Day: December 4, 2018

#ICYMI: Excellence in Executive Education recognizes executive education providers that have delivered a targeted executive education program for a client that has delivered measurable results.

GOLD

The Regis Co.

Northwestern Mutual Life Insurance Co.’s business model is based on having a strong field presence in communities where its district and field offices support financial representatives. These representatives are responsible for developing relationships with customers who ultimately purchase the Milwaukee-based company’s products and services. With the goal of expanding its sales force, Northwestern Mutual was looking to increase development efforts to build the skills of its emerging leaders to be able to lead the growing organization.

To create this leadership pipeline, the company came up with Leadership NEXT. The invitation-only, three-year, high-potential program debuted in 2014 and includes simulations and experiences that allow participants the opportunity to improve and focus on their leadership skills. These experiences include real-world applications focusing on the financial acumen of running a small business, leadership development, and other leadership competencies in a peer-to-peer setting, according to the company’s application.

Initially, to help determine the needs and strengths of Northwestern Mutual’s financial representatives, The Regis Co., a developer of custom simulation-based experiences, conducted interviews that were then codified in a needs document. Next, a cross-functional design session was held with financial representatives, leadership and stakeholders. Finally, working with Regis, Northwestern Mutual designed the NEXT Simulation Board Game, the primary activity in the Leadership NEXT program. The game is designed for six teams, with each team representing the leadership in an Northwestern Mutual office. As the teams play the game, they encounter tasks that emulate running an office, including making investments and ROI impact, as well as situations in which leaders must make financial decisions unique to running an office. The game is delivered in a live, facilitated session to prompt discussion among participants. Each year, the game can be updated to reflect new challenges facing Northwestern Mutual.

While it’s too early to tell whether the program has made an impact in market share and improved financial representative performance, behaviors have changed among its target audience, according to the company’s application. Observations by Northwestern Mutual executive leadership share that participants are making fewer decisions alone. They are engaging more people in their offices when making difficult decisions, which will hopefully create better change-management processes and clearer communication in the long term.

Northwestern Mutual has also experienced an increase in its executive leader succession pool. Due to the NEXT program, more sales leaders are expressing interest in becoming a managing partner; Northwestern Mutual reports a 400 percent increase in interest among sales leaders to continue to executive roles in the company.

SILVER

NovoEd

As part of its Strategy 2020 goal, Clorox wanted to gain a competitive advantage by developing an industry-leading supply chain. The company enlisted the help of Scheller College of Business at Georgia Tech, which was already providing successful executive education to senior leaders for the company. These senior leaders felt that in order to execute changes in the business, lower-level managers needed to be properly trained as well. But bringing in Clorox managers for a two-week offsite program was not feasible for both logistical and budgetary reasons.

To meet this need, Scheller created a blended online program, Global Operations Leadership Forum. The program utilizes the NovoEd learning platform to incorporate online learning with an onsite residential component at the Georgia Tech campus, allowing participants to interact with Georgia Tech faculty and network.

The GOLF program focuses on three areas crucial to implementing an industry-leading supply chain — strategic thinking, operational excellence and leadership development — and lasts eight weeks. The first two weeks are completed online. Participants learn about basic topics, divide into small groups and work on team assignments. Week three is held in-person and consists of three days on campus at the Scheller School of Business, with seminars led by faculty and subject matter experts. The final four weeks are held online and consist of a continuation of learning content and one team assignment per week.

The program requires three to four hours per week spent in the NovoEd learning platform. Each week, the teams are expected to meet via video conference at a time of their choosing to work on and submit their team assignment. In the platform, each team has its own private workspace in which they can schedule times to meet virtually, have discussions and share documents. Team assignments receive feedback from instructors and staff so participants are receiving both peer and expert feedback during the program.

By building a greater sense of accountability and relying on each other in teams, the initiative has garnered a nearly 100 percent completion rate. Based on survey feedback, participants reported a high level of impact on their activities and management of supply chain initiatives.

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#ICYMI: A couple of quintillion of bytes are generated every day. Data is all around you. And every day we perceive new data and our brain processes it constantly. But we cannot constantly work with huge data volumes efficiently, that is where special algorithms for processing Big Data come in. Bis Data contributes to many fields of activity, and today it is rapidly being integrated into the real estate sector.

Why is Big Data changing real estate sector?

Nowadays IT technologies drastically change the structure of the commercial real estate market. Innovative technologies change almost everything in the real estate sector, starting from the business model building, human resources management or optimization of expenditures. Big Data is one of the technologies that gained its popularity in the real estate markets of many countries. The goal of Big Data technology is to automate the analysis of huge amounts of data from multiple information sources. And human capabilities will not be enough to process all this data. Therefore, companies will be able to optimize financial costs, time, and achieve a more accurate result that won’t be affected by a human factor. Big Data works with machine learning to solve main business tasks. Huge data massive is analyzed according to set algorithm, and artificial intelligence provides people with the solution of a specific task. The most widespread example – credit appraisal of a borrower in banking or microfinance sector. Many banks already make their decisions on loan issuance on the basis of the verdict from an automated system.

The future of Big Data in real estate

Big Data potential usage on real estate market is multipurpose. If it comes to an end consumer, then real estate Big Data can help consumers appraise objectively various real estate objects by multiple parameters. Modern real estate databases offer rather limited information volume about different objects interesting for you.

* For example, real estate predictive analytics with Big Data technology helps to estimate the time you need to spend to go to the specified object in rush hour, how many schools and kindergartens are located in this area, and other related issues;

* Thus, Big Data makes it possible for an individual to make a quick decision whether he/she needs to waste their time on this object or it is better to choose something else.

As for business, Big Data potential can also be titanic. Technology can be highly efficient for marketing fields starting from personalized offers to end consumer to the determination of real estate object type with all tiny properties that can be built in that or another location.

Advantages of Big Data in real estate

So what are Big Data benefits that make it possible both for real estate agents and consumers improve their interaction with this field? It is time to find out. Risks reduction First, we should clarify that commercial real estate companies start using Big Data since it helps them reduce financial risks. How is it implemented? Using predictive analytics in real estate, companies can analyze the total condition of the building, its age, how solid it is, all reconstructions that were made before, and the information about the current owner. Based on all the above, real estate companies can make a correct estimation of the real property and provide customers with detailed recommendations and information. Moreover, real estate agents can quickly find appropriate variants for customers that meet their demands and preferences. Improved customers’ engagement. Data-driven analysis can come to the rescue. Real estate agents often come across ambiguous and unclear customers’ behavior which cannot explain why they don’t like this house or why they don’t want to buy it. That is where analysis using Big Data can help solve this issue once and for all. Predictive analytics for real estate is very important. Special tools developed by software development companies like Cleveroad can analyze the needs of consumers and improve their engagement. Perhaps, undetermined requirements of customers may even come to naught eventually and agents/companies will offer customers what those want to get. Detailed and precise appraisals When people sell or buy a house/apartment, they want to know its real price. And the process of the correct estimation is rather difficult and long since it requires full information about the building condition, location, area and so on. So prices can be changed drastically depending on many factors. Big Data is an option, as always. Using special analytical tools, real estate agents are able to perform accurate appraisal and set a real value for the indicated building. Big Data will provide users with actual information on the basis of the neighborhood, area, total conditions of buildings and so on. Thus, agents and consumers can get the most realistic price, and both parties benefit. Using Big Data, the real estate sector can be completely modified. https://goo.gl/aV4iiT