necessary knowledge to be an engineer, doctor etc., do they provide you the right infrastructure to help you imbibe that knowledge that you get. Sadly, although some of them do, most of them do not. They just operate as factories that churn out people with degrees and diplomas. And this makes choosing the right college or institute to pursue your career bound education very crucial.

If your goal is to get yourself educated, then the choice of your college/institute becomes important, and most of the times, it also becomes extremely difficult as the number of people vying to get into one of these institutes would be much more than what they can manage to provide education to. Hence there would tough exams which will put you to test yourself against the other hopefuls and as these most probably are some of the best Institutes of the country, the competition for it would be very tough.

I have heard stories of people preparing for exams like the civil services exam for three to four years. Sacrificing, almost everything, fun, family, friends etc. They invest a lot of time, that too from the most energetic phase of their life, youth. Some may see this as a gamble because despite your best efforts, you might only just reach the gates, only to be told to return and try again. Its heartbreaking to say the least, but a stronger word needs to be found to describe the emotion at that point of time. Still you find a lot of guys who return to fight one more bout, why? Because it’s worth it.

If you take a look at it carefully. What do you stand to lose? A year or two from your life which will on an average have what, seventy years. Just do the math yourself. Few years of hardship, turmoil and pain equals either of the two, one it might get you where you want to be. It might take you to the right institute which provides the right education, one which you fought so hard for, a profession that you wanted to pursue, one which you thought you would excel at, as you would be getting inputs from some of the greatest minds in your chosen field from your institute, you would be more equipped for success and hence success is also most likely to follow.

And if you do not make it to the institute of your choice. All that preparation is never going to go to waste as this will prepare you for other good institutes, may be not the best but closely following in the second rung, like NITs for the IITs etc. Emotionally it never drains you as well, because years later you would have the satisfaction of not having to battle with the question, “What would have been?”

About the author

This article has been written by Mr. Chirac K., Director operation and Sales & Co-Founder of  ’A brand new thinking’. Mr. Chirac holds a post graduate diploma in Management from an IIM. He also holds a B.Tech degree in Mechanical Engineering. He can be reached at [email protected]

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Making decisions for future

When as a kid, we were asked about our future aspirations, each one of us would have had a different answer. Some of us wanted to be doctors or engineers, some pilots and some, something different. But as we grew up, our aspirations kept on changing subject to a whole lot of things. Some of us choose a career because of attractive money, some because of parental pressure and some do it just because a bunch of other people is pursuing the same career. There would only be a hand few of people, who choose a course or career for sheer passion.

So, how does one decide upon a specific career option? What things a person should look at while deciding for a particular course or job?

The first and foremost thing should be the interest in the related field.  The career that you decide upon should be fitting to your interests and also the lifestyle that you would want to pursue. Before selecting a career, you should first know yourself. You can start by listing down your interests.

The second important thing is to have a career that fits your abilities. You should jot down your qualities and key skills. After doing this, you can start finding a career/course that suits your interests, abilities and key skills.

The third important thing is your attitude towards a career/course. Why do you want to join a particular course? Is it just because your friends are doing so or because you want to make a difference? Do you just want to complete a degree somehow, or you really want to learn something from that course? For every yes/no, there will be a different set of courses/careers, and a different set of institutions.

The fourth important thing is the training and education available for the course/career that you are thinking about. Are there good institutes that train you for your preferred course/career? You should keep some options at your disposal before choosing a course or an institute.

The fifth important thing is the return on investment that you will be getting once you make a particular course/career choice. How much minimum salary you can get, if you opt for this course/career? While passion and interest are important, the importance of money can’t be ruled out.

The last but not the most important thing is the availability of jobs for the course/career that you have decided upon. You should research on the prospects of growth that the course/career provides. Will you have to relocate frequently for the jobs? If you are a person who doesn’t want to relocate, opting for such a career would not be a good choice.

While taking into consideration the present scenario, one should also think about the future. Would there be enough jobs in the future? With all the new technology, with lots of new niche fields coming up, one should think about the future of the course/career more than the present.

After taking into account all the doubts that the students have about their career, we at Networkers Home, have come up with a unique program of formal education which offers a lot of specialization with the regular management and IT courses from which every student can benefit. The programs have been designed to give the students a practical and realistic training so that they are ready for the challenges of the future. The subjects have been chosen to suit the future demand of the industry.

In words of Isaac Asimov, the great science fiction author, “It is change, continuing change, inevitable change that is the dominant factor in society today. No sensible decision can be made any longer without taking into account not only the world as it is, but the world as it will be.” 

So, it’s up to you to take a wise decision and change your life forever.

About the author

Ms. Sujata Veenapani is the co-founder of NH School of Management & Technology (NHSMT India). She holds a Post Graduate Diplolma in Management from an IIM and a Bachelor of Engineering degree from B.I.T Mesra. She can be reached at [email protected]

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Investment in Education

Nalanda is the first university of Asia. It was a Buddhist center of learning and was there from fifth or sixth century CE to 1197 CE. It is widely regarded as the greatest university in the recorded history. Students from all over the world used to visit Nalanda and get the education there. The student teacher relationship was so strong that students used to listen to their teachers with proper attention and learn from them. Great mathematician Aryabhata was head of Nalanda and this used to be an honor for the students, to be taught by such a great person. Great people have passed out of Nalanda and have contributed widely to the society which made India the center of the world and its GDP was highest till Mughals come to India.

Takshashila was another great center of learning present in India. Great Chanakya headed the institution and produced students like Bhadrabhatta and Purushdutta. People from all across the world used to come to Takshashila to learn Mathematics, Science, Economics, and Politics.

The above two institutions clearly exemplifies that early India discovered the potential of learning and its advantages. People across the globe used to come to India to learn on various subjects and the emphasis was on practical learning. The students used to leave their home places and live at these institutions for years before mastering their subjects. The life of student was difficult but they had the passion and the zeal to learn things.

Education is an investment and not an expense. Parents of the student and students themselves feel that education is all about getting a job which is absolutely wrong. According to Horace Mann “A human being is not attaining his full heights until he is educated”. That’s true also an educated person not only learns the subjects but learns to be in the society and develop the society. So it’s not only a Job but a lot more than that.

To get the world class education, like students used to get at Nalanda and Takshashila, the students and their parents have to make some sacrifices. These sacrifice include leaving their homes, be away from family for long time, paying fees etc. Increasing purchasing power of people of India and the availability of bank loans has negates the fees aspect. These days students can easily get loan provided quality education is provided to them.

Education should not be considered as one big problem which will drain the money. A student who never gets out of his village will definitely save 1 or 2 Lakh Rupees but in the longer run he will always live in that village and over the time the money he saved will lose its value. On the other hand a student who invests that money in education might have some monetary problem in early years of education but as the time proceeds will earn 10 times that of other student. Such student might have to live away from his family, leave his friends, and leave his hometown. But this is the key, the student who thinks that it’s an investment will be much better off than the rest of the world.

A service class person will always try to save money for bad times. The money will lose its sheen in some time because of the inflation. The same amount of money earned by a businessman will be invested in new ventures to earn better returns and this cycle continues from one generation to other. It is the investment that got them better returns. Though there is a risk involved but life is worthless without any risk, you have to take risks to reach at the top, you have to work hard and most importantly you have to invest in education.

Students at Networkers Home come from all across the country to learn in the most conducive environment. They invest the money in Cisco certification and get excellent rewards. After passing within a year or two they fully recover the money they invested while studying at Networkers Home. Once they are out of Networkers Home they are not only Cisco certified network engineers but better person and start contributing to the society. It is said that nothing comes easy in life and you have to take certain decisions to reach at the top. Investment in education is one of the best decisions that anyone can take in her life because it gives rewards in longer term and that’s what is required in life.

About the author

This blog has been written by Mr. Sumit Singh, co founder of NH School of Management & Technology (NHSMT India). Mr. Sumit Singh holds a post graduate diploma in Management from an IIM. He also has a B.Tech degree in Computer Science. He can be reached at [email protected]

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Why Education sector & not a traditional MBA job

An educated man is thoroughly inoculated against humbug, thinks for himself and tries to give his thoughts, in speech or on paper, some style!

Well as this famous saying goes, education really transforms a person’s thinking, makes him aware of himself and his environment, and opens the doors towards self-mastery and realization of one’s true potential. However, our country’s educational system doesn’t bring out that many thought leaders and innovators, as a country of more than a billion people should.

I believe that we need to think deep and hard over the issues plaguing our educational system. Assuming that everything is right would be like living in a fool’s paradise. I have been lucky enough to have been a part of the some of the best educational institutes in the country right from school to my post graduation days at an IIM. However, I have felt that there has always been too much emphasis on rote learning and cramming things up rather than promoting creativity and original thinking.

I often think why all the Face books, the Apples and the Microsofts of the world come from U.S. only. Why are we not producing such thought leaders and champions who rule the world? The answer I believe lies in our educational system that discourages creativity and original thinking. The only things parents care about is for their children to do great in exams, and in our educational system, doing great in exams depends upon cramming and learning systematic problem solving techniques.

Also, the fact remains that the biggest motivation behind getting good education in our country is to get the best paying jobs. The best educational institutes in our country, the IITs and the IIMs lag way behind in research compared to other such global institutes. The graduates passing out of these institutes go for lucrative jobs in India and abroad, and very few good people go for research because of lack of big money there. In order to promote quality research in our country, the government needs to allocate significant money for research activities.

One big change that is needed in our educational system is to make it more practical, involve students to develop group skills, rather than focusing only on competing with each other. Also, our country needs a young generation of entrepreneurs who can create jobs in hitherto unexplored areas and provide opportunities in diverse fields, so that people aren’t attracted towards a few sectors only for job security.

I believe the key thing that’s lacking in our educational system is qualified, world class trainers who are motivated to teach. The major roadblock there is lack of good salaries for teachers, which discourages top people from venturing into teaching. Also, good money and rewards need to be brought into research so that the best brains go for it, thereby ensuring that modern innovative technologies originate from India and we lead the world, rather than getting the best technologies twenty years after they originate in the west.

I feel very strongly that we need innovators in education sector who can make the necessary changes and create educational institutes that promote real learning and innovative thinking. I could have personally opted for a normal marketing or banking job in an MNC as most IIM grads do, however I believe that I have the passion and the zeal to work towards the improvement of the educational landscape of our country.

It is with this motivation that I opted to work for a new venture in the educational sector, so that I can implement my ideas into the formation of a new group of educational institutes that is truly world class on all parameters, and which brings India to the forefront of innovative happenings worldwide. We were world leaders once, and our own Nalanda University was the leading educational institute in the world, where students from across the world used to come and learn. We intend to create the next generation of such institutes in India that can take us back to our glorious past.

About the Author:

This blog has been written by Mr. Manish Kumar Verma, the co founder of NH School of Management & Technology (NHSMT India). Manish holds a post graduate diploma in Management from an IIM. He also holds a B.Tech degree in Civil Engineering from N.I.T Durgapur. Manish can be reached at [email protected]