What Retail Quotes

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Similarly both corpoarte houses are extremely careful on customers services .

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

Taking the Path to BPR

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

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

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

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

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

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

An opportunity lost:

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

New Temples of Consumerism

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

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

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

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

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

Bhagvada-Gita : Revisiting the message of doing ones Duty

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

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

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

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

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

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

Future is Virtual

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

Matter of Spirit or Spirit of Matter

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