Certain Online Marketing Stratagems That Are Essential in 2017

Online marketing has imposed a big impact on both the smaller & bigger organizations. In fact, it is actually wiping out the traditional marketing through its approach. The concept of online marketing is also relative and varies from organization to organization depending on their amplitude, work culture & capital. With a lot of techniques that belong to different categories, online marketing has a bouquet of strategies for all the organizations, whether small or large, whether with a huge capital investment not.A big part of the online marketers think that online marketing is limited to SEO, SMO & SEM, where in reality, a lot of other online marketing strategies have already arrived at the end of 2016 and some of them are still coming since the beginning of 2017. So, as the field of online marketing is quite vast and very much volatile, therefore, the biggest online marketing experts always do the experiment and upgrade themselves to cope up with these changes.But geniuses are geniuses and we can’t wait for being one of them without doing nothing. So, before we lose the game and stay backward, here are certain strategies for you that are dominantly impacting the field of online marketing in the present year of 2017 too!Voice searchNot to say much, Google itself is emerging to the voice call search process. As online marketing majorly works around the search protocol, so the evolution of this latest search technique makes the game easier! Search by voice takes comparatively lesser time and freedom to choose the language users to want and is practically a very optimized method than the general search because it is easier and rapid in terms of showing results on the SERPs. With the rapid growth of voice search on the smartphones over almost all the countries of the world, the reach of this type of search has grabbed half the world of online marketing with its flexibility, smoothness and facilitated terms & conditions.Niche Content CurationGoogle now supports GIFs & videos on the SERPs that directly approach the viewers once they open the page. Once any topic is searched, along with the text contents and images, videos and GIF files also open up to optimize the understanding of the users. The crawler of Google crawls the websites and find out the videos and GIFs and when anyone searches for the niche term, the related videos and GIFs are displayed from the cache. This process has already started in the larger portion of the USA and in the near future, it is expected that this feature will dominate the entire virtual world.Mobile Responsive MarketingThe ‘big switch’ from the big screen to the small screen, more specifically, from desktop to smartphones has compelled the invention of responsive content. As more and more people are accessing the websites through the smartphones, along with the design, the contents need to be mobile friendly. To keep pace with this change, the online marketing strategies are also evolving into being mobile responsive.Live Streaming Cuts The Snow!To redeem online marketing from its old, almost obsolete freezing mode, the social media sites have launched the live streaming in the year 2016. The concept clarifies the objective that checking out the ‘at present scenario’ of the host makes the branding strong. With the help of the faster internet facility and the omnipresence of the smartphones, live video streaming channelizes the constant flow of endorsement and grab the attention of more public. As the amenity gets more and more attention, it is to hope that in the present year, we are going to get this feature more optimized.The ‘Go Getter’ Influencer MarketingInfluencer marketing is the latest in, in the online marketing in 2016. As a consequence, more and more industries are striving to apply this strategy, but without a proper knowledge of how to leverage it for a proper business progression. As influencer marketing focuses less on the direct approach to the targeted group of customers and focuses more on the key leaders or influencers to generate more traffic to your business, it empowers the online marketing from a new perspective.Content Marketing & Dense ContentContent density is the major requirement of organic SEO services. High-quality content and proper keyword stuffing in a website helps to grab the attention of the viewers and enables the website to gain the traffic easily.The ratio of the content on a page and the size of it is referred as content density. If a web page has a higher content density rate it ranks better in the Search Engine Ranking Pages or SERPs. This is because, with a higher content density rate, the crawler crawls the website and finds it more quickly.As people have less time to read the entire article, highlighting the particular portion of the articles that can make the deal is the key to success. Dense content marketing focuses on the chosen content that helps in achieving a good deal of traffic through content marketing.

Best Skin Care: Top 10 Skin Care Tips

Healthy skin is probably the most important aspect of natural beauty-enhancement. Below you will find the top 10 best skin care tips. Though there are certainly more than 10 important tips to getting the most beautiful skin possible, this skin care tips list is limited to the top 10 that cover the critical points of skin care. Here they are:1. Know Your Skin Type. Determining your skin type is the first thing that must be done because it will determine the products you choose and the daily regimen that you will follow. There is no one product that will suit every skin type. Your type will be classified as dry, oily, or combination. Look for products that specifically deal with your particular type.2. Drink Plenty of Water. This cannot be stressed enough. Drinking lots of water will keep your skin moist and will aid in your overall health. Your skin is the biggest organ of your body and it requires a lot of water in order to be at its best. This is one of the most important tips for overall best skin care.3. Cleanse the skin twice a day. Every day we are exposed to dust, free radicals and outside pollutants that can damage our skin. Even though our skin doesn’t look “dirty”, we must be sure to cleanse regularly and twice a day is the recommended amount. When bathing or cleansing your face, use lukewarm water instead of very hot or very cold water because both of those may damage the skin as well.4. Treat your skin gently. Scrubbing the skin or exfoliating too often is not good for your skin. Never rub, but gently massage the cleanser into your face using upward circular motions. As you age, the skin loses its elasticity and rubbing it or pulling it can actually cause the skin to sag.5. Use a moisturizer. Dry skin looks bad because it’s not getting the proper nutrients that it needs. The dryness will actually cause your outer layer of skin to crack which results in an unattractive look. Choose a moisturizer that is right for your skin type and apply it over damp skin. Also ensure it’s a good quality product that contains the necessary nutrients for best skin care.6. NEVER use body soap on the face. This type of soap is meant for use below the neck. Only use cleansers that are made for the face because they are much more gentle on your skin.7. Use Sunscreen. This point cannot be stressed enough. Using sunscreen will protect your skin against the harmful UV radiation from the sun. You may think that if it’s cloudy that you don’t need sunscreen, but that’s not true. Skin cancer can be caused by exposure to UV rays so don’t forget this very important skin care tip.8. Exercise and get plenty of sleep. Both are essential for great skin and overall health. Lack of sleep and lack of exercise are both causes of sagging skin and wrinkles. Both exercise and sleep will help you to overcome any stress in your life which makes you look and feel better.9. Don’t ignore skin conditions. Be sure to pay attention to your skin and if you notice any abnormalities, consult your dermatologist immediately. It’s best to find out what the condition is before you start self-diagnosing and treating it yourself, which could lead to more problems.10. Try to beat stress. Though we all have stress in our lives, there are ways to lessen it. Understand that stress is harmful in so many ways to your health and to your appearance. It will harm the skin as well so be mindful of this and try to do things to help lessen the stress in your life.

Best in Class Finance Functions For Police Forces

Background

Police funding has risen by £4.8 billion and 77 per cent (39 per cent in real terms) since 1997. However the days where forces have enjoyed such levels of funding are over.

Chief Constables and senior management recognize that the annual cycle of looking for efficiencies year-on-year is not sustainable, and will not address the cash shortfall in years to come.
Facing slower funding growth and real cash deficits in their budgets, the Police Service must adopt innovative strategies which generate the productivity and efficiency gains needed to deliver high quality policing to the public.

The step-change in performance required to meet this challenge will only be achieved if the police service fully embraces effective resource management and makes efficient and productive use of its technology, partnerships and people.

The finance function has an essential role to play in addressing these challenges and supporting Forces’ objectives economically and efficiently.

Challenge

Police Forces tend to nurture a divisional and departmental culture rather than a corporate one, with individual procurement activities that do not exploit economies of scale. This is in part the result of over a decade of devolving functions from the center to the.divisions.

In order to reduce costs, improve efficiency and mitigate against the threat of “top down” mandatory, centrally-driven initiatives, Police Forces need to set up a corporate back office and induce behavioral change. This change must involve compliance with a corporate culture rather than a series of silos running through the organization.

Developing a Best in Class Finance Function

Traditionally finance functions within Police Forces have focused on transactional processing with only limited support for management information and business decision support. With a renewed focus on efficiencies, there is now a pressing need for finance departments to transform in order to add greater value to the force but with minimal costs.

1) Aligning to Force Strategy

As Police Forces need finance to function, it is imperative that finance and operations are closely aligned. This collaboration can be very powerful and help deliver significant improvements to a Force, but in order to achieve this model, there are many barriers to overcome. Finance Directors must look at whether their Force is ready for this collaboration, but more importantly, they must consider whether the Force itself can survive without it.

Finance requires a clear vision that centers around its role as a balanced business partner. However to achieve this vision a huge effort is required from the bottom up to understand the significant complexity in underlying systems and processes and to devise a way forward that can work for that particular organization.

The success of any change management program is dependent on its execution. Change is difficult and costly to execute correctly, and often, Police Forces lack the relevant experience to achieve such change. Although finance directors are required to hold appropriate professional qualifications (as opposed to being former police officers as was the case a few years ago) many have progressed within the Public Sector with limited opportunities for learning from and interaction with best in class methodologies. In addition cultural issues around self-preservation can present barriers to change.

Whilst it is relatively easy to get the message of finance transformation across, securing commitment to embark on bold change can be tough. Business cases often lack the quality required to drive through change and even where they are of exceptional quality senior police officers often lack the commercial awareness to trust them.

2) Supporting Force Decisions

Many Finance Directors are keen to develop their finance functions. The challenge they face is convincing the rest of the Force that the finance function can add value – by devoting more time and effort to financial analysis and providing senior management with the tools to understand the financial implications of major strategic decisions.

Maintaining Financial Controls and Managing Risk

Sarbanes Oxley, International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS), Basel II and Individual Capital Assessments (ICA) have all put financial controls and reporting under the spotlight in the private sector. This in turn is increasing the spotlight on financial controls in the public sector.

A ‘Best in Class’ Police Force finance function will not just have the minimum controls to meet the regulatory requirements but will evaluate how the legislation and regulations that the finance function are required to comply with, can be leveraged to provide value to the organization. Providing strategic information that will enable the force to meet its objectives is a key task for a leading finance function.

3) Value to the Force

The drive for development over the last decade or so, has moved decision making to the Divisions and has led to an increase in costs in the finance function. Through utilizing a number of initiatives in a program of transformation, a Force can leverage up to 40% of savings on the cost of finance together with improving the responsiveness of finance teams and the quality of financial information. These initiatives include:

Centralization

By centralizing the finance function, a Police Force can create centers of excellence where industry best practice can be developed and shared. This will not only re-empower the department, creating greater independence and objectivity in assessing projects and performance, but also lead to more consistent management information and a higher degree of control. A Police Force can also develop a business partner group to act as strategic liaisons to departments and divisions. The business partners would, for example, advise on how the departmental and divisional commanders can meet the budget in future months instead of merely advising that the budget has been missed for the previous month.

With the mundane number crunching being performed in a shared service center, finance professionals will find they now have time to act as business partners to divisions and departments and focus on the strategic issues.

The cultural impact on the departments and divisional commanders should not be underestimated. Commanders will be concerned that:

o Their budgets will be centralized
o Workloads would increase
o There will be limited access to finance individuals
o There will not be on site support

However, if the centralized shared service center is designed appropriately none of the above should apply. In fact from centralization under a best practice model, leaders should accrue the following benefits:

o Strategic advice provided by business partners
o Increased flexibility
o Improved management information
o Faster transactions
o Reduced number of unresolved queries
o Greater clarity on service and cost of provision
o Forum for finance to be strategically aligned to the needs of the Force

A Force that moves from a de-centralized to a centralized system should try and ensure that the finance function does not lose touch with the Chief Constable and Divisional Commanders. Forces need to have a robust business case for finance transformation combined with a governance structure that spans operational, tactical and strategic requirements. There is a risk that potential benefits of implementing such a change may not be realized if the program is not carefully managed. Investment is needed to create a successful centralized finance function. Typically the future potential benefits of greater visibility and control, consistent processes, standardized management information, economies of scale, long-term cost savings and an empowered group of proud finance professionals, should outweigh those initial costs.

To reduce the commercial, operational and capability risks, the finance functions can be completely outsourced or partially outsourced to third parties. This will provide guaranteed cost benefits and may provide the opportunity to leverage relationships with vendors that provide best practice processes.

Process Efficiencies

Typically for Police Forces the focus on development has developed a silo based culture with disparate processes. As a result significant opportunities exist for standardization and simplification of processes which provide scalability, reduce manual effort and deliver business benefit. From simply rationalizing processes, a force can typically accrue a 40% reduction in the number of processes. An example of this is the use of electronic bank statements instead of using the manual bank statement for bank reconciliation and accounts receivable processes. This would save considerable effort that is involved in analyzing the data, moving the data onto different spreadsheet and inputting the data into the financial systems.

Organizations that possess a silo operating model tend to have significant inefficiencies and duplication in their processes, for example in HR and Payroll. This is largely due to the teams involved meeting their own goals but not aligning to the corporate objectives of an organization. Police Forces have a number of independent teams that are reliant on one another for data with finance in departments, divisions and headquarters sending and receiving information from each other as well as from the rest of the Force. The silo model leads to ineffective data being received by the teams that then have to carry out additional work to obtain the information required.

Whilst the argument for development has been well made in the context of moving decision making closer to operational service delivery, the added cost in terms of resources, duplication and misaligned processes has rarely featured in the debate. In the current financial climate these costs need to be recognized.

Culture

Within transactional processes, a leading finance function will set up targets for staff members on a daily basis. This target setting is an element of the metric based culture that leading finance functions develop. If the appropriate metrics of productivity and quality are applied and when these targets are challenging but not impossible, this is proven to result in improvements to productivity and quality.

A ‘Best in Class’ finance function in Police Forces will have a service focused culture, with the primary objectives of providing a high level of satisfaction for its customers (departments, divisions, employees & suppliers). A ‘Best in Class’ finance function will measure customer satisfaction on a timely basis through a metric based approach. This will be combined with a team wide focus on process improvement, with process owners, that will not necessarily be the team leads, owning force-wide improvement to each of the finance processes.

Organizational Improvements

Organizational structures within Police Forces are typically made up of supervisors leading teams of one to four team members. Through centralizing and consolidating the finance function, an opportunity exists to increase the span of control to best practice levels of 6 to 8 team members to one team lead / supervisor. By adjusting the organizational structure and increasing the span of control, Police Forces can accrue significant cashable benefit from a reduction in the number of team leads and team leads can accrue better management experience from managing larger teams.

Technology Enabled Improvements

There are a significant number of technology improvements that a Police Force could implement to help develop a ‘Best in Class’ finance function.

These include:

A) Scanning and workflow

Through adopting a scanning and workflow solution to replace manual processes, improved visibility, transparency and efficiencies can be reaped.

B) Call logging, tracking and workflow tool

Police Forces generally have a number of individuals responding to internal and supplier queries. These queries are neither logged nor tracked. The consequence of this is dual:

o Queries consume considerable effort within a particular finance team. There is a high risk of duplicated effort from the lack of logging of queries. For example, a query could be responded to for 30 minutes by person A in the finance team. Due to this query not being logged, if the individual that raised the query called up again and spoke to a different person then just for one additional question, this could take up to 20 minutes to ensure that the background was appropriately explained.

o Queries can have numerous interfaces with the business. An unresolved query can be responded against by up to four separate teams with considerable delay in providing a clear answer for the supplier.

The implementation of a call logging, tracking and workflow tool to document, measure and close internal and supplier queries combined with the set up of a central queries team, would significantly reduce the effort involved in responding to queries within the finance departments and divisions, as well as within the actual divisions and departments, and procurement.

C) Database solution

Throughout finance departments there are a significant number of spreadsheets utilized prior to input into the financial system. There is a tendency to transfer information manually from one spreadsheet to another to meet the needs of different teams.

Replacing the spreadsheets with a database solution would rationalize the number of inputs and lead to effort savings for the front line Police Officers as well as Police Staff.

D) Customize reports

In obtaining management information from the financial systems, police staff run a series of reports, import these into excel, use lookups to match the data and implement pivots to illustrate the data as required. There is significant manual effort that is involved in carrying out this work. Through customizing reports the outputs from the financial system can be set up to provide the data in the formats required through the click of a button. This would have the benefit of reduced effort and improved motivation for team members that previously carried out these mundane tasks.

In designing, procuring and implementing new technology enabling tools, a Police Force will face a number of challenges including investment approval; IT capacity; capability; and procurement.

These challenges can be mitigated through partnering with a third party service company with whom the investment can be shared, the skills can be provided and the procurement cycle can be minimized.

Conclusion

It is clear that cultural, process and technology change is required if police forces are to deliver both sustainable efficiencies and high quality services. In an environment where for the first time forces face real cash deficits and face having to reduce police officer and support staff numbers whilst maintaining current performance levels the current finance delivery models requires new thinking.

While there a number of barriers to be overcome in achieving a best in class finance function, it won’t be long before such a decision becomes mandatory. Those who are ahead of the curve will inevitably find themselves in a stronger position.