March 2008
Is outsourcing on a back foot?
As the US economy slows down, Indian companies face diminishing workload and lowering margins. But so far there have been no withdrawal symptoms. If the rupee is appreciating, it might be time for us to make the most of it by channelizing marketing in the right direction. It’s not a time for worry, it’s a time for some strategizing.
As the US market slackens, Indian outsourcing firms fear a danger. Of suffering lesser work, lesser profits and even having work taken away from them to countries like the Philippines.
“I don’t think it’s a situation of gloom for the industry. I think it’s a situation of cautiousness for the industry,” Azim Premji, chairman of India’s third largest software services exporter said recently. It is true. We needn’t panic about the appreciating rupee but about preparing ourselves well for what is to come.
The worst has not hit us yet. And it probably won’t. If there is one thing to learn, and many have learnt it from the 2001 crisis, we need to focus a little harder on the business. Glenn Gow of the Crimson Consulting Group opines in one of his pieces, “This time will be different. Software won’t get hit as hard – but it will suffer along with the rest of the economy. Vendors that shape their marketing strategy for the downturn will emerge stronger when economic growth returns.”
That is the trick. To make the most of what marketing costs offer you in a slump. As the economy slows down, this is the time you can leverage yourself to the utmost by investing in your image. If you present your strengths at the time of a slowdown, it puts you at an edge around your client. If you show results and enthusiasm at a time when all is not well, you are bound to reap benefits in the long run.
Instead of worrying over the US economic slowdown, it is a time of cost saving for most Indian companies. That is the only way you can recover from loosening profit margins. When you concentrate on confidence building with clients at this point, you are bound to make a stronger statement that will stay with them much after the slowdown has recovered. You can focus on some image building, find newer clients during the slump, and who knows, you might win a whole new set of friends.
It is up to the Indian software industry to make the most of the situation now. If everyone’s cutting costs in the US, which is where most of India’s business comes from (it is Indian software industry's largest market with a whooping 61 per cent share), there are all the more chances that more varied work will flow into countries like India. It gives us the opportunity to explore opportunities of doing more central software development instead of cloning processes that have simply been passed on by our Western counterparts.
So far we are primarily providing back-office services. There are little chances of doing premium work like coding and engineering management. So this might be a good time for Indian techies to learn the intricacies of the technology market as it works across the globe. This again requires us to undertake serious marketing so we are able to garner more work out of currently confused companies abroad that are not sure how they want to go about manoeuvring the economic recession.
The flipside, once again to India’s advantage, is that companies don’t cut down on processes that are mandatory to day-to-day processes. They would instead cut down on more nonobligatory jobs like consulting. This gives an advantage to Indian companies that undertake tasks indispensable to routine needs of an organisation. In an interview HCL chairman Shiv Nadar said, “Our work is the core of the client's business processes.” He says the company primarily focuses on technology services, which don’t impact their business in such a slowdown.
Innovation. That is another key to successfully rise out of the slowdown. Invest smart, get business that will impact you lesser and provide unique services at a good cost to new clients and old. This will boost your business now to propel outsourced work later. Indian technology firms can also look at exploring newer markets where they have not reached so far. With low costs, extended services and newer offerings, they can lure clients.
When in peace prepare for war. And that is what we ought to do. Many tech visionaries are likening India’s IT industry and the slowdown to what happened in Japan with the Auto industry and the appreciating Yen. Technology for India is an area of excellence and it is time for us to invest and use global best practices for India’s benefit. If we provide the right services at agreeable terms and invest into the image of the industry, we are likely to benefit in the long term.
Posted by Shiraz Datta on March 26, 2008 at 05:25 AM in Business Growth, Business Optimization | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Retailers, get ready for the magic of CRM
“International giants entering India in a big way was an impending trend only waiting to happen. If you haven’t prepared for the tussle yet, this is your chance. Indian retailers are set to impress customers and increase their bottom-line with the aid of the right CRM”
It’s ironic that while the retail sector in India is estimated at US$350 billion, organised retail is estimated barely at US$8 billion. The upside is the expected growth rate. By 2010, organised retail is expected to grow up to US$22 billion, an estimated 40 percent compounded annual growth of return over the next few years.
Numerous international retail giants from Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States are entering the Indian market with enormous hope and investments. Retailers in India so far only prefer to increase the number of outlets within a city or to other regions as a part of their expansion drive. But they will now need to fight the burgeoning retail space with many new shopping centres and growing new markets like the kids’ retail revolution in apparel. To manage the tremendous volume of transactions and to beat international competition, Indian retailers have an immediate need for Customer Relationship Management (CRM) tools.
CRM will happen. It’s simply a question of how long it will take and in how many ways retailers will benefit. Customer Relationship Management is important, especially for your repeat customers and for them to feel camaraderie with the retailer. A good CRM will provide the right framework to retailers so that they can personalize merchandise purchases, services and responses across all communication channels for the customer’s satisfaction and for increased sales.
Low cost, high value
But before retailers embark on any CRM software, they need to ensure it comes at optimal cost, with minimal risk, high value, and a higher return on investment (ROI). It should install quickly, interface readily with existing systems, be easy to learn and to use, and deliver uncompromising performance.
Driven by changing lifestyles, strong income growth and favourable demographic patterns, the Indian retail market is growing at compounded annual rate of five percent and expected revenues of US$320 billion in 2007, according to a report by AT Kearney and the Confederation of Indian Industry. And big international and domestic retailers have realized this growth.
To sustain competition from the giants, Indian retailers must differentiate or brand their business. Customers expect retailers to do this is by personalizing products and services. And this is where a rightly implemented CRM comes into play.
Growing Communication Channels
India has more than 129 million mobile communication subscribers and the number is expected to go up to 300 million in 2008. This is a strong marketing channel retailers cannot afford to miss. “Truly loyal customers can’t imagine doing business with anyone else. They are your best means of advertising because they’ve become advocates for your company. They bore their friends with stories of how great you are,” write Shaun Smith and Joe Wheeler, authors of Managing the Customer Experience.
To implement the right CRM, retailers need to analyze customer preferences and trends, and then merge analysis with inbound and outbound calling via CRM technology so that customers can communicate with the retail chain by fax, phone, web, SMS and the like. The CRM framework links and integrates these channels to individualize the customer’s experience and ensure satisfaction.
Similarly, competition must be kept under a check. If a retailer offers volume discounts, its competitors must likewise offer comparable value to the customers. If a retailer has tools to reach more customers with personalized purchase offers, or to process orders faster, or with fewer errors, or more efficiently, other vendors must adapt or gradually surrender market share.
But unfortunately, only 30 percent of companies worldwide have actually implemented a commercial CRM software package. And most of these are only a year old. Of this minority, 54 percent have implemented just one part of CRM. With so much room for improvement in meeting customer demands, CRM can only help.
Contact centres form an integral part of CRM because they directly impact how customers feel about the retailer’s products, services and business. With an efficient system at the contact centre, retailers can help customers buy what they want and need. For instance, retailers are yet to utilize the opportunity of selling daily needs to a population that is using the latest technology to purchase almost everything.
If you are looking at moving to customer-centric marketing, this means that all customer functions are subject to CRM’s analytical processes. This helps retailers understand both how the customer base is presently segmented and, for the future, according to what retailing values. Other analyses identify new services, evaluate their ROI, shift focus from less to more profitable customers, etc. The outcome from CRM analytics is better service, improved planning and profitability, and more appropriate pricing.
Customer Analysis
CRM analysis can help retailers make a smooth shift to a customer-focused enterprise by allowing processes like differentiating customers into segments, discovering precise needs of customers and redesigning compensation and rewards to effect behavioural changes. This process establishes the context that stimulates the customer to shop and buy. Hardcore marketers make their own analytical understandings with the help of a CRM to evaluate what their customers need.
Improved Sales
Better services imply the customer’s improved ability to make purchases. They will make informed decisions and be happy with their purchase. Such efficient shopping will only mean a patronizing customer. For the retailers, this means higher transaction rate, increased revenues, and a wider profit margin.
Smart retailers are looking up new and critical CRM tools like the unified agent desktop that allows customer service agents to respond faster and with greater accuracy and consistency every time a customer picks up the phone, accesses e-mails or chats. The unified agent desktop brings the customer into focus at the desktop and turns the agent’s screen into a hub that can access all enterprise applications and databases necessary to respond rapidly to the customer.
The result is increased quality and decreased operating costs, leading to one of the most handsome ROIs in the industry. It also eliminates data redundancy like repeating customers with the same requests or relying on agents to recall the correct systems to enter a new customer record or service request.
Questions to ask about any CRM Framework:
- Does it allow the supervisor or manager to access and process analytical data online? Preferably through a web portal?
- Does it use just one screen to manage all customer channels – e-mail, voice, chat, fax, web self service – so that agents stay productive and don’t get lost in the transaction?
- Does it offer a universal view of your retail CRM data on a single screen – contact information, history of recent activity, knowledge base, workflow interaction, resource management?
- Does it make efficient use of your and the customer’s time by minimizing clicks so that managers and agents don’t have to toggle to other screens or other applications while the customer waits impatiently?
Posted by Shiraz Datta on March 19, 2008 at 09:21 AM in Business Growth, Customer Dialogue | Permalink
Web of many dimensions
As intelligent as the human, as responsive and as understanding. Web 3.0 is likely to be something most of us have not even imagined. And yet, it is going to be something we are all going to create!
Thanks to Web 2.0, we are all leading successfully virtual lives. Building communities, sharing knowledge, even searching information on the future and from the annals long lost. Web 2.0 has been more of a revolution than the dotcom boom and proven its success like nothing else has. It has got almost everyone hooked to the internet with localized communities as well as very popular communities like orkut and facebook.
This version of the web, created by xxxx, is being followed by different versions, the immediate being Web 3.0. Yes, it is simply a version, but it is likely to change the way we use the internet in the same way that Web 2.0 did. Web 3.0 is being discussed, debated and fabricated to further replace this interactive version of the world wide web. Semantic technology, autonomics and autopoeisis are some very confusing terms being used to describe what Web 3.0 could possibly be like.
We’ll go on a tangent and try to describe what Web 3.0 is in layman terms and what it means to the end user, who is eventually going to make up the intelligence of this greater phenomenon.
Where Web 2.0 gave us the interactivity to share information real time, to create communities and to make transfer of data oh! so simple, Web 3.0 is going to be a drastically more intelligent version. It will be a smarter assistant, who will understand our needs, requirements and if everything goes well, even our psychology. It will make the internet available everywhere—on mobiles, TV, even bathroom mirrors if you please. Artificial intelligence will take on a whole new meaning as the web understands internet pages as well as we do. It will be clever enough to relate media to media instead of depending on words, commands and strings.
You will need no keywords. Search engines of the future will be able to fathom what you need, maybe as soon as you log on or maybe as soon as it understands your needs. This is why it is being referred to as the Semantic Web, a term coined by inventor of the first world wide web Tim Berners-Lee. So the web will be smart enough to understand what you are looking for and to understand your needs at various points in time. It will be able to guide you on what meetings you need to prioritize, what movies you need to see and what goodies you need to purchase. You will even be able to visit the supermarket next door or the brand store in another part of the world, courtesy Web 3.0.
It will almost be a virtual world, where you can socialize, entertain and even travel with the web, while sitting in the suitable realms of your room. It will take our lives beyond day-to-day to create a 3-D experience that is able to provide us with an alternate reality where we can collaborate and connect with a whole new set of people. What’s more, you will be able to develop and change the web according to your needs and imagination. People will be able to change the way this world works. And we will not have to depend on the expertise of a programmer to do this.
Web 3.0 will also be a more advanced form of the current searches. So search engines of the future will be able to look for music on the basis of the music that you provide. It will be able to search pictures according to ones that you provide. You needn’t try different keywords, all meaning the same thing, and toss around words to find what you need. It will be able to understand what you mean, without your having to rack your brains over words, strings and keywords. Yes, SEO might very soon become a thing of the past!
This simply means that we will be able to enjoy the internet more than ever. We will be able to intermingle with the internet the way we interact with the outside world today. We will be able to share thoughts with the internet and possibly get a response from it. The web won’t simply be a canvas where we can find our answers and solutions but one that can understand our needs and provide us information and solutions that we have been looking for.
According to Mills Davis, founder and managing director of research consultancy Project10X, “The problem is that existing knowledge on the Web is fragmented and difficult to connect. It is locked in data silos and operating system file system formats… Web 3.0 changes this.” So we will have access to large amounts of data—easily. Different applications will come together to provide a more enhanced experience to the user.
The end user will therefore not be simply a consumer but become a ‘prosumer’. It will be a kinship of internet users with the world wide web. We will be able to evolve the web according to our needs and the web will be able to provide intelligent solutions, as it learns your requirement while you interact with it. It will know when you want to do what task and execute it for you. If you want to make a presentation, for instance, an intelligent user interface like Web 3.0 will know how you would want to present it and set it for you in the desired format.
Essentially, it will be an interactive web that will evolve with the user over a period of time to understand the user’s psychology, needs, habits, methods and requirements. The web will develop with its users to recognize habits of communities across the globe, across ages and even across aptitudes. Furthermore, you and I will be able to develop what the internet should be like and what it should offer.
While this is how Web 3.0 might function, it will be supported by high speed broadband connections and numerous ways in which one device connects with another.
Posted by Shiraz Datta on March 14, 2008 at 03:05 AM in Business Transformation | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
It’s just a wake up call for the IT industry
It would be pessimist and unfair to assume that we could no longer be the greatest providers of outsourced software services for the world. The industry simply needs to evolve to grow into a bigger industry with larger targets. At the same time, the country needs to prepare as a whole to provide an appreciable environment to overseas customers.
The country is fretting over what seems to be a not-so-bright-future for the Indian IT industry. For those making the bucks, India’s fairytale story can’t seem to go bust so soon. And it might not. Yes, the IT industry is being met with serious challenges that it needs to address immediately. But the good news is there is still a chance and all we need is to prepare for the future. Going by the past trends, the IT industry has always seen it ups and downs. Concluding anything on the Indian IT | ITeS industry would be premature. A recent interview with NASSCOM president Som Mittal, in which he stated that the IT sector expects to meet or even exceed its software export target of $ 60 billion and overall software and services revenue goal of $ 73-75 billion by 2010. So dismissing these numbers would not be appropriate.
However there are surly certain issues that require a thought or considerations. On the surface, there seems to be a downturn in India’s bright and booming IT industry. To start with, there is the appreciating rupee against the Dollar. The Indian rupee has strengthened 15% against the Dollar the last one year. But America being the primary provider of outsourced business to India’s IT companies, their dipping economy fares trouble for companies here.
Another twist to this tale is the reduced spending on IT services by American companies as their economy slows down. Not only has this caused a drop in the rate of salary hikes and hiring, American firms are also passing on and creating lesser work for Indian’s IT companies. As the bulk of work lessens, India being the largest provider of low-cost outsourced services, the impact is reflected surely and poorly.
As Infosys Chief Mentor and Non-Executive Chairman Narayan Murthy has constantly pointed out, another bottleneck the Indian IT space faces is India’s clogged infrastructure. Any foreigner, who steps down at the Indira Gandhi International Airport in Delhi or the Bengaluru International Airport for the first time, will not get the best first impression. For a country that opened its doors for other countries almost a decade back, the development growth has been relatively slow and I guess can be a hindrance for the growing Indian economy.
Our Indian airports need serious makeovers. Let’s hope the new ones will provide the extraordinary experience that a visitor deserves. If you walk down the road from Bangalore’s airport to the city’s best-known hotel Leela, the traffic and pollution are stifling. Similarly, if you land at Delhi or Mumbai’s international airports, there is nothing welcoming about them yet. The efforts are on, but it needs speed and urgency. Or we are bound to lose work to competitors like China, Eastern Europe and Russia, who not only provide low-cost services but also better propriety. With new fiscal budget awaited in near time I would advocate for policies that would aid to sustain the India IT shining story. The Government will also need to look in continuing the tax holiday to smaller STPs beyond 2009
Competitors are another major threat to Indian’s IT industry. While the industry might not be as organized in countries like Russia and China, they are on their way. And they are also producing quality engineers, comparable to India. Even countries in central Europe are not very far from achieving what we have been bloating over. Emergence of these countries in the IT space has already started impacting our client’s preferences and margins.
India needs to stabilize the way IT firms are working. The talent is there but we still fall short of the demand. If we want to continue supplying work to firms abroad, we need sufficient talent within the nation to meet the demand. Engineers don’t simply need to provide outsourced services that mainly involve testing services. If the industry wants to survive, it will need to train professionals to do substantial tasks that will help firms move up the value chain.
Even companies that are outsourcing work now want to pass on more evolved work to India. They will soon be automated and we will be forced to take on other work. We need to prepare our systems and professionals for a future that involves different work like developing systems and solutions for foreign clients including diversifying in the various other geographical regions. Companies like TCS and Infosys have taken the clue and are already undertaking work that will help them grow from a service provider to a policy enhancer with larger foot print. Besides, the kind of outsourcing services we are providing right now might become redundant very soon.
At the same time, despite what the scenario looks like, salaries are being hiked at tremendous rates. Salaries of those higher up in the ranks is soon likely to match of those in the United States. This is not a positive sign for the low-wage advantage that we currently offer. Cost arbitrage may very soon not be considered as a differential factor but a hygiene one.
Fortunately, this is not the end of the story. So far, Indian companies have been providing peripheral work to foreign firms. But times are a changing and any IT firm that wants to keep evolving at the same rate will have to grow to be able to provide higher margin work like consulting. We need to the move up the value chain to sustain the advantage that we are currently offering to the world. In the recent NASSCOM leadership forum there was a great talk or recommendation to the India IT | ITeS company to move up the value chain to sustain the competitive advantage.
The fundamental business model of Indian IT industry of earn is $$ dollar and spend in rupees would prevail in the coming years with amendments of Earn in Yen, Euro, Pound, Dollar…..and spend in Rupees. However sustaining this model would require a considerable cumulative effort of the industry and government.
With annual growth rates of nearly 30% in the past ten years, Indian IT industry has been resting in peace. We have provided a bulk of talent and spearheaded some of the greatest software development and ITeS any country has provided. The stats for future does looks encouraging provided the industry works together to over come the hurdles. It’s time to gear up. If we don’t change, and fast, we may very well be headed for a fall.
Posted by Shiraz Datta on March 12, 2008 at 01:56 AM in Business Growth | Permalink
Web 2.0: It’s not really that technical!
"Simplifying Web 2.0"
If you are not comfortable with technology and its concocted numerical nomenclature. If you haven’t figured out Web 2.0 yet, we give you a load up on what it really means to get connected!
How many of us are comfortable with technology and advancements in it? Not too many, I’m sure. The recent generation is a little more ‘Tech-savvy’ they say, but even then it’s just a very superficial understanding of the terms and their purposes. Under this condition, when someone mentions Web 2.0, it seems a little over your head! Have they actually reinvented the web? Isn’t that what 1.0, 2.0 etc are supposed to mean? Different versions of the same thing. So does this affect the way we use the web? It will probably become more complicated with more tools, more buttons, more of everything to make the user think even more while using it! So many questions that tend to make Web 2.0 seem like some enigma which is understood by just a few and blindly used by the rest. But the fact of the matter is that, Web 2.0 would not exist if it was not for the common user. It is us that make the new version of the Web, and not the geeks in their cubicles writing innumerable lines of code.
Web 2.0 was a term introduced to the world during the first O’Reilly Media
Web 2.0 conference in 2004, but has never really been accepted widely as the right nomenclature. We could possibly define Web 2.0 as a knowledge-oriented environment where human interactions generate content that is published, managed and used through network applications in a service-oriented architecture.
This by itself is obviously confusing and is not how you would want to describe it to someone who you are trying to explain the simplicity of Web 2.0 to! However, I have mentioned it here for those who are interested in knowing the technical description of the term. For the rest, it is basically trying to say that Web 2.0 is a place where you, your friends, your family and anyone else can come share information in various forms and get connected to each other in the process. Basically, let’s come hang out and exchange information!
Simple isn’t it?
Let’s take some examples to get into the spirit of Web 2.0 a little more. How many of us have an Orkut, Facebook or MySpace account? Pretty much everybody. And this is exactly what Web 2.0 is all about. People no longer use the Web just to check their mail and send out information at fixed points of time.
It’s now all about making everything real time and sharing and exchanging information then and there. The sites mentioned above allow you to put up photos, write down your thoughts, make a profile that people can browse, share videos and lots more. Suddenly no one on the net is a stranger. People can look through your profile and learn more about yourself even before they have met you. You can connect to people you would never have directly met, but who may be able to help you in a number of ways from hobbies, to accommodation, to education and a lot more. These sites function on user-generated content and that’s what Web 2.0 is all about.
Putting the power in the hands of the user!
You will no longer be told what to do online, but will be asked what you want to do. The Web is no longer a place for the ‘Tech –savvy’ or the professionals who want to showcase their skills. It’s all about the common user who wants to share his thoughts, his work, his skills and allows others to view and rate his work.
Everybody can now have their own web page, and even a custom URL to give them their own online identity. Blogs have already been advanced enough to allow you to not only write about your experiences, but to also include pictures, videos and lots of other features that make them a rich source of information and an outlet for the creatively inclined to showcase themselves to the whole world.
Gone is the time when you had to have big bucks behind you to do anything online and even then have technical expertise to execute it. Now, all you need is some basic computer knowledge and you are on your way to destinations unknown! You no longer need a space ship to “Boldly go where no man has gone before!”
But for all its plus points and advantages, the Web 2.0 advancement also has some serious privacy invasion and identity theft drawbacks. With the amount of personal and potential sensitive information online, you need to make sure you take care of who is looking at your web pages and blogs. Identity theft for creating bogus accounts, image theft, misuse of personal information are all very serious and real threats that abound in this brave new world of the Web.
The movies “The Net” and “The Net 2.0” dealt with a fictional situation of the ill effects of the World Wide Web, but these seem very plausible with the simplification of the Web of late. But with the ease it introduces and the scope for enrichment of our lives, Web 2.0 cannot be viewed as a bad advancement at all.
It’s just up to the user to ensure that he/she uses it responsibly. “With great power comes great responsibility”, said Spiderman and that applies to the Web as well. With the new power and control that it offers to the common user, it is up to him to ensure he uses it carefully and makes sure he watches his own back and other’s as well. At this time of sharing information and thoughts, sharing concerns and watching out for your online colleagues is a must. After all, isn’t that what Web 2.0 is all about. Sharing, exchanging and experiencing what others have.
Posted by Shiraz Datta on March 9, 2008 at 11:34 PM in Business Transformation | Permalink | Comments (0)
Is the downturn "really" good for India
A recent article published in Economic Times on US Slowdown offers opportunity to Indian IT Industry, does highlights some interesting aspect of the current market situation. I must say it’s a coincident that recently I had a lengthy discussion with one of my friends Sandeep Bansal, working in an ITeS company, about this slowdown and how it’s an opportunity for us sitting here in India. He actually came up with few interesting examples to support his point of view. In line with same I saw this article about various opportunities that Indian companies may have from the US slowdown.
From the article’s perspective the author has tried to relate and convince about the current down turn to that of what has happened in the past. I must say that he has done fairly a decent job in certain aspect. However the current situation relating to that of what happened in the 2000-01 was superficial, as the fundamentals and the dynamism of the given market environment has drastically been changed. Weakening dollar could be well said example of such fundamental shift.
The articles does highlight that the company though in short terms is dealing with the problem by increasing the efficiencies of its productivity improvement re-pricing and more off shoring, doing more work at its offices in India that on-site in US. We all are aware about the downturn and a probable recession that the US Economy is facing, and with elections there seems to be no respite for the outsourcing industry. With both Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Obama proposing to give benefits to the companies those are not outsourcing their work to “shores”. So there is an analytical requirement of developing or Rethinking the tactics to sustain or even tide over the downturn.
Another highlight of the article was the target verticals identified, and among the list financial service was the first. Well I do not disagree with it being on the first however dose has reservation about the sustainability of the sector in the US market as a major revenue generator for the India IT and ITeS companies. As few reports that I had chance to go through does indicates the slowness in the US Financial Sector from the technological spend perspective, with a tremendous growth opportunity from the emerging markets in the same timeframe. Taking on a suggestive mode, I would like to recommend of companies to create Asian specific offerings to tap on the financial services sector of this region. Leverage on what you have learned in the matured markets and modify it for better utilization in the emerging ones.
The article does reflect on building and acquiring the “Intellectual Property”, which personally I am a big fan of. I believe with any downturn or upturn we need to build and/or revise the IP as per the changing dynamism and a look into the future. As an “IP” is what a company can differentiate itself from its friends known as Competition. The ability to create uniqueness in one’s process, delivery, implementation, etc. can provide the competitive advantage that is require to tied over any downturn(s). McDonald’s targeted service time for a burger is 7 minutes delivery, no matter which part of the globe you are. That is an IP for me.
An ability to create and recreate the magic and above all to sustain is imperative.
Posted by Shiraz Datta on March 9, 2008 at 08:13 PM in Business Growth | Permalink | Comments (2)
The Internet cable story
Is the internet a potential enemy weapon? A chunk of South Asia's booming economy relies on the internet. We take a look at the role the internet is playing in these economies and how they have suffered with disrupted cables.
Yes, it could have been a ship's anchor as few unconfirmed report suggests however it maybe it's too large an incident to be a coincident. But are we taking it too far by roving our suspicious senses to miscreants that may be?
While all of that may be true, it is best for us to wake up. Us, in the countries that are building the blocks of their economy by using the internet as our magic wand to information assimilation and dissipation. What has caused people to raise question is the fact that these numerous breaks (numbers vary between four to seven) have only affected the Gulf and India and have caused sizeable commotion. Those breaks have affected more than 85 million internet users in India, Pakistan, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar, Sudan, Egypt and the United Arab Emirates. But it seems to have had no effect on internet users other countries. This has raised serious questions about our intellectual strength and even security or could be an indication that we are not doing enough to protect our infrastructure.
Reports say that it was anchors of ships crossing the seas that caused the disruption. But sources also say that records of the time that the cables broke show no marine traffic in most of these regions. Since most cables cut lay next to certain specific nations, it is probably not simply a case of infrastructure or economy. More so because reports of ships' anchors cutting cables under the sea have not been established so far.
Under such a scenario, we want to be cautious about where we could be headed if an incident could disrupt business for days and if our intelligence is not equipped enough to manage a sabotage of this magnitude.
Millions of jobs are being outsourced to Indian shores and bright lads of the country are picking up opportunities with arms wide open. Is this trend creating enemies for the economy? Are there potential enemies trying to create hurdles or even pack up the systems for us to be not able to grab a bit of the global economical pie.
The biggest bearers of this threat, therefore, could be the outsourcing industry. The Indian BPO/ITeS industry depends purely on connectivity and when the support of this backbone is withdrawn at any point, the breakdown is unfathomable. I still remember the day of chaos at a UK call centre when we were informed about a connectivity outage for the entire day and the anticipated losses that were incurred. Not discounting the battering the image of company got.
Outsourcing generates streams of revenue and jobs for the Indian youth, they and the whole India shining story can be severely affected with serious repercussion an incident like this can create. With the fall of the Dollar, the struggle is poor enough. Add to it the commotion of technical faults or mishaps and we have the recipe for a collapse.
Even if we spare the outsourcing industry for a moment, there are numerous other places where cables being cut can disrupt business. The exchanges will take a definite hit, as we recently witnessed. The banking system will go for a toss and billions will be lost simply managing the damage thereof. According to Nasscom figures, Indian software and services exports could be earning $60 billion by 2009-2010. With possibilities like this, it is difficult for the industry to take such a heat over so many days.
It's best if we wake up and smell the smoke. Even if we are to believe that some natural or marine issues are to blame, all of us who depend on the internet minute-by-minute also need to secure it from all potential threats. It was a blessing that Indian companies were able to avoid the crisis using alternate land and satellite solutions. Even in the future, large companies with well-developed backup plans for disaster recovery and continuity might not get affected that much vis-à-vis companies that do not have adequate infrastructure to support. But it is a sign that is jeering us to improve or update our infrastructure. Maybe our infrastructure is not fit enough to undertake natural or manmade calamities of these kinds.
The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India is already in discussions with the three primary owners of under-sea cables in India - Bharti, Reliance Communications and Tata-managed VSNL to set up some sort of a mechanism to make our communication network more hard wearing. What companies need is to look at this issue with a microscope.
If we look at the corporate scenario that is a sufferer here and that can do with an immediate solution, one possibility emerges. What went wrong this time and needs urgent attention is the synergy that Internet Service Providers can create if they work in tandem. It would be a good idea for them to come together to create a synergy that allows them to cooperate in such times when either could be the tormented party. At the same time, the end consumer will be served better, which is the end requirements of all providers anyway.
Anything or everything, from email, instant messaging, blogging, virtual operation theater, can stop in a split of second. It is undoubtedly a "potential disaster without any war or weapon". And we cannot wait for that to happen.
www.shirazdatta.com
Posted by Shiraz Datta on March 7, 2008 at 07:58 AM in Business Infrastructure | Permalink
Code me a code that codes!
As we veer towards automation, efficiency becomes important. Between the race to ace time, we are forgetting an important innovation that might help us better. Must we think about automating codes? So we don't have to waste man hours doing just that?
In today's world of high automation and a wholesale shift to the digital, real time and live systems take front seat. It therefore becomes imperative that time be spent wisely and care be taken to avoid unnecessary activities. Work hard but work smart is the mantra.
This of course is easier said than done because working smart requires more effort to be put in at one point to ease up the load later and most of us with our myopic vision cannot see beyond the present!
Automation comes only after a level of manual struggle to perfect the tools that achieve it. We come up with ways and means to convert, time consuming manual labor into a simple and effective but most importantly time and money saving automated process. A set of machines or a few lines of code can achieve in a few minutes what 10 people can achieve in a few hours. Though the initial investment for this process could be sizeable, the return on it is very healthy.
However, we always stop at achieving just that and move on to the next process where we make a whole new system to automate it. But, can't we apply the same principle here as well? Automating various systems is a system in itself.
So why not automate that? Why not develop a system that reads processes and develops systems to automate them? Seems like the next logical step but it is far more complex than it sounds. Let's take the example of the simplest and most widely used automation systems we have.
Softwares. These simple lines of code do a number of tasks which we ourselves find too tedious to carry out. But behind every program are three programmers who have worked day and night to get it right. They have indeed worked their magic to come up with innovative ways to tackle the problem, but for every innovation they have also invested time in writing some repetitive lines of code.
This is where the process of automation can come in handy. Why not write a code that will automatically generate lines of code for situations that match certain pre-set parameters within it. Eg., every time it sees a choice and the alternatives, it generates the appropriate switch command, or every time it sees a condition, it generates an if-then-else loop. All it needs to do is learn to recognize such patterns. This can be achieved by a set of instructions to loop through a document or reference material to find certain conditions and then take an action based on their nature.
This will require some really intelligent coding to ensure the program doesn't generate garbage lines of code. It will almost require some predictive systems that may come close to mirroring human intelligence. With the development in adaptive software, this is not too difficult to achieve, at least in principle. The program may take a few runs to get the right combinations, but it will definitely achieve the right result faster than a human can.
We will of course still need humans to apply the final touches on the result, but it will ensure that time spent is spent doing intelligent coding and not repetitive stuff.
An Indian software company had come up with software of this sort some years back, but the buzz surrounding it never really matched up to what it deserved. They had a software that would recognize common elements in a program like brackets and key phrases and fill in the other lines to code itself.
So, if we typed "If", the program would automatically generate a variable and give you options of what conditions to enter and fill in the other fields based on information already available in the program. This saved time for the programmer apart from ensuring that there is no repeat of variables, misplaced syntax, infinite loops etc, which would make debugging difficult in larger programs.
For a corporate level this may be an apt solution. But even on a more amateur level, this is being racticed, but without the knowledge of the people involved! Web designers and data entry operators often use or write software that automates some everyday tasks like table conversions, entry listings or even macros in excel. These do exactly what we have discussed so far.
They follow the user's instructions to complete some manual chores in a fraction of the time using intelligent lines of code to generate more lines of code that are easily edited to achieve the desired result. However, since these are at a much smaller level, their impact is not felt in a big way. But their importance in the process involved should never be underestimated.
People tend to stay from these options because of the need to control the data, lack of faith in automation for important processes and mostly due to ignorance about the method of functioning of the process.
Ignorance is bliss they say, but in this case it's because people are not aware of the available tools. Hence, they end up losing out on the bliss some knowledge could have given them. Figuring out the process to achieve this automation sometimes takes a little time and effort which we are not ready to devote and hence we end up wasting a lot more time, effort and money in doing things the hard way.
The solution is simple. With the pace at which the world is progressing today, the adage 'Time is Money' has never carried more weight. We can either continue carrying on working hard and not worrying about innovations, or we can work smart and invest time and resources now to achieve results and reap benefits for a long time to come.
This happens or not, of course I cannot tell now and will let the time answer. However the choice is there to be made, but will we make the right one? This is one decision a few lines of code would not resolve for us!
Posted by Shiraz Datta on March 5, 2008 at 09:59 AM in Business Transformation | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
