A guest lecture on "Contemporary HR Jobs and Entry level HR Competencies" was organized on 20 February, 2020. Mr. Naga Siddharth, Chief HR Officer across multiple organizations, a Psychometrician, and Author was the keynote speaker.

The guest lecture aimed to enlighten the students about dynamic shifts in HR roles, functions, and its overall impact in shaping organizations. He also emphasized the importance of transformation from traditional to digital platforms to conduct the HR operations, which can enhance the productivity and longevity of this profession to a great extent. Job opportunities, skills, and competencies, courses, and certificates that can help to perform HR roles effectively were also discussed. It was a highly knowledge gaining and enriching experience for the students, it not only benefited them to understand about the functionalities of this profession and industry expectations, but students also learned about Importance of new- age skills such as data analytics, AI, design thinking for HR Jobs in the future.

Most of the marketers believe that retaining a customer is easier than acquiring one. Today, it's just a lot harder to do. Customer loyalty is no more a Holy Grail of the companies. Customers are demanding more than ever and getting distracted and wooed by many alternatives. Greater access and lesser information asymmetry has enabled customer switching among brands. Recent study by Accenture reveals that nearly 70% of Indian customers see little difference between brands and 50% per cent of the customers still believe “a good deal” is a reason sufficient to switch beyond other possible considerations like brand and innovation. Only 30% to 40% of the loyalty points given to Indian customers by Payback are redeemed.

In the above context, CRM experts are finding it challenging to build customer experience which has to meet articulated and unarticulated customer-needs. The panel discussion was to examine challenges faced by marketers and CRM professionals on how to retain customers who are more demanding than ever in a scenario where earning customer loyalty is becoming more difficult every day. Also to examine retention strategies adapted by industry professionals in these challenging times of disruption and distraction.