Category: General Articles

Chinese billionaire Jack Ma’s Ant Group won regulatory approval to boost the registered capital of its consumer finance unit by 10.5 billion yuan ($1.5 billion), a move suggesting progress in the fintech giant’s efforts to restructure its operations to satisfy authorities’ demands.

Chongqing Ant Consumer Finance, which was established in 2021 to host Ant’s consumer-lending businesses, such as Huabei and Jiebei, got the greenlight to increase its capital to about $2.7 billion on December 29, according to a post published by the Chongqing unit of the China Banking and Insurance Regulatory Commission. This will allow Ant to handle more consumer-oriented loans and it eliminates another regulatory obstacle en route to completing its initial public offering that was abruptly shelved in 2020. Ant was told at the time that it had to

Marketing Podcast with Steve Miller

In this episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast, I interview Steve Miller. Meetings & Conventions Magazine calls Steve Miller the Idea Man for his unconventional, edgy, no-spin approach to marketing and branding. He is the author of the Amazon #1 bestseller, “UNCOPYABLE: How to Create an Unfair Advantage Over Your Competition.” Steve’s speaking and consulting clients have ranged from entrepreneurs to Fortune 100 corporations, including Proctor & Gamble, Greystar Real Estate, Caterpillar, Boeing Airplane, Starbucks, Philips Electronics, and the prestigious TED Conference. We’re talking about his latest book — Stealing Genuis: The Seven Levels of Adaptive Innovation.

Key Takeaway:

Improvement is not innovation and innovation is essential if your aim is to survive in today’s business environment. Fixating your mind on improvement in today’s world is a dangerous path—one that ultimately leads to commoditization and irrelevance. In this episode, I talk with author,

This is the second part of my new series of Power BI posts named Power BI 101. In the previous post, I briefly discussed what Power BI is. In this post, I look into one of the most confusing parts for those who want to start learning Power BI. Many people jump straight online and look for Power BI training courses which there are plenty out there. But which one is the right training course for you? Let’s find out.

What do you want to gain from learning Power BI?

Regardless of attending paid training courses or being a self-learner, the above question is one of the most important questions you might ask yourself before going to the next steps. The answer to this question dictates the sort of training you must look for. Your answer to the preceding question can be one or none of the following:

• I

Christmas comes late for Premier League clubs looking to bolster their squad in the January transfer window. Lots of spending is expected this year, but the winter World Cup makes the January window a bit different from most years.

The general trend has been for spending in January to increase. But there are plenty of exceptions. The biggest January spending spree came in 2018 as Liverpool splurged on Virgil Van Djik, Arsenal brought in Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang, and Manchester City added Aymeric Laporte. The pandemic and the resulting empty stadiums meant spending in 2021 was the lowest in nine years, but last year saw January spending bounce back

Marketing Podcast with Laura Bull

In this episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast, I interview Laura Bull. Laura is a bestselling author and brand strategist who specializes in transforming people into competitive and sustainable business brands. Her latest book is — From Individual to Empire: A Guide to Building an Authentic and Powerful Brand.

Key Takeaway:

Laura Bull spent ten years with Sony Music Entertainment and spearheaded artist development including Carrie Underwood, Brad Paisley, and Johnny Cash. Now she’s helping entrepreneurs discover and leverage their authentic and competitive brands. In this episode, we dive into how to build a personal brand, why she’s working to redefine the term “influencer”, and how to transform entrepreneurs into viable brands.

Questions I ask Laura Bull:

• [1:40] The branding of the music industry has changed dramatically — hasn’t it?
• [4:27] What’s one of the wackiest stories from working with artists in the

This is my last blog post in 2021. I wish you all a wonderful break and a happy new year.

In the first post of my Power BI 101 series, we learnt that Power BI is a data platform containing various tools and services. We also explained the currently available subscriptions within the Power BI platform. The focus of the second post of this series is on what we should learn to achieve our goals more efficiently. In this post, we focus on the reporting tools available to us according to our subscription plan. From this post onwards, we discuss more specific aspects of the Power BI platform.

We learnt so far that Power BI is not just a reporting tool to build sophisticated reports; it is indeed a platform supplying a wide range of features from data preparation, data modelling and data visualization to contribute to an organisation’s data

T20 cricket, played over three hours, has become the sport’s most popular format underlined by the sprouting of franchise leagues globally headed by the billion-dollar Indian Premier League.

It’s also been deemed the ‘growth engine’ for the global development of the sport highlighted by a new cashed-up T20 franchise league in the U.S. set to start in 2023.

But there are those pushing for an even shorter and sharper version of the game, believing it can appeal to those weened on soccer’s 90-minute playing time and better suit declining attention spans.

The T10 format, played over 90 minutes, has started to spread forcing the sport’s gatekeepers to start making decisions over whether to legitimise it. The arrival of the Abu Dhabi T10 league in 2017 led to widespread sneering with cynics believing this supercharged version was starting

My weekend blog post routine includes posting links to a handful of tools or great content I ran across during the week.

I don’t go into depth about the finds, but I encourage you to check them out if they sound interesting. The photo in the post is a favorite for the week from an online source or one I took on the road.

• Chatsonic – Chatsonic is a new way to create content, easily and quickly. You can chat with your computer, giving it commands in plain English. It’s like ChatGPT, but better!
• Chron – Cron is a next-generation calendar for professionals and teams. It streamlines workflows, integrates other productivity tools, and builds collaboration right into your calendar. Cron is helping make the modern workspace more efficient.
• Readitfor.me – is the world’s leading book summary service for executives and entrepreneurs who want to stay on top of the latest

Incremental refresh, or IR, refers to loading the data incrementally, which has been around in the world of ETL for data warehousing for a long time. Let us discuss incremental refresh (or incremental data loading) in a simple language to better understand how it works.

From a data movement standpoint, there are always two options when we transfer data from location A to location B:

1. Truncation and load: We transfer the data as a whole from location A to location B. If location B has some data already, we entirely truncate the location B and reload the whole data from location A to B
2. Incremental load: We transfer the data as a whole from location A to location B just once for the first time. The next time, we only load the data changes from A to B. In this approach, we never truncate B.

Over the last few years, consumers have been practicing more conscious drinking, whether that’s abstaining, sipping low-proof drinks or tiger-striping — switching between no-alcohol drinks and regular-strength drinks,

In 2022, sales of no- and low-alcohol beverages grew by more than 7% in volume across 10 key global markets, surpassing $11 billion in market value. This is up from $8 billion shown in 2018, according to IWSR Drinks Market Analysis.

The pace of growth is expected to surpass that of the last four years, continuing at a CAGR of 7%, compared to a CAGR of 5% between 2018 and 2022.

“The dynamic no/low-alcohol category presents opportunities for incremental sales growth as consumers are recruited from drinks categories such as soft drinks and water” comments Susie Goldspink, Head of No-