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Tag: hand

  • AC Nielsen invests Rs 100 million in hand held terminals in India

    MUMBAI: Market research organisation AC Nielsen India has unveiled its plans to create the country’s first ever market research field force equipped with Hand Held Terminals for data collection across the nation.

    This announcement marks the culmination of a two-year long plan to bring world-class collection methodology to India. The company will sink in Rs 100 million into the venture.
     
     

    AC Nielsen’s Hand Held Terminal is a personal digital assistant embedded with proprietary software applications designed to capture retail sales data used by the country’s marketing community. With this investment, AC Nielsen becomes the first market research organisation to deploy Hand Held Terminals across the country.

    The company states that the level of investment and technological advancement are unprecedented in the market research industry in India. It is the single largest technological investment since the inception of market research in India with the launch of Operations Research Group in 1961. AC Nielsen states that this move reaffirms its commitment to grow the industry as a market leader and deliver the best quality data to India’s marketing community.
     
     

    Hand Held Terminals offer a paperless solution for capturing marketing information to be used by marketing decision makers and analysts. Until now, all consumer product marketing-related data has been captured by more traditional means. The company states that the paper-and-pencil methodology, while accepted as a norm, just needs to be improved in tandem with the rapid development on the technology front.

    Hand Held Terminals with built-in error-checking mechanisms on the other hand offer marketers leading edge collection of better quality, less error-prone data. This is especially important when the information pertains to over 150 varied product categories and over 17,500 brands from 50,000+ shop shelves across the country’s vast retailing landscape.
     
     

    Data from 750 individual Hand Held Terminals will be transmitted from over 200 locations across the country to AC Nielsen’s processing hub at Baroda and supported by a technology infrastructure using Compaq Unix and high-end servers for data storage and processing. The company adds that this ability to collect, transmit and therefore process data faster will enable it to reduce turnaround time for delivering market information to marketers from the present 16 days to nine days.

    The knock-on effect is faster and more effective marketing actions than ever before. The benefits can range from better sales to more efficient and targeted distribution. The Hand Held Terminal initiative in India has been under planning and conceptualisation for a period of 18 months. The technological enhancement process has also entailed rigorous training of ACNielsen’s mammoth in-house field force with the aid of specialist workshops covering each of ACNielsen field professionals in every state. “

     

  • HBO tries its hand at the western series ‘Deadwood’

    MUMBAI: A hell of a place to make your fortune! Over the past couple of years English movie channels Star Movies and HBO have broadened their offerings through mini series. Earlier Star Movies had announced that it would air the adventure series Lost in India from September.

    Now HBO has announced it will commence airing the period western drama Deadwood from 1 August every Monday after the 9 pm movie.

    The year is 1876 and the town of Deadwood in the state of South Dakota in the weeks following the death of General George Armstrong Custer in the famous battle of the Little Bighorn is a lawless sinkhole of crime and corruption. Deadwood is an illegal settlement, a violent and uncivilized outpost that attracts a colorful array of characters looking to get rich — from outlaws and entrepreneurs to ex-soldiers and racketeers, Chinese labourers, prostitutes, city dudes and gunfighters.

    Into this uncivilised outpost ride a disillusioned and bitter ex-lawman, Wild Bill Hickok, and Seth Bullock, a man hoping to find a new start for himself. Both men find themselves quickly on opposite sides of the legal and moral fence from Al Swearengen, saloon owner, hotel operator, and incipient boss of Deadwood.

    The lives of these three intertwine with many others, the high-minded and the low-lifes who populate Deadwood. The show stars Timothy Olyphant, Ian McShane and Molly Parker. Deadwood’s lovable bad guy is Machiavellian saloonkeeper McShane, who has a vested interest in keeping his unincorporated South Dakota camp lawless. He batters his prostitutes, harangues his lackeys, and arranges murders to protect his gold-mining swindles. He’s an incorrigible wheeler-dealer, contracting services for “$10 or a ball of dope,” and keeping his customers from fleeing the saloon to join a lynch mob by promising “pussy half-off, next 15 minutes.”

    Olyphant plays the town’s conscience, a department-store proprietor Timothy Olyphant. Powers Boothe meanwhile plays another negative character. He opens a classier saloon/casino/brothel across the street, but quickly reveals himself to be just as ruthlessly amoral as McShane. The show’s creator David `and his crew study how civilisations get built out of chaos, through subtle power plays and calculated bloodletting in a place “in the middle of nowhere, where nobody’s looking.”

    The show is said to have unflinching realism, adult themes and inventive storylines. While it is good to see a Western back on screen after quite a while how well it attracts Indian viewers will remain to be seen.

  • Hutch joins hand with Microsoft; brings Office on mobile phones

    MUMBAI: Hutch has launched ‘Microsoft Outlook on Hutch’, a service that allows Hutch users to access their office emails on their mobile phones. A unique corporate solution developed jointly by Hutch and Microsoft, the service enables access to corporate emails using either SMS or GPRS service.

     

     
    Announced jointly by Hutchison Essar director Asim Ghosh and Microsoft India managing director Rajiv Kaul, the service will enable Hutch subscribers to read, download, edit and send Microsoft Outlook emails with Microsoft Word, Excel or Power Point, says an official release.

    With help of the service, all Hutch users can receive SMS alerts informing them about new email in their corporate mailbox and can read the entire mail on their mobile phones. The Microsoft Outlook on Hutch’ service is secure and accessible even when the user is roaming, claims the release.

    The service can be activated by setting an option on the user’s corporate mail server (Microsoft Exchange 2000 / 2003), which allows a copy of office mails to be delivered to the user’s Hutch phone. Using this service, Hutch users can view emails over SMS for a monthly fee of Rs 49, informs the release.

    The base service is available to Hutch GPRS users at no extra cost. For those who choose to use the ActiveSync facility to download, edit and send mail in MS Word, Excel or Power Point formats, a fee of RS 499 per month will be applicable.

    Commenting on the service, Ghosh, said, “This brings to the mass business market the two great leaps of communication – business email and mobile telephony. Now for the first times, business users can manage their emails with a wide range of handsets – not a service reserved for the elite.”

    According to Kaul, said, “The PC and the mobile phone are technological innovations that have dramatically improved the lives of consumers worldwide, and the corporate user in particular has been one of the greatest beneficiaries. The Outlook on Hutch service combines the two to offer a powerful new tool to corporate users – allowing them to use a single device to communicate and stay connected.”

    “We are committed to providing our customers with a seamless computing experience. Customers should be able to leverage our technologies and their investments in infrastructure, no matter what access device they use. The launch of this service is a result of that commitment, ” Kaul added.

    “We have always worked with leading international partners for developing innovative services for our users. We are happy to be working with Microsoft for bringing corporate solutions that help improve our subscribers’ productivity,” added Ghosh.