WinIT LooseIT of e-Tailing

The concept of e-tailing is as old as 1990’s since those days there have been pioneer in this business model and there are organizations who have also burnt fingers by entering into the e-tailing without ground work. This work is an effort to trace journey of two popular e-tailers of the history where one has come as winner all the way but another could hardly survive for couple of years.

Tesco:
In a quest to find new avenues in business, the leading retailer of UK decided to start supporting its brick & mortar business with online model. Lets see what were some of the key strength of this retail giant
1) A well established and Profitable brick and mortar business: A retail chain started by selling grocery from 1919, Tesco grew organically and inorganically over the time. Like its counterpart Walmart and Target , it started transferring the savings gained by volume purchase to its customer and gained instant popularity.
2) Amazing ground work: It was a very obvious observation for Tesco that to go online it customers should have access to net. Tesco decided to provide broadband services and soon become well known ISP. With this it became first retailer who was also an ISP. Tesco also did intensive analysis on the profitability of the business model.
3) Running pilot model first: Tesco started pilot model in one of the London store , a very basic website was designed and the model was a combination of telephone, fax and internet. After successful broadband business and encouraging results from its pilot project, Tesco started providing online shopping in many of its London based stores.
4) Efficient Operation: Once customer has ordered the merchandising, Items would be picked up from store by employees and delivered to the customer.
5) High focus on technology: Tesco was very clear that its technology has to be the best to provide amazing customer experience not only in terms of website navigation but also in terms speed .It went on to the extent to produce updated CD’s and supply to its customers so that they can add items to their basket and then connect to internet by dial up connection to just place the order.
6) Geographic expansion of e-Tailing : Tesco made sure that it sticks to the basic for expanding its e-tailing. It targeted places like South Korea, where Internet use is high and where high-speed Web connections abound, enabling the grocer's jam-packed pages to download quickly.
7) Going that extra step: Tesco went one step beyond when it enabled Tesco.net for visually challenged people. Blinds could now purchase online with the help of speech recognition systems. The system, which the company developed along with the Royal National Institute for the Blind (RNIB), uses technology that converts text to speech, describing products on the company's Tesco Direct Web site and guiding consumers through the buying process.

WebVan.com
Unlike Tesco , webvan is started as only an online retailer without having a support of brick and mortar stores. Louis Border started it with the help of several VCs in 1999. WebVan pioneered technology to serve its customer sand went on creating a huge infrastructure to the extent that after some time the expense of running business was much more then the cash inflow.
1) No Support : WebVan did not have any brick and mortar business to support, instead it developed its distribution centre from where it supplied to the custmomers.
2) Ambitious plans without any groundwork: WebVan went on an expansion ride without even looking at the feasibility of the business model. The plans were really ambitious involving expense of multibillion dollars in setting up infrastructure.
3) Ignorance to availability of internet : Even though webvan made a point setup its business in town with higher broadband penetration but still it over estimated the potential of online shopping in those days.
3)Huge Investment in automation : WebVan spent a fortune in automating its distribution centers. They were equipped with conveyor belts on which merchandising used to travel to reach to the picker trucks. It used refrigerator trucks to keep vegetables fresh. Webvan missed on the fact that for sustaining such kind of investment it would need huge customer base since very beginning
4) Misfit collaboration : In less then one year webvan decided to takeover one of its archrival HomeGrocer. HomeGrocer & Webvans business were running on entirely different business strategies. Webvans distribution centres were very high tech and automated whereas in HomeGrocer DC operations were manual.
5) Every thing can not be automated : Automation in webvans distribution centre was common for all the items and their was no way it can be customized for separate merchandising , specially for food items which were soft and come in delicate packaging.
Webvan was bankrupt by july 2001, Over ambition and high reliability on a niche segment caused closing down of webvan

Learning’s :
Looking over Tesco and WebVans ( and some other etailing ventures) we can have some key points about this business
Brick & Mortar Support: It is very difficult for an online grocer to continue without support of a brick & mortar business. Tesco , Walmart, Fabmart used online as a strategy for market development and became successful. Like WebVan Peapod also tried to be an onlibe grocer by simply collaborating with various superstores but after running into losses for long time it decided to build its own warehouses.
Internet Penetration : Tesco’s plan to become ISP was simply visionary and shows how serious they were about e-tailing. WebVan missed the actual numbers of internet penetration as well as prospective clients who would be using website for grocery shopping. IF we look the numbers for 8.5 lac customers Tesco was generating 2.5 Lac orders a week but WebVan was generating merely 15K orders for 7.5 lac customers.
Phased Investment in Hi tech infrastructure : Where Tesco kept it simple, Webvan went on building state of the art automation technology for its distribution centre. It would have been wiser to test the feasibility of business before getting into such a huge capital investment. Especially in the days when labour was much cheaper then such kind of high end technology. The investment made by Tesco was mostly for making customer experience better, which was the need of the hour.
Strategic collaboration: WebVans collaboration was also a misfit with its business model. It is necessary to have collaboration which can compliment the business model especially in the days of start up. Within 1 years of starting business was not a good time to merge with a business where one would need to spend money for major restructuring of business itself.

I would say one major takeway will be "Put technology and investment where it makes things easire for customer"

Also posted on Cool Avenues (http://www.coolavenues.com/know/system/saurabhs-it-1.php)

Sales Call : Making it through

Sitting through a sales call is never an easy task , It makes people sweat even in AC rooms lets see what can be a logical sequence of talking your way

through to a sales call

1) Formal greeting : Start your call with a formal greeting , just saying a casual "Hi" , "Hello" is definitely not a good idea , something on the line of
"Good morning sir, I am Saurabh Shukla from SPJIMR" is always safe

2) Introducing yourself, team members & Company : First of all introduce your self and any acquaintance of you have, give a moment to your prospect so that he can get your names and designations. Having introduced people present in the meeting room , give a brief introduction about your company . You may be from one of the largest organization on earth but please keep introduction of your organization very crisp , a small background , some of the recent & significant achievments and some work on the line of business of your client. This much should be enough .

3) Don't be too desperate : Now we definitely understand that you are on a mission and for you the conference room is a war front where you have to come out as a winner but remember the ice has not broken after introduction. There are always so much environmental factors in business scenario to discuss. May be you can discuss something about the clients business ( ofcourse how good it is doing).

4) State the purpose ( Not giving away everything): State the purpose of your meeting , this will depend whether you have had some communication with the client already, if you can state the purpose in terms of gain to client that will be really great.

5)Now listen: Having said so much how about giving the person on the other side give a chance to speak and when he speaks you better be listening

6) Understand the requirment: Every organization has some core competency of flagship product but customer is least interested in what all you can provide, his interest lies in solving the problem in hand so you better understand his requirment well and talk in terms of a solution which fits customer well ( rather then pushing your products).

7) Involve : In a meeting where more then one person is present from customers side , please make sure that both are involved in the discussion. That will not only lead to better discussion but also help you in getting more information and expectation.

8) Take next appointment : I am sure you never thought the dealwould be over in one call , so make sure you have an appointment for the next time before you leave the room. Also list down any deliverables which are being discussed.

Doing ordinary in EXTraordinary way

"There are no superstars in Wal*Mart we are an organization of ordinary people , overachieving"
David Glass, CEO, Wal*mart

Recently I was watching a story on discovery about kuchipudi dance, the performer who dresses like demon need to have red eyes and continuously blinks them during the performance. This is something which can be achieved by makeup and conscious effort (blinking eyes) but the performers have an extra ordinary way to perform it , they put a small mustard seed inside both eyes for entire performance , this seed is painful enough to turn eyes
into dark red ( and of course continuos pain does causes blinking). What an extraordinary way to achieve an ordinary goal.

One small story comes from BestBuy, It was expanding big time in 90's to the extent that same day it had opennings of many stores. One day it had openning of a store in Chicago and just few hours before stripes were painted in parking area , there was no way they can be dried by the time of openning . But if there is no way then make one by yourself, BestBuy store team got a helicopter flying few feet up from ground , just to dry the paint in parking area !!! and ofcourse it worked extraordinarily well!

Same is true specially for knowledge workers . Imagine today knowledge economy is run by millions of people , can every one get a chance to have something very challenging or work on simply outstanding extraordinary projects, I guess no ( plus every one does not have calibre to perform extra ordinary tasks).Above that ordinary works are also
need to be carried out for running the show. These ordinary works can be carried out very simply in a routine way but at the same time their is huge opportunity to go to that extra step which will create the difference.

When we took over a large project from European bank for managing their middleware infrastructure services , there were 12 servers to be managed. Every day by 10 AM we will get mail alerts from all 12 servers , each mail need to be openned and checked for any error before our taking lover all of the senior executives used to open all the mails and verify status by themselves . Our team decided that one person on shift would check all the mails
and club all the status in one other mail having subject " MMS Server Status" , effectively this meant now checking only one mail for every one else.

All senior executives now waited for this status mail which gave them snapshot . One day my senior was on the shift , after 3 months with the system he must have realised these are production servers and it is very rare that something goes wrong with them , most of the time they will be ok so from that day he changed the subject line of the mail " MMS Server Status - All OK " , so whenever every thing was OK a mail with this subject used to come and bingo , just looking at the subject line everyone knew they need not bother to open the mail for today's status , its going to be a sunny day ahead with lesser critical issues. I was in a meeting with client manager when he got this mail for the first time on his black berry and he shouted with
sheer joy , showing me he asked why didn't we think this before. While he couldn't stop grinning on this idea , I was also asking the same question to me what a brilliant way to perform a simple task. Someone not only identified the criticalness of the system but also identified the level of ease which can be provided to business users , what an extraordinary way to do a very ordinary task.

Many of Such small operational innovations gradually take their place in industry best practices and standard operating procedures , improving the entire chain of activities.
All one has to do is remember few things while at work
No task is small task.
Drill down deep on whatever you do.
Never stop improving and innovating.

What Retail Quotes

Walmart and Target are the pioneer of the retailaing industry , both are so different in thier management and expansion styles yet very same when it comes to following business ethics and treating customer well. Both organizations show that it was the strong foundation pillars laid by founder members and then management by some of the best brains that took them to peak of Retailing and to the depth of consumer's heart

Sam Walton was a firm believer in the potential of small towns , because of his philosophy Walmart served small town customers very well and created a strong entry barrier for others.

Following statements shows the priority for Mr Walton was providing better services in the existing stores before expansions.
I always wanted to be the best retailer in the world but not necessary the biggetst : Sam Walton ( The walmart decade)

Sam's style was Management by walking around was the
I have always had soul of an operator, somebody who wants to make things work well , then better and then the best they possibly can : sam Walton

Stock it , price it right , Show the value , Take the money : Tom Coughlin , VP, COO Walmart ( Walmart decade)

Drapper put the foundation stone for target , he was initially into banking , mortgage and lending business where he always made sure to lend money to people who are strong in character , sending interests to investors much before time and doing business with complete integrity and honesty.
Buiness integrity is doing things as you agreed to do them. doing things when you agreed to do them. doing things you ought to do. George drapper dayton , Target ( from on Target).

Character is a matter of slower growth but the reward is certain : George Drapper
Target has always been particular in store decoration and putting stylish merchandising arrangements.
Capture the customers imagintion with array of goods and earn loyalty with generous merchandising policy : George Nelson

The concet of integrity and honesty in these houses is so strong that it keeps going on at the same pace with new management , always.

In retail there are lots of ways to be marginally crooked and we decided we weren't going to do that : Norman McMillan , VP, Strategic planning Target
Here is how target proposes building up talent for business
You want a good manager , put him under a good manager and let him run the business : Flyod Hall, Target CEO Retailing is detailing : On target

Similarly both corpoarte houses are extremely careful on customers services .

It does not matter whether customer is right or not what matters whethe she thinks she is right - Dayton , On Target

Taking the Path to BPR

A company which has started couple of years back and growing at very fast pace would not need any business process re-engineering. The focus here will be entirely on growth , the volume handled by various processes should be farely low. So rather thn thinking about BPR such organization should directly adopt the best practices available in the industry since very beginning.
In other case BPR is very relevant for an organization which has been functioning for a decade , it has a matured stable growth rate, data handled by processes are of reasonable volume and outer business environment has changed significantly to advocate and support BPR. Many times processes for older organizations are not updated regularly which means after significant time these processes will be very good candidate for re-engineering as they would have various redundancies and the technology to support them would have enhanced multifold.

1) Have processes codified : Every organization does have a standard operating procedure for the entire range of processes carried out , these SOPs are formed at the very early stages of organization and supposed to be updated frequently but their are two main problems 1) People find out thier own way of doing things by passing the standard procedures given to them , this is true specially in cases where lateral hiring happens.

A person coming from different organization will be comfortable in doing the same work in different way , he may have used altogether a different technology so he will be building his own way of executing tasks which can be contagious after some time and spread across the team.

2) SOPs are not updated periodically : With time various changes happen in oraganization structure , technologies used and the way business is performed but all of these updates don't go to SOP as frequently as they should be going , so after some time SOP itself becomes obsolete.
So it is manadtory to know " As Is" Process for the organization and document them for refernce and benchmarking during BPR.

3) Management Support: Head of only one department or any manager alone will never be able to complete BPR ,there are many people & management
issues then we can ever imagine. Departments don't want to share thier data and decision making factors , people think it is yet another way to waste
time , People do not see any value add in contributing to this process , the information given may be a top level view and the list goes on.
This all can be eliminated if and only if we have a buy out from top management so that smooth communication can happen across all the departments
and they are forced to cooperate.

4) Conduct POC: The best way to get buy in from departments and management is to pick up a much smaller function in any of the department and conduct POC of BPR . If this POC could successfully bring some of the pain points showing the scope of improvement which can be braught in the processes then your task will be much easier

An opportunity lost:

Recent Global turmoil seen more then half of top financial institutions falling down , they either filed for bankrupcy or sold themselves at a price which was half or third of thier valuations few months back. These financial organizations were center for best talent across the world , global banks and HNIs used to swear on thier name and expertise . Totally unmatchable human intellect and growth potential. It was a bargain time on streets when some of the best money makers were on the sale . Several banks like BOFA , CITI utilise this opportunity to the fullest by acquiring these organizations completly or in partial units.For Asia which is still thanking its stars for not getting into this mess , it was an opportunity lost. There are very few institutions in the history of Asia which have raised to the level of these western Investment banks . This time they had an opportunity to simply grab what has already been created at a price which is almost unbelievable but none of Asian oganizations were prepared for such opportunity. The only bank from Asia to venture into it is Japanese Namura which acquired Lehman brothers assets in middle east.Indian banks which were still in much better condition but financially as their exposure to subprime crisis was almost non existent , Couldn't leverage on these opportunities. This was a golden chance which comes almost in a dacade , one timely decision could have set any moderate financial organization to the top of the world. Quality assets and worldclass talent could have been acquired at very low cost and also retained for long time at very competitive operating expenses.
Anyways now most of it has already gone to kitty of US banks ( Yet again ) but still there are chances to learn a lot from this and grab some of the best talent in respective fields.

New Temples of Consumerism

Although it has been said again and again that only 3 % of retail in India is organizaed whereas rest is highly unorganized mom n pop store format but when I travel from Andheri to Mindspace , I feel exactly opposite . To name just a few mega malls which cross my way in are Fame Adlab , In orbit , Infinity , Megamall , Hypercity , Shoppers stop , Evershine , Shubhichha and what not ( My batchmate Ganesh informed me that currently 7.5% of retail market in India is organized and it is expected to go upto 20% by 2010, So it has increased for sure). half of these are located in very close vicinity to each other. A grand addition to the list is newly opened Star bazaar where you get every thing of daily need , probably the model was to repeat wallmart's mantra of big volume in low price , so most of SKUs are packed in relatively bigger chunks, I will not say the discounts are as bigger as smaller stores will offer .

One of the other innovation of Indian retail is having food joints within these stores , Big bazaar , shoppers stop already had it , same is done by Marks and spencer as well as star bazaar . These food joints are growing bigger day by day adding almost everything from Veg biryani to street food in thier menu. They do fetch some additional revenue speciall if people are coming just to do some window shopping , gourmet food can still make them spend some extra bucks without feeling guilty.

The recent realization by retailers is simple , no matter what happens people will spend money on food , vegetables and daily grocery items . Now a very large portion of entire mat is devoted to it which include green vegetables , fruits and even grains !

The challenge in front of consumer remains selecting the best and cheapest option , all of the retailers making branded goods available to thier consumers which leave them with selecting best price and the difference is not small . I planned to purchase Noka Music express 5310 which is priced over 10K in hypercity , 9600 in Nokia Service stores and around 9300 in Spencers , isn't it amazing that one of the retail format is able to sell cheaper then original manufacturer.

Whatever the case is options are many , these modern temples of consumerism are definetly attracting many ( and mind you with family and freinds) and leaving no stone unturn to pull some money out of thier pocket . I call them temples because these are the places where people go when they want to shop and also when they don't want to , when they are happy and also when they are stressed , also an obvious rush in festive seasons . Overall outcome will be a push to econmoy , to inflation and to some numerical predictions ( which are most of the time any way baseless) .
So Are you contributing to countries economy?

Bhagvada-Gita : Revisiting the message of doing ones Duty

Gita is my favourite topic since long time , not because I understand it but mostly because I am still trying to understand it . There are so many dimensions to it and mostly my conflict is with the core message of Gita " do your duty efficiently without being attached to or affected by the results" . I can not stop thinking how is it possible that one works out so many steps to reach to the ultimate end result and this message says it simply does not belong to you so don think about it There may be two reasons behind it .

1) Influence to the result by external factors : In childhood we confronted one science example many times " what happens when 1 kg of cotton and 1 kg of metal is dropped from the same hight , which will reach to the ground first" our innocent mind always tend to answer that lighter weight will reach on ground much later then heavier one which is scientifically not true if the experiment is done in vacuum . Thats the catch .... if the experiment is done in vacuum where there can not be an external factor but we live in real world where there are so many external factors always influencing each and every activity we do and hence all the end results. so if the same experiment is carried out in external environment then it will be impacted by gravity , air and some other environmental resistance which will keep lighter weight in the air for some extra time.
Same is true for our acts , there are so many factors to prevent the pure outcome of our activity , suppose I am preparing for an exam and I read all the course material but will my surrounding and environmental condition be the same as of my other friends ... I may have some personal issues , I may be not feeling well ... On the day of exam I may come across some un pleasant event and the list goes on . whereas some one else may get an excellent environmental support and score much better then what he intended to.

2) Looking at bigger picture : Another optimistic way of looking at this message of not giving too much attention to end result can be our precision for end result. Human is not accurate in predicting results and it is very much possible that what we predict is an understatement of what we can actually do or even we may miss out on some of the important side results and other cascading results.
To put it simply If a student sets a goal for himself to score first rank in school without knowing that his calibre is to achieve first rank in entire city or in entire nation...

Arjuna's unwillingness to do his duty as a warrior, because fighting involved destruction and killing but there are other outcomes to this which are more important , It will be victory of truth and justice , This will annihilate evil forces from earth and make life more beautiful for coming generations infact it will have cascading affect till generations to give learning and lessions . Arjuna fails to see the bigger picture here

3) To perform every act by putting best of our effort: second point directly leads us to this one , if rather then shackling ourselves with some expectation which could be an understatement for us we perform each and every step in the process by putting best of our effort , there are great chances that we achieve much more than what we would have set as benchmark.

This will also help us in stopping the differentiation between various tasks , we consider some are important and some are not and so we tend to neglect the tasks which are less important whereas theory of management says there has to be value addition in each step , if there is no value addition that means a redundant task and has to be eliminated.
These were just few of the many reasons which may have lead to this mysterious message of Gita . I believe this message is worth considering , last time I heard something similar from Tiger woods when he mentioned that in his game he does not concentrate on the scores rather he enjoys & concentrates on each and every step of the game which keeps him away from the nervous ness which players get in tournaments by looking at their and competitors scores ... thats another way to look at it and I wonder Woods know it even when he may have never read Gita !!

Future is Virtual

Ever imagine in 21st century someone is walking into a computer shop and asking for a laptop or desktop with 512 MB RAM and probably 1-2 GB of harddisk , you would say he must be living in late 19th century but I would say he is living in mid 21st century thats the future may look like where thin client may again be reduced to dumb client and every thing is taken care by servers over world wide web.
What does a person want from his desktop today , If he is a manager he would like to come to office and check his mails on oulook look into outlook calender for his schedule for the day , work on a presentation for next day and then may be check the excel template for qualiy control. In addition to this he may be using some intranet or internet portals for various other activities but as for as my knowledge goes typical managers who manage resources in an organization are restricted to MS office they don't have to do more then that.
Now with bare minimum memory and harddisk in a system one can definitely open a web browser ( or via Mobile) and connect to net , thats all you need Globally hosted operating system now provides a complete virtual desktop just one click away and all you need to connect to it is a web browser and a good version of flash running on your system ( now that would not need much of computing power !) even ur mobile is able to run a simple web broweser . This G.HO.S.T comes with 5 GB initial storage space and all basic tools and services you would expect an operating system to provide infact as competitive as ur windows desktop , It has it's own office tools , mailing solution , media player and much more .
There is facility given to upload and download files from local disk to G.HO.S.T environment and vice versa. Now isn't it all a manager needs , he will be getting his mailing service , doc, PPT and excel . Then there are hundreds of complimentary services being provided by different websites for example Zoho.com which is an online CRM solution you can maintain customer contacts and automate your entire
salesforce online at a very low cost , Google doc and ebook have already been there for a long time now. If thats not enough then there are portals which can provide a huge database and even mail archival for your corporation . Companies like Sonian provide mail archival solution whereas Amazon web services have started providing database on demand.
At onside there are huge benefits and absolute freedom of any hardware or software because of these services on the other side there is everything on stack , giving away entire database of an organization to a third party vendor is something which is still not thinkable, or even accessing remote desktop will give away your credentials which means threat to privacy but then everything in this world comes at a cost and associated risk the tradeoff ofcourse depends on us

Matter of Spirit or Spirit of Matter

In the movie “Finding Nemo" towards the climax there is a scene where marling and dori are stuck inside a giant shark , Marlin knows it is almost end of it now there is only one way and that is to the belly of the shark whereas dori is typical fish with flash memory she hardly remembers anything beyond few seconds and she is also happy go lucky ( just imagine she met Marlin on the way and since then she is with him ) .
When a final blow of water comes from outside and Marlin tries to hold on hard his place , Dori says leave it , she pretends as if she can talk and understand whale and tells marlin that let go and everything will be fine. Obviously it is a tough decision which marlin takes seeing no other choice he lets go his grip and both go down the throat of whale , suddenly whale sprinkles all the water accumulated in it's throat and bingo both fishes are out .again.
This is the typical life scenario many times we are faced by adversity and we think this is it , this is the end of the road. Most of the time these bad phases happens to be a passage to something better , may be a new opportunity , a new avenue which you would have otherwise never explored. There are so many examples to consider from mythology to history and to the modern world. What worst could have happened to Prince Ram and Ayodhya then sending him to jungle for 14 years but it turned out to be making of entire saga which necessarily meant elimination of evils from earth and Protection of many noble souls.Would Mohandas karamchand Gandhi have any chance of becoming the great mahatma gandhi had he never faced the cruelties of British in Africa.
What was the rejection and deniel of giving technology to produce steel in India to Mr Tata made him open his own company which proudly stands worlds most respectable company.
Examples are plenty but what is often missing is our attitude towards life , why not find a new opportunity in every problem as this can be the only thing which can make you think out of the box , extreme and desperate situations would lead to highly extra ordinary solution . The best part is once we are able to successfully face it , we will not be afraid . This is the spirit which keeps sending adventurers to continuos explores even if they have marginally escaped from death in the last one , they know what is their potential and capability and behold they become so resourceful and confident that they just don't care. as the saying goes " The secrete of life is to make stepping stones out of stumbling blocks".
Keep the spirit alive !!

People and Event Management : From Nimitt

As soon as you get into a B school , studies are not the only thing you get involved in so many things . Same was with our batch as well when we. joined SPJIMR . After induction there was committee division where people have been divided into various committees . PRCOm for building .relationships with corporates and other institutes , ACADcom for taking care of academic schedules , PLACom for placement related activities ,
IT-NFRA com for making sure that our physical and IT infrastructure works fine , ITEACOM to take care of leadership guest lecture and work on college magazine and ADMAP to boss around These were the traditional committees which existed in SPJIMR (PGDSM-MIT) since its inception but this time there was a new committee formation " Nimitt Com " .
Nimitt is the annual event organized by our batch ( instituted by our super seniors) and in 2007 it could not be grander then it was . A two day action pack event based on the hottest theme around which would later picked up by many other colleges for entire event or part of event. On The day of committee formation I came to know I am in PRCOM , that is also the preference I had opted for but then overnight shuffling happened , After looking at the scale of Nimitt it was decided that a new committee need to be formed , Nimittcom to take care of Nimitt activity over the year. 6 people were moved to it ( of course taken out from other committees) Including me , I guess I was moved in it because I worked in many activities in Nimitt . People were apprehensive and thought there would hardly be any work to do ere in this committee , in 2 days 3 out of 6 members left the committee to join a interest which suited them , what a start , I joked with my faculty coordinator , attrition rate of 50% ! Will it sustain , whats the guarantee remaining 3 of us will last specially when there was only one thing common between us and that was our heights....

We just now finished the event successfully and probably with the highest relevance any other institute has ever done in India , A comprehensive research to back our event and participation of highest authorities in the area of SMEs ,there is so much to write about , It's been a journey full of frustration , hard work , depression , dejection , excitement , learning , achievement .
But first thing first , people issue which can make or break events

Personal goal Vs organizational goal : It's almost one year again to another memorable event of life , I won my first paper presentation contest in IMI Delhi in an event called SPandan . It was on the theme of aligning personal goals with organizational goal . I definitely remember how I convinced audience that it is difficult , today given a chance to deliver same presentation , I would say it's not just difficult , Its very very very difficult to align personal goals with organizational goals.

For any event to be successful you will have to map the common goal with people but people are so busy chasing their personal goals , they just don't see the forest for trees. Who cares about organizational goal specially if that is not adding any thing concrete to you and to certain extent it's true building academic records , winning awards , preparing for placement and doing certifications is much more important then helping in conducting an event . It is like moving mountains , specially if you don't have any authority , how on earth you can convince people to see the vision which you have.
I'll have an obvious advise here , identify people who do you think can contribute , who are good time managers and know how to balance things , who are enthusiastic about more then just academics in life and yeah with whom you and your team members have good repo , handpick such people for your work and then start .

Make some one accountable : Now this is a very interesting point , most of the time in cases like event management you want people to work in group or teams for sponsorships , corporate coordination , promotion , infrastructure and so on . We divided groups at the very beginning but then we thought every time a group or team is made in class , we are asked to choose leader and their starts ego clashes , attitude problems . Isn't it paradox that at one side B school teaches us team work and on the other side every time their are obstacles in team work because of such practices . We opted to not choose any leader for any group , assumption was that some people will work hard and emerge as leaders rather then we choosing one .
Well it will not be too tough to guess that things do not work out in this manner , the problem was now no one was accountable for anything , there was no one pushing deadlines , motivating people and setting milestones that means eventually we ended up doing this for all things . We were quick to learn that it is not going to work this way , we formed next group of teams soon and this time their were some people accountable for activities of entire group so now we coordinated with only one person in the group.

Exercising power / Authority : Now this has to be the next after we made someone accountable in a group , often it is seen that people would like to be in key positions where they can take decisions and influence others but then there are very few who can take this job , leadership is not to be given but to be achieved by once deeds . We made team leaders but there were very few who could practice authority in the team without fraction. Even when there were best friends then also it will be obvious for your team leads to come back to you and tell you how they have been either completely ignored or countered by their members . Even we in Nimitt com faced this problem , I don't know whether there is any solution to this or not but my suggestion is authority if proved with a stick in hand will not have a long life instead you will have to lead by example and of course at the same time be humble.

Sitting on stuck work : This was the fact which I have learnt hard way during my corporate life hence I was very alert about it , At times people take responsibility but they just don't move because they are waiting for some important information or go ahead , now the problem is no one knows that someone is waiting for something , one has ring alarm bells that he is stuck , which normally people don't do , they just wait .that means continuos status update becomes a must on the part of event manager or organizer , he has to make sure that every one is moving and moving fast.

Involvement and initiative taking : parato could have thought that 20% of people will take 80 % of initiatives but the percentage is even smaller , 10 -15% people will take initiative and at the same time will have courage to come forward to take on those initiatives with a sense of ownership. There may be other genions with better ideas but either they would like to just give a passing remark on the issues or keep mum cause speaking of an initiative may also need them to get involved in it's execution.
Anywhere in any project , it is very important for one to identify both kind of people and create some kind of mapping to make sure you don't loose out on the idea factory .

Have some perfectionist in team or make some : When one person or a set of people have to be involved in many activities at one go then it is very difficult to maintain quality , there will be errors . It is always better to get it verified from someone who is perfactionist , identify such people and use their passion for perfection , if you don't find anyone then the only option left is to make one , someone got to be finicky about details .

Ready to learn new stuff , just in case .. : In such activities which do not have a formal structure and abundance of money to spend on outsourcing jobs , one must be ready to learn new stuff so that he can practically of some help to other people who are getting stuck in such areas.
This quality is a must have because you never know when someone is going to say that he doesn't have any idea how to do this and then the only way out is to get your hands dirty , if you will not do it , no else would!

Reverse Customer loyalty

The whole concept of customer loyalty is misplaced , If we say today customer is king then why customer the king should be loyal to something or someone . It should be companies and organizations which should be loyal to customer. It should not be customer loyalty rather it should be company loyalty if I may call it so ( probably a better term would be reverse customer loyalty) . Consider example of iPhone , when new iphone launched customers across globe shown tremendous faith in the company and its product , there were queues for whole night to take first hand set of iphone from the shop , thats great and shows customers were really loyal to apple otherwise for hi tech product people do not show such a faith in early stages as people have shown for iPhone ( normally they wait and watch , have a feel of the product , see how robust it is and purchase only after its been around in the market for some time ) . Result , probably apple broke even within few months as for as iphone is concerned . In return what did apple do to its customer , within months it reduced price of iPhone by 200$ leaving the customers who have been early buyer of the product in distress and frustrated , what did apple do to make sure that those customers who have shown so much loyalty in apple product are farely ? it did not do anything substantial . So here is a case where customer is loyal but is company loyal to its customer...

On the other side is example of tata , a year back tata promised nano , a car with one lac price tag . When it was launched price of many input factors have gone up as good as 15-20 % but during launch Mr Tata said " A Promise is a promise " and kept the price still one lakh even if that meant taking a hit on margins. That is what being loyal to your customer where you consider closely what your cutomer demand and build your product accordingly. CRM is upto some extent helping to serve customer better but I believe it is a good automater of processes and tool for managing customer still it's purpose should not be to ipmprove customer loyalty rather it should be to help oragnizations become more loyal to customers to increase reverse customer loyalty. USAA comes closer to this definition where they use CRM by all means to help customer , they are not bothered that they should sell products which give high margin to them , rather they advise customers something which will be of more value to customers , they use the data not to exploit customers but to serve them and gaurd ther interest .

If still we are talking about customr loyalty then how is it more different then old days of fords and bajaj when customer was supposed to be loyal force fully in absense of enough choices .

ABC of Creative Costing

In traditional costing system it was a simple method because it was made for a simple era , imagine why would Mr Ford need to worry anything in traditional costing after all , he had to produce only one thing and that was black cars . Ford wasn't changing any model in earlier days , forget about model he wasn't even changing colors of the cars and in such a case traditional costing made perfect sense where all the overhead and other costs were proportioned equally to the number of units produced . there was hardly any confusion or apprehension about costing .

No one would have imagined in those days that a process as simple as finding out cost of labor , material , sales and administration and allocating it to number of units will become so creative in coming days. Very soon days of monopoly and cost plus were on their out from industry , it was time to produce more and with various varieties . ( just after one decade GM would have near 8000 model of cars in its portfolio). Then started the problem , not all the product needed same kind of materials neither were they produced by similar processes . Some of them were simple and needed easily available materials but some were specific which needed expensive material and special treatments. In fact Cost differentiation started much before manufacturing , In case of motherboard , chips or other research extensive electronics product research and design also contributed to the cost and determined the way these products need to be produced during manufacturing.

These complexities gave birth to a new comprehensive and creative way of costing , Activity based costing where no longer the cost was a simple function of direct labour , direct material with equal distribution of overhead to all the products . In ABC each phase of product lifecycle was divided into various activities and cost incurred in each activities was calculated , this obviously gave a clearer picture rather then a generic overview.

What were some of the basic points to consider while deciding between ABC and traditional cost.

Disillusionment : At times traditional cost created illusions , lets take a very bookish example which is there in almost all costing books . If a car manufacturer is manufacturing cars of two types one is standard cars which are made in assembly line and completely automated whereas another types of cars are competing head on with Maybach ( Remember these high end cars in which entire interiors is done by hands) and after making these two kind of cars he is simply dividing the total cost incurred in making them by number of units produced , obviously he would now find that the margin for his standard cars have decreased .....
traditional costing created this kind of false illusions for management which may lead to disastrous decisions like closing down production of standard cars or increasing the price of these cars . ABC helped management in such situations by providing them precise information

Hitting right on the correct problem : In earlier days when major portion of motherboard fabrication was done by hands in HP , they found that over all cost for motherboards was high and the obvious blame was on manufacturing . What they missed is two things
1) How will the device be manufactured is decided much earlier in design phase
2) Manual fabrication is much costlier then automated manufacturing.
These are typical example where either a product need some special treatment or one of the process in product development is eating larger chunk f resources then other processes . In such case we need to concentrate only on those pain areas.

Traditional costing could have never detected these issues , it was again ABC which came to the rescue .

Importance for service industry : Traditional costing could have never done justice to service industry . In service industry there is no tangible product to be delivered , every service is simply combination of activities . To find out which activity is costliest you need to apply ABC and once you have done so , you can decide on next strategic move , whether you should keep such activity with you or outsource it to some third party vendors.

Similarly there is one very crucial question which traditional costing will never be able to answer and that is which customer is causing more cost or which is the most profitable customer.
In short here ABC can help you providing right set of services to right set of customers

Can IT be your quantum leap : Coming Soon

Billions of enterprises to enterprises of billions

Time of small has come , last year apple released its ipod nano which was smallest and sleekest in the family and after that there was much hyped dream of Mr Tata , Tata Nano which shown to the world that small is really disruptive it can bring a paradigm change in the industries and prove that impossible is nothing . There was a time when people used to long for big , today the liking has changed ( If we keep some exceptions like real estate out) and it has been rapidly caught up by Industry biggies , at one side Fijitsu and Apple have come up with the smallest laptop this year on the other side from mobile to hard disk everything is shrinking into a pocket size portable device.Now the question is does small mean that it has some tradeoffs , is it compromising something ? Today in most of the cases answer is no. Small is as powerful as its larger counterpart and whenever small comes into market, it instantly becomes favourite of masses. A very comparable trend has been seen from last couple of years in industry, there is a huge surge in number of small and medium size industries worldwide. These SMEs are emerging as the growth engine of the world economy . In the EU, SMEs comprise approximately 99% of all firms and employ between them about 65 million people. In China there are close to 8 million SMEs and in India the number is 4.5 million.SMEs are also responsible for driving innovation and competition. These are the businesses which later on become some of the largest empires in the world, recall the days when Infosys started with 5 man and a two BHK apartment in Pune and went on to become the second largest software services provider in Asia . At one side where big stalwarts of India Inc are making news worldwide, back home the efforts of the small and medium enterprises are also gaining appreciation and support from all the dimensions.

Great Governance :

Indian government has been closely monitoring the development in SME sector and formulating many supportive policies to boost it further and it has to definitely do this for a sector which employs more then 178 lakh people. For funding SMES financial institutions like Small Industries Development Bank of India (SIDBI) , National Small Industries Corporation have been instituted . the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has already issued guidelines to the public sector banks to ensure 20 per cent year-on-year growth in credit to the SME , other banks are also encouraged to provide loans to SMEs .

Advocacy by Non profit associations:

Most of the Industry associations like CII , FICCI , NASSCOM which represent all sections of industry have not only setup a separate wing catering to the SMBs but also started encouraging SMEs by giving away various awards in almost all of the verticals where SMEs are functional. One of the most talked about awards is "Emerging India Award" which is instituted by ICICI in collaboration with CRISIL. Corporation bank has also initiated an ward called National award for mSME which will be focussing on sector wise contribution of mSMEs. As per my understanding the most critical role played by these authorities is by doing advocacy for SMEs with government as well as private organizations specially banks , this helps in bringing attention to the areas of improvement and creating better opportunities for SMEs. It is because of these effortsmany organizations are joining hands with regulatory bodies and trying to come up with solution and funding products for SMEs. Media is also fully supportive of these efforts.

Now IT is easy :

There was a time when arrogance of IT companies was at peek , it was impossible for anyone to realise that any small business can leverage on power of the mighty mainframe or for that matter any state of art computing facility like data centres and storage solutions but today rules of the game have changed . IT companies have suddenly started targeting and building solutions for SMEs not only because they want to help SMEs grow larger but They have also realised this is where their future top and bottom line is. As per the latest Microsoft-AMI Partners report, "the India SMEs are on a firm growth trajectory, with 60 per cent of PC-using businesses expecting 20 per cent growth and 16 per cent planning to add branch offices to expand operations". Some of the classic example of these focussed solutions are storage product by Sun , HP , Toshiba , Network solutions by Cisco , nortel . Another breakthrough in this space is emergence of software as service have given value for the cost put in by SMEs as they only pay for what they use and hence they are not bound to purchase complete packages to use just a small part of it. Now setting up IT infrastructure is possible in very affordable prices for SMEs thanks to the concepts of platform as service and On-Demand delivery model enabling firms to move their entire IT infrastructure management to the ‘multi-tenant system’ shared resources where complete infrastructure can be leased or rented .

Environment :

Whenever entrepreneurial ventures are discussed , we always discuss successes and not failures whereas more then 80% of start-ups never complete their one year of existence . I see this a good sign for other entrepreneurs because they always have fascinating success stories like virgin , FedX , Infoys , Microsoft , Dominos , Air Deccan to follow and no failures which can cause any hesitation in their minds. Visionaries like Dhiru bhai Ambani gave a life to this word "Entrepreneur". Entrepreneurship today is the most respected occupation !

This is the time when SMEs have a perfect balance of opportunities and sources to leverage on those opportunities , at one side globalization is continuously opening new opportunities for industry and on the other technology enablement like ecommerce.

There is no dearth of talent specially when they are sitting in the hub of worlds coast arbitrage centre.It is worth appreciating that everyone is realising that one size does not fit all and hence special nurturing is needed in case of these small but powerful giants. The quest for searching new growth avenues never stops , up to now we are master in putting lower categories up in value chain and so will be done here as well , the concept of micro small and medium enterprises has already caught up the momentum and given various supporting factor there is every possibility for each of these billions of enterprises to become enterprises of billions.

Connecting India !!

When it comes to digital divide and internet connectivity , For a country like India it will not be possible to make one size fit all , we will have to work on different models . The best way would be to take the best practices from different models and integrate them . Here is a framework

1) Use of WLL : Traditionally the infrastructural aspect of digital divide has been focus of internet connectivity . India must improve its infrastructure to support internet deployments across the nation , If it can not be done then we must look to alternate solutions recently Patrick Gelsinger from Intel suggested that developing countries should say no to copper wires and use wireless local loop and fibre optics for backbone.

Pabal, a small village located 70 km from Pune in Maharashtra, is all set to join the Internet revolution.
Efforts are underway in the village to provide Internet connections to an area of 2,000 sq km through the Wireless Local Loop Technology (WLL). The technology was developed by the Indian Institute of Technology, Chennai, and is marketed by N-Logue.
2) Setting up Kiosk : The way telephone services were made available to the masses by setting up PCO’s similarly now it is time to set up internet kiosk where people can walk in and browse internet , the biggest benefit which consumers get out of this is cost effectiveness , here they are exempted from cost of buying a computer system and paying monthly rental to ISP . All an user has to pay is 15-20 Rs per hour. These kiosks can be set up in existing government infrastructures like railway ticket booking outlets , postoffices , schools , hospitals , panchayats . These are the basic government offices which are there in every villege .

3) Encouraging private players to enter in this field : Private players can be invited to setup infrastructure and resources , some players have already entered and successfully innovated business models in urban and remoter areas. The focus should also be there to organize these resources well .

4) More employment generation : There should be more employment generation with the help of internet so that more people can be attracted towards it . Specially in terms of setting up internet kiosk , small BPOs and data entry centres . n-louge and ITC both create local service partners who can earn their living by running these kiosks

5) Offline availability : Small backup servers and data repositories should be maintained which can help providing offline data when there are issues in connectivity . Electricity is also a problem even for tier 1 and 2 cities of India in such situation proper battery backups , UPS Circuit breaker and voltage stabilizer should be provided

6) Making internet more relevant : Information which are relevant to diverse sector of society should be made available online . It should include agriculture, Veterinary , Health Care, Education , current affairs and much more
7) Finding alternate ways : There can be still many remote areas where we may not bring IT revolution in such cases we should be ready to work with non conventional ways , for example the alternate solution implemented by DAknet where data is collected by mobile vans.

Shattered dream fo decoupled economy

http://www.coolavenues.com/know/gm/saurabh-economy-1.php

The bulls were all riding to the north till February, the celebration of Diwali, Christmas and New Year was still in the air, and above all, there were talks of India and China economies getting decoupled from US economy, India becoming more self-sustainable
and self-dependent. Then came the acid test of the de-coupling, US Sub-prime crisis started taking tolls on all the foundation pillars of the financial services across the globe. At initial stages, it looked as if only IT companies, which have major chunk of revenue coming from these big financial service providers and banks, will be getting affected, but then started one of the deepest bear hug of Sensitivity Index.
The crisis in US had down-sized the Indian growth story from a futuristic fairy tale of crown prince to a below average story of struggling man. Now the idea of decoupling sounds laughable, We have seen the result, how independent our functionings are with respect to Western Economy, US Economy is still the engine of world growth express. We are far away from being a decoupled economy, and how can we be one.
Complete Sensex was overloaded from FII and FDIs. All major financial institutions have picked-up almost every stock available listed in the sensex. What happened when they felt trouble in thier homeland? Obviously there was liquidity crunch, there was apprehension that US recession can send growth of complete world couple of years back . Institutional investors started selling their holdings one after another, and the result was the downward journey of Sensex. The same message was received clearly by Indian investors and they followed the way shown by wise men of the finance world.
What Next?
Asia-Centric Approach
Looking at the current trends, there is a shift expected from West to East, Indian investment banks are still doing better. Recently, Indian arms of I-Banks offered highest salary in premium business schools. In India, these banks are still showing profit and distributing bonuses, which are higher then anywhere else in the world. Same is also applicable for China.
Shift to Commodity
Commodity, metel and oil are still crossing new limits every day. Recently, oil crossed 112 Dollar per barrel whereas gold is its all time high of near 13,000. There is a direct correlation between prices of gold and oil and, hence, they are increasing together. For investors also, it makes more sense now to invest in commodity market as it will not only provide less volatility but also save value of their money from inflation.
Slowdown in Growth
With US recession, the growth in India and China will not be that fast, still Asian countries are highly export-oriented and US is the largest customer for them.
Further Rise of Europe
All this can be good opportunity for Europe to rise. Euro is continuously getting stronger in comparison to other currencies, and there are not many bad news coming from Europe.
Leadership Change
In a very short span of time, we are seeing leadership change for the biggest power of the world, Vladimir Putin stepped down from Russian president-ship, Soon there will be new president in USA and new premier in Pakistan. UK and Germany have also seen a change in leadership and for India also this is the last year of the UPA government before election. Although any of these changes will not be able to affect much in terms of economic factors, but they may change the sentiments of people.
Accumulation & Bottom Fishing
Problem for one and opportunity for other. It is shopping time for all those who were sitting on large reserves and waiting for correct valuations to arrive. Recently, large number of stocks have been accumulated by various investment firms, and the trend will go on gradually.

Kautilya's 7 pillars of organzation .

The ancient wisdom which Chankaya had passed to us is amazing , It penetrates two main areas of any orgaization 1) Finance ( Arthshashtra) and 2) Organizational structure and Roles and Responsibilities.
Here is an example of what chanakya's opinion was about organizational structure. In one of the verses of Arthshastra he quotes
Swami , Amatya , Janapada , Durg , Kosha , Danda , Mitra , Iti Prakariyet.
These are the seven main componenets of any organizations
AS par kautilaya shastra it is very important for any kingdom to keep all of these 7 factors intact for smooth functioning of the nation . Following are the 7 pillars mentioned by Chankaya.
Internal constituents :
following 5 internal constituents are important for an organization
(a) Swami: The master or king of the nation who rules the nation and has complete control , he is not involved in day to day activities of the nation . Swami is responsible for building long term strategic plans for growth of the nation
(b) amatya : bureaucracy, often loosely described as ministry, They work directly under Swami and control all functioning on his behalf .
(c) durga: fort, often identified as city (pura),
(d) artha or Kosha : treasury or finance of the nation . Kosha is accumulated earning from the janapada which is used for several purposes.
(e) danda : army of the nation. Danda is the workforce of the kingdom which is instrumental in any key implementation and execution of the task

External constituents :
As per chanakya there are two external constituents which affect any organization
(a) Janpada : Rrural hinterland, Can be translated as the end users or stakeholders who are directly affected by what is done by Kingdom.
(b) Mitra : friends of the nation who can help them in the crisis situation .

In todays organizations , these can be compared as given below
1) Swami is represented by the CEO of the organization
2) Amatyas are represented by different managers of the oranization
3) Durg is the headquarter of organization
4) Kosha is the reserves with organization
5) Danda is the workforce of the organization
6) Janapada is the market which organization serves
7) Mitra are partners and other allies of organization

Any activiy or problem of organization can surely be fit into one of these seven pillars and then can be solved accordingly !!

Based on a discussion with Mr Radhakrishnan Pillai , Management evangelist and strategic consultant

Want to build a sustainable organization !!

More than 80,000 company failures per year in the last 20 years, compared to 19,000 per year, on average, in the previous 30 years. Going forward it is becoming difficult for corporations and experts to predict sustainability of organizations. It is not at all surprising in this scenario every one is talking about making organisations more resilient.

Here is what I feel can make an organization sustainable

Connecting with Employees : It is said that employee are the biggest Assets of a company , accountants might not be very happy with this statement but in todays world where intellectual capita is considered the biggest asset , this statement definitely holds true. For any organization to be strong , to grow and break all the barriers it is very important that their management connect to Employees . Employee should be an integral part of organization , he should live the value of organization .
This connection works as bedrock on which whole organization can sustain. Leaders must make sure that they understand each and every team members to, get to know them - to build a connection based on trust, honesty and respect. Lets take a very simple example of Indian freedom fighters , they literally built an empire where every one was connected , Leaders not only gave instructions but also set an example and that resulted in a connection in all the members , Connection to an extent that every one saw the same vision , everyone worked on the same ‘s mission . Similar connection . Most important thing about connection is , its infectious nature , even if one employee is in synchronization with organization , his influence will work like a charm on other team members as they will be able to relate with organization via him very easily and hence will be transformed from an employee who simply does a 9 to 5 job to someone who will feel integral part of organization to such an extent that he will be engaged to it for always. An organization where leaders are able to connect with employees will never loose its valuable employees and will overcome the biggest problem which comes in way of companies resilience i.e. attrition rate , migration of talent. Once you are able to retain your master performers you will certainly be able to amaze yourself and team with a brilliance and consistent performance because when you have succeeded in creating a team that is connected, you can count on each of them having a higher degree of personal engagement toward meeting the goals before them

Change management: Change can be defined as "… to cause or to become different, alter, transform, convert. Implies a radical alteration of character or replacement with something else" [2]. As truly said , change the only constant thing in the world , when an organization grows from a small 20 – 30 people company to a MNC having headcount in thousands , it goes through in numerous changes . Accepting a sudden change is not in nature of human being , he likes to be in his comfort zone which he is familiar with so if these changes not handled properly they lead to a big panick and chaos. Change inherently brings conflict and turmoil to organizations.
According to Smit and Cronjé [18] management should be sensitive towards potential change in order to prepare for it and should be aware of the steps
involved in a change process to increase the possibility of its successful implementation. In the process flow diagram there are some important steps which need to be followed for implementing any change in an organization. A resilient organization must be able to manage it’s changes at the same time making sure that it’s employees don’t see new change as a liability on them and this can happen if and only if desire of excelling and improving can be generated in employees so that they can feel the need of change from within.

Eco Holi

As per recent norm by Govt of India , Color with chemicals should be avoided in holi so we used the ageold wisdom of India to play holi

Its very simple , Use a pit of 4 X 7 so that even tallest and fattest friend of your can come into that . Fill this pit with water and dust whichwill in turn convert into mud with a little effort and fun and you are done . Advantage ; Starte counting

1) Cost effective : its free

2) Eco freindly

3) good for skin

4) Its feeling of connecting to earth , you know what I mean

5) Above all now you are invincible and don't care whatever color or stuff people use on you.

And after this you can simply start throwing others in here

Holi Hungamaaa 1

On 22nd we celebrated holi in SPJIMR campus , here are the different colors. Even before we could prepare ourselves , evry one was red blue and black .

Gulal , color , WAter , Thandai everything was used to play holi and still there was much more to come

Be aware Thoughts can become Action

Dedicated to a friend who turned thoughts into action.
It was a session by Parimal Merchant , Prof has called 3 volunteers from near by slum area to introduce them to us and tell us about the work which they are doing in slums , these volunteers themselves lived in slums and earned their livings by small jobs of hawkers , domestic help which fetched them an earning of 2-3 K per month . During the discussion it came out that doing social work obviously was no cake walk for these people specially when they don’t have support and funding from big organizations . All they had determination to do something and courage and conviction to take it forward.
The agenda of session was not Social service of work of NGOs but it was the four C’s of Parimal Sir , Conviction , compassion , courage and Confidence. While talking to these normal people who have started very small in slums , many times they mentioned that the path taken by them was by no means easy but they had already decided on it and hence they did not have any other go but to follow their heart. Vedas and old sayings also mention “ Thought produces actions “ , what you think is what you become irrespective of environmental and other constraints whole universe will be in your support to materialise your dream into reality , no matter how big it is .Amazingly it also does not matter whether it is good or bad , what matters is how clear is your vision , how clearly do you see it approaching . I recall one of the interview by now hit pop singer Daler Mehandi , He mentioned , when he was in USA working as cab driver , he used to visualise himself as a pop singer , he would visualise himself performing in front of large audience . Later on when he became a singer , he designed his own attire and this attire was the result of his visualisations only.
Next Level of it is "Thought with faith produce and attract stronger action " , I could immediately recall one strange habbit of Henery Ford , Mr ford had a habbit of of touching anything he liked and promising to himself that I would have it before this much time , and he always managed to fulfil his promise . Obviously Ford had confidence on his abilities which attracted even stronger actions , Whatever people say repeatedly and with conviction is bound to happen , probably that is the reason in old days our elders used to say that we should not say something bad about someone , who knows it might come true. So next time think big , think creative and think larger then life who knows it may turn into reality , after all its Law of attraction.

Mantra of Marketing

It is not about new ways of marketing and promotion , it is about categorising old ways
Must Use them : IF one advertiser which you should use always and at any cost , that is your customer . There are very few businesses which use their customers as their brand ambassador. I feel rather then investing a million dollar on a big celebrity , it will be worth more to invest 1 million dollar on 10,000 customers and give them some kind of benefit to advertise for you.
Customer must be used to promote your product as they are the one who can convey the message with the most credibility to other likeminded people . A customer can even break another persons brand loyalty and bring him to your shop . I have seen this many times in youth and teenage group where they are mostly influenced by people walking around them.

Can’t do without them : In todays world one thing you simply can not do without and that is internet . It is redundant to say how important is net for your products advertising and promotion. Social networking sites like orkut , facebook and linkdln are creating hypes they give you power of reaching to thousands of people , categorize them on the basis of different parameters and target them by writing just one message. That’s the power of technology and innovation which simply can not be ignored.
Other medium like blogs , ads in websites and search engines also provide similar value in almost insignificant cost.
Use them anyway : TV and newspaper are the medium which are anyway used they have become so obvious that now advertisers don’t even bother to find out how many people they are going to reach by putting their ads on these medium , they simply going for it knowing both of these medium jointly penetrate more then 90% of the population. So next time you decide to advertise a product don’t waste your time thinking how many people will you reach by TV,Radio and newspaper . Everyone can be reached by them and everything can be sold using them.
Don’t Go Alone : Almost every business needs partners and suppliers , one must also try to arrange mutual cooperation with partners to promote each others product . Remember how intel become a brand by advertising on PCs with “intel inside” logo , that was a very smart move and before that no one cared much about internal processor of the system , what mattered was the name of the assembler or manufacturer of the laptops or PCs but this advertisement generated the kind of awareness which made intel a strong brand .
CoCreate Value : Once the business is in comfortable zone , it is time to give something back to society , environment and planet , infect now there is concept of triple bottom ,where even the social activities and values generated by these activities are also added in balance sheet , ITC is one of the few which have already started doing it. So if you are in associated with any NGO then it can be promoted on your websites and similarly your product can be listed in NGOs website . Its all about being in the club of mutual admirers after all :)

Realizing the power of Small ( and medium enterprises)

In most economies, smaller enterprises greater in number then the large corporations . some of the facts related to SMEs in the world are:
1) In the EU, SMEs comprise approximately 99% of all firms and employ between them about 65 million people.
2)China’s more than 8 million SMEs, account for 99 percent of China's total enterprise and 60 percent of the nation's industrial output and exports.
3) In India 4.5 million SMEs contribute 40% of industrial production but create 70% of industrial pollution.
4) As per the latest Microsoft-AMI Partners report, "the India SMEs are on a firm growth trajectory, with 60 per cent of PC-using businesses expecting 20 per cent growth and 16 per cent planning to add branch offices to expand operations" .

Not only are SME's seen to be the engine of employment growth but they are also responsible for driving innovation and competition. These are the businesses which later on become some of the largest empires in the world , recall the days when Infosys started with 5 man and a two BHK aprtament in Pune and went on to be the second largest software services provider in Asia. SMEs also play a major role in developing entrepreneurship and ways of diversifications.
Given the rosy picture , SMEs are the one hit hard even by minutest change in the macroeconomic conditions. They have great difficulty in obtaining captal for scaling thier operations , crossing boundaries of nation , going with technical upgradation and attracting the best talent. This all keeps these indegeneous industries shackled with thier potential locked.

The Human Identity Crisis

In last few years I have noticed that almost every one under the sun suffers from identity crisis , there are very few of us who can be themselves and hardly influenced by what others say or do , these people have only two categories , either they are mad or they are highly successfull individuals in thier fields. Every one wants to become someone else and it starts from very early stage of life , since childhood you are being told that you are not good enough , you should become like your elder brother , sister or some freinds . This comparions keeps going on in school and college and after some time rather then exploring your self you start exploring idntities and traits of others because you want to become like them . If you sing good
then probably your parents would like you to become Abhijit sawant as he prove himself somehow somwhere , I am sure that parents of Abhijit Sawant must must have asked him to become like Sonu Nigam and Parents of Sonu Nigam might have had an expectation that one day thier son would be like Kishore or Mohammad Raffi. This continues and does not have any end or beginning and strange part is this happens even when the difference between us and someone might be very little and insignificant.
Swami Vivekanand used to say in many of his lectures that only those who are brave and couragious can admire and accept themselves , Infact hindu philosphy goes beyond this , Vedas put forward the concept of "So-Aham " , " Shivo-Aham " , Brahm-o-Aham" which was to believe that you are everything , you are not a part of god but god himself because there is only one supreme power and all souls are his projection just like thier is a single sea which has many waves coming and disappearing in a span of time . With the help of this knowledge our sages and greate man were able to see unity between Universe and themselves and attain the highest level of one ness and peace. Alas we don't even know this wisdom and even if we know , it hardly impresses us because what matters today is materialsic pleasure and success with which no one can be satisfied , so one always keep on looking to someone else who "look" more satisfied and happy and behold here starts desire to become some one else and loosing yourself.
Come one be brave , be strong accept yourself as you are . It is not bad to keep on improving yourself but that drive should come from within .

Not just Quotes : The Guide to live life with joy and pride

An auditorium full to its capacity , people even sitting in the stairs and attentively listening and taking notes . On blackboard ( actually it was a white board ) their is Sanyasi explaining a process flow as how to take corret decisions in life , what are the roots of good management . It is Gita shibir in SPJIMR where HH Swami Viditatmatmanada ji have come down to the campus for one complete week and every day he discussed with whole college the very core of almost every religion , the value systems which human should follow and the art and science how one should live his life , He says " If you don't accept yourself then how will you expect world to accept yourself " . We cam across many such insight full thoughts and quotes during his discussion , here are some of them.

" I am consciousness with body and not ody with consciousness "

"Be happy with oneself"

" Rather then being commanded by environment , one should command enviornment"

" Only he can serve society , who himself does not need to be served"

"HAte the sin and not the sinner"

"Being simple is not simple"

"Happiness and Anger does not go together"

"Contribution leads to discovery of inner divine wealth"

"Indulgance , Anger , Greed , are gatewy to suffering "

" Remember 3 Cs Control , compassion and Charity "

"It is not we who get angry , It is anger whch gets us"

"People want to be accepted AS they are"

"Love is given and not asked for"

""The basis of universe is contribution"

"Help is attitude and nt action"

"A leader should influence others not by word but by action "

"Freedom of performing action comes with Responsibility"

"Be Kind and Forgiving"

"Whatever nourishes also required to be nourished"

" If you would love yourself , world will also do so "

" A reactive mind is not an objective mind"

" Being good is not enough , one should also be perceived good"

" Make an effrot with attitude of contributions and returning a favour "

"Gracefully accept whatever outcome is "

Entrepreneurship : Do you have it in you

Few day back we were listening to Captain G.R. Gopinath of airdeccan ,his tell of building an empire was mesmerizeing and from that speech and our readings we have drawn some basic characteristics of an entrepreneur
1) Risk Taking abilities : So taking risk is the first step of entrepreneurship . An entrepreneur must have risk taking ability , one who can not take risk can not become entrepreneur. When one tries to enter into any venture he never knows whether it is going to be successful or a failure and that makes it very difficult for a normal person to come out of his comfort zone . The decision of taking a risk is very important , one who passes this examination of taking risk has surely one of the very basic characteristics of being entrepreneur. If we track back the starting point of some of the today’s successful entrepreneurs like G.R. Gopinath, Mr Narayan Murthy and many of their likes have left their jobs and took a risk of loosing the financial security of their life.

2) Entrepreneurs believe in humble start : Many of today successful entrepreneurship ventures have started in a garage , almost all of them have had very humble beginning be it HP , Amazon , Dell , Infosys , Linksys or Google. The reason was obviously not that they liked the idea of working from garage but because of obvious resource crunch in the beginning phase of entrepreneurship most of these people have to work with minimum available facilities and resources in early days. Just before starting google , larry page and Sergey bin have concerted their own hostel room into a research laboratory , In early days of Infosys it used to function from a small 2 BHK in Pune , there was no servant to clean the flat and founder members themselves used to clean it .

3) Entrepreneurship demands Vision : It is not a mandatory criteria that entrepreneurs must have some clear vision about what they are about to do but if this vision exist then the organization is bound to sustain for long term. When Gopinath Munde started a no frill cheap airline , he had a vision that his fellow countryman should be able to travel by air without paying a fortune for it , It was this vision that kept his motivation high and made air deccan an instant hit among people from middle society. Consider example of Harper-Arrington Publishing and Media which was started by Harper and Arrington with a vision to educate kids and adults.

4) Entrepreneurship demands persistence : There are very few entrepreneurs who get it all right in the very first shot. It need lots of persistence to carry on the quest for success and to not give up the hope. Entrepreneurs don’t let it go , they would exercise all available options and make sure that they get the outcome . One of the example of persistence is

5) Entrepreneurs learn from mistakes : Infosys was not the first venture started by Mr Narayan Murthy , First of all he started a company named softronix but within a span of 1.5 years he had to close it , after doing a job for few years he again started a new venture named Infosys but this time he had already learnt the lesson , Softronix was targeting indian software market which did not have much scope at that time so later on with Infosys Mr Murthy targeted US markets where software industry was booming at that time .

These are not the only characterstics for entrepreneurship but these are definitely few important onces and if you have them all then I guess you should start now

USe customer to innovate

If we talk about innovations , researching on cutting edge technologies , working on new systems and frameworks , the immediate thing which comes to mind is the huge cost associated with it which does not always provide a good return . Imagine how many innovations and research never make it to the production environment . What could be the way in which companies can still get innovative ideas without having to spend too much on thier own workforce , that is surely learning from customer and involving him in your system to innovate.
Who would know customer better then himself , Customers are the biggest source of innovation . They can come up with any weird idea because it is not going to cost them any thing , they won't be afraid of failure (It hardly matters to them ) and they don't have any pressure from thier management to drive innovation in a certain direction only . One such idea is innvated by customer in Punjab , Dhaba owners of Punjab also purchase Washing Machines but not for washing clothes , guess what they make lassi in those washing machines. Just imagine if one of the negineer in Videcon would have come up with this idea that lets project our washing machine as Lassi maker also , what would have been reaction from his management ?
Now when customers have shown the way , they must be seeing a business proposition here , may be in future they can simply do some changes in design of washing machine and make it more suitable for lassi making .

Going forward it will be very important to involve your customers into your business , just imagine you end having a workforce of millions of people by using this methods and guess what you even don't have to pay these people . All you have to do is to listen to them carefully , understand them and thir needs and encourage them to provide feedbacks on any aspect of product and services . One other industru where I see this practice prevalent is media and entertainment , Many news channels have started making thier cutomers their reporters . They ask viewers to send any latest happening around them , You see now they are literally coveringentire nation without sending any one physically anywhere. What adds to this is tehonology which has made it all very simple.

So remember when next time you meet your customer , don't think that he is just customer , give him a new role that is of critique and Engineer for your product and he may change the way you do business.