Spark a Forever Flame this Valentine’s Day with the Iconic Zippo Windproof Lighters

Valentine’s Day is right around the corner, and for those who have not been prepping for it, shopping at the last minute can be quite a daunting task! While chocolates and roses might be a conventional choice, this year why not make an extra effort and woo your loved ones with the everlasting flame of a Zippo windproof lighter!

Pick from a stylish, rugged and fun range of windproof Zippo lighters – they’re the perfect style accessory coming in playful designs and vibrant colors. These scratch resistant lighters come with a lifetime guarantee, a fitting symbol of your everlasting love. Select lighters can even be customized by having a special message or name engraved – for the full selection, visit https://www.zippo.in/customise-it.html.

Choose from an array of new designs available on the William Penn Online Shop https://www.williampenn.net/, and in 28 William Penn stores and 3 shop-in-shop operations across 10 cities. 

Toyota Kirloskar Motor Launches “Service Express”, Car Service Now at Customers’ Doorstep

 

With ‘Customer First’ approach, aiming to cater to ever changing, evolving customer needs and expectations, Toyota Kirloskar Motor today announced the launch of ‘‘Service Express’, which focuses to provide convenience of car maintenance to customers at their closest access. Although Toyota has successful model of Mobile Service Vans operational, it focuses to provide only select service offerings in terms of break down services and minor repairs.

With the introduction of this ‘Service Express’ -, Toyota Kirloskar Motor pioneers in its segment, providing All Periodic Maintenance Services [Minor, Medium & Major], Express Maintenance in just an hour, Wheel Balancing, Wheel Alignment and even Eco-Car Wash. Further, Toyota also intends to provide car beautification services & minor body-paint jobs under this easy access servicing experience.

Under this initiative, currently Toyota covers the remote areas of Rajasthan, have been receiving positive feedbacks from customers on this doorstep service experience. The customers have been appreciative of Toyota’s concerted efforts and initiatives undertaken giving ease-of-access to car servicing. Now customers can avail this service in their own towns, while avoid travelling long distances for periodic vehicle maintenance.

Over the years, Toyota have been offering delightful Car Servicing experience to the customers uplifting the core values of service brand with “Quick & Quality Service by Qualified Manpower”. Toyota has built well-trained & qualified staffs to service high-quality world-class cars, offering premium service experience.

Keeping pace with the changing market dynamics, Toyota’s service initiatives offer a range of comprehensive services to its customers, offering a truly joyful ownership experience.  Toyota strives to deliver the best services by way of ‘QService_Quality Personalized with complete pack of Convenience and Transparency’ at low cost of maintenance, marking an experience of customer delight beyond one’s expectations.

Commenting on this new service offering, N. Raja, Deputy Managing Director - Toyota Kirloskar Motor, said, “Convenience plays a very important role towards providing delightful services and ensuring peace of mind to customers. At Toyota, we always listen to our customers’ voice and strive to make our service offerings ever-better, providing ease access to Toyota’s car care. Our aim is to limit the constraints of fixed location set-up of car servicing with ‘Quick Service’ offers at customers’ doorsteps, bringing the best-in-class service experience even closer with these ‘On-wheels’ touch-points.

Through this service, we express gratitude to our loyal customers towards the trust and admiration they have shown through the years towards our products and services.

Being a safety leader, it is our conscious effort to raise awareness on importance of regular maintenance of the cars to ensure safe driving experience. Through our world-class products and services, we continue to look forward to forging ever stronger bonds with our customers and partners.” He added.

In-line with its “Customer First” approach, Toyota conducts periodic service campaigns, promoting the importance of regular vehicle maintenance to ensure safe, comfortable and trouble-free drives, bringing an ever-new experience of owning Brand Toyota for its customers.

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Project Management Playing a Vital Role in Building Assets for Tomorrow

By Vineet Kumar, Lead Consultant BI & Analytics, 3i Infotech

Project management plays a vital role in proper planning and executing a project and to successfully accomplish a goal within a given time frame. In India, the project management jobs in project-oriented industries is expected to reach 21.7 million in 2027, according to Project Management Institute (PMI). We should create and monitor project methodology standards, provide advice and create an environment to support our project managers. As per a recent analysis by PMI, project managers contribute to a nation’s productivity, which supports GDP that in turn contributes to the standard of living. It is estimated that the GDP at risk due to the project management talent shortage is US $23.4 billion in India.

Our customers are spending significant services amount on consulting, implementation and system integration. Hence, going forward, our constant engagements would be on how to improve the customer service and satisfaction, enhance employee productivity and shorten project timelines. We should start building assets that can help us align for this and proactively suggest best practices based on what we have learnt from projects with other clients. We need to package our existing thought process that can help bridge gaps between expectations and reality. We need to ensure that our project management capability helps minimize the risks, control costs, improve speed to market and make substantial improvements in our margins.

Let’s delve into some of the best practices that we should implement to enhance the project effectiveness.

Project Governance: There must be a common governance structure and framework at the beginning of each project, outlining day-to-day operations with short term and long-term goals clearly laid out, and certain parties must be tasked with the responsibility of ensuring completion of the said goals. This includes pre-determined points at which the progress is evaluated and decisions about next steps are made. These decisions should be duly recorded and thoroughly communicated down the chain of command, if they are to be effective.

Monitor project management quality: Quality assurance in project management involves regulating and managing the services that the project delivers, ensuring that the quality and consistency is retained. The aspect of quality control incorporates a process of monitoring specific project results to check if they are met or not. The project management team should be aware of the following concepts:

Prevention (keeping errors out of the process) and inspection (keeping errors out of the hands of the customers)
Special cases (unusual events) and random causes (normal process variation).
Advice project managers on risk management: The risk control phase includes risk management plan which supports to address a risk, based on suitable cost-effective control strategies. Here, the focus is to proactively minimize the risks before it occurs or to reactively recover it from the loss and restore the normal process state. Apart from being advised, the project managers also need to evaluate risks and find out ways to mitigate it. They also must identify potential risks in a timely manner.

Analytics/Metrics development: Analytics in project management provides continual improvement process. It also helps project managers to make tactical decisions, thereby improving project success rate. Project management analytics ensures that the projects are completed on time and according to specifications. Project metrics measures the success of the project. Some of the key metrics that can be used in project management:

a. Operational Excellence Metrics: It is at the core of every project and must be tracked and reported on for every iteration.
b. Business Value Metrics: These are used to determine the business value of a project like Return on Investment that indicates the bottom line of the return on any investment; Earned Business Value which is used to track the value of the requirements being delivered; Net Present Value which is used in capital budgeting and investment planning, to analyze the profitability of projected investment and Internal Rate of Return which is used to evaluate the attractiveness of a project.
c. Human capital: This represents the skills, knowledge, and values of the development teams and their readiness to do their jobs.

Project templates: Project template provides patterns to project deliverables, serving to increase understanding, save time and improve the quality of project outcomes. Project templates need to serve as per customer preferences as different audience have different needs. It acts as a repository for the work products created during project life cycle. Providing your project team with options for what deliverables they use and how they use them provides a fit-to-purpose approach to project deliverables that will improve your project team efficiency.

Best practices to be implemented post project go-live: Post implementation reviews should assess how successful the system is in terms of functionality, performance, and cost versus benefits, as well as assess the effectiveness of the overall project life-cycle and areas of further development. Project managers can gain through historical views of similar projects which will show comparative efforts, cost and resource usage, that in turn provides a wealth of information to guide future projects.

Subex Wins 5-Year Deal from Umniah to Deploy ROC Revenue Assurance

Subex, a leading telecom analytics solution provider, has announced that it has closed a 5-year deal with Umniah to deploy ROC Revenue Assurance.

Umniah stands out as one of the fastest growing and most trusted telecommunications providers in Jordan. Since its launch in June 2005, Umniah has achieved a strong presence in Jordan’s competitive telecom market by offering high-quality mobile, internet, and business solutions while keeping abreast of the latest industry trends and ensuring customer satisfaction.

Subex was selected based on the Hadoop capabilities of ROC Revenue Assurance and the ability of the solution to meet the compliance needs of the scope. Through the integration of Hadoop, Subex will able be to reduce the Total Cost of Ownership (TCOs) of the implementation across the five-year span of the contract. The offering will also provide Umniah with a solution which is highly scalable, multi-functional and supports near real-time data transactions.

“We are delighted to partner with Umniah to deploy ROC Revenue Assurance. The deployment of Hadoop based ROC Revenue Assurance enhances Umniah's future readiness by providing flexibility to scale as required, enabling real-time Revenue Assurance, and by providing an unmatched customer experience while optimizing the cost of ownership. Subex solution portfolio has expanded to cover all areas of Business Assurance, Risk management and Security. We intend to work with Umniah to expand the coverage to these new areas and thereby provide them with a winning edge in the highly competitive marketplace.” said Vinod Kumar, CEO and Managing Director, Subex.

Ziad Shatara, CEO, Umniah said, “With Umniah operating in an extremely competitive environment, we were looking for a solution which would provide us with an edge over our peers in terms of offering the best customer experience. Through their Hadoop-based ROC Revenue Assurance, Subex was able to align with our goals, and deploy a solution which is highly flexible, scalable and compliant with our scope, while keeping TCOs low.”

Subex’s ROC Revenue Assurance is the industry’s first revenue assurance solution that simplifies RA. It helps customers in addressing revenue assurance challenges inherent to individual service verticals: Wireless, Fixed, Cable MSPs, and MVNOs. It also helps address revenue assurance across multiple functional areas such as service fulfillment, usage integrity, retail billing, interconnect/wholesale billing, and content settlement in addition to revenue management in marketing, campaign management, offer development and lead management. 

Falabella Group and ThoughtWorks Partner to Accelerate the Digital Commerce Journey of Latin America’s Leading Integrated Retail Brand

Falabella Corporate Services India Pvt. Ltd., part of retail giant S.A.C.I. Falabella, South America’s largest integrated retailer partners with ThoughtWorks India, a global software consultancy to fast track the ecommerce platform of the Falabella Group. The strategic partnership will give Falabella competitive advantages of customized, scalable and a secure platform that will integrate with its existing systems.

In line with the Group’s aspirations of being a formidable digital commerce player in the countries it serves – Chile, Peru, Colombia, Argentina, Brazil, Uruguay and Mexico, Falabella Corporate Services India will drive data driven and personalized customer shopping experience through ThoughtWorks digital platform strategy. This transformative journey will champion rapid experimentation, adoption of innovation and leverage principles of agile software development, design thinking, data analytics, product thinking, elastic infrastructure and evolutionary architecture – this digital platform architecture will be core to the Group’s vision.

Ashish Grover, Head eCommerce for Falabella and India Technology Head, reflecting on the e-commerce market in Latin America, stated, “The LatAm e-commerce market is expected to grow dramatically to almost 80 billion USD this year. This is a huge opportunity for us given Falabella’s diverse portfolio, which includes departmental stores, commercial financing, banking services, home construction & improvement, real estate, travel and insurance. We are looking at an integrated digital retail approach and leveraging our omni-channel strategy that expands to financial products and payments. Our partnership with ThoughtWorks will give us the added impetus to accelerate our digital commerce journey to provide our end customers with a seamless shopping experience.”

Daniel Arancibia, Managing Director for Falabella Corporate Services India commented, “As a 130-year-old organization in retail, being customer-centric is deeply ingrained in our DNA. This collaboration with ThoughtWorks is yet another step forward to deliver better customer experiences and aligns with our overall digital strategy.

Sudhir Tiwari, Managing Director for ThoughtWorks India had this to say on the alliance with Latin America’s biggest retail player, “We are living in exciting times where India is spearheading global product thinking and engineering. And, now with Latin America opening up to technological investments in the subcontinent, we have the opportunity to partner with Falabella to deliver innovation and strategic competitive advantage. This partnership is a big win for Global inhouse centers (GICs), who are continuously evolving their structures and operating models to keep moving up the value chain in their global partnerships.”

Jayesh Ghatge, Market Partner for ThoughtWorks India added by saying, “Falabella is one of the market leaders in the retail space in Latin America and are on the cusp of an ambitious digital transformation journey that will deliver unique customer experiences across their entire portfolio of companies. Couple that with ThoughtWorks’ global expertise in retail and digital platform strategy and product innovation, and we have a winning combination. The Latin American giant’s partnership with ThoughtWorks will usher Falabella into a data-led Intelligent Enterprise of the future.”

IAF Given Full Charge Of Selection And Training Of 10 "Vyomnauts" For Gaganyaan Mission

As India treads a step closer to unfurling the country’s flag in a manned mission to space ‘Gaganyaan’, the Indian Space Research Organization has tasked the Indian Air Force with the selection and training of the Gagannauts.

The Gaganyaan mission, as it's called, will launch from the Sriharikota spaceport in Andhra Pradesh sometime in 2022.

It will carry a three-man team of "Vyomnauts" into low-earth orbit, where they will stay for at least a week, and then return them to Earth for debriefing. The mission will use India's GSLV Mk III three-stage rocket and will be a collaborative effort between ISRO and other national agencies.

ISRO is taking help of the IAF to train 10 crew members of the country’s first human space flight programme.

ISRO Chairman, K Sivan informed media that they have finalized all the criteria and requirements for crew selection and training. The same has been submitted to the IAF.  The air force has now been given the full task of selection and training of the crew. The first two levels of training of the crew will happen at the IAF’s Institute of Aerospace Medicine (Bengaluru) and the final phase of training will be abroad.” he was quoted as saying.

He said that ISRO wants IAF to train at least 10 candidates out of which three will be selected for the maiden space journey. While there were reports last year that countries like France and Russia were extending their support to the mission.

It was reported that the French space agency, CNES will be combining their expertise in fields of space medicine, astronaut health monitoring, life support, radiation protection, space debris protection and personal hygiene systems to train future astronauts.

However, Sivan has said that no final call regarding crew training abroad has been taken so far. Meanwhile, on February 08, Hindustan Times had reported the Armed Forces Medical Services (AFMS) was planning to collaborate with ISRO to develop an aerospace medicine soon.

Lieutenant General Bipin Puri, the Director General of Armed Forces Medical Services told HT, “It (Gaganyaan) is an important event for all of us and hence steps towards developing the aviation medicines will be undertaken soon at the Bangalore-based laboratory.”

Reportedly, IAM (Institute of Aerospace Medicine) is affiliated to the Armed Forces Medical Services. The Institute provided medical support to the Indo-Soviet Manned Space Flight programme from 1982. Today, the Institute is the nodal agency in India for providing the best solutions in the fields of Aerospace Medicine. Recognized by the US and Russian Space Agencies, IAM has become the premier aeromedical centre in this part of the world.

To avoid endangering human lives in the first space manned mission, ISRO will conduct two unmanned missions before the final mission and will carry humanoids, a robot that resembles a human being.

While the first unmanned test flight will be carried out in December 2020, the second unmanned test will take place six months later in July 2021. Finally, the human space flight will be launched in December 2021.

If this mission succeeds, India will join an exclusive group of countries that have put humans into space. We'll be just the fourth behind Russia, the US, and China.

“meformycity”: An Initiative by Canara HSBC Oriental Bank of Commerce Life Insurance

Canara HSBC Oriental Bank of Commerce Life Insurance launched its “meformycity” initiative in Bengaluru. The initiative which promises to make our cities cleaner and beautiful through graffiti art held at 135/3, Vijaya Arcade, Lalbagh Road, Bengaluru.

One of its kind, the initiative reached its mid-leg in Bengaluru this year, after illustrating graffiti's at some of the busiest walls of Delhi, Gurugram, Mumbai and Mohali (Punjab).

Canara HSBC Oriental Bank of Commerce Life Insurance has taken this step to sensitize civilians about how a simple depiction & expression of the great Indian spirit on the walls of our cities can induce us in making our environment a better & cleaner place. The Company also revealed graffiti’s across two other locations – Kochi and Chennai.

Mr. Anuj Mathur, Managing Director & Chief Executive Officer, Canara HSBC Oriental Bank of Commerce Life Insurance said, “We take pride in doing our bit for the society and are also humbled by the phenomenal response by our audience. This has allowed us to be responsible and simultaneously connect with our audience in a better way.   We as a company encourage everyone in the organization to participate and do their bit to implement sustainable practices and make a positive impact for the environment. We also recognize the importance of educating people and keep doing awareness campaigns and employee volunteering activities to support the environment around the year.”

Ms. Tarannum Hasib, Chief Distribution Officer, Canara HSBC Oriental Bank of Commerce Life Insurance said, “Our promise has been to leave a legacy behind, where the society at large can come together and contribute towards making our cities cleaner & beautiful. We are extremely proud of hosting this initiative in Chennai and celebrating the great Indian sprit on the walls of Chennai, Bangalore & Kochi”.

Till date Canara HSBC Oriental Bank of Commerce Life Insurance has covered more than 10,000 square feet in creating graffiti across 7 Indian cities which have left an immense impact in creating awareness on cleanliness and making our environment a better place to live.

The company has partnered with Radio Mirchi to create outreach campaigns on Radio and reach the audience digitally.