The fine 'Art of Disruption'

the fine 'art of disruption'. 

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Simple online search to a memorable offline experience

“At the core of every organisation is the product that outlines what the organisation does, and at the core of every product is the consumer who decides what he/she/it prefers”.

Isn't this what every enterprise small, medium or large is aspiring to achieve? How often do we get to experience the “ah!” brand moment ourselves? I am sure, we all do. Well, here is an experience of my own, unexpectedly in a small, elegant fine dine restaurant in the beautiful area of Erlangen in Germany, located just a few kilometers from the city of Nuremberg.

The online experience

Few days prior to my anniversary, I was in search of a fine dine restaurant. Being on the move, I performed a quick mobile Google search - “Fine dining in Erlangen” and the relevant recommendations popped up in top half of the search page. Using the coordinates listed on the search page, I reviewed few of them online, and later called this restaurant to reserve a place for two.

The offline experience

On the eve of the anniversary, as we settled down at our table, the headwaiter greeted us with a pleasing smile. After exchanging pleasantries we turned for the menu, and were surprised to hear that the restaurant didn't have any. Instead they preferred that the Chef is introduced to the guests first hand and prepare something delicious to suit the palate of the guests. The Chef went on to ask us “what do you feel like having today?” (In German). They spoke German or Italian, and very little English, and we somehow managed to communicate with each other. As he continued he faced a challenge in front of him (evident when he said “Mamma Mia!”) – What to serve a vegetarian, in the 4-course menu? I could understand the difficulty of the task — being Germany, and intending to eat in a fine dine Italian restaurant, without meat, a staple in diets of both these regions. They took a few minutes to get to know my palate and my likes, and said I am in for a great night. I was hoping it wasn't sarcastic.

That “ah!” moment

The rest of the evening, I was served with 3-course vegetarian dishes at the right time followed by a dessert that were scrumptious. One of the dishes was not to my satisfaction, but I was offered an extra desert at no additional cost to compensate. Honestly, I wasn't expecting anything spectacular, but dining at this restaurant turned out to be more than just a meal for me. It was a very memorable experience for a perfect date!

The repeat mode

Hoping it wasn't a onetime wonder, I repeated my visits on two other occasions, and unexpectedly returned with a positive experience every time. Later, I went on to share my recommendations with my friends and colleagues.

Key learning's

This was a personal experience on how a simple mobile search led me to the right content and reviews that drove me to the right restaurant which delivered the right product and unexpectedly an excellent customer service.

Despite being a local brand, the experience this small restaurant generated has left quite an impression on me to recommend this eating place to anyone visiting Erlangen. Isn't this what we are trying to achieve within the offline and online space today? The message from our day to day being is simple - the content that your consumers want is out there in various channels, namely the web, social, retail stores, wholesale, TV etc. – you name it! Now, imagine only if your brand could take the locally relevant contents to the remotest regions that helps generate a personalized experienced for your consumers, so they could take informed decisions and experience something amazing and exhilarating. Wouldn't keeping the person in the personalized and customized experience be like achieving nirvana for your brand? That’s exactly what this little Italian restaurant nestled in a corner of Erlangen did.

Engage with Anand Rao via twitter @anands_rao

Readings also available at https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/simple-online-search-memorable-offline-experience-anand-rao

Notes from Gartner's Digital Business Conference in London, UK on Sep 4, 2014

My notes from the Gartner’s Digital Business Conference “Taking the Business Digital: Your time is Now” in London, UK on Sep 4^th, 2014.

The presentation was divided into two subjects facilitated by two Gartner leads,
> The State of Digital Marketing – Jennifer Beck
> Social and Mobile Marketing – Jennifer Polk

The following is the random scribbling from the (well-presented) Gartner conference for your reference. Kindly ignore the grammar and structure. 

THE STATE OF DIGITAL MARKETING

The digital organisation today, in collaboration with marketers and IT, plan on investing their budgets on,

• Building a seamless Consumer Experience (CX) journey for their consumers 
• Developing a robust Content Marketing strategy for context relevant engagement
• A Loyalty program that craves for advocac
• Data, yes you read it right. This is the holy grail of everything an organisation needs to know about a piece of content or track their consumer's digital footprint
• Developing program standards for the marketing of two speeds - reactive campaigns and full blown projects
• Conceptualising experience across touch points across multiple channels to connect with the consumers anytime, anyplace, with relevant content

CONSUMER FIRST

• The latest battle that the brands fight today is that of developing a seamless consumer brand experience across all channel touch points. 
• The buyer journey today is no longer linear. Consumers are looking for a “great experience” across channels. However, the definition of “great experience” keeps changing. It extends beyond brands’ products & services. And the line between products & services is non-existent.
• Gartner says, by 2016, 91% of companies will compete on the basis of the customer experience. 
• Brands & vendors/agencies must constantly evolve their capabilities around UX, content strategy to keep pace with the digital and consumer trends, else they will be left behind. Remember your competitor is just a click away!!

STORY SCAPING

• To succeed in digital business build the dream and vision for your clients, excellence is in the delivery. Tell constructive stories to your leads to elevate your pitch.
• Rethink your sales model by focusing on solutions than talking about pain points. CxOs know their pain points, they want to know what you are going to solve for them and how you are going to solve for them. Focus your pitches on these aspects.
• One question that every CxO’s would ask the sales account directors – What are you here to do for me? Why should I be spending my valuable time with you? This is not new, and always existed. Articulate your value propositions clearly.
• Today, CIO's are looking to engage with vendors who have clear visibility on how they are helping brands solve their challenges rather than talking about just technology and systems. Back to the first point - it's about story scaping!

IT’S AN AD, AD WORLD

• Marketing world is all about ads and engagement. 
• Buyers are channel blind. They don’t see channels, they see engagement, they experience.
• More and more brands are looking to evolve content marketing into their digital strategy - offline or online, across channels.
• They want to enable the discovery of intellectual, contextually relevant content in-house for their employees or curate contents to meet their consumer needs across channels.

LOYALTY IS GOOD, ADVOCACY IS BETTER

• A set of consumers who may have been loyal for many years, and some of who may have been inactive, will only generate a fraction of revenue and brand impression as compared to a recently  acquired consumer who talks about the brand with friends and families. Target such consumers. They are the one's who will build advocacy, and ultimately resulting in more revenue and brand impression for you.
• Get it right with the right team. Focus on tracking the consumer behaviour through marketing automation programs to deliver contextually relevant content to consumers.

BE SOCIAL, BE MOBILE

• The young today is always connected – on mobile, in social. 
• Gartner says, 71% of consumers use their smartphones atleast 5x per day
• Gartner says, online search using mobile device continues to be the leading trend followed by social
• Gartner says, Mobile traffic drives 22.3% of the revenue, whereas Social traffic drives 18.3% of the revenue

Brands and vendors who talk about mobile first, social first have to act fast. Just being mobile first, social first is thing of the past. Today you need to be talking mobile always, social always.

THE CMO vs CIO CHALLENGE

• CMO’s have always hunted for profits and demanded results. Gartner says, CMO’s will spend more on technology than CIO’s by 2017. Whereas CIO’s have always focused on business case and demanded cost optimisation & technology consolidation. 
• They both are right, but the stairway to heaven is in focusing on a digitally led organisation.
• The digital organisation structure today is being promoted in many firms to bridge this gap. The primary digital roles with budget, control and where digital marketing is critical to success are,

o   Consumer experience leader

o   Digital commerce leader

o   Marketing technology leader

o   Marketing analytics leader

o   Multichannel marketing leader

GARTNER DIGITAL MARKETING

Access to more (and much accurate) details from Gartner on http://www.gartner.com/marketing/digital/

Holding the Social media Torch @ Olympics 2012

mobile statistics stats facts infographic (2011)

By 2014, mobile internet is set to overtake fixed internet access. This was the big headline from Microsoft Tag's Mobile Marketing Infographic last year.

Source: Microsoft Tag

Insanely cluttered Social Media Marketing agencies

Source: Luma Partners

A Complete Guide To Every VC Firm Doing Digital Investments

15 keys facts and conclusions to know the future of the Internet in 2015.

Digital Life: Today & Tomorrow from Neo Labels on Vimeo.

Bitcoins - a decentralized digital currency

Adam Smith, the father of modern economics, distinguished between “value in use” and “value in exchange” – in his own words: “The word VALUE, it is to be observed, has two different meanings, and sometimes expresses the utility of some particular object, and sometimes the power of purchasing other goods which the possession of that object conveys. The one may be called ‘value in use’; the other, ‘value in exchange’. The things which have the greatest value in use have frequently little or no value in exchange; on the contrary, those which have the greatest value in exchange have frequently little or no value in use. Nothing is more useful than water: but it will purchase scarce anything; scarce anything can be had in exchange for it. A diamond, on the contrary, has scarce any use-value; but a very great quantity of other goods may frequently be had in exchange for it”.

According to Smith, the value in exchange is the power of a commodity to purchase other goods and whose objective measure is expressed in the market. A virtual adaptation of this want-based value in exchange now exists, also called – “Bitcoins” (Currency: B). Ever heard of it before? Perhaps you have not been labeled as one of those into-the-digital world technology geeks whose life revolves around the digital space and virtual worlds. Not that I am one either, but hey, then we all know that curiosity killed the cat. I was enlightened about Bitcoin’s existence whilst working with a media and entertainment start-up on devising and supporting partnership concept for payment gateways. Whilst evaluating the consumer behaviour, apparently this medium of payment caught my attention; that’s how the inquisitiveness built-up. At that time Linden Dollars, QQ Coins, and Facebook credits were just starting up.

Wait you are still wondering what a Bitcoin is anyways? – It is world’s first digital currency that was devised in 2009 by a programmer called, or atleast he/ she is believed to be called, "Satoshi Nakomoto". Bitcoins are digital currencies (coins) that are earned by solving real-time networking security problems. These coins then can be traded for real currencies on exchanges (where Bitcoin trading is legal), or for goods from certain businesses that accept them. Now read this: Bitcoin is a concept run by internet users and not by any business or bank. The concept of exchanging Bitcoins needs only a computer, an internet network, and a flash drive, which also acts as your locker. Since the concept was devised on open source, anyone could view the code. For this reason you as an individual must have basic computer security knowledge to ensure that there is no digital theft or hacks. Still confused on how it works? Ok so try this analogy – ever heard of peer-to-peer music sharing - hello Napster: the bane to the media and entertainment industry, and a boon to the pirates. If you haven’t heard about Napster, then it is about time you got your foundation right. Coming back to the point, the Bitcoins work like peer-to-peer music sharing networks, except that they are a decentralized internet society. The demand for the same grows as long as the internet users use Bitcoins and circulate it.

Bitcoin has no banks to report to, nor it is associated with one (remember I mentioned, the concept is driven by users and users alone), so you just end up saving extra $$$ that you always wanted to, in order to avoid paying those extra commissions and fees to set-up and maintain an account. In other words, it has no central monetary authority to monitor the transactions online, which only means that is unlikely to expand beyond a few niche segments such as the online gamblers, hackers and other ill repute behind the screen underground characters. Some good things about the use of this digital currency are that transactions across the globe become easier – and moreover it is free. Also your account is never frozen or kept inactive – so you can now plan on an epic timeless expedition across the globe without stressing about what happened to your account. It also forms a great way of conducting easy transactions for petite and freelance businesses. Wouldn't you want to have such a thing when you aren't investing much? And yes, you need not worry about the inflation, since the supply of the digital coins is done at a predetermined rate. At the time the concept began the value of one Bitcoin was approximately about 60 US cents, and at the time of this blog post, it was trading at approximately US $15. You may want to check the website ‘Mt.Gox’, that allows trading of US Dollars (USD) for Bitcoins or Bitcoins for USD, 24/7 - now wouldn't you want such a hassle-free, round-the-clock control on your money?

Upshot: Stock markets interest me in general, and I found the concept of Bitcoin quite fascinating and interesting especially looking at the two year currency valuation. As per Reuters, approximately $130 million worth of Bitcoins are now in existence, but the number is not expected to explode enormously. But like any other currency, a Bitcoin’s worth also fluctuates with demand. Since Bitcoin is a system run by users, the understanding is that it will either see an extensive recognition or it will not. It will by no means go away until people decide to bring it to an end. It will keep running as long as the users have the will and ability to keep it going. Bitcoins, a very good concept, is probably attracting large number of eyeballs in the digital space, but because of the lack of a central monetary authority they are probably disaster-prone. In my opinion, it is all but a giant digital ponzi scheme ready to burst soon.

Image source: Picked up from internet

Album Sales: With or without you Napster!

The labels come with a positive forecast showcasing Napster and Limewires contribution in the billion dollar decline in record sales, which may just be one of causes of the overall sales decline. Blaming Napster, Limewire and likes of such companies only goes to show the lack of adoption of file-sharing by labels when they had the chance to innovate themselves and gain. This chart is just the reflection of that. The labels should instead focus on educating about digital piracy and offering innovative, clean and well-priced content across geographies?

Deal Network - "The Money Network"

The ability to build a company that gets to $1 billion in revenues in less than two years is unprecedented. In the next decade, there may not be 50 $50 billion companies, but there’s probably going to be 50 $1 billion companies as new class of giants will emerge from the swarm of start-ups.

Running the distance for a cause - My first Mumbai Marathon

Exactly last year - I was running in the parks of Madrid with my Italian buddy to keep pace with age and fitness. The Mumbai Marathon for a matter of fact didn't even figure in the Top 30 to-do-list (Yes! Sleep did). Since then the transition from Madrid to Mumbai changed all that. To start with - Illness and irregular fitness schedule. Blame the endless unfinished road constructions, the ever so populous Mumbai's public transportation, the undying Mumbai humidity, and the pollution and not to forget stray dogs that start running behind you for 5 am jogs. But despite all that Mumbai is Mumbai - a city of billion dreams. I managed to get through the cruel 'change in weather' phase. I just could not risk running on the road early mornings, as I was already chased by the dogs twice, and so I started hitting the gym to earn my spot at the starting line up for the Standard Charted Mumbai Marathon 2011. The hectic travel to workplace never really helped me train regularly during the weekdays, but I did own the Sunday mornings. I made it a point to join my friend for a game of football and sometimes a little jog of my own early morning in the lanes of Ghodbunder Road just to keep pace with my stamina. With the injury niggle I was not fully committed and confident of the marathon registration back in August 2010, but since then trained well to gain an upper hand over my fitness and ended up reaching the venue despite not holding the registration number for the Mumbai Marathon. As I stepped outside the train station, all I could see was thousands of Mumbaikars in their tracks and shorts charged up for the grand event. It was also a pleasure to catch some Bollywood and Corporate names standing at a hands distance away, busy entertaining the media and the press. See, as I told you I did not register for the event as I was unsure of my fitness, but now that I made it to the venue, in my hunt for someone to help me register for this event, I came across this NGO Swayamsiddh - a parental organization for the mentally challenged from Aurangabad, and decided to run for them. I felt like I was on to something. I went with the intention of running solo with my curious something marathon outfit and my stop watch, but no where did it occur to me that I had be running for a cause at the mother of all races. Given the number of participants on the track, running the distance in one stretch was not at all possible, so had to stop in between to dance with the NGO kids and volunteers and then start running again. Nothing like running with thousands of other like-minded souls. The experience was unique and I am sure every story on the street from this day brings in pride and that of marathon glory. Next time I will make it to a point to hit the 21Kms registration button on time and get some of you lazy bones to train with me too.

Image Source: All images are used from internet. 

The Rise Of Facebook's Valuation From 2004-2011

How did Mark Zuckerberg retain 26% of equity after so many rounds of financing? Facebook timeline after series of funding...

Source: TechCrunch

Save the tigers

A recent documentary on animal planet and a campaign awareness program got me gripping and hence I promoting this one...

Video copyrights: WWF

Telecom analytics continue to play a major role in determining company performance

Indian Telecom is the fastest growing industry next only to the IT industry. Investment in the Indian telecom sector is forecasted to peak at $40 billion during the current fiscal as the country presses on to build a network of one billion mobile phones over the next two years, the Telecom Equipment and Services Export Promotion Council has said. Much of these positive effects and growth of the industry were driven by numerous regulatory and policy changes in the country over the last two decades.

The presence of 15 operators scattered around 22 circles, competing for the pie of the customer market share (CMS) and revenue market share (RMS), is currently driving continual change in the telecom industry. The market is already experiencing high pressure on profit margins and slower revenue growth. In addition to this, the market is already battering major issues in regulation and policy stemming from a possible probe into the 2G spectrum scam that a government audit says was awarded too cheaply losing out a mind boggling figure of Rs. 1.76 lakh crore. While the Public Accounts Committee takes care of the spectrum scam, one can only hope that justice prevails and those found guilty are dragged to the court.

In the meanwhile, operator must continue to focus on new business models and bringing radical changes to the products to improve profitability. Given the nature of the competition, mergers and acquisitions in this industry is inevitable. As market penetration reaches a saturation point, competition for existing customer increases. Further the introduction of the mobile number portability (MNP) and 3G services creates challenges for the operators to retain existing customer, while simultaneously focus on bring on new customers. While the 3G service roll outs would depend on the handset penetration, quality of service and network performances in each of the 22 circles, MNP is here to stay and play a huge part in driving the business operations and services of the operators. 

Telecom analytics will continue to play a major driver in understanding the customer base. Understanding prior customer behavior helps a company provide offers that are more personalized and attractive, thus increasing customer loyalty. As the market evolves and new products are launched, analysis becomes critical to understand the tariffs, product and service migrations, customer profitability and loyalty. Telecom data is complex. Companies sweat it out to make sense of data from legacy systems, customer service applications, and thousands of product and activity codes. Further, the complexity is added when drilling down to features, add-on tariffs, bundles and packages. Operators, who are focused on analyzing these trends either through self-managed teams or through outsourced analytics group, would benefit the most in understanding the trends in the market.

The foundation for performing complex analysis is thus based on accurate subscriber metrics. Statistical and predictive behavior modeling form the cornerstone for these data analysis. And the factors that one needs to focus to ensure continuous analysis during the new business launch, joint ventures or acquisitions are flexibility to adjust market changes, scalability to handle large volumes and accommodate growth, compatibility to integrate seamlessly, audit ability and vendor knowledge. The proper understanding of these factors and the appropriate means of addressing them will be critical in determining the winners and losers in the marketplace.

Image Source: Telecomtalk.info, transpromo-live.com

Cash Connections - Who invested in Social Networking??

Overview of the current strategy consulting landscape

The consulting industry has evolved significantly over the last few months. In view of the figures sourced from Kennedy Vanguard of Strategy Consulting Firms and Practices, the revenue/ degree of strategic capability figures provides a way to map some of the biggest names in the strategy consulting landscape. Today, consulting firms are experimenting with different delivery models to supply their skills and resources – new markets, talent war, forging alliances, joint ventures etc.

Source: Kennedy Vanguard of Strategy Consulting Firms & Practices, consultancy.nl

Earlier in 2010, AON went about acquiring Hewitt Associates for about $4.9 billion to strengthen its human resource base. Consultancy firms - Booz & Co. and AT Kearney were involved in merger talks, which eventually collapsed. Going by the annual revenues of these two firms the merger would have placed them third in strategy consulting - behind McKinsey & Co. and BCG. After a successful deal structure with Bearing Point’s North American arm, Deloitte were most recently involved in advanced merger talks with Germany’s Roland Berger Strategy Consultants. This deal fell apart on Wednesday 23rd Nov, sighting Roland Berger’s plan to remain independent – gaining a close to 100% majority voting from its partners, as reported by Financial Times. A successful deal between these two firms would have challenged some of the big names in the strategy consulting landscape, clearing creating a global strategy leadership with annual revenues close to $3 billion.

A traditional forecast model cannot predict the future M&A’s as consulting firms are slowly, but steadily coming out of recession. It would however be interesting to see how firms will be looking to adapt from focusing on deals to enjoying a more transformational relationship. For some consulting firms, this means to return to their traditional consulting roots; while for others, the challenge would be to focus on diversification without compromising their reputation and cost base. Success for consulting firms lies in understanding their position within the bubble chart, and the specific threats and opportunities this brings.

Sources: Financial Times, Kennedy Research

Convergence of TV and Internet Services

Its 8 pm, you are on your way home after a hectic day at office. You are anxiously waiting for the bus to show up, so that you do not miss that crucial world cup match. Chances are - either the bus is overly packed with commuters and you wait your turn for the next one, or the buses are not on time for the umpteenth time. In either case you have no choice but to miss your game. Yet another time, you end up catching the highlights and missing those exciting moments of watching a live match with your friends. Now picture this scenario - yet another match, and you are at the bus stop. This time you do not worry about the bus being packed or being late. You simply take out your Smartphone, get the Wi-Fi in place and connect to your favourite sports channel. Voila - Game on! Hang – on – while some technologically leading markets have already developed this service, we have not yet reached there.

Despite the crisis that swept the entire media & entertainment industry, and especially the television industry, since it draws majority of the revenues from advertising models than subscription models, the Pay-TV segment is enjoying a relatively stable position in the market. The marketability of content today is done in ways to create a new value proposition and to differentiate content offerings. Competition, mainly from the internet world, is slowly, but steadily opening up. Television viewing is undergoing a major change where it is characterized by migration to the Internet. The rapidly changing consumption patterns such as mobile or pay-per-view pose a real threat to the Pay TV operators.

Today, as the laptops, Smartphone’s and tablets become a common place, the viewing habits of consumers have shifted drastically. In what seems to be an unavoidable trend, the TV content is opening up to the web interfaces. Google TV, Apple TV etc. are perfect examples of products involved in merging TV and internet into a single screen and experience (Not to forget Roku, Boxee, and Vudu). Google and Apple are global phenomena with a hell lot of eyeballs, more than any of the Pay TV operating services. With just a click of a button, you can seamlessly search for your TV contents, easily switch between TV and web without actually having to change any input channels and access a vast catalog of contents.

So what makes a good digital content a great content? What gives the consumers the incentive to reach out to their web or the television set each time? The key to understand here would be to see how companies can unlock these questions to come with compelling strategies to compete with vast content libraries, compelling on-demand services and the relatively low pricing offers. No doubt that the underlying drivers behind these opportunity lay the network transformation and other market opportunities - OS-based Smartphone’s, Diversity of communications (p2p, smart grids etc.), trend towards flatter networks, next generation services (analytics, content, security, e-commerce etc.) and new monetization methods. The evolution of new consumption patterns and the freely available contents pose a major threat to the Pay TV segments, and sooner or later they will have to adapt their strategic positioning to strengthen their brand image and attractiveness to consumers. The way we are watching TV today is evolving, and so must Pay TV operators...

Teach A B C the new generation way

Cheers - "They who drink beer will think beer" - Washington Irving

Just a month ago I was in a sports bar watching this high profile match between Atletico Madrid and Barcelona in Madrid, Spain. The bar tender was very friendly and he opened up the tap, couple of hours even before the match could start. You see, soccer and beer are two things that go hand in hand. Then, be it a Champions League night or a La Liga or a Serie A – bars are always full and the kegs keep getting empty. I was with random people chanting and trying to match them with Spanish songs. I couldn’t stop noticing how fast the bar tenders were re-fuelling the kegs. So I went upto the bar tender looking for Tapas and asking him about his beer business in general. While I started with his beer business in general, during the conversation, I was made aware about the value of beer industry in Europe, and as I held my pint, I realized that it had tremendous potential post 2010 particularly in the emerging market, as companies look to divest to re-capture their debts while acquiring and partnering with firms.

Everywhere in Europe I couldn’t fail noticing the top brands like Ab-Inbev, Heineken, SAB Miller, Carlsberg, Asahi, Molson Coors, Diageo, and couple of Indian brands. I just was curious to understand the market, and was quiet astonished that the global beer market was valued approximately at around USD 510 Billion in 2008-2009. Europe accounted for 49.1% of the global beer market, followed by APAC – 22.9%, South and Central America – 8.6%, and MEA – 1.8%. Consolidation in the beer industry has changed the leading company, with AB-InBev becoming the market leader based on sales in 2008, followed by Heineken, pushing SAB Miller down to the third rank. A recent report by market business insights, show that the largest alcohol category will continue to be beer, cider and flavoured alcoholic beverages category, which is projected to reach USD 393 Billion in Europe & US by end of 2010 resulting in an increase of 5% from 2006 to 2010.

Image Source: Stealingshare.com

However, like any industry, the beer industry has its own concerns and issues. Beer is losing market share to wine and spirits, in part due to perceived health benefits from wine and high levels of innovation and premiumization in the spirits market. Growth in beer consumption volumes will be driven primarily by the increase in rising disposable income and beer-consuming population in emerging markets. The alcoholic drinks industry is being increasingly scrutinized by governments who are demanding stricter controls on advertising, and there are also concerns regarding the rising level of obesity in Europe and US. Also rising raw material prices have led global beer companies to increase the price of beer, especially in Europe. The beer brewing process is a very precise and therefore heavily controlled process where the exact amount of ingredients and heat as well as the right timing are crucial to its success. As enormous amounts of waste water and vast energy consumption are main concerns for a brewery, the following seven focus areas provide excellent examples of sustainable process implementation – energy usage, water conservation, recycling, heat recovery, CO2 recovery, transportation, and emissions reduction. A differentiated value proposition and meeting the triple bottom line  is something the industry players must look to build on to. Today, there is a greater demand towards ethical products – go green and recyclable are the mantra’s that these companies need to use in their supply chain.

And while I was thinking green, and I was awakened by the roaring Atletico fans as the ball saw the back of the net. Some of the regulars there got free beers, as their bar tender friend was a die-hard Atletico fan. Now I know why this industry is still booming…and as the old saying goes..."Beer needs Soccer and Soccer needs Beer...that's how life goes...". Cheers to that!

Image Source: images.allposters.com