Making working from home work for your business

The number of employees working at least part time from home has been rising over the past few years According to Global Workplace Analytics: “69% of employers offer remote work on an ad hoc basis to at least some employees, 42% offer it part time, 27% offer it full time.”

Once the coronavirus pandemic struck, those numbers swelled as companies around the globe scrambled to comply with government mandates that disallowed businesses to bring in anyone to a workplace that was not deemed essential.

“The world’s biggest work from home experiment” is how Heinan Landa, CEO and Founder of Optimal Networks, describes the current situation.

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Implementing a Successful Remote Work Strategy

Voice powered shopping

Like the captain of the Starship Enterprise, we too can now ask a computer for information by talking to it. We can even order tea, Earl Grey, though maybe not at the preferred temperature just yet. As voice activation is being directed toward shopping, there are new opportunities for marketers to explore.

With Siri, Cortana, Alexa, or the Google Assistant available, voice activation and queries have become an integral part of smartphones and smart home technology. According to Thrive Analytics, voice search among smartphone user hit 65 percent in 2015 in the US. That's more than double what it was just two years before, which indicates a very rapid rate of growth. The voice control option is also growing  among users of smart home products. 

Taking note of this trend, Google is now nudging its Google Home customers to start using their voices for shopping. It recently announced that Google Assistant could not be used by people with Google Home to order a variety of products from over 50 participating Google Express retailers. 

Read more in OK Google Goes Shopping

Location, location, location with a dash of analytics

"Location, location, location.” That’s the mantra of the real estate profession. It sounds simple enough, but the question is what is one looking for to identify a desirable location? Now data analytics can provide a clear answer for at least one type of market: those who seek homes within commuting distance of jobs that provide a living wage.

Opportunity Score is a data-driven tool built by the real estate company Redfin in partnership with the White House Opportunity Project. It identifies which residential areas offer affordable housing and are within a 30 minute carless commute of jobs that pay at least $40K a year.

In its blog, Redfin explained what went into powering Opportunity Score....

Considering a move, or just curious about how your own city ranks? You can plug it in to get the score. Just don’t expect to find a perfect 100. As Redfin explains, a city can start out with the 100 because of the number of jobs that meet the criteria, but then be knocked down due to the home prices. There’s also quite a difference between scores for cities in general and addresses in particular.

The highest score it assigned to a city is a 70, and that went to San Jose where 78% of jobs meet the criteria. But that’s not the only thing that counts. The same job percentage was found in Detroit, the city with the lowest score -- just 3%. Individual addresses around Detroit, though can reflect very high scores, with, for example, one address on Harrison Street earning the description “Job Seeker's Paradise” with a score of 94.

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If You Lived Here, You’d Be Home Now