Given the difficulty level and competition of these exams , you would need to think through why and how you would do it
Define : Definition of your goal is very important , what exactly you want to do in life , why would you like to get into an MBA after all its a place where they would not let you sleep more than 3-4 hours in a day , it will cost you fortune , you would continously staring at your laptop screen and reading numerous reports in record deadlines, there will be cutthroat competition among your pears , you will be almost cut from your family and social life.
Why would one want so many trouble ? and if you have already made your mind then you better have a definition ofyour goal, may be not as ambitious as becoming CEO of MNC in next 20 years but definitely as basic as what do you like to do in general.
1) Peopls People : Are you the one in team who knows most of the people around, communication is an opportunity for you , when you speak people just can not drift their focus , you can get along with every one. In addition to these points lots of clue can be taken from the job you have been doing , have you coordinated many events in college , are you involved in interacting with customer regularly from you team , do you handle communication with internal stakeholders , do you think and work with creativity
If these are some of the things describing you and your work then you must consider Marketing as your choice of specialisation for MBA.
2) The Money man : you have a dmat account from before any of your friends even understood what is dmat, you love to understand money matters , you have done your graduation in finance related subjects , your client is financial instituion and you enjoy understanding thier business processes. If these characterstics describe you to some extent then look for finance as an option of specialisation.
3) Always operational : If you have background of handling things at various levels in shop floors , graduation in mechanical , production , automotive engineering etc and you like to get involved in activities which run an organisation then operations management is the field for you
4) Tech lover : Now a days there are lots of option for doing MBA in systems management and information management , It makes sense for some one who has already spent signifant time in technology oriented
Develop : In all the B school assesments they try to find out candidates who have been groomed well in almost all the facets of thier personality , One may think then what are these people going to do , isn't it their job to provide you direction and develop your skills in multiple dimension of personality but please understand it is easy to start from a point up to where some work has already been done rather than starting from a blank page.
As part of develop phase you would have to develop your skills and personality with respect to the career field you are interested in ( As we talked about in Define stage) so start taking more interest in the areas of your work which are directly aligned with your career definitions. In addition to this work a little on personal aspect as well , good communication skill , positive thinking , good people skill , keeping a calm and composed head are some of the things which you should try to achieve for a successful career in any field.
Decide : After defining your career objective and doing some ground work to develop skills in those direction now is the time to decide which institutes you should choose . The institutes should have good reputation in your choice of area . It is time to do a thorough research both primary as well as secondary and find out which all institutes you would like to target , please keep your mind open and do look at some of the global (but feasible ) options .
After taking this decision you can start applying for admissions in respective colleges.
Demonstrate & Differentiate : Even though steps so far may not be easy but the toughest part is to crack the exam and selection process , this will need a structured approach . Once you are through with the written test , group discussion and interviews need to be taken care and this is where your ground work in step 1 and 2 will help . For beating your competition you will have to stand out in crowd, you should have differentaition points and deep knowledge in the education and work you have done so far.
It may sound difficult to differentiate oneself from thousands of other candidates who have done the same graduation ,worked in the same areas that of yours and even have same hobbies and passion that of yours . That is the reason you will have to focus in a narrow scope which can play as your strenth .
Thursday, December 17, 2009
Monday, December 14, 2009
Challenges of CMMi implementation
CMMi Challenges
What Vs How : CMMi prescribes the end result mentioning what need to be achieved but it does not talk about how to reach that goal which obviously makes it very much dependent on the philosophy and culture of organisation where itis been implemented . The hidden benefit here is that a company can work on a model and customize it specifically to organisational need hence spending resource and money which is just fit for its need rather than simply following some path which may have worked for another organization not similar in size and culture.
Restricted use of Measurement and Analtics : Where large organization may have TB of data available with them in almost all fields for small companies the focus is always too much on running and growing business then collecting data . It is very difficult to clearly define the metrices which business will need to monitor closely . Even if data is available at times it is not very clear how to make sense out of it
Availability of Process blueprints: Process documentation and a central repository of processes is key to management of any activity but in most of the cases process knowledge remains as a concept with various subject matter experts and not codified explicitly , this is common even in sufficiently big organizations. Even if the work of process documentation is initiated , most of the employees take it a liability in addition to thier work and it becomes a part time assignment.
Its not a panacea : Organizations may work under misconception that once CMMi model is implemented it is going to address all the quality related issues
which is not true because quality related issues have much broader scope to be solved by just one model like CMMi , It can certainly be a part of
organizational quality program but one can not rely on CMMi to fix all issues in quality.
What Vs How : CMMi prescribes the end result mentioning what need to be achieved but it does not talk about how to reach that goal which obviously makes it very much dependent on the philosophy and culture of organisation where itis been implemented . The hidden benefit here is that a company can work on a model and customize it specifically to organisational need hence spending resource and money which is just fit for its need rather than simply following some path which may have worked for another organization not similar in size and culture.
Restricted use of Measurement and Analtics : Where large organization may have TB of data available with them in almost all fields for small companies the focus is always too much on running and growing business then collecting data . It is very difficult to clearly define the metrices which business will need to monitor closely . Even if data is available at times it is not very clear how to make sense out of it
Availability of Process blueprints: Process documentation and a central repository of processes is key to management of any activity but in most of the cases process knowledge remains as a concept with various subject matter experts and not codified explicitly , this is common even in sufficiently big organizations. Even if the work of process documentation is initiated , most of the employees take it a liability in addition to thier work and it becomes a part time assignment.
Its not a panacea : Organizations may work under misconception that once CMMi model is implemented it is going to address all the quality related issues
which is not true because quality related issues have much broader scope to be solved by just one model like CMMi , It can certainly be a part of
organizational quality program but one can not rely on CMMi to fix all issues in quality.
Wednesday, December 9, 2009
Business of Businss Education
The factories of innovation ..some of the greatest B schools of India seems to be on path to new kind of innovation , developing the most expensive post graduation programs on the earth. ISB, SP Jain Institute of Management and research are leading the pack with introduction of new program which can cost you more than 2.5 Million INR to get an MBA degree ( well to be specific some of these may be only diplomas or certificates if not approved by AICTE) . At one side ISB is starting PGPMAX which will be more of a part time MBA course for executives and will be taught at Hyderabaad campus with some sessions in Kellogs and Wharton on the other side SP Jain has already launched a course in collaboration with Schulich university Canada which will be divided between Mumbai and Toranto campus.
There is no doubt that some of the included expenses are stay in foreign campuses , food etc but the point to ponder is whether these courses will be wble to provide you the relevant return on investment. If we include other living expenses for around 2 years , it will come across 3 Million INR, It is enough amount to secure a middle class common man's pension for lifetime so what is the kind of ROI one is looking from this kind of investment , well I do understand intellectual development and ability to apply structured methods for solving strategic , operational issues etc would be some of the great take away from this course but at the end it all boils down to what can you do with such skills i.e How much you can earn or what is the kind of job you are offered.
If we even consider some of the normal not so expensive courses , they have failed to provide a good ROI to more than 50% of the participants . All the media hype about million dollar salary in pink news paper is focused on some top 5- 10% of the class participants , rest go back with a decent increment in their salaries and mostly almost in the similar area of work ( as even in campus placements organizations give due weight to the background of candidate). even though top 20 institutes take fees in the range of 4 to 10 lacs , and the salary of students coming out of program varies between 4 to 11 lac with average being somewhere 6.5 to 7.
two of the Three generic strategies which even watchman of these B school knows is cost leadership and differentiation
Cost Leadership : Salary , roles depend on various factors from business condition to industry need so why can't B school implement a more innovative model which they have been teaching for long time , They can take a fixed component of fees which covers cost of course material , infrastructure etc and a variable component of the fees which depends on what kind of benefit is materialized to the student after course , to be specific let it be a percentage of annual pay package received by student , isn't something similar today's IT organizations doing by charging a variable component depending on how much money IT saved / earned for their clients .
I think We all have something to learn from TATA's here , a 2000$ car and a 20$ water purifier , that is what Indian market demands value for every penny spent , specially in education which is very crucial for indian middle class .
Differentiation : There are very few institutes in India which have created a differentiation , I would consider NITIE (SCM), ICFAI(FIN), FMS(Service), IRMA(Rural), IIFT (IB), XLRI, SCMHRD (HR) , MICA (MarCom) as some of the leaders , rest all are more of "Me too" kind . They should start differentiating in a way which adds value to students and also makes sure that it is filling a wide gap in the industry
There is no doubt that some of the included expenses are stay in foreign campuses , food etc but the point to ponder is whether these courses will be wble to provide you the relevant return on investment. If we include other living expenses for around 2 years , it will come across 3 Million INR, It is enough amount to secure a middle class common man's pension for lifetime so what is the kind of ROI one is looking from this kind of investment , well I do understand intellectual development and ability to apply structured methods for solving strategic , operational issues etc would be some of the great take away from this course but at the end it all boils down to what can you do with such skills i.e How much you can earn or what is the kind of job you are offered.
If we even consider some of the normal not so expensive courses , they have failed to provide a good ROI to more than 50% of the participants . All the media hype about million dollar salary in pink news paper is focused on some top 5- 10% of the class participants , rest go back with a decent increment in their salaries and mostly almost in the similar area of work ( as even in campus placements organizations give due weight to the background of candidate). even though top 20 institutes take fees in the range of 4 to 10 lacs , and the salary of students coming out of program varies between 4 to 11 lac with average being somewhere 6.5 to 7.
two of the Three generic strategies which even watchman of these B school knows is cost leadership and differentiation
Cost Leadership : Salary , roles depend on various factors from business condition to industry need so why can't B school implement a more innovative model which they have been teaching for long time , They can take a fixed component of fees which covers cost of course material , infrastructure etc and a variable component of the fees which depends on what kind of benefit is materialized to the student after course , to be specific let it be a percentage of annual pay package received by student , isn't something similar today's IT organizations doing by charging a variable component depending on how much money IT saved / earned for their clients .
I think We all have something to learn from TATA's here , a 2000$ car and a 20$ water purifier , that is what Indian market demands value for every penny spent , specially in education which is very crucial for indian middle class .
Differentiation : There are very few institutes in India which have created a differentiation , I would consider NITIE (SCM), ICFAI(FIN), FMS(Service), IRMA(Rural), IIFT (IB), XLRI, SCMHRD (HR) , MICA (MarCom) as some of the leaders , rest all are more of "Me too" kind . They should start differentiating in a way which adds value to students and also makes sure that it is filling a wide gap in the industry
Sunday, November 15, 2009
In Company of Kabeer !
Passion for doing something , starting something which may seem nothing but your interest. Your heart wants to follow it not knowing whether there is some benefit in it , whether there is a purpose to it , can it serve higher interest who cares?. Those who start walking are bound to meet with so many destinations , its upto them to choose whether to stop here , whether to walk continuously , should some one else be included , is there anything meaning full to this ... If you would have thought ofthese questions I bet you would have never started that kind of journey which Ms Shabnam Virmani in Kabeer Project.
Kabeer is a mystic poet of 15th century from Northern India , he did not have much knowledge of scriptures or any holy book but seems he had the ultimate experience of true self and purpose of human life , he wrote small verses which contain elixir of life from daily living to highest meditation and very aptly such knowledge can not come from reading , such knowledge can come only fromexperience . Map his words to the most ancient hindu scriptures and it will match word by word be it about description of the lordwithout any form or be it about rituals vs simple meditation. Yet he symbolizes what I may say the most secular figure of Indian history , no wonder India is a secular state , It is land of Kabeer after all. Ms Shabnam Virmani now director of Kabeer project in bangalore started her journey to collect different shades of Kabeer across India, the question is why across India , what do you mean by different Kabeer? well the fact is Kabeer died leaving his work unstructured and unconsolidated , later when people started collecting it they realised there are so many other verses written by local people and credited it to Kabeer ( huh and they say web 2.0 and user generated content is discovered in 20 century after internet) So there is a kabeer who wrote in awadhi and typical north indian but there is one who wrote in Rajasthani and then other in gujraati and also in punjaabi with urdu influence . There can be only one explanation that all these Kabeers are a core idea followed by local people to generate their own Kabeer the one which they understand better , the one which talks in their language and gives example for their lives.
Thats why Miss Virmani found it a passion to explore local folk song artist who sing Kabeer , she did not have any idea of what this project will turn into but today her journey has taken her from bangalore to Malwa, Ayodhya, Kanpur, Jaypur, Karanchi, Lahore and guess what to Stanford where there are research on Indian literature and Kabeer at its pivotal.
Kabeer project today has a set of 4 movies which are screened for free in annual events at Mumbai, Pune and bangalore followed by a gala event of marathon classical and folk singers across border , talking about love, spirituality and boundrylessness. It publishes literature and translation from Kabeers verses and has launched DVDs .People now give ideas to Ms Virmani that she should enhance the projec to promote secular image , to bring Kabeer to urban youth and what not but what she has already achieved was beyond imagination and transformative
for her self and people associated with her . Kabeer is truly becoming an idea much larger than just being a historic poet.. thanks to the project Kabeer
Follow your heart and every time you do start with grass root :)
Kabeer project ORGANISING Kabeer festival in Pune , today being last day there is a concert in Symbiosis Vishwashanti bhawan !
Tuesday, November 3, 2009
Promoting organization and not the product
Intel has always been an organization believing in promoting name of the organisation and the brand it stands for rather than promoting any specific product of its own. It has repeated the attempt yet again and this time with all its might . In couple of recent adds where intel describes how its stars are different from common stars and in other where it talks about "our inventions are so big that you can not see them". In first impact it gave me feeling of some political parties which normally promote parties rather than promoting the work done by them but they do so because they have not done any work and they dont have any thing to talk about on the contrary this can never be case with intel which is so fast in product development that the time it releases its ad for one product till than you have other products on the shelf .
Than what prompts organisations to promote themselves rather than any specific product , one reason for sure is that they have moved beyond any competition and competitor in specific product segments which make them fearless knowing their products are picked up by customers anyway. but whats the objective of such ads In old time intels advertisements were criticised saying they don't provide any ( or enough) reason to buy the intel processor.These ads have been able to build a strong top of the mind recall and a better brand value for intel so much so that even people who do not know computers or whats a processor know intel exist at the same time it is difficult to name any other competitor in the same industry ( specially when intel captures 80% of the market share).
In case of companies like Intel the start of such campaign is the kind of product or services they are in, a processor may have been the most critical part of the PC but it was always hidden from the customer and that is where Intel changed the game with intel inside program plus it was very difficult to market or advertise the complexity and benefit of processor to a normal end user so it was easy to just ensure that the name Intel is known .
One more such attempt was recent ad of Tata with tag line "Desh ko hum chalate hai" for one moment I got confused that this is an advertisement of a political party specially its timing with elections but an organization like Tata which is servicing so many touch points of our daily lives can certainly claim that they run a major part of the country and the benefit will be in terms of much needed trust and goodwill.
Overall I feel such marketing happens in following cases
1) Surrogate marketing where product is tobacco, alcohol and can not be promoted directly2) Organizations which have too many products and services either in the same area (bank, LIC) or in diversified areas3) If the product is too complex to explain 4) Political parties or social organizations.
Than what prompts organisations to promote themselves rather than any specific product , one reason for sure is that they have moved beyond any competition and competitor in specific product segments which make them fearless knowing their products are picked up by customers anyway. but whats the objective of such ads In old time intels advertisements were criticised saying they don't provide any ( or enough) reason to buy the intel processor.These ads have been able to build a strong top of the mind recall and a better brand value for intel so much so that even people who do not know computers or whats a processor know intel exist at the same time it is difficult to name any other competitor in the same industry ( specially when intel captures 80% of the market share).
In case of companies like Intel the start of such campaign is the kind of product or services they are in, a processor may have been the most critical part of the PC but it was always hidden from the customer and that is where Intel changed the game with intel inside program plus it was very difficult to market or advertise the complexity and benefit of processor to a normal end user so it was easy to just ensure that the name Intel is known .
One more such attempt was recent ad of Tata with tag line "Desh ko hum chalate hai" for one moment I got confused that this is an advertisement of a political party specially its timing with elections but an organization like Tata which is servicing so many touch points of our daily lives can certainly claim that they run a major part of the country and the benefit will be in terms of much needed trust and goodwill.
Overall I feel such marketing happens in following cases
1) Surrogate marketing where product is tobacco, alcohol and can not be promoted directly2) Organizations which have too many products and services either in the same area (bank, LIC) or in diversified areas3) If the product is too complex to explain 4) Political parties or social organizations.
Thursday, October 15, 2009
Next is (G)Wave
It is a lesson for us all to know how ahead of time google keeps itself , It has started developing google wave 2 years back and now is the time when it is ready with this amazing communication and collaboration tool named google wave, needless to say it is designed to accommodate todays youths changing communication method where they are now communicating in a group involving more than 2 people , hence the walls, scrapbooks or tweet posts are growing stronger day by day.
The other point to be noted was growing usage of instant messengers which are almost replacing emails, now even if the receiver is offline than also one can IM him which he can open after coming to online so the very first work GW did was to take a hybrid look of IM and email where now there is hardly any difference left . In GW when sender is editing /writing /musing in his email text editor , that is instantly visible WORD BY WORD , now imagine that , this is what is called real time messaging , messages at the speed of your thought ( though I would never like this much realtime ness so google has also given a check box to disable this ). Even more exciting is that attachments also appear realtime on the recipients wave window. The time sender drags and drops attachment , thumbnails will appear at receivers window much before he has downloaded entire lot.
Another cool function is to playback forwarded mails in the sequence in which they were originated and evolved,its so common to forward a mail chain to a new recipient and he has to go through entire chain from bottom to top but now he can just click on playback option and this chain will start appearing from scratch , pretty impressive I would say.This way it is much easier to add a person to the wave and again for people who would like to choose to send a private reply , they can do so privately in wave too. Google calls it a tree structured mailing/messaging where any branch of tree can be taken and expanded only to a limited group ( or to entire public).
This wave will without any doubt collaborate and consolidate all your communication channels. Very soon you will be using waves in your orkut accounts, blogging portals and anywhere else and yet be able to control and monitor all of them from your google wave (email ) editor. So what happens about editing, currently if you share something across so many comunication channels you edit it every where but in wave you just have to edit it once and it will be reflected everywhere . This collaboration is even possible for documents editing and production where same document can be edited (simultaneously!!)by multiple members ( it will include power point , spreadsheets and text based docs).
oh yes it also works on mobiles !
Undoubtedly it is the first and foremost collaborative tool of its kind and competitors of google (like yahoo, MSN and now their marriage..) will find themselves in a shocked state to counter it ,may be copying this formula from google would be easy and at time people do it well ( like facebook copied stuff from orkut and twitter and today is leading the social networking area) but we all know google has the ability to take a quantum leap every time..
The other point to be noted was growing usage of instant messengers which are almost replacing emails, now even if the receiver is offline than also one can IM him which he can open after coming to online so the very first work GW did was to take a hybrid look of IM and email where now there is hardly any difference left . In GW when sender is editing /writing /musing in his email text editor , that is instantly visible WORD BY WORD , now imagine that , this is what is called real time messaging , messages at the speed of your thought ( though I would never like this much realtime ness so google has also given a check box to disable this ). Even more exciting is that attachments also appear realtime on the recipients wave window. The time sender drags and drops attachment , thumbnails will appear at receivers window much before he has downloaded entire lot.
Another cool function is to playback forwarded mails in the sequence in which they were originated and evolved,its so common to forward a mail chain to a new recipient and he has to go through entire chain from bottom to top but now he can just click on playback option and this chain will start appearing from scratch , pretty impressive I would say.This way it is much easier to add a person to the wave and again for people who would like to choose to send a private reply , they can do so privately in wave too. Google calls it a tree structured mailing/messaging where any branch of tree can be taken and expanded only to a limited group ( or to entire public).
This wave will without any doubt collaborate and consolidate all your communication channels. Very soon you will be using waves in your orkut accounts, blogging portals and anywhere else and yet be able to control and monitor all of them from your google wave (email ) editor. So what happens about editing, currently if you share something across so many comunication channels you edit it every where but in wave you just have to edit it once and it will be reflected everywhere . This collaboration is even possible for documents editing and production where same document can be edited (simultaneously!!)by multiple members ( it will include power point , spreadsheets and text based docs).
oh yes it also works on mobiles !
Undoubtedly it is the first and foremost collaborative tool of its kind and competitors of google (like yahoo, MSN and now their marriage..) will find themselves in a shocked state to counter it ,may be copying this formula from google would be easy and at time people do it well ( like facebook copied stuff from orkut and twitter and today is leading the social networking area) but we all know google has the ability to take a quantum leap every time..
Friday, September 25, 2009
ITIL in real life
Those who have ever taken ITIL training know the toughest part is to explain people difference between incident and problem, it is very easy to explain every other difficult concept of ITIL to people but incident Vs problem is always a tricky one. Looking at a practicle example suppose every day when you come from office to home , you wife opens the door, takes your laptop from you , offers you a gilass of chilled water , this is standard operating procedure which is followed on your returning but what if one day to your surprise it did not happen , you came home and there was no one to open door, take your bag and make you comfortable , is this a problem ?
In ITIL terminology , this is a disruption from daily standard operating procedure hence it is not a problem , realisticaly if you think your wife may be caught up in some other work or she may be out to buy vegetables in grocery store near by , this was just one off incident , specially if you see that from the next day onward you are back on the same routine । But if next day also same incident is repeated and even after that you do not get the expected reception on your home coming than there are multiple occurances of the same incidents pointing to one common root cause and thats a problem for you so ITIL would take it into problem management process.
Now once you have realised that this is a problem , you would have to resolve it and for resolution you would need to do a root cause analysis , after putting some stress on your head and talking to your wife you realised that the root cause of this cold reception may be because she has been doing it from so long but you never care to talk to her about her day instead
you switch on TV and engross yourself on useless breaking news of 24X7 news channels. Now this problem ( having identified root cause) becomes a known error for you and it seems for solving it you would need request for change to change the standard operating procedure , now instead of turning to TV on your arrival you would rather have a small chat with your wife
and find out how was her day .
Even if this approach does not solve the problem than you have two alternative one is to do a functional escalation that is to escalate some one who is higher in authority and can handle the problem in this case it may be your father in law or mother in law who. Otherwise you can do a hierarchical escalation to a person who is expert in this type of problem , it may be your sister or brother in law.
See ITIL is even relevant to daily life !
In ITIL terminology , this is a disruption from daily standard operating procedure hence it is not a problem , realisticaly if you think your wife may be caught up in some other work or she may be out to buy vegetables in grocery store near by , this was just one off incident , specially if you see that from the next day onward you are back on the same routine । But if next day also same incident is repeated and even after that you do not get the expected reception on your home coming than there are multiple occurances of the same incidents pointing to one common root cause and thats a problem for you so ITIL would take it into problem management process.
Now once you have realised that this is a problem , you would have to resolve it and for resolution you would need to do a root cause analysis , after putting some stress on your head and talking to your wife you realised that the root cause of this cold reception may be because she has been doing it from so long but you never care to talk to her about her day instead
you switch on TV and engross yourself on useless breaking news of 24X7 news channels. Now this problem ( having identified root cause) becomes a known error for you and it seems for solving it you would need request for change to change the standard operating procedure , now instead of turning to TV on your arrival you would rather have a small chat with your wife
and find out how was her day .
Even if this approach does not solve the problem than you have two alternative one is to do a functional escalation that is to escalate some one who is higher in authority and can handle the problem in this case it may be your father in law or mother in law who. Otherwise you can do a hierarchical escalation to a person who is expert in this type of problem , it may be your sister or brother in law.
See ITIL is even relevant to daily life !
Thursday, September 10, 2009
Can't Fire
It will be a dejavu for Mr Naresh Goyal , head of jet airways. Last year during tougher times he tried to remove around 1900 employees from the jet payroll , which sounded a right decision for the company as many of these people were on probation and they had completed their probation period post which it was Jet's call whether it want them to continue or not, given the special macroeconomic conditions there was no other option . Of course no one can deny the human side of the story but this risk has always been associated with private jobs and people today come prepared to face it any time .
Doing a job today does not make you feel as safe as it was 4 years back or much safer before 2000 bubble burst or safest before GE Neutron Jack era when lifetime jobs were guaranteed and companies like IBM was famous for committing to life time employment of its employees . Currently once more jet fired 2 pilots facing an unprecedented situation with almost entire pilot staff going on a synchronized leave. Organizations which are service intensive and have to face volume of customers on many touch point every day turn themselves into a tricky situation by such issues , some thing similar happened in 2006 when some staff of gourmet ( a food supplier to airlines) was fired resulting a strike which meant no food in flights irrespective of the fact that many of these flights were as long as 14 hours journey.
In such conditions company would not have any choice but give it up to the demands of the union. Even though there is no such instance observed in IT industry where in last two year thousands and thousands of people have left the job but there is definitely damages, when companies remove employees who are redundant or so called non performers , people who have been retained also feel the fear and start looking for the opportunities to leave the current company . It may result to a fast attrition rate once normal times return back which leaves companies into a situation where they have work but no resources and now they are bound to hire resources from market at higher costs.
Given this vicious cycle , it seems organizations just can't fire but still they do ....
Doing a job today does not make you feel as safe as it was 4 years back or much safer before 2000 bubble burst or safest before GE Neutron Jack era when lifetime jobs were guaranteed and companies like IBM was famous for committing to life time employment of its employees . Currently once more jet fired 2 pilots facing an unprecedented situation with almost entire pilot staff going on a synchronized leave. Organizations which are service intensive and have to face volume of customers on many touch point every day turn themselves into a tricky situation by such issues , some thing similar happened in 2006 when some staff of gourmet ( a food supplier to airlines) was fired resulting a strike which meant no food in flights irrespective of the fact that many of these flights were as long as 14 hours journey.
In such conditions company would not have any choice but give it up to the demands of the union. Even though there is no such instance observed in IT industry where in last two year thousands and thousands of people have left the job but there is definitely damages, when companies remove employees who are redundant or so called non performers , people who have been retained also feel the fear and start looking for the opportunities to leave the current company . It may result to a fast attrition rate once normal times return back which leaves companies into a situation where they have work but no resources and now they are bound to hire resources from market at higher costs.
Given this vicious cycle , it seems organizations just can't fire but still they do ....
Tuesday, August 11, 2009
Challenges of third kind!
Recently I was reading the 2008 annual report of varian Inc which is one of the leading medical equipment manufacturer , in the opening statement of the report Varian Inc CEO mentioned that he put forward a challenge in front of his employees to save 100,000 lives every year , that is the number which can fill a football stadium.
This challenge aptly suites to Varian which has already developed many cutting edge instruments based on radiotherapy and other cancer related treatment technologies to save cancer patients , enhance the accuracy of the results and reduce the overall treatment time to almost half. One latest example is their rapidArc beam which targets tumor in a single continuous
rotation around the patient leading to the highest possible precision and control of the treatment ( Hence lesser chances of killing healthy tissues) . Whats motivating in this case is rather than putting forward a target of increasing bottom line , increased rate of product development, rapid go to market timing ( and what not) CEO hit on a point which can be related by almost every one in the company and also by supplier and customers of the company , a higher cause which is worth putting every bit of effort . Should it has been a normal sales and number oriented motivation , only top and middle management would have been running behind those numbers but now every one would be willing to contribute looking at the noble cause.
This should be a learning for many other in different industries as how to thing of a bigger picture and inspire people to do something which can give them extreme satisfaction and drive their enthusiasm to the peak point of making a difference. The beauty of such inspiration is that it has not ignored top and bottom lines in fact it has encompassed everything in much better way then any other vision could have been , meeting such challenges means producing most innovative products, driving highest quality level and near zero defects , taking direct feedback from customers and their customers and implementing them , carving a niche for yourself and when all of this is done numbers will follow.
Look back in the history of business whenever such a vision statement was created , it had become an instant success . I see Mr D B Ambani's objective of making a call cheaper than a postcard considering our rural population can afford only this much for communication created one of the largest telecom player of India, there are many more !!.. Tata family also put forward many such challenges to its employees like creating a world class Indian hotel when Indians were not allowed in british hotels, Developing leading science institute like IISc to groom young india !!
This challenge aptly suites to Varian which has already developed many cutting edge instruments based on radiotherapy and other cancer related treatment technologies to save cancer patients , enhance the accuracy of the results and reduce the overall treatment time to almost half. One latest example is their rapidArc beam which targets tumor in a single continuous
rotation around the patient leading to the highest possible precision and control of the treatment ( Hence lesser chances of killing healthy tissues) . Whats motivating in this case is rather than putting forward a target of increasing bottom line , increased rate of product development, rapid go to market timing ( and what not) CEO hit on a point which can be related by almost every one in the company and also by supplier and customers of the company , a higher cause which is worth putting every bit of effort . Should it has been a normal sales and number oriented motivation , only top and middle management would have been running behind those numbers but now every one would be willing to contribute looking at the noble cause.
This should be a learning for many other in different industries as how to thing of a bigger picture and inspire people to do something which can give them extreme satisfaction and drive their enthusiasm to the peak point of making a difference. The beauty of such inspiration is that it has not ignored top and bottom lines in fact it has encompassed everything in much better way then any other vision could have been , meeting such challenges means producing most innovative products, driving highest quality level and near zero defects , taking direct feedback from customers and their customers and implementing them , carving a niche for yourself and when all of this is done numbers will follow.
Look back in the history of business whenever such a vision statement was created , it had become an instant success . I see Mr D B Ambani's objective of making a call cheaper than a postcard considering our rural population can afford only this much for communication created one of the largest telecom player of India, there are many more !!.. Tata family also put forward many such challenges to its employees like creating a world class Indian hotel when Indians were not allowed in british hotels, Developing leading science institute like IISc to groom young india !!
Thursday, July 23, 2009
Questions which can not be answered
Since the downturn has started there are some of the questions which have gained popularity with all the business news papers and news channels , interesting fact is no one seems to know answer to these questions yet these reporters keep asking same thing to almost any one and every one they meet
What kind of recovery we would see? : Now we all know there are various kind of recovery , W, V ,U shape etc but how can one predict recovery from a recession which is not yet near to completion , anyways how does it matter to business and common man as what sort of recovery it will be . It sounds important only to great economist and academicians who are good only in postmortems and never in predictions.
How should industry leaders respond to this down turn ? : after reading couple of answers on this I am myself now expert to give an answer , tow things 1) Innovation 2) Cost optimization . These two are the buzz words and now even in normal times innovation is very difficult for an industry where thousands of players selling same thing so the easiest resort to the industry is cost optimization which means cutting on head count . I have till now not seen a different answer to this question and hence stopped reading at the point where this arrives , whether its been asked to some business guru or minister , I have yet to see some innovation in their answers.
What is your focus market ? : Dare any one answer this beyond India and China , people will think he is illiterate and have not even attended pre school education, even kids know that these countries are focus market from super cars to match boxes , whats the point in reading a whole paragraph just to get the same conclusion
Do you see these green shots as a sign of recovery ? : This is a binary question and half of junta replies in 1 and other half replies in 0 so you are left confused whether there are any green shots , whether there are any recovery ? no matter how logical answer to this question is , it will not satisfy your quest of knowing whether recovery is happening or not because you yourself keep looking at so many contradictory examples around.
Sunday, July 19, 2009
My pick on top tech trends
I believe next technology business would see lots of potential in following areas
Mobile application : Internet did spread like a wild fire and every one had gut feeling about its potential but today mobile has much wider penetration then internet and also the time people spent on mobile is almost their entire waking up time. Currently where internet penetration in India is for 250 Mn people on the other hand mobile penetration is almost double with
around 500 Mn people . Organizations which missed on net applications can directly jump to mobile . Recently SBI's Mobile banking is a classic example , SBI could never make it big in ebanking but counting on the fact that now mobile technology is mature and secure , plus their are regulatory frameworks around , it can instantly reach to such a large user base.
With cheaper high end sets ( including iphone and BBs) applications dealing with media contents are also becoming popular and a large segment is using these apps exhaustively. Mobile is already transferring good amount of data from one place to other.
Security : Here I am looking at all kind of security , with global connectivity Internet security has definitely become high priority and companies and professionals in this business are making a fortune a logical extension to it is mobile security which seems to be more vulnerable thanks to wireless , blue tooth , data card etc.
On the other side now physical security is also taken very seriously not only at corporate level but also for personal and private usages, look around the new real estate development and you would find each flats have security systems.
Television applications : Television penetrates even much larger segment then Internet and mobile and now holds lots of potential . The first immediate preference would be to make it interactive and start selling products via live televisions. however the hidden treasure is in on demand content , today's lifestyle make it very difficult for people to follow some
program on a regular schedule , they must have flexibility to watch any program at any time of their choice , In India some operators are now already equipped with these facilities where any one can view any program ( at his own preferred time )telecasted in last one week .
Going forward a huge entertainment library which would empower users to pick and play her favourite programs ( no matter whether they are telecasted on current week or closed down last year) and watch them. Latest plasma LCD panels and home theatre system will compliment it very well
Mobile application : Internet did spread like a wild fire and every one had gut feeling about its potential but today mobile has much wider penetration then internet and also the time people spent on mobile is almost their entire waking up time. Currently where internet penetration in India is for 250 Mn people on the other hand mobile penetration is almost double with
around 500 Mn people . Organizations which missed on net applications can directly jump to mobile . Recently SBI's Mobile banking is a classic example , SBI could never make it big in ebanking but counting on the fact that now mobile technology is mature and secure , plus their are regulatory frameworks around , it can instantly reach to such a large user base.
With cheaper high end sets ( including iphone and BBs) applications dealing with media contents are also becoming popular and a large segment is using these apps exhaustively. Mobile is already transferring good amount of data from one place to other.
Security : Here I am looking at all kind of security , with global connectivity Internet security has definitely become high priority and companies and professionals in this business are making a fortune a logical extension to it is mobile security which seems to be more vulnerable thanks to wireless , blue tooth , data card etc.
On the other side now physical security is also taken very seriously not only at corporate level but also for personal and private usages, look around the new real estate development and you would find each flats have security systems.
Television applications : Television penetrates even much larger segment then Internet and mobile and now holds lots of potential . The first immediate preference would be to make it interactive and start selling products via live televisions. however the hidden treasure is in on demand content , today's lifestyle make it very difficult for people to follow some
program on a regular schedule , they must have flexibility to watch any program at any time of their choice , In India some operators are now already equipped with these facilities where any one can view any program ( at his own preferred time )telecasted in last one week .
Going forward a huge entertainment library which would empower users to pick and play her favourite programs ( no matter whether they are telecasted on current week or closed down last year) and watch them. Latest plasma LCD panels and home theatre system will compliment it very well
Thursday, July 16, 2009
Reasons why Facebook can replace twitter
After doing some analysis of facebook and twitter I am feeling that the "share whats in your mind " feature of facebook could be a good replacement to twitter. At one place twitter started to facilitate only small updates about self but then it restricted itself to it , even after there is so much buzz about twitter in the web world and increasing users , it has not added any significant applications to attract more hits. Sharing a pic with follower would have been a very basic facility
Your message is shown to everyone connected with you : what ever you share in facebook is available for everyone to read instantly whereas in twitter one has to follow you to be aware of what you are up to
A pic is better than thousand words : Facebook like orkut enables sharing of pic and video plus friends can comment on those pics/videos . I see people using this feature much more than simply putting text on their status of facebook
Other applications : There are so many application which facebook is enabling its users to use ranging from surveys, quizzes , games, sending gifts and so on . This keep users involved and also generates more comments and related discussion comments
Celebrity trust : Twitter generated initial buzz because of some of the celebrities choosing it to keep their followers updated but look facebook today and you would find so many of them are already present there.
Structure : The way twitter shows messages of people you follow looks messy and unstructured some times whereas facebook has put across a good structure of showing messages and clubbing related comments in the same discussion
Even though the ease of accessing twitter from mobiles can not be debated but with so many high end hand sets around I feel accessing facebook from mobile is also becoming a trend. If twitter does not come up with some thing better , I feel it may loose its grip over the user base within couple of years
Thursday, June 18, 2009
What a Mentor can do
Recent advertisement " What a Mentor can Do" of ET Idea has represented the nearest picture of what a mentor can do . a falcon is shown flying ahead and guding a cock in the open sky , well this is what a mentor can do a cock does have wings and willingness to fly but its not capable of taking long flights similarly there are many talented mind around who may have ideas and commitment to work on those ideas but they may not know the exact path and to approach things . This is where a mentor can do wonders by helping you streamline and focus your thoughts and giving you right inputs to not only start off but also go long way in the journey.
We have been seing this relationship since ages and its transformation can be observed from mythological to hitorical era.I would say the best ever mentor has to be Lord Krishna who directed Arjuna and helped him choose the right path. In history also we would find many such examples where mentorship has helped in developing immortal legends out of ordinary man. Ramkrishna transformed a curious child narendra into a monk who could create a new perception about India and its spritual philosophy in the world.
So what all a mentee expects from her mentor
1) Inspiration : The very basic need of doing something , one has to be inspired and charged up. The inspiration generated from other source is much more impact full than the one generated from within. Mentor must be able to light up inspiration in the mentee.
2) Deep expertise in the area : IT will be very rare to have someone mentor without being good expertise in the area where mentee is working. Mentor is supposed to know all and resolve the doubts of mentee with entire confidence.
3) Ability to explain with simplicity: Mentor should be able to make things simple for mentee in terms of the understanding , he is like a watchmaker who can diassociate all the parts of the watch and explain each and every one to his mentee.
We have been seing this relationship since ages and its transformation can be observed from mythological to hitorical era.I would say the best ever mentor has to be Lord Krishna who directed Arjuna and helped him choose the right path. In history also we would find many such examples where mentorship has helped in developing immortal legends out of ordinary man. Ramkrishna transformed a curious child narendra into a monk who could create a new perception about India and its spritual philosophy in the world.
So what all a mentee expects from her mentor
1) Inspiration : The very basic need of doing something , one has to be inspired and charged up. The inspiration generated from other source is much more impact full than the one generated from within. Mentor must be able to light up inspiration in the mentee.
2) Deep expertise in the area : IT will be very rare to have someone mentor without being good expertise in the area where mentee is working. Mentor is supposed to know all and resolve the doubts of mentee with entire confidence.
3) Ability to explain with simplicity: Mentor should be able to make things simple for mentee in terms of the understanding , he is like a watchmaker who can diassociate all the parts of the watch and explain each and every one to his mentee.
Monday, June 1, 2009
Time For New Spring
Once upon a time there was a great jungle , it had various varieties of trees , bushes , animals , birds and resources to sustain all of it. Some trees were really very old and strong . These big trees were from various variety and size . They were around since ages and now many of the birds and animals have nests over them. As these trees grew they were expanded into mammoth structures with capturing maximum space and resources in their area. They absorbed whatever came near by their roots. Water , soil and light was equally absorbed by them . Because of such consumption it was impossible for any small sapling to grow under their shadows since they
could not get enough resources .
With more urbanisation around the normal life of jungle was also interfered in many ways ,The grand river in the jungle was used to waste disposal as well , some canals were created to take the contaminated and toxic waste to the river and central jungle for disposal.The greed of big
and arrogant trees was such that they started sucking much of such toxic waste equally. The birds who were supported by the trees or any one else could not notice any thing from outside but because of high intake of such wastes roots and foundation of the trees were contaminated , insects and hermits have started eating them up. It was a painless and slow process
which went unnoticed to every one.
As winters started , there came a strong storm . Unaware of the weakness which these trees had accumulated in their roots , they could not stand this storm and started falling one by one. It was a chaos in the jungle since these were old epitomes and supported the environment around them. Many animals and birds became home less , while falling these trees also destroyed smaller plants and bushes around them . Some who fall on another of their kind resulting fall of both trees. There was hardly any thing could be done about it. Lots of unfortunate damage was definitely caused and we all will surely miss the sweet fruits , the grand shelter , esteemed identity and magnanimity which was associated with these trees.
With in some time fallen trees will be covered in soil and provide good fertile base to other smaller plants to grow on them . The positive side is with their fall they left a large open area where new saplings would be able to grow freely now , there will be new breed of tree , may be stronger and more diverse. With this kind of evolution probably these new ones would avoid toxic waste and depend upon clean natural resources for growth .
( PS : With GM filling for chapter 11 today , It was heartbreaking to see such large organization getting annihilated in given crisis . Hopefully there will be new ones to take charge )
Saturday, May 9, 2009
Success Is A Thief
On our day of graduation we had Exe Director of Tata Sons Mr R GopalKrishan as Chief guest , at the last minute of start of his speech he decided to change it a bit and give some direction to students who seems to have programmed themselves to become CEOs. All the student Representative who spoke before him mentioned how they are ready to take on world and how SPJIMR makes them suitable for all C grade job , probably this made Mr Gopalkrishan encourage to give us some really friendly advice.
His speech started with a very unusual quote "Success is a thief" , To us all it was a new mantra which we have never heard nor imagined but as he explained us the reason behind calling success a theif , we had to agree. Stating the status quo of current young executives who sleep with their PDAs , Blackberries, Laptops , Communicators and all such fancy devices which seem to ring at different time resulting keeping these young achievers awake most of the time. These successful people have lost their sleeps , they keep missing their food and hardly have any time for old friends and family . Success had stolen it all from them.
Mr Gopalkrishnan jokingly mentioned how he has realized that the lift man who is taking people up and down in the life always has a silly smile on his face but a top rank executive travelling in the same lift looks so dim and depressed , concerned as hell like burden of entire world is on the shoulder of this poor fellow. The problem is people have started programming themselves to occupy corner cabins in organizations , rather than waiting for success to come to them naturally.
We have become mechanical in current environment and keep worrying about things which are not even in our control . The need is to take a break from regular routine some time , stick a silly smile frequently on your face, talk to some strangers (now that's fun), make some one laugh because at times to build momentum one has to slow down
His speech started with a very unusual quote "Success is a thief" , To us all it was a new mantra which we have never heard nor imagined but as he explained us the reason behind calling success a theif , we had to agree. Stating the status quo of current young executives who sleep with their PDAs , Blackberries, Laptops , Communicators and all such fancy devices which seem to ring at different time resulting keeping these young achievers awake most of the time. These successful people have lost their sleeps , they keep missing their food and hardly have any time for old friends and family . Success had stolen it all from them.
Mr Gopalkrishnan jokingly mentioned how he has realized that the lift man who is taking people up and down in the life always has a silly smile on his face but a top rank executive travelling in the same lift looks so dim and depressed , concerned as hell like burden of entire world is on the shoulder of this poor fellow. The problem is people have started programming themselves to occupy corner cabins in organizations , rather than waiting for success to come to them naturally.
We have become mechanical in current environment and keep worrying about things which are not even in our control . The need is to take a break from regular routine some time , stick a silly smile frequently on your face, talk to some strangers (now that's fun), make some one laugh because at times to build momentum one has to slow down
Saturday, April 25, 2009
Managing the business processes
Whats the difference between business decades ago and businesses now ? what has changed them ? What has become competitive advantage as Mr C. K. Prahalad
would ask ? Lets pick up companies in any industry and put some basic questions
1) Were these companies able to deliver standard experience on every customer touch point?
2) Did these companies care about their internal processes of inbound, outbound logisitics and operations as mentioned by Porter in value chain
3) What was the core strength considered by these organizations and what was the competitive advantage over which they relied?
Lets start with the first question the most important one in every context . The ultimate aim of every business is to make customer happy and we know gone are the days when customer was happy by just getting what he has asked for , at times he had to be satisfied in much lesser than what he has asked and he was still happy. Considering the example of Bajaj Chetak , once the vehicle which ruled all hearts of all Indian . It worked like a charm across the age
sections. customers have to wait as long as one year to get one for themselves and company was in no hurry to scale up or start a new venture , so much so when Honda approached them to start a producing motor bikes , Bajaj turned it down assuming scooter business will always remain what it was at that time.
Considering this was the case we can very well assume what would have been the customer service and how customers would have been dealt , there was hardly any effort to build customer relationship afterall it was all game of demand supply equation , for huge demand there was a limited supply so no one needed to pay much attentio about customer experience , pre purchase , during purchase or post purchase.
Consider the same bajaj in today's scenario , they are running a campiagn which no one ever heard in India. For Bajaj XCD 135 CC bike they have put a challenge to the customer saying they can come and test drive the bike and if after that they purchase any other bike than Bajaj will reimburse the price for other bike. Where seems to be focus today , entirely on what customer experience , even though this example is talking about experience of the product but
similarly experience of the processes and customer serices have also taken strong ground thats why the new advertisment of Maruti talks about how customer can get a Maruti care service almost at any part of the India from rural to urban area.
In nutshell we have moved from the times where Mr Ford declared I would give model of any colour to the customer as long as it is blcak to the era where youcan customise your car over web and it will be produced for you. It is with the help of streamlined processes that organizations are able to develop highly personalised experience for customers.
Having extablished some gound on the hypothesis that customer experience is important , lets see an obvious extension to it . If customer experience is important than can an organization make sure that it delivers same customer experience gain and again . A product may certainly deliver same customer experience again and again but what about service? Any service where lots of manual intervention is required will be a great challenge for standardization.
For such kind of activities what is required to have a process map and train all the employees on that process map across the locations. Similar kind of efforts were put by outlets like Mc donald and Pizza huts and thats how you get same experience ( of food as well as service) across all the outlets but upto than it was just a vision worked out withwhatever help available around , today we have made an entire methodology which is less science and more art called Business Process Management. There are lots of tools and standards to model organizational processes .
Its now when organizations have realized that a successful business not only means a block buster product but also efficient and standard processes. It is also an effort to manage business processes explicitly considering there are very frequent changes in business and related processes and if we don't have a strong hold on our processes it will be difficult to respond to changing business enviornment.
Our second concern was regarding internal processes which include various processes in the value chain of an organization, In old times when organizations had customers flocking on thier door for whatever they create , they had very less time to think about various internal processes and optimize them for maximum benefit. It is after Motorola and GE taught the value of 6 sigma to the world , we realized how much can be gained by exploring in this area. There have been various process improvement techniques and 6 sigma pioneered all of them but what was missing ? To have detailed process maps and micromangement of each of the assocuted processes, To make sure that each complex process is broken into small ones and each modular process can be handled seperately. 6 Sigma was a good tool for improving but not for automating because 6 sigma treated etire process as a whole and concentrated more on the quantative abilities to come to a conclusion.
Third and another differebce between businesses done in past and today is Identifying the core stregnth or competitive advantage of your business. Couple of decades back no one thought that processes could be core strength for an organization and then emerged examples like southwest airlines , which has changed the rules of aviation industry by just redifning thier internal process from the way fleet is scheduled to the way a carier is prepared for the next flight , creating end to end cost effective systems.
Its very simple to understand that highset benefit lieas in controlling each and every critical process of business from selecting a vendor to producing goods/ services and delivering to customer. In todays volatile world it is important not only to develop these processes but also to map them and keep them with you in codified form so that you can always go back to find out whether these processes are being followed , if there is any change needed and how best
they can be automated.
The basic need of dividing complex processes and than modeling , monitoring and managing them has given birth to BPM
would ask ? Lets pick up companies in any industry and put some basic questions
1) Were these companies able to deliver standard experience on every customer touch point?
2) Did these companies care about their internal processes of inbound, outbound logisitics and operations as mentioned by Porter in value chain
3) What was the core strength considered by these organizations and what was the competitive advantage over which they relied?
Lets start with the first question the most important one in every context . The ultimate aim of every business is to make customer happy and we know gone are the days when customer was happy by just getting what he has asked for , at times he had to be satisfied in much lesser than what he has asked and he was still happy. Considering the example of Bajaj Chetak , once the vehicle which ruled all hearts of all Indian . It worked like a charm across the age
sections. customers have to wait as long as one year to get one for themselves and company was in no hurry to scale up or start a new venture , so much so when Honda approached them to start a producing motor bikes , Bajaj turned it down assuming scooter business will always remain what it was at that time.
Considering this was the case we can very well assume what would have been the customer service and how customers would have been dealt , there was hardly any effort to build customer relationship afterall it was all game of demand supply equation , for huge demand there was a limited supply so no one needed to pay much attentio about customer experience , pre purchase , during purchase or post purchase.
Consider the same bajaj in today's scenario , they are running a campiagn which no one ever heard in India. For Bajaj XCD 135 CC bike they have put a challenge to the customer saying they can come and test drive the bike and if after that they purchase any other bike than Bajaj will reimburse the price for other bike. Where seems to be focus today , entirely on what customer experience , even though this example is talking about experience of the product but
similarly experience of the processes and customer serices have also taken strong ground thats why the new advertisment of Maruti talks about how customer can get a Maruti care service almost at any part of the India from rural to urban area.
In nutshell we have moved from the times where Mr Ford declared I would give model of any colour to the customer as long as it is blcak to the era where youcan customise your car over web and it will be produced for you. It is with the help of streamlined processes that organizations are able to develop highly personalised experience for customers.
Having extablished some gound on the hypothesis that customer experience is important , lets see an obvious extension to it . If customer experience is important than can an organization make sure that it delivers same customer experience gain and again . A product may certainly deliver same customer experience again and again but what about service? Any service where lots of manual intervention is required will be a great challenge for standardization.
For such kind of activities what is required to have a process map and train all the employees on that process map across the locations. Similar kind of efforts were put by outlets like Mc donald and Pizza huts and thats how you get same experience ( of food as well as service) across all the outlets but upto than it was just a vision worked out withwhatever help available around , today we have made an entire methodology which is less science and more art called Business Process Management. There are lots of tools and standards to model organizational processes .
Its now when organizations have realized that a successful business not only means a block buster product but also efficient and standard processes. It is also an effort to manage business processes explicitly considering there are very frequent changes in business and related processes and if we don't have a strong hold on our processes it will be difficult to respond to changing business enviornment.
Our second concern was regarding internal processes which include various processes in the value chain of an organization, In old times when organizations had customers flocking on thier door for whatever they create , they had very less time to think about various internal processes and optimize them for maximum benefit. It is after Motorola and GE taught the value of 6 sigma to the world , we realized how much can be gained by exploring in this area. There have been various process improvement techniques and 6 sigma pioneered all of them but what was missing ? To have detailed process maps and micromangement of each of the assocuted processes, To make sure that each complex process is broken into small ones and each modular process can be handled seperately. 6 Sigma was a good tool for improving but not for automating because 6 sigma treated etire process as a whole and concentrated more on the quantative abilities to come to a conclusion.
Third and another differebce between businesses done in past and today is Identifying the core stregnth or competitive advantage of your business. Couple of decades back no one thought that processes could be core strength for an organization and then emerged examples like southwest airlines , which has changed the rules of aviation industry by just redifning thier internal process from the way fleet is scheduled to the way a carier is prepared for the next flight , creating end to end cost effective systems.
Its very simple to understand that highset benefit lieas in controlling each and every critical process of business from selecting a vendor to producing goods/ services and delivering to customer. In todays volatile world it is important not only to develop these processes but also to map them and keep them with you in codified form so that you can always go back to find out whether these processes are being followed , if there is any change needed and how best
they can be automated.
The basic need of dividing complex processes and than modeling , monitoring and managing them has given birth to BPM
Friday, April 10, 2009
If you are a leader , you should be able to follow well:
What could be one of the most turning point of the fight in great Mahabhart story . The Leader of the era Krishna who had been continouslt in the fore front of all the incidents suddenly takes the role of a Charriot driver for his best friend Arjun. It did not take him a split second to decide whether in coming ages it would hurt his image , whether it would immediately demote him from a heavenly deity to just another earthling and even more inferiors in the community , just a charriot driver.
I feel odds have turned other way round because it is this phase of Krishna's life he has delivered the most respected wisdom of Hindu Mythology - Gita . It is in this role he has influenced the entire saga in such a way that no one else could have done so including elmination of Karna or Jaydrath like warriors .
I am trying to think something else as well , Krishna was the leader of entire story , un disputed decision maker for pandavas bu he also comes across as the best follower giving command in the hand of Arjun.
Some one who has already proven leadership skills must also be able to follow well , there will be many hurdles in his way to the follower topmost being his ego self , already been in a position where he has only given orders now putting him in the shoes of order taker will be dificult, what can add salt to injury is if this time some one who has followed you is going to lead you or some one who is not of the same status.
Even though there are all kind of risks associated when a leader steos down to be follower but if he successfully does it with a humble heart than he may emerge a greater leader , almost a legend
I feel odds have turned other way round because it is this phase of Krishna's life he has delivered the most respected wisdom of Hindu Mythology - Gita . It is in this role he has influenced the entire saga in such a way that no one else could have done so including elmination of Karna or Jaydrath like warriors .
I am trying to think something else as well , Krishna was the leader of entire story , un disputed decision maker for pandavas bu he also comes across as the best follower giving command in the hand of Arjun.
Some one who has already proven leadership skills must also be able to follow well , there will be many hurdles in his way to the follower topmost being his ego self , already been in a position where he has only given orders now putting him in the shoes of order taker will be dificult, what can add salt to injury is if this time some one who has followed you is going to lead you or some one who is not of the same status.
Even though there are all kind of risks associated when a leader steos down to be follower but if he successfully does it with a humble heart than he may emerge a greater leader , almost a legend
Thursday, March 12, 2009
Cook the book ?
Accountancy is not only science but a very sophisticated art as well , Purpose of this article is just to look at different methods which companies use from time to time to present a different picture of thier books , none of these methods can provide any long term benefit , all they can assure is trouble. Real profit is some thing which is earned by a direct increase of top and bottom line and not just be shifting numbers here and there.
depreciation : Depreciation is an highly effective tool of cooking books , specially for manufacturing and logistics companies which have huge capital investments in machineries and vehicles. Suppose the average industry practice is to depreciate a lath machine for 10 years but some smart company thinks it can depreciate similar machine for 15 years , this kind of tweaking will be effective enough to bring the books from red zone to green as the
earning will be increased because lesser depreciation is being subtracted .
COGS : If Cost of goods sold is subtracted from the revenue that gives gross profit , Further subtractions of operational expenses, interests payments and taxes will take us to the net profit. If one wants to increase gross profit artificially the easy way is to move the cost of goods sold towards operational expense. There will be some smart accountants who found arguments for the same.
Showing earnings in advance : In service industry there are contracts which can be as long as 5 to 7 years , if 40% of the money comes from software development than 60% is from maintainace and support. If an organization is getting into a contract with its client which is about delivering a software as well as supporting it for next 5 years , then it can show any fraction ( as liked by its accountants) of this revenue at any time in the books
and guess what its perfectly legal.
Goodwill : one of the best ways to create an impressive asset base is to increase the goodwill, whenever an organization aquires another there is lot more than just physical property. Mainly a huge client list , good work force , a well established brand etc. all can be put under goodwill. In addition to this if some of the value from plant , property can also be shifted to goodwill , that will mean no depreciation charging for such assets in turn direct impact on the bottom line.
Bill and hold : This has been a very popular accounting technique in many of the organizations which asked their corporate customers to purchase much earlier then the business cycle and pay only after sale has taken place. The purchase made was billed and showed as a revenue in current cycle, very clearly this can work only one odd time.
depreciation : Depreciation is an highly effective tool of cooking books , specially for manufacturing and logistics companies which have huge capital investments in machineries and vehicles. Suppose the average industry practice is to depreciate a lath machine for 10 years but some smart company thinks it can depreciate similar machine for 15 years , this kind of tweaking will be effective enough to bring the books from red zone to green as the
earning will be increased because lesser depreciation is being subtracted .
COGS : If Cost of goods sold is subtracted from the revenue that gives gross profit , Further subtractions of operational expenses, interests payments and taxes will take us to the net profit. If one wants to increase gross profit artificially the easy way is to move the cost of goods sold towards operational expense. There will be some smart accountants who found arguments for the same.
Showing earnings in advance : In service industry there are contracts which can be as long as 5 to 7 years , if 40% of the money comes from software development than 60% is from maintainace and support. If an organization is getting into a contract with its client which is about delivering a software as well as supporting it for next 5 years , then it can show any fraction ( as liked by its accountants) of this revenue at any time in the books
and guess what its perfectly legal.
Goodwill : one of the best ways to create an impressive asset base is to increase the goodwill, whenever an organization aquires another there is lot more than just physical property. Mainly a huge client list , good work force , a well established brand etc. all can be put under goodwill. In addition to this if some of the value from plant , property can also be shifted to goodwill , that will mean no depreciation charging for such assets in turn direct impact on the bottom line.
Bill and hold : This has been a very popular accounting technique in many of the organizations which asked their corporate customers to purchase much earlier then the business cycle and pay only after sale has taken place. The purchase made was billed and showed as a revenue in current cycle, very clearly this can work only one odd time.
Saturday, March 7, 2009
Ideation:
As an organization which need to survive on highly innovative ideas how do you make sure that you create an environment suited for idea generation from your employees. In all the organizations an employee is absorbed in routine day to day activity , there are very few like google who have a special 20% of office time is left for the employee to work on the ideas which appeal to them. If we look back , historically organizations have given almost no chance to its employees to generate ideas and implement the same. Most of them had very few key decision makers at the top who were the only people responsible for various ideas and their implementation. There is hardly any effort to manage ideas and innovations. One of the most impressive innovation management I have seen is in John Deers, the global agri equipment organization really knows how to select the best idea and implement it. It has a structured way to do it , it encourages its employees to come with new ideas and some of the best are chosen to be presented in a 3 day long event in the organization , after which the most impressive one is selected for implementation.
Recently I came across another very innovative ways to select ideas in GE, the Global technology group started Idea trading in its department, here employees have registered their ideas in a virtual exchange, each employee has been given virtual currency of 3000 rupees and a trading account for this exchange , once he logs in he can start trading ideas and the price of an idea goes up and down depending on the volume of its trade.
It really make sense to set a structure for generating ideas in organization and giving some of the best once a chance of implementation. Just imagine if one idea can create organization of worth billion dollars than how many brilliant ideas can come from thousands of people in that organization. This is the reason processes like six sigma specially focus on methodologies of idea generation.
One of the oldest method of idea generation is war , most of the revolutionary ideas including Internet were generated during war. Now a war can not be started inside an organization to generate ideas but definitely an environment can be created where every employee feels the heat of competition from outside world, I guess that is what ad agencies best at and that's how they keep generating ground breaking ideas.
Recently I came across another very innovative ways to select ideas in GE, the Global technology group started Idea trading in its department, here employees have registered their ideas in a virtual exchange, each employee has been given virtual currency of 3000 rupees and a trading account for this exchange , once he logs in he can start trading ideas and the price of an idea goes up and down depending on the volume of its trade.
It really make sense to set a structure for generating ideas in organization and giving some of the best once a chance of implementation. Just imagine if one idea can create organization of worth billion dollars than how many brilliant ideas can come from thousands of people in that organization. This is the reason processes like six sigma specially focus on methodologies of idea generation.
One of the oldest method of idea generation is war , most of the revolutionary ideas including Internet were generated during war. Now a war can not be started inside an organization to generate ideas but definitely an environment can be created where every employee feels the heat of competition from outside world, I guess that is what ad agencies best at and that's how they keep generating ground breaking ideas.
Sunday, March 1, 2009
Small but strong
The normal notion also says that bigger is stronger and certainly we will have many examples whre size determines strength. Nature has its ways to create exceptions and examples, The strongest material on the earth is diamond , no doubt about it. In fact phsycis will agree that the smaller is the size of particle , more energy it will require to break it. This year global recession has hit business school placements like never before , MBA graduates who considered themselves employable in any circumstances are having tough time to find a job so colleges started looking for small firms and start ups .
In last few days I have got a chance to interact with several such organizations from head count to 4 people to 100 , from revenue of 60 lacs to 100 crores. I am really amazed that even in such bad times many of these smaller firms who have been in existence for around 3-4 years are doing extremely well . There are many reasons to it and one of them is to target a focussed area and provide end to end executable solution in that area at very competitive price.
In discussions it also came out that where many of the larger firms could not predict about their future projects and cash flows , these smaller firms have project lined up for next couple of years so much so that they are turning down clients because they don't have enough resources to execute many such projects at the same time.
What is keeping small strong ?
Low Operational expense : Most of them are still running from small rented spaces and have not opted for purchasing and maintaining their own facilities. This is keeping the operational expense low. These organizations are running from premises with less than satsificing facilities where they may not even have a cafeteria for their staff. Where other larger ones have now a big task at hand to cut down highly on operational expense , for smaller ones its life as usual on this front.
Every one does everything : For start ups it is not acceptable at any time to handle an attrition rate of 25-20% , even if it happens than the key to remain strong is a flatter hierarchy where every one knows and does pretty much every thing, one is responsible from opening the office doors in the morning to making an international sales pitch, collecting receivables , recruiting projects and managing existing projects in hand.
Closeness to customer : Large organizations today have client list running in hundreds , one of the KPI of quarterly results is number of clients added and specially from fortune five hundred, post which it is about deal size but in case of start ups and new organizations in block , they have almost all of their projects are coming from very few clients which means complete attention and close association with these clients. There may not be deal sizes of millions of dollars but there are definitely continuos flow of projects and great trust on these small but flexible partners.
Its not money but passion and vision : I thought these it is very bookish and theoretical concept that small firms are driven by sheer passion which does not care much about cash flow , specially in short term. Recent interaction with some of the CEOs opened my eyes to a world which is full of energy , vision and un quantifiable passion. They are so intoxicated in it that every second sentence they speak gives a confirmation of their passion and commitment. Small size helps making such feelings contagious to the entire team. Offcourse money follows , many entrepreneur commented that earned much more in their small entrepreneurial stint of 3 year than their corporate career of 30 years.
Developing a perfect ecology : Larger organizations have too much pride and arrogance which hinders development of a cooperating ecology with their peers but this is just opposite in case of smaller ones, they are constantly looking out for friends who can help them in various phases , be it complementing them to provide end to end solution to customers or helping them in expansion to new locations. This kind of ecology gives them more strength.
I am certain that many such small organizations will not only sail through the current crisis but also will establish themselves as strong players in respective fields . Lets hope when they become bigger , they don't forget how they have drawn strength to do so.
In last few days I have got a chance to interact with several such organizations from head count to 4 people to 100 , from revenue of 60 lacs to 100 crores. I am really amazed that even in such bad times many of these smaller firms who have been in existence for around 3-4 years are doing extremely well . There are many reasons to it and one of them is to target a focussed area and provide end to end executable solution in that area at very competitive price.
In discussions it also came out that where many of the larger firms could not predict about their future projects and cash flows , these smaller firms have project lined up for next couple of years so much so that they are turning down clients because they don't have enough resources to execute many such projects at the same time.
What is keeping small strong ?
Low Operational expense : Most of them are still running from small rented spaces and have not opted for purchasing and maintaining their own facilities. This is keeping the operational expense low. These organizations are running from premises with less than satsificing facilities where they may not even have a cafeteria for their staff. Where other larger ones have now a big task at hand to cut down highly on operational expense , for smaller ones its life as usual on this front.
Every one does everything : For start ups it is not acceptable at any time to handle an attrition rate of 25-20% , even if it happens than the key to remain strong is a flatter hierarchy where every one knows and does pretty much every thing, one is responsible from opening the office doors in the morning to making an international sales pitch, collecting receivables , recruiting projects and managing existing projects in hand.
Closeness to customer : Large organizations today have client list running in hundreds , one of the KPI of quarterly results is number of clients added and specially from fortune five hundred, post which it is about deal size but in case of start ups and new organizations in block , they have almost all of their projects are coming from very few clients which means complete attention and close association with these clients. There may not be deal sizes of millions of dollars but there are definitely continuos flow of projects and great trust on these small but flexible partners.
Its not money but passion and vision : I thought these it is very bookish and theoretical concept that small firms are driven by sheer passion which does not care much about cash flow , specially in short term. Recent interaction with some of the CEOs opened my eyes to a world which is full of energy , vision and un quantifiable passion. They are so intoxicated in it that every second sentence they speak gives a confirmation of their passion and commitment. Small size helps making such feelings contagious to the entire team. Offcourse money follows , many entrepreneur commented that earned much more in their small entrepreneurial stint of 3 year than their corporate career of 30 years.
Developing a perfect ecology : Larger organizations have too much pride and arrogance which hinders development of a cooperating ecology with their peers but this is just opposite in case of smaller ones, they are constantly looking out for friends who can help them in various phases , be it complementing them to provide end to end solution to customers or helping them in expansion to new locations. This kind of ecology gives them more strength.
I am certain that many such small organizations will not only sail through the current crisis but also will establish themselves as strong players in respective fields . Lets hope when they become bigger , they don't forget how they have drawn strength to do so.
Sunday, February 8, 2009
From spending dollars to saving paise : Back to basics of cost cutting
When I came to Mumbai in early 2007 , there was a barber down the street Near my hostel . Unlike many others in the main road it was slightly on the off road and no frill barber shop where other jazzy shopes charged 75 to 90 per hair cut this guy charged only 25. Initially he had equipment only enough to support his operations plus a music system. After some visits I started noticing the change in the shop , old music system was a gone and a new one with surround sound was purchased , entire front wall was replaced with glass walls and than came the AC. He now even has a TV inside the small shop. Talking about charges it has gone up slightly from 25 to 30 which I feel was acceptable given the kind of facilities he has added, specially the AC ( and yes give some credit to inflation as well).
What was the necessity of adding so many facilities which are none essential to his operational activities , he can give many logic1) To attract more customers from higher end who would like to have thier hair cut in AC saloon2) To make waiting time of customers more comfortable 3) May be it is for the owners own comfort , he had positive cash in flow , he thought why not make life more fun at work for myself and employees.
Once all the facilities are set up now he does not have any way to track which facility is adding how much to his income , customer retention or operational efficiency , he has not even made any effort to do so. Each of these facilities have definitely increased his expenses to a significant level. So much so that now he may be working on a very thin margin and any change in market will make his operation unsustainable , what if tomorrow a no frill shops start in neighbourhood ( just like he was two year back) , it will surely take away atleast 25-30% of his customers who are not bothered much about AC and music in the saloon.
Recently in a discussion with one of the professior at SPJIMR , he mentioned that IT firms had a tendency to spend lavishly when cash flow was good and margins were high , this is what has put them in all kind of troubles today however small firms are always conservative in thier spending . I will have a slight difference of opinion here , It is normally characterstics of any individual or organization to climb up the spending ladder as his income grows. He is always attracted by some thing which seems just a little better and little expensinve than what he already has.
The Barber down the street is just an example , even a vegetable hawker would try to add facilities for his comfort as and when income grows ( not necessarily this will add to his revenue). So it is common tendency , and this is the entire focus of cost cutting in bad days. To some extent IT companies did over spent in building those glossy structures and than they needed to hype up salaries of their employees because thier global counterparts were ready to poach trained and groomed talent at almost double and triple the cost. Once upon a time the indian BPO employee used to get around 2200 $ a year which was 1/15th of what thier US counterpart would get but now this difference has narrowed down to 1/8 and very soon it could have been to 1/4 eliminating the very basis of competitive edge which was delivered by Indian vendors , probably a good cost control in bad times will again take organizations to some basics.
What was the necessity of adding so many facilities which are none essential to his operational activities , he can give many logic1) To attract more customers from higher end who would like to have thier hair cut in AC saloon2) To make waiting time of customers more comfortable 3) May be it is for the owners own comfort , he had positive cash in flow , he thought why not make life more fun at work for myself and employees.
Once all the facilities are set up now he does not have any way to track which facility is adding how much to his income , customer retention or operational efficiency , he has not even made any effort to do so. Each of these facilities have definitely increased his expenses to a significant level. So much so that now he may be working on a very thin margin and any change in market will make his operation unsustainable , what if tomorrow a no frill shops start in neighbourhood ( just like he was two year back) , it will surely take away atleast 25-30% of his customers who are not bothered much about AC and music in the saloon.
Recently in a discussion with one of the professior at SPJIMR , he mentioned that IT firms had a tendency to spend lavishly when cash flow was good and margins were high , this is what has put them in all kind of troubles today however small firms are always conservative in thier spending . I will have a slight difference of opinion here , It is normally characterstics of any individual or organization to climb up the spending ladder as his income grows. He is always attracted by some thing which seems just a little better and little expensinve than what he already has.
The Barber down the street is just an example , even a vegetable hawker would try to add facilities for his comfort as and when income grows ( not necessarily this will add to his revenue). So it is common tendency , and this is the entire focus of cost cutting in bad days. To some extent IT companies did over spent in building those glossy structures and than they needed to hype up salaries of their employees because thier global counterparts were ready to poach trained and groomed talent at almost double and triple the cost. Once upon a time the indian BPO employee used to get around 2200 $ a year which was 1/15th of what thier US counterpart would get but now this difference has narrowed down to 1/8 and very soon it could have been to 1/4 eliminating the very basis of competitive edge which was delivered by Indian vendors , probably a good cost control in bad times will again take organizations to some basics.
Sunday, February 1, 2009
Evolution of Customer Experience : Retail
One of the oldest business of the civilised society, what all changes it has seen in terms of customer experience.
“The Shopping is no fun” Experience:
Historically this business started with small shops catering to different needs. For a customer there was no fun being in these shops why?
1) There used to be only one narrow counter where all the customers have to line up. Most of the time counters were designed in a way so that customers have to stand outside the shop.
2) One or two attendants serving customers for whole day so in rush hours customers have to make extra effort to draw their attention.
3) Customer used to receive only what he asks for, all the brands, sizes, shapes could not be placed on display shelves.
4) Shops used to cater only a particular need , there were different shops for grocery, cloths, footwear’s etc.
Overall it was a tiring experience for the customer, he felt happy to get out from the shop as early as possible.
“Delighted to be ” Experience:
By 1862 seeds of organized retail had started germinating, this was the year 3 players who would change the future of retail industry started their operation. Kmart, Walmart & Target , there is not much to discuss about K mart but it is interesting to see how walmart and target decided to provide very different kind of experience to the customer in the same retail business. First of all let’s see come commonalities which they brought
1) First time customer can experience the satisfaction of seeing & feeling almost all major brands and before taking any decision , as larger shelf space made sure that all prominent brands for the same category are displayed at one place.
2) Customer could walk at his own ease in privacy; he did not have to ask someone to give him the merchandising; however reps were few meters away whenever there was a query.
3) Now it was time to make sure that customer does not waste much time on counter waiting in queues for transaction to be processed.
4) The shop floors were huge which meant customer can come with entire family or friends and shop.
5) As these stores received discount from vendors on volume, they passed their savings to customer. Which gave customer feeling of getting value for their money?
6) Advanced point of sales systems made checking out easier, it not only gave a sense of comfort to customers but also helped retailers in maximizing customer’s time spend on the floor shopping merchandising rather then waiting on POS.
So some of the common experience enhancements were: Sense of independence, A better ambiance, Satisfaction of having checked all available brands, I can shop at ease and my own pace, value for money.
“Shop till you drop” Experience:
Late 90s and early 20’s started seeing altogether a different side of retail , customers were now being spoilt, not only by the choice of merchandising but also by providing various facilities in the store.
Food joints: Some of the retailers leveraged on amazing combination of having food joint inside the shop, Shoppers Stop, bigbazar , spencers, Trent and many other retailers were now giving no excuse to customer to go out of the shop.
Child care : Many retail outlets started having special children zone where trained employees take care of younger ones while their parents shop. This is amazingly relaxing for mothers who can not leave kids alone at home .
Not only this , lifestyle retailers in particular have been spending a lot on their ambience which has given birth to various shop interior consultancy firms who claim to know art and science of shop interior.
WalMart here also broke all the records and started keeping photo labs, dry cleaners, optical shops and hair salons in its super stores in early 90s
The experience was of complete peace of mind , shopping in an environment where one does not have to worry about anything.
“From my couch” Experience:
After satisfying all kind of sense in the shops, retailers started driving sales by technology. As the new generation started getting tech savvy, retailers knew its time to take the store the house.
Several have tried their fortune in online retailing or e-tailing but not too many success stories. Tesco remains international leader because of following
1) Ease of shopping online: Online shopping can be a very complex business hence the focus has to be bringing simplicity in customer experience which Tesco & Amazon have done quite well with the help of good technology and customer data.
2) Personalization: This facility of offering you items which may be of your interest could have never been a possibility in a brick and mortar business of several hundred square foot but in e-tailing this is the vantage point. Tempt customer with her interest , giving him a personal experience of being cared.
Saturday, January 17, 2009
Evolution of Customer Experience
When we talk about customer experience in interaction with business, this experience is made of two factors
1) Senses of customers ( i.e. sight, sound, taste, touch, smell).
2) Emotions of customer.
To make sure that customer gets a brilliant experience which satisfies both of above parameters , following drivers need to be focussed.
1) Customer Expectation: What is the expectation of the customer while entering into the shop. It is interesting that most of the organizations will have standard operating procedures of hundreds of pages describing how customer should be treated but yet there is no practice to have documentation of what customer is actually expecting or what kind of experience customer desires.
2) People: Employees who are facing customers will directly impact customer experience. Specially in the industry where entire business depends upon customer facing , it is very important to have trained employees facing customers.
3) System: Today when technology drives business, systems being used impact highly on the customer experience, for example it was really embarrassing for customers to undergo the security scanner of handheld metal detectors, which used to take some time. Instead walking through those metal detector doors is a better option.
Similarly another important touch point for customers is POS, the smart your POS system will be the better customer experience will be. Another complain raised by customers is about IVR systems. Complicated answering systems in call centres make customer feel as if they are any transaction which is under processing.
4) Facility: In physical interaction with customer, this is the most obvious and a very strong touch point with customers. Today organizations (specially retail, hospitality chains) are very particular about the kind of experience they want to provide to customers in organization premise. Not only they are spending huge sums on making better, elite, sophisticated, easy to navigate facility outlets but they are also thinking out of box, Mid Columbia Medical center is one special hospital where patients are allowed to choose room interiors of their own choice. This clearly shows to what extent they care about human choice and experience, it is also very obvious in health care industry where if one is able to make patient feel happy then entire process can run smoothly.
5) Organization culture : Once George drapper Dayton ( founder of Target) noticed one of his employee is arguing with customer in what seems to be the customers mistake. He immediately resolved the issue and later on told the employee “ It is not important whether customer is right or not , what’s important is whether she thinks she is right” It will be difficult to view assume that this change was same for almost all the businesses , we will try to see 3 major industries which have been influenced heavily by technology to provide better and effective experience to their customers.
1) Senses of customers ( i.e. sight, sound, taste, touch, smell).
2) Emotions of customer.
To make sure that customer gets a brilliant experience which satisfies both of above parameters , following drivers need to be focussed.
1) Customer Expectation: What is the expectation of the customer while entering into the shop. It is interesting that most of the organizations will have standard operating procedures of hundreds of pages describing how customer should be treated but yet there is no practice to have documentation of what customer is actually expecting or what kind of experience customer desires.
2) People: Employees who are facing customers will directly impact customer experience. Specially in the industry where entire business depends upon customer facing , it is very important to have trained employees facing customers.
3) System: Today when technology drives business, systems being used impact highly on the customer experience, for example it was really embarrassing for customers to undergo the security scanner of handheld metal detectors, which used to take some time. Instead walking through those metal detector doors is a better option.
Similarly another important touch point for customers is POS, the smart your POS system will be the better customer experience will be. Another complain raised by customers is about IVR systems. Complicated answering systems in call centres make customer feel as if they are any transaction which is under processing.
4) Facility: In physical interaction with customer, this is the most obvious and a very strong touch point with customers. Today organizations (specially retail, hospitality chains) are very particular about the kind of experience they want to provide to customers in organization premise. Not only they are spending huge sums on making better, elite, sophisticated, easy to navigate facility outlets but they are also thinking out of box, Mid Columbia Medical center is one special hospital where patients are allowed to choose room interiors of their own choice. This clearly shows to what extent they care about human choice and experience, it is also very obvious in health care industry where if one is able to make patient feel happy then entire process can run smoothly.
5) Organization culture : Once George drapper Dayton ( founder of Target) noticed one of his employee is arguing with customer in what seems to be the customers mistake. He immediately resolved the issue and later on told the employee “ It is not important whether customer is right or not , what’s important is whether she thinks she is right” It will be difficult to view assume that this change was same for almost all the businesses , we will try to see 3 major industries which have been influenced heavily by technology to provide better and effective experience to their customers.
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