Fortunes Crown

Author: info@fortunescrown

  • THREE WAYS YOUR BUSINESS CAN DEVELOP A SOCIAL MEDIA STRATEGY FOR SUCCESS

    THREE WAYS YOUR BUSINESS CAN DEVELOP A SOCIAL MEDIA STRATEGY FOR SUCCESS

    The growing success for businesses on social media is no secret, especially when 83 percent of marketers ranked advertising on social platforms the second most successful marketing channel.

    Our boutique travel and lifestyle agency spotlights our partner agency, The Stylista Group, and the invaluable social media tips for success.  

    But how are businesses gaining and measuring success on social platforms?

    Well for one, businesses can gain market intelligence such as consumers’ interests, customer feedback, and competitor research. They can expand their reach for more market opportunities whilst promoting valuable and relevant content, consistently. This allows the business to increase the brand’s visibility on search engines. Additionally, a positive brand experience on social media can generate inbound traffic to increase business revenue and improve brand perception.

    Market data revealed that 81 percent of shoppers research online before purchasing and over half (54 percent) of social media users research products specifically on social platforms. Social media platforms are becoming a search engine for consumers when looking for products and of course, if a brand has a higher-performing social page, the intent of the customer to buy is greater.

    Yet, with all the opportunities available to businesses on social media, 61 percent of marketers still find it challenging to generate traffic and leads.

    Re-evaluating your social media marketing strategy for greater success and maintaining a resilient mindset are your first steps towards overcoming these challenges. 

    Complete a Social Media Audit
    A social media audit provides the basis for a data-driven social media marketing strategy. It helps you to understand best practices going forward. The social media audit starts with reviewing your metrics (engagement rates) so that you can develop analytics. See some examples below.

    What Type of Content on Social Media Performs the Highest?
    This metric is normally based on the number of shares, likes, comments, mentions, and profile visits one piece of content generates. If your business has already posted a diverse range of content formats, your audit can be more specific in terms of highest-performing content such as videos on Facebook stories or maybe Instagram reels. 

    “A data-driven social media marketing strategy is a recipe for success.” The Stylista Group

    Who is Your Audience, When to Engage, and What are Their Interests?
    Instagram ‘Audience’ Insights provides location when users are most active online, and demographical data such as age range and gender. If you are running ads, Facebook Insights allows your business to understand conversion rates for different content formats so that you will be able to tailor your ads for higher ROI future campaigns.
    If your business utilizes several social platforms, why not make your reporting easier by consolidating all metrics into one? Some of the best social media monitoring and social listening platforms include Hootsuite, Buffer Analytics, or Sprout Social.

    Set Your Social Media Goals
    Once you have reviewed your data and conducted a social media audit, you can start setting your social media goals. A good and effective method used by industry experts is known as SMART goals. The SMART goal acronym can be broken down into the following:

    • Specific – What do you want to achieve and why? For example, you want to run a social media campaign on Instagram to increase website traffic by 30% to meet the business objectives.
    • Measurable – How will you measure your success, what are the key performing indicators? Your KPI’s can be to increase weekly link clicks by 10% in your Instagram bio and stories.
    • Achievable – How can you achieve your goal? Your social media audit can help with what content formats should you use and how long you should run your social media campaigns?
    • Relevant – Is the social media goal relevant to achieving your overall business objectives such as increasing website traffic to convert, thereby generating higher revenue?
    • Time-bound – How long will it take to achieve your goal?


    Get Creative With Relevant Content and Engage
    Creating content that is relevant and valuable to an audience is key to capturing their attention. But it’s no longer just an aesthetic image of your latest beauty device and where to buy. Businesses must get creative and leverage engagement opportunities. This can include:

    • User-generate content such as influencer campaigns with video testimonials
    • Educational insights such as “How to” videos
    • Live streaming auctions and giveaways on Instagram and Facebook

    According to Hootsuite, think “conversation” – not “broadcast.” Too often many businesses are using social media as a press release platform to announce a new product or service to a large audience. However, this strategy is not sustainable.

    Engagement is a two-way communication and in a competitive landscape, your customer has the choice to engage with brands who are relatable, relevant, and considerate of their audience.

  • Natasha Makhijani: Acing Successful Recruitment

    Natasha Makhijani: Acing Successful Recruitment

    Oliver Sanderson Group makes the recruitment process easier for businesses, so they can engage and develop a long-lasting working environment. With the help of technology, from creating a resume database to deploying employees to prominent companies, Natasha is excelling in the recruitment field.

    We at Fortunes Crown got into conversation with Natasha Makhijani, the CEO of Oliver Sanderson Group, to know more about the company and how it is helping the businesses as a whole.

    Below are the highlights of the interview:

    Please brief us in detail about the current scenario of the business. How have the customer preferences changed over the years?

    The executive search industry is changing in a number of ways, and this is reflected in the evolving preferences of our clients. There is now a greater focus on EDI challenges. We are seeing a growing recognition of the importance of inclusivity and the value of diversity, and clients come to us to tackle their EDI challenges, reach out to under-represented groups, and achieve more diversity in their boardroom and senior leadership teams. Digitalization is also transforming the industry, changing the way we advertise roles, discover candidates, and engage with our community. Finally, recruitment companies are increasingly aware of issues around sustainability and the environmental impact of our work. We are taking steps to minimize our impact and operate more sustainably and more responsibly as a business.

    Could you please walk us through your educational/professional journey? What was the moment that triggered you to step into the business?

    I, Natasha Makhijani, am not your average headhunter. As CEO of Oliver Sanderson Group, I am pioneering new approaches to executive search through tech innovations and D&I initiatives, all while breaking down barriers as an Asian woman business leader.

    After graduating with a Bachelor’s degree from City, University of London and a Master’s from DePaul University in Chicago, I began my recruitment career on the Graduate Scheme at Hays in 2000. Fast-tracked into management roles, I achieved four promotions in four years and took a team from billing £10,000 to £80,000 a month. From Hays, I moved to Michael Page, and quickly gained recognition as a “super biller”. But I always felt that there was another path for my career, and having set up executive desks at both Hays and Michael Page, I set my sights on establishing a business of my own.

    I founded Oliver Sanderson as a start-up in 2011 and have since grown the firm into an international business at the cutting edge of executive search. Oliver Sanderson has built up a strong track record in recent years, having placed CEOs and senior leaders at FTSE 100, FTSE 350, and Fortune 500 companies. Specializing in both permanent and interim executive placements across a wide range of sectors, the firm provides clients with an end-to-end executive search process, drawing from the experience and creativity of its research team to solve complex recruitment challenges.

    New technology has been central to Oliver Sanderson’s rapid growth, and I am a pioneer of digital innovations in executive search and recruitment. I co-founded Snapp Resume, the world’s first mobile job board with voice technology capability and Amazon Alexa connectivity. The app currently has a database of over 25 million candidates in the UK and the USA, with over 250,000 positions listed on its mobile job board.

    My forward-thinking leadership was recognized with a CEO Today Global Award 2021. I appeared in the winner’s magazine in February 2021 alongside some of the world’s most inspiring executives in a feature story on her journey and achievements. I have recently been shortlisted for the prestigious Recruiter Awards 2021 in the category of Agency Recruitment Leader of the Year.

    Under Makhijani’s leadership, Oliver Sanderson is poised to remain at the forefront of an evolving industry.

    When was Oliver Sanderson Group established? What are the prominent services/solutions offered by the company?

    Established in 2011, Oliver Sanderson is an executive search firm with a difference, combining experience and expertise with innovation and fresh thinking. We specialize in finding permanent and interim talent at the board and senior leadership levels for FTSE 100, FTSE 350, Fortune 500, and PE-backed businesses. With our suite of digital recruitment apps and our award-winning diversity and inclusion work, we are leading the way in discovering the next generation of business leaders.

    What measures do you incorporate to ensure motivation and productivity within the workspace? How do you respond to criticism and disagreements?

    I focus on keeping my team motivated by challenging, supporting, and inspiring them. At Oliver Sanderson, no two weeks are ever the same – we are always working on new roles with new organizations, and making new connections and relationships with candidates. It is this aspect of our work that ensures that we are constantly learning, keeping the working week fresh and challenging. We set monthly and annual targets to hit for our team across a number of areas, from sales to social media engagement. But we also support each other, understanding that growth isn’t always linear, and we sometimes learn more from failure than from success. Dialogue is crucial – daily conversations, feedback and brainstorming sessions. These help us stay connected and supported together, constantly learning, and constantly striving to improve as individuals and as a team.

    What was/is your response to the current unprecedented situation?

    The global pandemic has had a major impact on our daily business operations, but we have managed to survive and thrive since the first lockdown. Our firm has had to adapt to meet new challenges, becoming more flexible in our delivery models. The Oliver Sanderson Executive app has enabled the team to make an effective transition to remote working, with the digital platform offering video interviewing to substitute for the face-to-face meetings made impossible under lockdown. Our apps helped candidates engage with the job market at a time of unprecedented difficulty and uncertainty, and we received exceptionally positive feedback about our contribution to the economic recovery. Thanks to our flexibility, we have managed to grow our revenue and expand our team, and we look forward to a brighter future as corporations and wider society begin to rebuild.

    What are the services/solutions we should anticipate from Oliver Sanderson Group in the near future?

    Our digital recruitment solutions set us apart from the competition and pioneer a new direction for the industry. Snapp is a software platform designed and created by Oliver Sanderson. This suite of digital recruitment apps offers a pioneering mobile job board and integrated video interviewing options.

    Co-founded by me, Snapp is a first-in-class mobile job board providing digital solutions at every stage of the recruitment process. Featuring a voice technology-enabled search function, introductory candidate and client profile videos, integrated job applications, and a video interviewing tool, Snapp unlocks a new world of talent, connecting great people with great jobs all around the world. Our tagline – “From application to placement, all in a SNAPP!” – highlights the speed and simplicity of the platform.

    Snapp currently has a database of over 25 million candidates in the UK and the USA, with over 250,000 positions listed on its mobile job board, while Snapp InView has processed over 1,500 interviews. Our exclusive integration partnership with Amazon Alexa provides Snapp with access to over 100 million devices, including (as of March 2021) every Smart TV. Snapp powers Amazon Alexa’s ‘Find me a Job’ skill, and currently has over 25 million candidates registered in the UK and the USA, with over 250,000 positions listed on its mobile job board.

    Oliver Sanderson harnesses the power of its Snapp suite of digital recruitment apps to discover the next generation of business leaders.

    As a decorated leader, what would be your piece of advice for entrepreneurs seeking careers in the business?

    Always remember, doubts and setbacks are part of everyone’s journey – the road to the top is never simple! So be resilient, and never give up. I have been doubted in the past, but I used those doubts as fuel to fire me onto greater successes. Whoever you are, wherever you come from – with hard work, a bit of luck, and a good team around you, you can do it too!

  • Nick Lai: Marketing in the Digital Age, the Present and the Future

    Nick Lai: Marketing in the Digital Age, the Present and the Future

    The world of digital media is changing at a phenomenal pace. Its constantly evolving technologies, and the way people are using them, are transforming not just how you access your information, but how you interact and communicate with your friends and colleagues on a global scale. It also has changed the way you choose and buy products and services. People are embracing digital technologies to communicate, in ways NickMetrics helping businesses integrate such technologies seamlessly into their everyday needs.

    Nick Lai, Managing Director at NickMetrics has worked client-side for a wide range of businesses, including start-ups and marketing leading corporations across a range of industries. He has built a large number of successful digital marketing strategies, both nationally and globally, and consulted for companies across the world.

    Inspiration Behind NickMetrics

    Nick was born in Malaysia and while growing up he realized that consumers have grown tired of mass media marketing, and are turning instead to the internet. They want more engagement, more interaction. Before his interest as a writer, he already had a successful experience of an online affiliated program back in 2009. Lasting for 2 years, the online venture later ignited an initiation of an online design and development firm in 2012 which enabled him to hit his first million.

    Nick explained, “I always felt I wanted to do more, so I turned back to writing, and it has been one delightful journey so far.”

    Continuing his admiration for writing, a leading digital marketing conference grabbed Nick’s attention where he witnessed the vast potential of digital marketing. The event became a turning point and an eye-opener for him to start living and serving businesses online presence. And that’s how Malaysia’s best Digital Marketing Agency, NickMetrics.com born in 2016.

    The Highway

    Today, Nick and his team as the generation of digital natives are entering the workplace and are spending like never before. This is the mass market of tomorrow, and for business people and marketers the challenge is to become fluent in this new digital language so that we can talk effectively to our target audience.

    As the managing director, he has contributed to the significant growth of several businesses in areas including digital marketing, offline marketing, branding, and relationship management. Moreover, to make this small agency effective he sits for sales, design, development, planning, and execution. He is also responsible for recruiting and training the best minds of 48+ employees which is their extraordinary assets.

    Laying Strong Digital Space

    Throughout Nick’s career, he has aimed at transforming the brand from a variety of verticals, developing intimate search knowledge and strategy for diverse clients. The agency is inclined for offering the trendiest and new-age digital marketing solutions to brands such as SOP to handle each client’s digital marketing campaign.

    Nick is responsible for the delivery of NickMetrics’ business plan across marketing which mostly includes Influencer Marketing, Social Media Marketing, Search Engine Optimization, Search Engine Optimization, and Content Marketing. Such an effective package enhances its market leadership position and continues to deliver exceptional growth.

    NickMetrics Group apart from being industry-centric has another most comprehensive Malaysia’s Online Auto Insurance Comparison Website that has been developing a connection between insurance and consumer. The website helps insure both parties with better-informed decisions and facilitates them to make smart and easier insurance purchases. While offering consumers unbiased comparison for auto insurance, it majorly saves the hassle of consumers from the details and technical processes of auto insurance.

    World Wide Wild

    Since its inception, Nick and partners have extensive experience of serving more than 30 medium-to-big sizes clients helping them implement multi-channel brand-marketing strategies. With that, the agency has successfully flagged its location in Malaysia, Hong Kong, and India.

    The agency has also launched packaged services where users can answer a few questionnaires and pay online. After that, the involving team will start working on it based on its SOP and the reports and results will be displayed on the user’s dashboard.

    Believing in his power of writing and entrepreneurial journey, Nick says, “there’s so much out there I plan to try out, but it’s all in the plans. Through writing and any entrepreneurial adventure I take on, my goal is to change the world, I plan to become even better, not just professionally but also personally, and writing gave me the voice to reach out to the world.”

  • Ellen Voie: Driving The Female Workforce With Positive Work Culture

    Ellen Voie: Driving The Female Workforce With Positive Work Culture

    You might associate success as something driven by personal ambition, but the goal is broader for others. Ellen Voie, CEO & Founder of the Women In Trucking Association, Inc., is more concerned about elevating the entire industry so everyone can benefit instead of advancing her professional path. While finding personal success, her organization is the driving force in creating a better environment for all women. Perhaps this is more of a woman’s way of leading an organization, but this is quickly becoming the best way to change the world.

    Women & Softer Economics

    In 2007, Ellen founded Women In Trucking Association as a nonprofit trade/professional organization. She found that women comprised about three percent of the driver population and had very little representation in board rooms or the C-Suite. The sentiment at that time was that the industry was being gender-blind and claimed to hire the best candidates. However, it was apparent that there was not a level playing field. There was unconscious bias in the hiring and promotion of female executives, and for female commercial drivers, the playing field was anything but level. Showers were communal for men, restrooms for women were scarce, trucks were designed for men, and companies didn’t provide women’s uniforms.

    The most critical area was the lack of data. Since women were considered “statistically insignificant” in trucking, breaking the information down by gender was difficult. Over the years, the Women In Trucking Association has worked with universities and private entities to look at the differences between men and women in transportation careers. Now, research has proven that women take fewer risks, both in the boardroom and in the cab of a truck. Women make decisions differently, and women have different values when looking for a career at a trucking company. Women are more collaborative and better at team building. All of these are positive attributes that weren’t valued in the past.

    Different But Inspiring

    Unlike other girls, Ellen has been interested in less traditional activities, such as woodworking, auto mechanics, drafting, and welding. After graduating from high school, she found a position designing material handling equipment at a steel fabricating plant. She was soon offered a transfer to the traffic (shipping) department and later advanced to Traffic Manager. She earned a diploma in Traffic & Transportation Management which gave her a great deal of insight into how the supply chain works.

    Later, after starting her family, Ellen took her skills in transportation and worked as a consultant to motor carriers in central Wisconsin. During that time, she earned her bachelor’s degree and Master’s degree in Communication. After eighteen years, she was ready to move on, and she accepted a position to lead the Trucker Buddy program, a nonprofit organization that matches professional drivers with elementary classrooms. 

    In 2006 Ellen was recruited by a large carrier in the Midwest as the Manager of Retention and Recruiting Programs. Her job was to initiate corporate-level programs to attract and retain nontraditional groups, including women. The goal was to increase the ranks of female drivers at the carrier and understand this demographic’s needs. At the time, Ellen was working on obtaining her private pilot’s license, and she belonged to a women’s aviation group. It occurred to her that there wasn’t a similar organization for women in the transportation industry, which prompted her to start the Women In Trucking Association.

    Reinventing Against Disparity

    Although women make up 50% of the population, female business owners are still a minority, especially in transportation careers. Women entrepreneurs entering male-populated industries find additional challenges to bring their ideas to life. The Women In Trucking Association has over 6,000 members in ten countries, and about fifteen percent of them are men who join because they support the mission. The organization provides insight to its members through surveys, research, and partnering with other organizations to better understand gender diversity in transportation careers. The goal is to be a resource for the industry and the government.

    As a trade/professional organization, Women In Trucking Association serves its members. For anyone involved in the transportation environment, the opportunity to network allows members to build better businesses. They believe in transparency and are responsive to feedback. When members feel the dues are worth the cost to provide value to their company or career advancement, they’ll be sure to renew their membership, so feedback is crucial. The organization constantly surveys its members on important issues so they can better represent them. Most importantly, they use their insight to make changes in the industry by quantifying their experiences, giving them measurable goals.

    Overcoming The Uncertainties

    Despite such devotion, Ellen admits that she has difficulty responding to criticisms. She cannot help but often take these criticisms personally because the Women In Trucking Association is her creation. She faces a hard time when people try to attack them for something they dislike instead of discussing working together.

    The world is at a stage where gender diversity is becoming an essential goal in every industry. The Women In Trucking Association is on a mission to make women aware of the career opportunities in the trucking industry. They have always had a virtual presence as an organization, so this wasn’t a factor amid the pandemic. The goal is to hire self-motivated people since employees do not have established work hours or even vacation schedules. Everyone works to complete their duties without the need for oversight.

    Millions of business owners worldwide faced at least some level of challenges during the COVID-19 pandemic. The Women In Trucking Association was also forced to make difficult decisions. For instance, they had to cancel their in-person event in 2020 and switch to a virtual conference. They had over 600 enthusiastic registered attendees, which encouraged them to provide a virtual option. Similarly, in 2021, they had over 800 at their in-person event in Dallas and hundreds more who participated in all or parts of the virtual conference.

    From Ellen’s Seat

    Having a solid foundation, the Women In Trucking Association has future goals to create local and regional chapters for members to continue to network throughout the year. The first chapter will be meeting early in 2022. In addition, they have launched their new Driver Ambassador tractor-trailer, driven by a female driver. She will take the mobile display around the country to educate the public about the trucking industry through interactive exhibits and a simulator in the semi-trailer.

    Ellen’s message for entrepreneurs is to be persistent and not let critics affect your ambition. “Starting any business, whether it’s nonprofit or for-profit, is difficult and time-consuming. Do your homework but ask lots of questions. Find a mentor and believe in yourself.”

  • Gagan Arora: From Transforming the Industry to Building an Empire

    Gagan Arora: From Transforming the Industry to Building an Empire

    Digital Version

    Mr. Gagan Arora was honored with World’s Greatest Leaders 2021-22”, 40 UNDER 40, and Asia’s Youngest Entrepreneur by Asia One. Recognized as one of India’s Top 100 Influencers by GMI and Forbes. An inspirational journey of a visionary entrepreneur from a small garage in Florida to transforming businesses across six countries through offshore and client services.

    Gagan, is a first-generation software entrepreneur, a tenacious leader, and a tech evangelist who has successfully built himself as a well-known brand name in the industry.  He is Boston University Certified and the seven-time recipient of the BEST CEO award. He is the Chairman of the Foreign Investors Council’s Delhi Chapter and the Director-Global Education for the Asian Arab Chamber of Commerce, servicing 52 countries.

    Mr. Gagan Arora, Founder and CEO of Vertex Group, is a pioneer in providing aided sales and marketing services to BPOs, BPMs, IT solution providers, and financial and accountancy firms.

    What’s the inspiration behind Vertex Group? Would you like to mention some of the highlights from your journey?

    I have spearheaded Vertex Group‘s expansion into six countries in just five years, earning numerous honors including “World’s Greatest Leaders 2021-22”, 40 UNDER 40, and Asia’s Youngest Entrepreneur by Asia One, which was highlighted on CNBC and ET Now. I have also been named as one of India’s Top 100 Influencers by GMI and Forbes two times in a row.

    I am usually inspired when the utterly impossible becomes possible by embracing the challenge with a never-say-die mindset, no matter how difficult things grow. My desire to prove myself has driven me to build the best work environment possible, expand, and spread our message around the world. If I hear a story from someone who has overcome the odds, worked hard, focused, fulfilled on their word, and has been relentless in changing the world to make it a better place, I feel unbelievably inspired and uplifted.

    Three words that describe my entrepreneurial journey are Upward, Learning, and Evolving. Since the inception of my journey as an entrepreneur, I have been upward with the challenges coming my way considering my setbacks and failures as new learnings that allowed me to evolve and create a bigger picture of my vision. Deprived of any financial or psychological support, although my circumstances were homeless my vision was not. I had a crystal-clear vision of setting a trend of innovation and technology by using the best of my day-to-day business knowledge. To give wings to my passion I took a leap of faith and left my job, sacrificed the comfort of a monthly salary and perks, and invested money to achieve one true dream. Success to me came in the form of waves that had highs and lows but my keen determination to not settle for anything less kept me going despite a few initial failures.

    With a strong vision and the will to transform the industry, I laid the pillars of my dream in a small garage in Florida with a team of two, and have since, expanded my footprints across seven countries with a powerful workforce of over 1500+ people. Now, as a President of the Group and a leader, I have taken all of my experience and learnings to make a huge impact, growing my current company from 2 employees to more than 1500, with international offices in the United States, United Kingdom, Philippines, Nepal, Middle East, and Africa.

    Please brief us in detail about the current scenario of the business. How have the customer preferences changed over the years?

    With the increasing demand for technology, India’s IT solutions sector has the potential to become the world’s next space center. Advanced technologies such as Artificial Intelligence (AI), the Internet of Things (IoT), and others have shrunk the distance between the virtual and real worlds, resulting in an interoperable platform between Information Technology (IT) and actual physical activities. Over and above past human-machine interactions, machine-machine real-time communication is now conceivable. With the rise in processing capability of the chips, visualization and simulation tools have advanced significantly. A wide range of complicated, customized, and modular goods can be designed and immediately conveyed to the machines that will follow. Thus, embedded systems, factories, and workers link via the Internet of Things to collaborate in a cyber-physical environment.

    Society is rapidly moving from analog processes to digitalized technologies which have opened new ways for businesses to improve and evolve together with their customers. Also, it offers the possibility to link the worldwide economy and build a network in which every business can find its place.

    Your smartphone is a perfect example of digital transformation. It allows you to use different digital services like socialmedia, which are yet an example of digital transformation because they have changed our way of communicating with each other. Big dataor machine learningare other examples that are especially relevant for businesses that want to learn more about their customers. They offer completely new perspectives on your customers’ behavior that you can use to grow your business. With digital transformation businesses are taking an important step toward getting to know customers better.Pen and paper are outdated. Today you can collect important information via smart applications that offer endless possibilities.

    Customers’ expectations have changed, thus traditional marketing channels like PR and distribution are starting to lose their impact. Social media is critical for both marketing your items and communicating with your customers. Customer care is now available not only by phone and email but also through social media. As a result, customers have come to expect significantly faster responses to their inquiries. It would not be inaccurate to argue that digital transformation serves as a vehicle for taking your company to the next level.

    What are the unique challenges your company is currently facing? How have they affected your company?

    With the changing business environment, no industry is immune to unknown difficulties. The Covid-19 pandemic has built a new reality that is complex, ambiguous, and full of possibilities. Uncertainty regarding the future is one of the most pressing issues we face today. The unprecedented waves of Covid-19 have had a negative impact on employees’ physical and emotional well-being, as they are constantly threatened by the loss that pandemic uncertainties could have on them and their families, thereby hurting employee productivity. The work-from-home culture necessitated that corporate culture is built in such a way that employees do not feel lonely while working and teams are not dispersed. Our Vertex leaders took on this challenge by maintaining regular contact with the employees in order to keep their motivation sparked.

    The future isn’t predictable and this past year has taught us that what’s most important is to be nimble in the face of adversity and emerge victorious as we face ongoing challenges. At Vertex, we have strategies to innovate, something that most companies in the market have overlooked. As a result, Vertex Group was one of the very few names showcasing 100% growth during a global pandemic. Stress, pressure, and the unexpected are a part of any job. Not everyone is equipped to handle these emotionally difficult situations well, much less with grace, efficiency, and an eye toward the future.

    When was Vertex Group established? What are the prominent services/solutions offered by the company?

    I created the foundations of my dream in a small garage in Florida in 2016 with a strong vision and the desire to transform the industry. Since then, I have spread my footprints across seven nations with a robust staff of over 1500 individuals. Now, as a CEO and a leader, I have applied all of my knowledge and expertise to develop my current firm from two people to over 1500, with international offices in the United States, the United Kingdom, the Philippines, Nepal, Middle East, and Africa.

    Vertex Group’s operations are divided into four verticals: Vertex Global Services, Vertex Digital Academy, Vertex Next, and Vertex Cosmos (VCosmos). Technological input is the major service provided by Vertex Group to its clients. They are tailored to the client’s specific demands and specifications, ensuring that they are both adaptable and simple to use.

    Vertex Group outsources IT-enabled services all over the world as a Business Optimization partner for a variety of industries, including a wide range of operations that leverage information technology to improve an organization’s workability.

    From data and workflow management to data warehousing, mining, and business intelligence, to outsourcing human augmentation needs, our services are used in various phases. With its comprehensive range of services, Vertex Group has been dynamically reshaping enterprises by delivering cutting edge solutions via BPO, Global Staffing, US IT Recruitment, Managed Services, Performance Marketing, Artificial Intelligence, Online Education, Staff Augmentation, Events and Conferences, Software as a Service, Talent as a Service, E-Commerce Management, Revenue Generation, Digital Marketing.

    What measures do you incorporate to ensure motivation and productivity within the workspace? How do you respond to criticism and disagreements?

    Vertex Group is known to be ‘The Best Place to Work’ because of its diverse and inclusive culture. At Vertex, each employee is valued for their opinion. We stand by the motto, “The best logic wins”, irrespective of where it comes from. The team members are given an equal chance to try and fail, enabling them to learn and apply the best strategy to win always. Learning and Growth are never stopped at Vertex, it is a continuous process. We prioritize the growth of our team members not just in terms of titles but also in the form of Learning. To keep the fires of inspiration and productivity ignited, a monthly reward and recognition program is held, in which employees’ extra efforts are recognized. At Vertex, inspirational leaders are the driving force that encourages and energizes team members to focus their efforts in one direction. We instill in our employees a “get-up-and-go” attitude that serves as an intangible motivator that leads to increased production. A sense of belonging, acceptance, and pride motivates team members to go above and beyond.

    We view criticism as intelligent and well-reasoned input that helps us improve our ability to maintain a diverse and inclusive culture at Vertex. Every voice matters at Vertex, and every voice is heard through our Employee Care E-ticketing system, which welcomes any employee queries, recommendations, or complaints. Employee care responds to criticism and disagreements by understanding how to listen actively, gently accept feedback, promptly resolve concerns, and implement suggestions as needed.

    What measures do you undertake to ensure optimum customer satisfaction? How much impact does the customer feedback have on the company’s strategies?

    We ensure that our clients are completely satisfied by communicating with them on a regular basis and listening to their needs and suggestions. We feel that employee experience is equivalent to the customer experience at Vertex. Because our employees are our face value and represent our company, client satisfaction will naturally follow if they are happy and motivated. To reach the highest level of client happiness, we first ensure that our personnel is entirely satisfied. We have an internal operation management system that tracks the process workflow and projects the customer satisfaction rate as a result.

    Customer feedback plays a critical role in shaping our company’s strategy as it guides improvements in the customer experience and helps us empower positive change in the business. It also helps us understand where our company’s products and services excel or fall short compared to alternatives in the market.

    Please tell us about the services/products your company is offering? How are they different from your competitors’ offerings?

    We provide offshore and client services, as well as aided sales and marketing services, to BPOs, BPMs, IT solution providers, and financial and accountancy firms. We work with clients all over the world to help them find the best people for their businesses through our global staffing service. We go to great lengths to guarantee that our clients discover the best fit for their company. We help IT companies use AI to deploy chatbots and build a more efficient workflow.

    Vertex Group has been digitally transforming organizations by deploying cutting edge solutions with its following wide range of services such as – BPO, Global Staffing, US IT Recruitment, Managed Services, Performance Marketing, Artificial Intelligence, Online Education, Staff Augmentation, Events and Conferences, Software as a Service, Talent as a Service, E-Commerce Management, Revenue Generation, Digital Marketing.

    To keep abreast, we’ve implemented the Vconnect software, which caters to the following domains within our organization:

    LMS – Learning Management System

    QMS – Quality Management System

    HRMS – Human Resource Management System

    Employee Care e-ticketing System – For all escalations, feedback, and suggestions

    Deploying Chat Bots – To make the processes for our clients smooth and streamlined

    Are you planning to launch any new products/services or advancements to your existing offerings? If so, we would like to know about it.

    For Vertex, growth is providing regular deliverables to customers through a continuous process in which both employees and employers work together to create a conducive environment in which they can reach their goals at the same time. Developing a growth strategy entails breaking into new markets and segments, allowing the company to reach new heights.

    Mr. Arora’s One Team, One Dream goal is to increase the employee strength to 4000+ individuals by 2022 by creating more opportunities and expanding the Vertex Group umbrella into four new countries, resulting in three new LOBs. Vertex Group’s future promises fresh ideas, new technology, and global expansion in many countries.

    Vertex has the following upcoming plans to help create a digitally altered world:

    IOT West Africa Conference and Exhibition – Accelerating West African economy through technology and digital transformation. The IOT West Africa conference and exhibition will set the stage for the most sophisticated technological solutions to transforming businesses and cities. The Conference will provide an unrivaled opportunity to learn about the latest ideas, products, and technical advancements. Exhibiting will allow businesses to launch into new markets, meet new clients and help shape the industry’s future.

    Power and Water Nigeria Exhibition – Accelerating the Energy Transition

    The exhibition will offer global stakeholders access and engage in technical discussions and assess the opportunities of the region in power generation, energy transition, distribution, renewable, water, and utility sectors.

    New Launch – Continuing our progress, we plan to add another arm to Vertex Group in 2022, which will be providing advanced technological solutions offering System Integration, servers, storage, AMC, and FMS.

    As a decorated leader, what would be your piece of advice for entrepreneurs seeking careers in the business?

    I always advise young people who are just entering the world of business to be open-hearted and open-minded. They should try to be the diametric opposite of what they see today, egoism, selfishness, and exclusion. They should be connecting, looking to the future, in solidarity, open to new knowledge and experience, listen to their heart, and most importantly be persevering to the end. In the end, everything always works out, if it hasn’t already, it just means it’s not over yet.

    I believe that as they move closer to a new digital-first era, the future represents a period of tremendous opportunity for up-coming entrepreneurs. With emerging technologies revolutionizing industries and driving demands for next-generation services, the tech world is an attractive proposition for a young, innovative talent to pursue their ideas and bring fresh concepts to life. I believe that one of the best ways to keep making consistent progress is to keep the fires of inspiration stoked. My advice to young entrepreneurs would be to be unstoppable and not let their failures decide their fate because those who overcome failure have the courage to succeed later.

  • How the Age of the Second Brain Can Destroy the First?

    How the Age of the Second Brain Can Destroy the First?

    How many of you are harry potter fans? In the story, Dumbledore had a magical vessel he used to store and review memories. It was called the pencil. This is obviously a fictional story set in a school of magic. But today we have something like this in the real world, it’s called the second brain.

    The second brain is a digital brain that can be used to document every piece of information, every experience, every thought, and every learning. You can access all of this whenever and wherever you want.

    What does a second brain look like?

    Nothing too sci-fi or magical, a second brain looks like a word document backed up in the cloud. How much does it cost? Most second brains are free and some cost as little as $8 a month.

    The second brain has been developed on the hypothesis that a human brain is meant to have ideas not to store those ideas. So the second brain can do the job of storing. It will store everything from your thoughts to your screenshots, your grocery list, your notes, photos, passwords, reminders, and all other things you can think of.

    How does this work?

    The second brain works through apps like Notion, Evernote, One Note, Obsidian, and Mem, all of them work in the same way. They expect every bit of information you come across, everything that you think your brain cannot hold. Shopping lists, quotes, or reminders, you don’t even have to type them down, you can simply voice record and send. If you are reading something interesting online for instance you can email the relevant paragraphs to your second brain. If you have a fleeting thought you can make a quick note of it.

    Basically, every time you come across something that grabs your attention you log, in whatever form. Screenshots, photos, excel sheets, slides from a PowerPoint presentation, lines from an e-book, excerpts from online articles, and then you can access all this information whenever you want.

    Say years later you want to write an essay or prepare an address on federalism. All you need to do is go to your second brain and type in the keywords, everything that you uploaded on the topic will be in front of you. If you’ve uploaded a grocery list you can retrieve it the next time you go shopping.

    Advocates of the second brain say the system helps in knowledge management, it increases creativity and the theory is pretty interesting. It’s almost like having your own little library in the cloud.

    So is this the future?

    Well more like the present, believe it or not, all of us already have a second brain. All the apps that we use double up as a second brain. You know the ones that remind you to drink water or to stretch at home. Even breathe, apps tell you to stand up and breathe. They remind you to buy bread on the way back home. Apps remind you what you are doing 10 years back in the month of June. Gigabyte after gigabyte of content from your life is spread across these apps.

    Do you remember what was the storage capacity of the first iPhone? 16 gigabytes (GB)! Today, an iPhone’s memory can be expanded up to 1TB, that’s one terabyte full of information from your day-to-day life.

    What second brain apps do is replace all these apps with one, a notepad that doubles up as your library, your gallery, your reminder, your password keeper, your bookmark, your logbook, basically everything. It’s all cataloged! Some apps take it a step up they use time and location data to remind you of information/memories that you may have uploaded but forgotten. For instance, you go to a restaurant, the app will tell you that you came here 3 years back and this is what you ordered, this is who you came with and this is what you thought of the experience back then, obviously provided you’ve logged all of that.

    But who does that, who documents so much information from their daily life? Actually, most of us do! We are continuously uploading stories, we are tweeting every fleeting thought, and blogging experience. Second brain app stores this content.

    Quick question. Can’t we store the same information offline?

    Of course, we can. We can keep notes, we can keep files. Previously, we had a filing cabinet. Once upon a time, every office would have such cabinets but filing and then searching for that file takes a lot of time. A digital brain is more convenient.

    But do we really need one? Some of us can barely handle one brain. Jokes apart, science disagrees with the very high hypothesis of the second brain. It says our brain can store information, in fact, it can store 2.5 petabytes of information. It’s enough to store 3 million hours of TV shows. You have to leave the TV running for 300 years to use up all that brain space. In other words, we don’t have to worry about running out of brain space in our lifetime.

    So why do we need a second brain at all?

    These apps handicap us. They make us unnecessarily dependent on technology. Today, at least 20 million people are using a second brain. Some are leaning on them for making life decisions.

    There is a very interesting story in an article. Annie, a 27-year-old in New York City began taking notes on her dating life. For Annie, the notion love tracker functions almost like an alternate memory which, once or twice, helped her clarify the amorphous gut feeling she was experiencing. “Once, after a first date I remember thinking this guy is so much fun but he seems really immature,” Annie says. Then on the third date with him, she was enjoying herself but began to feel a bit uneasy like “something was eating at me that I could not put a finger on,” she said. So she went home and consulted her notion love tracker; there, in her neatly organized tables, she found that she had noticed immaturity from the very beginning. She stopped seeing him.

    The question is, did she really need an app to tell her this? She was supposed to remember that piece of information without help from an app.

    The problem is not with the capacity of brain but our shrinking attention span. The reason why most of us forget information or names is that we are not paying enough attention to them in the first place. We are preoccupied all the time and mostly it’s with our phones.

    A second brain only worsens this condition. It expects you to frantically document, to go through life that person in the courthouse who is documenting every word being said. What would you rather do? Log the thoughts that cross your mind when you’re sitting by the sea or let the chain of thoughts flow as you absorb the beautiful sunset.

    We humans are more than what we document. Also, we humans evolve with time. So storing those thoughts can be a waste of time, both in the human brain space and the second brain space. Our brain functions in the most amazing way, it ensures we only remember what’s relevant. Our brain prioritizes clarity over clutter, our brain grows and it wants us to grow. What we need to do is pay more attention to things happening around us and you’ll be amazed by the kind of memory the human brain is blessed with.

    So back to the question, do we really need a second brain? A little medicine reminder or a grocery reminder may help us balance our daily lives better but beyond that, the human brain is good enough.

    Fun fact: A human brain can store 2.5 petabytes of information, enough to store 3 million hours of TV shows.

  • Paul Guenther: Offering Consistent Top-tier Business Solutions

    Paul Guenther: Offering Consistent Top-tier Business Solutions

    “Just believe in yourself. Whether you think you can or think you can’t –you’re going to end up being right, either way.”

    In certain ways of business, stepping into an industry brings spontaneous challenges. If a business person molds these challenges and utilize them as a ladder to climb up to a particular position, he/she can bring a disruptive change within an innovative approach in their business niche. Following the zeal from studying law to lead a B2B advertising space that turned into a renowned brand is Paul Guenther. An entrepreneur who proved himself time and time with his leadership and commitment.

    As Founder and CEO of Knowledge Hub Media, Paul harnesses the power of business management from sales to marketing, accounting to website development. His tireless efforts and focused engagement enhance every aspect of the business.

    Learning & Leading

    Over the years, B2B customers are being targeted at an exponential pace, in the way that they market to different types of audiences. Currently, in the B2B demand generation space, KHM’s clients have shifted to more niche targeting – promoting their assets to very specific and specialized job roles and functions. Where in the past, companies would target based on more generalized criteria (e.g., IT Decision Makers in large companies), they have shifted to a more qualitative approach. It’s less about lead quantity and more about lead quality, reaching the exact folks who are most likely to buy their software and technology platforms.

    Previously, a company that might have targeted “HR Directors” now targets “Talent Management Directors” and “VPs of Talent Acquisition.” Again, more specific with the job roles that they are going after. And in most cases, instead of targeting companies by the number of people it employs or goes industry vertical, clients tend to target companies via account-based marketing (i.e., ABM lists). ABM lists are generally created and provided by KHM’s clients, pre-campaign launch. They are made up of companies that fit very specific targeting criteria, and in most cases, fall into one of three categories: current customers; competitor’s customers; companies showing intent to purchase a given software platform or solution.

    Dive into the exhilarating story of Paul and his experiences.

    Placing the Wick

    Mr. Guenther’s journey of career-oriented learning started at Penn State University in the Fall of 2002. At the time, he was unsure about what he exactly wanted to do. After some time, he determined that he wanted to go to law school, and decided to major in Crime, Law & Justice. He got his B.S. in the spring of 2006, which was immediately followed by a (short) stint in Law School. He was doing a part-time night program, and at the time, he was unsure about it too. He started working full time during the day, going out with friends at night, and not at all focused on what he should have been focused on. Whether or not it was a blessing in disguise, he ended up going back to school in 2008 to get his MBA with a concentration in Marketing Management (Wilmington University). 

    In 2009, Paul started working on what would become “IT Knowledge Hub” – which is now known as Knowledge Hub Media. Once gained his MBA in 2010, he was off to the races with the company. Fortunately, over the next couple of years, he was able to bring his first few employees on – Anthony and James running Sales, and Chris, who filled the first Client Services role. He had also gone back to school by that point to get his Doctorate in Business Administration – finishing his dissertation and graduating in January 2020.

    Mission & Vision

    Knowledge Hub Media was established in 2009, and ever since its inception, the team has been a prominent player in the B2B advertising space. Their core competency, however, is lead generation – or “demand generation,” as it’s better known across the industry. KHM leverages content syndication via assets like white papers, webinars, case studies, and the like, to generate highly targeted leads for our clients. Most of our clients are in the software and technology industry – and when they’re not, they are usually advertising/media agencies working on behalf of the former. Most of our clients are promoting technology platforms and software solutions that they are looking to find net new customers for.

    Since the company’s initiation, Paul faced the challenge of not practicing things that traditional businesses do. Things like sales goals – and really anything that causes unnecessary stress, in general – are the things that the team tries to avoid. There has always been a favorable work-life balance, and overall, people continue to motivate themselves to get better. There is not much criticism or disagreement to go around, and that’s a good thing.

    Inspiring Employees to Meet Needs of the Clients

    Customers are always the most important aspect of any business. Without customers, no one has a business. Ensuring and enhancing the customer experience is always high up on KHM’s list, and at the end of the day, the team always wants to make sure that everyone is completely satisfied. It usually comes down to a few things: responsiveness, quality of the product, and customizability. Over the 12+ years, the team has evolved its practices and QA/QC measures to ensure only the finest lead quality – in terms of both data integrity and lead scoring mechanisms. It’s very important for the customizations where some clients are happy to stick with more traditional means and delivery methods, and some like the team to use custom API integrations, lead import systems, and form post technologies. The team is always happy to customize a product – with regard to both targeting and delivery – to go above and beyond the customer’s expectations.

    Being Adaptable to Unprecedented Times

    Businesses were being asked to keep their premises closed to combat the coronavirus. The onset of the COVID-19 pandemic was an uncertain time, and it impacted virtually everyone else on the planet. Though KHM was affected less than a lot of other companies, it felt a bit in the advertising/technology section. Some companies do cut their advertising budgets when times get tough. But some industries indeed took a pounding – like restaurants, hospitality, travel, and retail. 

    Building on more than a decade of experience, the company will continue to offer the same high-end, highly targeted content syndication and demand generation services that it has always offered.

    READ MORE: Influential Women Leaders in Business of 2022

  • Arungalai Anbarasu: Delivering Breakthrough Technology and Digital Transformation

    Arungalai Anbarasu: Delivering Breakthrough Technology and Digital Transformation

    Journey and Inspiration

    As a child, the curiosity of questions like where we came from, how things are built, how the earth was formed among others kept Arungalai Anbarasu awake at night. This made her want to be an astronaut. However, she grew up not knowing that her poor eye vision would never let her pursue that path. Therefore, she went to study the closest thing to it, engineering. She has her master’s degree in Electrical and Computer Science. And her master thesis was on Non-Destructive Testing (NDT), that’s what her employer Waygate Technologies specializes in.

    After university, she joined the famous conglomerate General Electric (GE) into their graduate program called Edison engineering where she learned how technology is used to build and sell solutions that solve different problems in the world like energy, healthcare, transportation, and communication. Therefore, driving a strategy & business from wing to wing became a passion which made her take different roles in GE & Baker Hughes in the areas of finance, strategy, operations, technology, and business leadership up to her current role of Chief Technology & Strategy Officer for Waygate Technologies, a Baker Hughes business. She and her team look at the overarching strategy for Waygate Technologies while delivering breakthrough technology innovation and digital transformation. She also led the industrial X-ray and computed tomography (CT) business in the past few years at Baker Hughes (BH).

    Every role, every experience, every country Arungalai has lived, taught her something new and contributed to shaping her career and personality. The diversity of roles and global nature of her roles before has really helped her look at the strategy for the company in a very balanced yet with an exponential growth approach. Her experiences have also taught her the power of being able to flex from the strategic view to the tactical view to operate the business at best which she very much leverages in her current role. Not only to dream about the future but also to enable the operations to make it real!

    Opportunities Against Difficulties

    As with any company in this age – COVID has thrown at Waygate Technologies a really large wrench. Its key customers were impacted, and that is clearly affecting them – it does no one good to ignore that fact.

    “There are opportunities even in the difficult moments.” With that in view, COVID has also posed a positive aspect where the digital transformation is accelerating in every industry…It is the new beginning for the Digital Revolution! NDE4.0 in Waygate Technologies’ case.

    Overall, if anything good has come out of COVID, it is the fact that drove us further away from each other physically and brought a lot of people much closer together virtually. The manifestation of this in industrial inspection is the drive to data and the drive to a larger level of, remote, collaboration. This coincidentally is precisely what is enabled by the suite of Waygate Technologies’ digital products called InspectionWorks.

    What are the main challenges to achieving the transformation from a device-centric inspection company to a data-centric inspection company? – both internally and externally?

    Transformation exists throughout the process; not just technology. Sometimes, digital transformation is seen as a technology problem only.

    Waygate Technologies is a company with a great heritage – the team traces its lineage back to Krautkrämer and Seifert – people who discovered the technologies and invented the techniques. However, with this heritage also comes a lot of tradition that tends to get up-ended in this world of, quite literally, data-driven micro-second decisions (if you don’t believe in the time scale, just look at the micro traders on Wall Street). ‘Waygatians’ try to address these challenges along with multiple fronts:

    1. Move execution to focus explicitly on collaborative partnerships – with customers and partners – this is critical because all these software solutions can become most successful when the team works in close collaboration with customers and partners, and focus exclusively on areas where they can deliver the most value – this allows for scale in a world that is moving at warp speed.
    2. The second pillar is that of building the right commercial models – they are so used to selling boxes that even when they sell software, they end up selling it as if they are selling a box – they need to consciously create new ways of doing business – this means trying out new models, refining them and coming up with faster, and more efficient paths to revenue.
    3. They need to continue to look long and hard at how to enable sales and commercial success on software and solutions – this requires a completely different mindset that needs to be encouraged, by training, incentives, etc.
    4. Finally from a hardware and machine manufacturing business to a software solutions business is a hard shift on technology execution and rhythms – one example is that they are moving to a constant release rhythm – they have set up a quarterly release calendar and they would like to drive a steady expectation from their customers – where like any other major software company’s yearly release event – their customers look to them at certain times of the year for them to release new versions of their solutions – like clock-work.

     

    Women Softening Economy

    Making decisions after considering multiple viewpoints ensures the probability of success from the outcomes is higher & the probability of approach with balanced emotions is higher. Women bring unique perspectives to research and scientific conversation, reduce the skill gap, and foster economic growth.

    Focusing on Digitalization

    Arungalai Anbarasu, the Chief Technology & Strategy Officer at Waygate Technologies, is driving strategy & innovation for the company. In addition to pushing the technology & business models boundaries on industrial inspection solutions, Aru and her team are also focused on the digital transformation of Waygate Technologies and the spearheads of the firm’s evolution into a Digital Inspection Solutions (DIS) provider, taking customers from inspections to insights and from insights to innovations.

    The key enablers that drive strategy, technology, business, security, etc are the team. In this time of the pandemic, it’s extremely important for each one of them to make an extra effort to care about the team, employees, peers. Challenges with the hybrid or home working are different. Addressing the challenges is better solved together. “We are stronger together than alone!”

    The key is empathy and authenticity. This builds a trustful relationship which then breeds into a fruitful partnership when the team undertakes challenges and fulfills transformational activities successfully.

    And practicing what they preach.

    Not encourage your team trying to build a kingdom but create a leap for humanity. The goal is always bigger than power and position–its transformation, innovation, and advancement.

    Lastly, giving the freedom for the team to create and develop within boundaries of compliance, ethics, and safety. People make a business; Business does not make people. So, a business will be successful only if it focuses on the people.

    Leading Breadth of Portfolios

    Waygate Technologies (WT) has the biggest breadth of portfolios and enjoys a leadership position in a large majority of them. They are world leaders in industrial X-ray and CT equipment and are leaders in professional video borescopes among others. The company proudly received the Frost & Sullivan Best Practices Award for the Global Industrial Computed Tomography Solutions multiple years in a row.

    WT’s combination of breadth – visual, ultrasound, X-ray, CT, Eddy current, portables, handhelds, testing machines, cloud services, etc have them placed in a unique position to deliver market-winning cross-modality insights to their customers. The world is moving away from data at single units of time, space, modality, etc.

    For instance, think of your cell phone – phones, since the time of the blackberry, have been able to both browse the net and you can call a restaurant to make reservations. However, today you can ask Siri for restaurant recommendations, and “she” can understand from your browsing history that it is your spouse’s birthday, remembers his/her favorite restaurant and knows which table you prefer and can create a reservation and remembers to add a note to your reservation that you are allergic to shellfish. In other words, we are moving away from delivering individual pieces of data and recognizing the exponential value of connecting disparate pieces of information.

    The inspection and quality industry is going the same way and Waygate Technologies is uniquely positioned to get the industry to that point. There it can look at the powder metallurgy via a CT powder scan, look at the engine blade cast from this powder via an X-ray, assess the assembly quality of the blade into an engine using ultrasound, and inspect the engine on the wing of an aircraft using visual testing. After then it connects all this data via its cloud services and analytics and delivers back to the OEM, information that they can use to make a much better generation of blades next time around. Waygate Technologies will take their customers from detecting defects to avoiding them altogether.

    Data– the Necessity

    One big change factor is Data – while being a buzzword today – is both fortunate and unfortunate. Fortunate because data is truly the bedrock of any communication – after all, all the cellular networks in the world would be completely useless if no one talked on cell phones generating “data”. However, these networks would also be useless if all that flowed out of cell phones were 1’s and 0’s – which is after all the raw data that flows around on these networks. What that analogy was supposed to demonstrate is that data is critical – but it is only one part of what enables any technology (and among them industrial inspection) – the second and equally critical portion is the ability to convert data to insights and/or information.

    “The 1’s and 0’s flowing from a cell phone from my daughter’s hand, through a cell tower, through satellites in outer space, back to my cell tower to my cell phone, really becomes meaningful when my cell phone is able to convert it to true information and when I hear– I love you mum.”

    Similarly, all the data that Waygate Technologies collects from its instruments, and other instruments, whether it is UT data from a competitors machine, MPI data from a 3-rd party testing lab, or images from an operators cell phone – all this data needs to be collected, correctly correlated, associated to the right asset that the team is inspecting. The process is critical but what is really needed is the ability to connect all this data and send back to the asset owner (customer), information on whether he/she needs to pull that asset from the line because it is at critical risk of failure or whether he/she can keep running it for another two years.

    Data and the associated information it carries can truly create a paradigm shift in inspections. There is one thing about inspections that WT’s customers painfully realize – no matter how well they build their instruments, no matter how cutting edge their software is; inspections to their customers are like doctors’ visits for them. The best doctor’s visit is the one no one needs to have.

    Data and information hold the transformative power to realize the Waygate Technologies dream for its customers – to take them from inspecting their assets today to fewer inspections tomorrow, to not having to inspect at all, in the future – after all, as its tag line says, “why detect defects when you could avoid them altogether?” This is what a truly leveraged data-driven solution can achieve for its customers.

    All of these require a strong cultural mindset shift. Waygate Technologies is a company that has historically sold “products” – or boxes. “We must move to envision, create, build, and sell solutions.”

    Waygate Technologies is developing ‘InspectionWorks’ with a DIS strategy, through the phases of acquiring, analyzing, and acting, which is centered around providing its customers with a way to develop an inspection “thread” that runs through their entire product lifecycle. Almost providing a digital asset health passport through its lifetime with the lens of inspection information–complete, centralized & contextualized inspection history of an entire asset – from cradle to grave. InspectionWorks is centered around providing its customers a way to develop an inspection “thread” that runs through their entire product lifecycle.

    The lifecycle of any customer asset goes through three basic phases – design & engineering, manufacturing, and operations. Today, via the use of PLM systems and digital tools the customer has an equivalent virtual “ecosystem” – often referred to as the digital twin. InspectionWorks (IW) will provide to this digital twin, at each point of the lifecycle, a connection to industrial inspections and the data coming out of inspections. Thus, InspectionWorks will be an inspection-centric digital “triplet” to the digital twin. Inspections are typically focused around the last two steps in the product lifecycle, but the data and insights gained from these inspections can also be fed back into the design phase to allow the customer to derive multi-generational value – thus defects coming out of the production and operations phase of today’s asset will allow the customer to design a less defect prone asset tomorrow – and that is how IW will take our customers from detecting defects to avoiding them.

    Promoting Women in STEM

    Above all, Arungalai Anbarasu has a 7-year-old daughter (Ada). The best outcome is that at her kindergarten graduation stated she would want to grow up to be an engineer. Arungalai has always been passionate about promoting women in STEM but after she had Ada, she’s now obsessed. Like any mother, she wants to make the world a better place for her.

    Arungalai heard this in one of the roundtables and it stuck with her.

    “The reasonable man adapts himself to the world: the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man.” ― George Bernard Shaw

    And she is proud to be an unreasonable woman.

    Arungalai would love to encourage all the girls and women to be unreasonable within the boundaries of compliance, ethics, and safety to take the first steps that will create progress for the others. Being first is never easy but it’s fun.

    Read More: Benjamin Talin: Embracing Digitalization More Than Just Digital

  • Jordan Meinster: Stretching and Kicking Basketball Franchise Performance into High Gear

    Jordan Meinster: Stretching and Kicking Basketball Franchise Performance into High Gear

    They say there’s a time and place for everything – Jordan Meinster says the time to start a basketball franchise is right now. There are many things that mark PickUp USA Fitness out from other franchises, but Jordan starts with two. ‘First, we offer new franchisees a turn-key business complete in every detail, including training and mentorship programs. And second, our whole environment is based upon allocating substantial resources to our training programs, whether it’s complete training or  365 day/year support.

    We at Fortunes Crown got into conversation with  Jordan Meinster, Founder & CEO, PickUp USA Fitness, to know more about the company and how it is helping the businesses as a whole.

    Below are the highlights of the interview:

    Please brief us in detail about the current scenario of the franchise business. How have the customer preferences changed over the years?

    PickUp USA has awarded 43 franchises for our basketball-focused concept. We have a nationwide presence and are considered the industry leader in basketball facilities.

    We stay in tune with our customer preferences and continuously adjust our services to ensure we are providing a world-class basketball experience. Some recent examples include a members-only adult basketball tournament each week and a new Youth Development league for kids in grades 3rd – 8th.

    Could you please walk us through your educational/professional journey? What was the moment that triggered you to step into the franchise business?

    I went to college in Durango, CO and always played PickUp basketball at parks and rec centers there while I earned my Bachelor’s in Business Economics. I put myself through school managing a restaurant. When I wasn’t in school or working, I was playing basketball!

    I worked for several years in banking and finance and eventually enrolled in night classes at USC where I completed my MBA. I always dreamed of opening a basketball gym and one day I got the courage to quit my job and start PickUp USA!

    When was PickUp USA established? What are the prominent services/solutions offered by the company?

    The first PickUp USA was established in Irwindale, CA (just outside of Los Angeles) in June 2012.

    PickUp USA is a basketball paradise for youth and adults. We do group and private basketball training, PickUp basketball with referees, tournaments, Youth Basketball Leagues, and a lot more. All of our clubs also have full fitness centers with weights and cardio equipment.

    What measures do you incorporate to ensure motivation and productivity within the workspace? How do you respond to criticism and disagreements?

    I take a very hands-off approach with my team. We collectively determine goals and then I let them figure out how to get there. It is a very entrepreneurial workplace. We encourage risk-taking and making mistakes. That has helped us become one of the fastest-growing fitness franchises in the US.

    Criticism and disagreements are a natural and productive part of any business. Criticism provides great feedback and insight from customers, employees, and franchise owners. Disagreements show that everyone cares. Friction is a part of growth and we welcome it as long as everyone remains respectful and professional of all team members.

    What measures do you undertake to ensure optimum customer satisfaction? How much impact does the customer feedback have on the company’s strategies?

    Customer feedback is a huge part of how we shape our programs and services at PickUp USA. We continuously run member surveys and connect with our customers at our gyms. Our corporate team is consistently onsite at corporate-owned and franchised locations and we actively solicit feedback from customers so we can know how to best serve them.

    Our franchise owners also perform self-audits on their stores to ensure that we are living up to the high expectations that our members and guests have for our clubs.

    As a leader, how do you ensure hiring the ideal franchising candidate with the ideal qualities? How do you ensure providing effective training and mentorship to the team?

    When analyzing franchising candidates for PickUp USA, our development team completes a comprehensive discovery process to get to know the individuals looking to franchise our basketball concept. Our Franchise Development Manager sends e-Brochures and conducts initial phone calls to answer initial questions and determine if there is a fit. From there, she sends them an application to complete. Upon receiving the application, she determines if the candidate qualifies to start our discovery process.

    If qualified, our VP of Franchise Development conducts a series of interviews and webinars to build the candidates understanding of our program. After this process, the VP determines if we will award a franchise to the candidate. It’s a very thorough vetting process that ensures we have top-tier franchisees to deliver our services to the public.

    After signing on as franchisees, our training and mentorship programs are widely recognized as the best in the industry. We allocate substantial resources to our training programs and all franchisees complete a comprehensive curriculum through PickUp USA University. Franchisees work directly with our VP of Operations, our VP of Marketing, and our Franchise Support Associate to complete their training, and they are assigned dedicated reps at the corporate office for ongoing 365 day/year support.

    We also have a platform for franchisees to communicate with one another, either one-on-one or in a community forum. We all support one another. When one of us wins, we all win.

    How did the COVID-19 pandemic impact you and your company? What was your response to the unprecedented situation?

    COVID shut down all of our gyms for a brief period in 2020. We banded together as a company and weathered the storm. We quickly recovered and were back to pre-pandemic levels of business by Q3 of 2020. 2020 wound up being a record year for the company and 2021 far surpassed 2020’s numbers. Things have not slowed down in 2022. Q1 was our best quarter ever.

    COVID was scary, but we have an amazing group of franchise owners and a dedicated corporate office. We didn’t close a single location and came out with a much stronger company. The customers were eager to come back to basketball and fitness. Many other basketball gyms and traditional gyms didn’t make it through COVID, so we saw a nice boost in business as one of the surviving brands.

    All credit goes to our franchise owners for continuing to deliver world-class service to the customers, even in the face of an unprecedented pandemic.

    What are the services/solutions we should anticipate from PickUp USA in the near future?

    PickUp USA has a lot in the works. We’re investing in our technology for our basketball training programs, and have lots of events in the works, including various tournaments, basketball camps, youth programming, and more. Stay tuned. It’s going to be an exciting year!

    As a decorated leader, what would be your piece of advice for entrepreneurs seeking careers in the franchise business?

    When looking at franchise concepts, it’s very important to find something you are passionate about. Starting a business takes a lot of work, and if you’re not into the business, it’s going to feel like just another job. If you’re passionate about the work, it will feel like a project that you can’t get enough of. If you love basketball, PickUp USA is probably your franchise. If you’re not passionate about basketball, there are a ton of other franchises out there. There’s truly something for everyone! It’s a great time to open a business. You just have to find something you love.

    I would also encourage people to get to know the company and the team members, particularly at the corporate office. Talk to them. Visit them. Get to know them. Also, talk to other franchisees about their experience. That’s the most valuable feedback you can get. Franchising is a partnership between the franchisee and the franchisor. Get to know the people you’ll be doing business with!

  • Karen L. Simon: A Resilient Professional Working in a Commercial Real Estate

    Karen L. Simon: A Resilient Professional Working in a Commercial Real Estate

    Digital Version

    With over 30 years of brokerage experience, Karen Simon is recognized as the first woman in Tarrant County to practice industrial real estate and the first female broker to be named the highest industrial producer in the Dallas and Fort Worth area. She specializes in office, retail, industrial and land sectors in leasing and sales.

    Running a business and raising children at the same time? That’s concrete tough. Thinking about family first against relocating for better opportunities, adds even more challenges. And end up entering into an industry dominated by men, that’s yet one more hurdle.

    But that’s what Karen Leslie Simon has done. Simon is the Managing Partner of Emersons Commercial Real Estate, responsible for marketing activities west of Dallas County. As an expert in real estate, Simon has completed over 900+ transactions encompassing thousands of acres of land and 6,000,000 square feet of building area. She has excelled as the president and managing partner of the Tarrant County division of Emersons Commercial Real Estate.

    The Inspiration

    Karen Simon earned her Bachelor of Science Degree from the University of Texas in Austin and a master’s degree in American history from Texas Christian University and 24 hours above masters from TCU as well. She also participated in the doctoral program at Texas Christian University.

    Ms. Simon started her career as a teacher in a community college and after 5 years she was ready to enter the business world. Though she wanted to continue teaching, the opportunity of teaching at a 4-year university was limited even if she completed her doctorate. Texas and TCU were not hiring faculty who graduated from their schools as they promote diversity. So she pursued the opportunity of the federal government. She had the opportunity to be considered as Executive Assistant for the Regional Administrator of The Department of Housing and Urban Development for Region 10, which was located in the Dallas- Forth Worth area. She was selected for the position and began her real estate journey.

    The Unexpected Journey

    One day an unexpected bulletin crossed her desk that if someone qualified to take the Brokers exam and did not already have a salesman license, they could do so. It was an opportunity for her as a HUD employee, as she was barred from holding a salesman license while employed by HUD because it could be a conflict of interest with the government. After learning she was only lacking 9 hours out of 900, she took a two-week leave from work and did the classwork, took a review class, and took the Brokers exam. To her delight, she passed the exam and began a new chapter in her life.

    After 6 months of holding her new license, Ms. Simon accepted a position as head of the Industrial Division for the Henry S. Miller Company in Tarrant Country and became the first woman to be defined as an Industrial Realtor in the metroplex.

    Experience Beyond Opportunities

    As a Managing Partner, Ms. Simon holds success in real estate in various capacities. From 1983 to 1989, she garnered valuable experience as the senior vice president of the industrial and land division of Henry S. Miller. Between 1990 and 2000, she flourished as the president of the R.E. Group Advisors, Polo Club Enterprises Inc., and the industrial and land division of the Woodmont Company.

    Soon thereafter, Ms. Simon was recruited as the executive vice president and managing partner of Bradford Commercial Real Estate Services, a role in which she thrived from 2003 to 2014. From 2014 to 2016, she was active as the president and principal of TIG Real Estate Services Metroplex West. In 1987, she participated in establishing the first women’s organization for women in commercial real estate, the Commercial Real Estate Women’s Organization. 

    Establishing the Company

    Emersons Commercial Real Estatewas founded in 2004 by Richard Webb, a banker and a real estate agent, and Matt Price, a C.P.A and real estate entrepreneur. The company based initially in Dallas did real estate leasing, sales, and property management. It has since grown to include Karen’s office in Forth Worth, one in Oklahoma City, and one in Houston and Austin.

    In 2019, the company also founded along with Priority properties out of St. Louis, a company called 1045. Its primary functions were to manage all of Kroger’s real estate nationwide. It manages more than 80 million Sq Ft. This growth and expansion have opened additional doors for its participants, and the team hopes it will have a continuing positive influence on Emersons itself.

    Concrete Services

    Emersons is dedicated to providing clients with all of the benefits of an in-house real estate management operation without the typical overhead, expense, and problems associated with employing their staff. Its experienced team offers professional property management services to Tenant-in-Common owners who want to know their investments are in good hands. With expertise in banking, finance, accounting, leasing, development, construction management, property management, and Tenant-in- Common management – it understands the broad dynamic of modern property acquisition, ownership, and management.

    From full-service management services, including property management and construction management to single solutions like accounting and financial processing Emersons can design a management program that suits businesses.

    Karen Simon’s Achievements

    Because of her experience and knowledge, Ms. Simon has been sought out by national real estate publications and local business papers as both a column writer and source for stories about real estate issues. She has also been honored by The Business Press in its “Who’s Who in Business” section as one of the Decision Makers and Heavy Hitters in Tarrant County and was a two-time nominee for the Fort Worth Star Telegram’s Newsmaker Award for Civic Involvement. She was named to the Dallas Business Journal list as the #4 Heavy Hitter in land brokerage and 2001 she was named one of the Great Women of Texas. She was also selected to handle the disposition of the closed Albertsons grocery stores in the Dallas/Fort Worth area. She was recognized as Bradford Companies’ Top Producer in 2003, 2005, 2006, and 2008. In 2007, she was named Business Woman of the Year by the State Women’s Chamber of Commerce. In 2011, she was named as one of the most influential women in Texas by the National Diversity Council.

    Moreover, Ms. Simon has been designated as a lifetime member of the Urban Land Institute. Aside from her primary vocational pursuits, she has dedicated her time to the executive board of the Boys and Girls Club and the advisory board of the Adrian College of Texas Christian University. She has likewise participated extensively as a board member and a chairperson of the Jewel Charity Ball, an organization that raises money for a local children’s hospital.

    Business achievements

    Ms. Simon has a Broker’s license in Real Estate in the State of Texas. In recent years, she completed the sale of 325 acres on the west side of Fort Worth and handled the 93-acre sale to Toys R Us for a distribution facility, as well as many other land sites for both retail and industrial development. She also recently completed the sale of three suburban office buildings and a 300,000 square foot office building in downtown Fort Worth. She was selected to represent CVS properties in their disposition of excess properties in the state of Texas. Notable clients have included Sun Life Insurance, Arcadia Realty Development, Vertex Investments, Woodcrest Capital, and A&G Realty.

    Renowned in her field, Ms. Simon has been distinguished among the Top 100 People in Real Estate Magazine and the Most Influential Women in Texas and One of the Greatest Women of Texas. Celebrated as Bradford Companies’ Top Producer, she is incredibly proud of having been honored as the Businesswoman of the Year by the Texas State Women’s Chamber of Commerce in 2007.

    Current Scenario

    The business has changed in methodology throughout the years. Handheld cell phones with emails and texts changed the nature of the dependence on being in the office to get work done and the use of tablets and portable computers brought us well into the 21st century. But nothing has changed the benefits of hard work, research, and knowledge as means of staying at the forefront of the industry.

    Customers still require that their brokers be knowledgeable and available regardless of their schedules and their own needs.

    Motivation Against Uncertainties

    Covid presented a challenge because tenants struggled, landlords struggled, adjustments had to be made and deals had to be flexible. As agents and property managers they have to make adjustments to payment schedules and conditions as to work parameters.

    Emersons encourages hard work with the knowledge that their splits with the company improve with production. Ownership is available at certain production levels, and they support continued real estate education. The company listens to its people if there is criticism, and they attempt to keep disagreements to a minimum. Emersons encourages self-improvement as a means of growing its business.