Becoming a CTO or a CIO

Becoming a CTO or a CIO                                                                                                                      

In order for a business firm to become really successful, the most important thing that it requires is excellent leadership. A technological visionary with excellent managerial skills can play a vital role for the growth of a company, especially a startup firm. When the right kind of technological decisions are taken, it can make your company and product scalable, thereby keeping your working team active and result oriented in their approach. 

Different types of CTOs or Chief Technology Officers operate within technical firms. The responsibilities that are handled by these professionals may vary from one company to another. Some of the more prominent roles handled by CTOs include the following:

Infrastructure Manager

Major Thinker and Strategist

External Facing Technologist

Technological Visionary as well as Operations Manager  

While the roles handled by the CTOs may be different from one organization to the next, there are certain qualities that every CTO should have in order to achieve success in their professional fields. Let’s have a look at some of them.

Highly skilled engineering discipline

Efficient CTOs should have the ability to make use of practical knowledge in order to come up with better quality software products. They should also be independent enough and not rely on consultants or professionals under them for regular technical expertise. The CTOs that lack sufficient technical discipline might eventually make decisions that lead to a sufficient amount of technical debt. This may come up in the form of incorrect code that needs to be corrected and recreated later. 

A sufficiently large network of professionals

While CTOs are required to handle large scale technical projects, it is imperative to understand that they may not know everything under the sun when it comes to the assignments that they handle. However, it is for this very reason that they need to have a well rounded network of professionals that can handle different types of tasks as and when required. For instance, if a CTO needs to have an iPhone app built within a short time but have no in-house iOS programmers, then the CTO can make use of his network to get the app developed within a short period of time. In this way, the CTO is not required to hire a full time iOS developer but also fulfill the task as and when required. Every efficient CTO has a network of engineers, consultants and development firms that can handle vital tasks such as these.

Enough work experience                                                                                                                         

A professional CTO should have sufficient work experience and know well enough how to guide technical strategy and manage teams and people. The technical discipline comes from handling projects from the beginning to the end and learning from the failures and successes. The CTOs should also have firsthand experience in managing complex processes and the people at the same time. A CTO with sufficient experience can make sure that a particular project is handled in the best way possible and the teams associated with the work also performs together to achieve optimum results. 

Knowledge relating to all technical aspects involved in a project

An efficient CTO should have sufficient knowledge regarding all technical aspects of a particular project. For numerous startup companies, this would mean in-depth knowledge regarding everything that is associated with the development of web software. Nevertheless, it is a hard truth that not all people involved in a technical field are familiar with the workings of the web. Numerous social networking companies actually manage to create only single page mobile apps. However, many of these apps have been redesigned since then in order to update them with enhanced technological features.

Always taking a practical approach to all projects 

A CTO should be a practical individual who needs to understand what can be achieved and in what ways. He should be able to coordinate with his team members and not be autocratic in approach. Sometimes clients may be required to cut down on technical requirements in order to cater to market demands. Therefore the CTO needs to take on a flexible approach and scale his goals according to the needs of the moment. Even if the CTO desires to make a technically better project, sometimes this may be needed to be sacrificed in order to meet market needs. Therefore the CTOs should be able to make such compromises as and when necessary.

Strategic thinking and planning

While a CTO is required to work on individual codes of a given project, he or she should never lose sight of the big picture. The CTO needs to play a crucial role in directing the project and making sure that the final technology or the product that is to be developed is flawless and handled as planned. The CTO should also look out for new technologies that are currently being developed and see how they can be used for the benefit of the project and the company. Such strategic thinking is going to benefit the company both in short and long terms.

Excellent communication skills                                                                                                               

Every CTO worth his salt should be having excellent communication skills so that he can interrelate with numerous people involved in technical and non-technical backgrounds. The CTO will need to communicate with the stakeholders from time to time and make them explain how various technical choices can affect the business goals. The CTO also needs to organize team meetings with engineers in order to explain them how various business goals are going to determine the direction of the technical decisions. Numerous meetings and communications are to be held on a regular basis to ensure smooth handling of various client projects. A CTO will is skilled at communication can combine technical and business aspects of a company and make sure that every project moves in the perfect direction. 

An efficient CTO should have a combination of all of these qualities in order to achieve success in his or her profession. These qualities can not only help in managing all immediate projects but also make further growth plans for the future of the company. 

Creating a Mobile Strategy: Find out the top 10 ways!

Creating a Mobile Strategy: Find out the top 10 ways! 

For any company, it can be quite difficult to come up with a solid mobile strategy.  Regardless of the business size, there are plenty of things that need to be taken into consideration. There is great complexity, considering the number of people who have to be involved. It is impossible to expect any strategies to draw a mobile-specific plan, given that the needs and objectives of each business are different from the other.  For a mobile strategy to be successful at all levels, various things have to be considered. 

Understand competitor strategy

Your mobile strategy will be determined by your company strategy. You have to first understand the mission of your company, its goals, the existing market conditions and the biggest competitors. Other than this, you should also analyze the strengths and weaknesses for your company as well as the possible pitfalls and chances lying ahead. You need to let stakeholders from different departments, such as Logistics, Account Manageme

nt and Marketing, to get engaged and assist in creating mandates and strategies. There is need to consider your competitive advantage, the scope of the strategy, the objective, the belief of the leaders and the company mission.

Consider the scope of customer improvement

Mobile strategy should not be an imitation of your digital strategy. Compared to your website, a mobile app should offer more value to customers. Think about how it will help them interact with your business repeatedly. You have to put the customer first and consider his or her perspective and convenience while designing your mobile strategy. Your mobile application has to ensure a great end-to-end process with all the touch points covered. It should also come with useful features such as data capturing, notifications and geo-location to offer a much better experience on mobile devices. 

Make it a touch point, not a channel

A perfect mobile strategy is easily possible when you keep in mind that the mobile has to be a touch point and not only a funnel, web extension, channel or platform. Customers view mobile devices as a touch point to interact with a business.  While outlining your strategy, you have to ensure that all the touch points should satisfy the needs of customers and allow the mobile strategy to be one more touch point - although a little quicker than the others.

Analyze your competitor strategies

You should check the things that are being offered by competitors through their mobile channel, as well as what they are missing out. Devise strategies to offer something different and much better than what they have on offer. Base your functionalities and features on the set of best practices that are commonly used by them. Innovate and offer something very different, so that customers immediately notice and differentiate you from the competitors. Create a proper market study before drafting your mobile strategy.

Evaluate your infrastructure

Once you have analyzed the strategy of your competitors, it is time for some introspection. Find out the strengths, weaknesses, threats and opportunities for your company. Check where and how a mobile strategy will fit into the scheme of things for your business. Can a mobile presence be handled conveniently by the kind of existing infrastructure of your business? Can your website handle the traffic coming from the app? Has your app been cross-checked on different devices and platforms for responsiveness and performance? With an app that performs badly, you will invite negative feedback for your business - which is the last thing you would want.

Focus on an idea

While developing a mobile strategy, you need to consider the basic idea which your mobile application should pivot around. The idea has to be simple and feasible, and assistive for customers. It has to fit in well with the overall strategy of your business for the coming years. The orders or services have to be delivered within specific timeframe and budget. Contingency plans should also be accounted for, before a strategy has to be planned.

Consider the budget and resources 

Once the core idea or strategy has been decided on, you have to consider the budget and resources required for its execution. Typically, there are two kinds of expenses that you have to bear. The operating expenses include costs of software, licensing, platform and infrastructure. The capital expenses consist of the number of people needed for the successful implementation of your mobile strategy. The headcount will be the most major investment and you should expect your expenses to be greater during the first year when your app would first be launched. Over time, the amount of work and cost would go down. Your task will be focused more on making your app more functional and optimizing it better. Some contingency funds should be kept.

Decide about your Key Performance Indicators

It is not enough to have a great mobile app. You should also be able to find out how it exactly converts for your business. You have to determine the Key Performance Indicators and measure how effective your strategy is against them. If properly done, you can easily understand the effectuality of your program or application. You can also set particular annual targets and find out whether the original targets are being achieved.  You have to set your Business Metrics, such as Increase Customer Satisfaction (NPS score), Revenue and Market share. You should also set App Metrics, such as App Rating, Active users, New Users, Session Length, Retention rate and Lifetime value. 

Type of app

You should have to consider whether your business needs a native or a hybrid app. Factor in whether the first platform on which the app should be built on should be Android or iOS. It is also important to decide whether you would want to employ another agency or would like to develop the app in-house. 

Test and Release

Just as revision is important before submission of an exam paper, you need to test your mobile app and check whether your strategy is a responsive one. Compare it across different platforms and test it out before finally launching it.

What S.O.L.I.D

Advent of Food Tech Apps in India

A Confused Consumer of the Food Tech Industry / Apps

       

Contents

• Introduction
• Various Food Tech Apps in the Market
• Categories of Food Tech Apps
• Awareness
• Market Size & Revenues
• Pros
• Cons

Introduction

With the growth of the startup space right from e-commerce giants to online cab providers and real estate, entrepreneurs are now focussed in building tech envisioned food marketplace in India. Couple of years when we think of food search and delivery platforms only few names would sprout up like Zomato and Food Panda. But then with the evolving startup ecosystems in tier1 cities like Bangalore, Mumbai and Delhi, the tech driven food start-ups have mushroomed to new heights. Presently if you count food tech start the number of players has exponentially increased; the list goes endless with more than 15 players competing with value proposition to gain their market share.

For Indian’s food is almost a religion. With the ever increase rise in better income, livelihood and strong background, the consumption of food has increased than before. Looking at the massive market opportunity it is helping the food tech business to gain traction from investor interest on funding them.

Various Food Tech Apps in the Market

Categories of Food Tech Apps Food apps can be broken down into various categories, viz., Online Ordering & Delivery apps - For eg. Pizza Hut, McDonalds. Fasoos etc. Aggregator delivery apps - Swiggy, FoodPanda, TastyKhana etc. Reviews & Menus - Zomato, Freshmenu. Table Reservation Apps - BytPlus, BookMyTable, TableGrabber etc. Deals and Discounts Apps - Little, Dishco, Dishem etc.

Awareness

With so much of advancement in technology and so with all the tech-savvy and the not so techie folks might still not be using these apps just because they are not aware. When we spoke to a few people in Bangalore most of them were aware of Zomato and Foodpanda. Many people were not aware of tablebookings or SpoonJoy where you can order a healthy Tofu dish to your home at Rs.99/- free delivery. Lot of people have seen folks with the Swiggy T-Shirts but never really used it and not sure what they do.

Food Tech Apps generally can use some or all of the below tools for better awareness of their apps to people and local market.

• Social media marketing platforms like Facebook, Linkedin, Twitter, Pinterest and Google+.
• Social forums. eg- Quora
• News and media.
• Banner Adverstisements.
• Promotional Campaigns (Google Adwords).
• Events.

Market Size & Revenues

The market size for food in India, which was estimated at Rs 23 lakh-crore in 2014, is set to reach a whopping Rs 42 lakh-crore by 2020, as predicted by Boston Consulting Group. Another special trait of the food industry is that many people strongly believe that it tends to fare better in times of an economic crisis because of the ever hungry consumers’ desire for more variety.
Lets face it! People eat. And they eat thrice a day. Expats and migrants from other states tend to eat out more and spend money on food.
The food tech apps have bridged the gap between restaurants/eateries and tech savvy consumers, the couch potatos, the deal grabbers and more...
VCs from the United States and all over are heavily focused on the Indian food tech market with 3.5 billion dollars spent in the first few months of 2015 alone..

Pros

• Massive market to cater to variety of different ordering behaviour.
• Reduce the pain of consumers in getting the right food with an access to an App.
• Better profit margin with the integration of technology and right resources.
• High traction of foreign investors in helping food entrepreneurs in scaling up the technology. hence thereby bringing investments for the country too.

Cons

• Retaining and building loyal customers.
• Catering high quality food based on different customers interests.
• Proper maintenance of the logistics, operations and packaging to function efficiently.
• Build bespoke business models and strong tech team to get over the competitors.

Analytics applied to Mobile Food Tech Apps

Contents

• Introduction
• Indian Market Share in Food Tech
• Spending Patterns
• Eating Patterns
• Various useful Analytics
• Pros & Cons

Introduction

In today's modern times people are so tech savvy that they are extensively dependent on their smartphone to make choice of what they should eat and which restaurant they eat at. People select their favourite dishes from variety of menu's of every possible cuisine out there. People easily pick the restaurant to eat at by checking other people's reviews on many restaurants thereby making their decision very easy. Then there are deals and coupons and offers all the time everywhere. There is homemade food, home deliveries, table reservations and more at the tap of a button on your smartphone. With emergence of such food tech as they call it, it has also become very difficult for "mom & pop" shops and old school merchants which are not online to run their business.

Indian Market Share in Food Techs.

The market size for food in India, which was estimated at Rs 23 lakh-crore in 2014, is set to reach a whopping Rs 42 lakh-crore by 2020, as predicted by Boston Consulting Group. Another special trait of the food industry is that many people strongly believe that it tends to fare better in times of an economic crisis because of the ever hungry consumers’ desire for more variety.
Lets face it! People eat. And they eat thrice a day. Expats and migrants from other states tend to eat out more and spend money on food.
The food tech apps have bridged the gap between restaurants/eateries and tech savvy consumers, the couch potatos, the deal grabbers and more...
VCs from the United States and all over are heavily focused on the Indian food tech market with 3.5 billion dollars spent in the first few months of 2015 alone..


Spending Patterns

In the western countries the spend versus volume is lower than in countries like China and India but the spend makes for it. According to a survey about consumer expenditures in the year 2013 it has been estimated that the average person spends around $6600 annually on food. In 2014 the expenditure increased by 2.4 percent. In countries like India, sheer volume beats the price hands down.
It is also estimated that the expenditure of the average person on food will only increase in the coming years. Consumers spend 10% of their disposable income on fast food every year. With these numbers we can clearly come to the conclusion that the average person does not think twice before spending on food which can satisfy his appetite.
Patterns of spending include Cuisine patterns, Rate patterns, Luxury, Ambience, Taste, cost and more. Analytics on each of these items can be very rich and with all the tapping of the industry there is still so much more to explore and exploit.

Eating Patterns

When it comes to the eating patterns of the average person, a survey conducted in  the year 2011 the average person consumed nearly one ton of food. That’s 1,996 pounds of food a year. At least 1 in 4 people preferred to eat some type of fast food every day. The study also revealed some other interesting numbers as well, People ate: 632 lbs. of dairy products (including 31.4 lbs. of cheese), 415.4 lbs. of vegetables (most popular being corn and potatoes), 273 lbs. of fruit, and 183.6 lbs. of meat and poultry. Over a whopping 10 billion donuts are consumed in the US every year. Similar numbers goes to Idlis and Parathas in India.

Various useful Analytics

Analytics are important for both merchants and consumers and especially the merchants to drive their business to success and increase footfall.
The web and mobile apps of the food tech industry collect a wealth of information about eating and spending and choices and preferences of people that it can be used and customized to increase revenue easily. A simple analytic can tell that in a specific area filled with college kids and IT folks a specific type (cuisine) food will fly higher versus the other., for eg. Burgers and Pizzas and fast food. People distribution across the city, number of people eating out within 2-3 kms or 5 kms, average spend per person in the locality, affinity to offers and deals, preference for reservations and value added services etc
With the churning of data comes useful analysis. In a locality teeming with teens and college students, buy 1 get 1 offers, 20% discount etc runs very well and footfall can be increased thus increasing revenue. Friday evenings are more popular for pub hopping and fine dining and merchants can create customized deals & attractive offers which is appealing to the consumers.

From a consumer perspective, data related to reviews and ratings help making the right dining choices, get to know their savings by using deals and offers etc.


Pros & Cons of Analytics and Food Industry

There are a wide variety of food applications available these days. The consumer can select the restaurant based on the rating provided by others. The applications these days are smart enough to remember previous food orders and a customized menu can be shown to the customer, which will only contain foods the customer specifically prefers.
Many applications offer coupons, deals, which the customer can avail and order the food at special prices with discounts. Lot of data like amount saved in a month/year etc can be shown which can be interesting to the consumer. This can also ensure that your appetite does not burn a hole in your pocket. All these benefits right at the comfort of your couch. Moreover this can ensure better consumer satisfaction. Merchants can get access to a whole wealth of information for better revenue models and advertising spends.

But there is a flip side to the whole thing as well. Some people don’t support the idea of application saving their preferences, many strongly look at it as a intrusion of privacy. We can also say that the advancement of technology induces the customer to a very unhealthy lifestyle and the customer may also lose touch with the outside world, by not going out to eat more and not socializing enough.