Go Global, be Local...

Most of the large successful businesses today made a modest start. They started on a small scale catering to limited geography and then extrapolated it to other geographies. Revenue potential in a geography is limited, when the business wants to increase its business beyond these limits, the obvious option is to expand the business model to other geographies. This way the business will have the opportunity to tap the potential in those geographies.

The way Business is carried out varies from region to region. Though these variations are minor, nuances of a geography are best known by people in that geography. In order to do a good business in a geography, it is advisable to recruit locals and give them the responsibilities. This will be paid off in terms of greater business to the company. This is one of success factors of America Insurance Group founded by Cornelius Vander Starr.

Wall Street… the Culprit?

Every organization wants to expand its business. The resource that fuels expansion of any organization is capital. There are many ways to generate capital. Normally companies go public to meet their demands of huge capital. When a company goes public for the first time, then it is called Initial Public Offer (IPO). There is a lot of exercise that goes into allocation of shares among individual investors, promoters etc. In order for the stock to be traded, it has to be listed with a stock exchange. In case of India it is either Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) or National Stock Exchange (NSE). After it is listed, the stock price varies with the performance of Company. Financial results released by companies at regular intervals is a good indicator of performance of a company. Wall Street closely watches the balance sheets of the publicly traded companies because it is bothered about the heavy betting it takes on a companies stock. As a result companies become too conscious of Wall Street. Meeting the market expectations is good thing to cheer and a good way of repaying the investors who reposed their faith in the company. In some cases where companies give more importance to this goal, they hide the stock de-valuing factors. They fabricate the books and present a normal picture. This tampering with numbers will only give temporary relief to organization , but has a huge negative implication which will roll out eventually. Examples of Enron, America Insurance Group are good examples of this.

Is wall Street the Culprit for the mistakes committed by organizations?

IT as a companion to business process flow...

Typical an organization will have many business processes one for each purpose. Some of the main process are sourcing, customer relation management, finance, human resource management etc. Most of the ERPs provide these functionalities as a part of them. Not all vendors are good in all the processes. Some are leaders in some process. For example Oracle is good in CRM, Hyperion is good in Finance Planning etc. Apart from these processes, there are processes in most of the Organizations, that can be automated. It is for this reason we see many custom Java based applications that cater to each of these processes. All business processes follow a certain order. At every point there should be an application that caters to that business process. This application can be a ERP module or custom Java application. Such a seam less solution will allow the company to capture information at each point and leverage the data.

Once we have data in applications, it can be transferred from it to a data warehouse using standard ETL tools. A reporting layer on top of the Data Warehouse can allow users to see trends. For example a report on customer-related-data from a CRM, will show the customer trend. Reports can be a set of standard corporate reports available for all users or adhoc reports of each user. Value of information will reduce with time. To have more valuable information, Data Warehouse needs to be refreshed more frequently.

Man is the best imitator:

The reason for Man being the best imitator could be biological. This imitation determines the way world goes. When we're born, our mind is like a blank hard disk. As we grow we see, listen and experience many things. These form impressions in our mind which will influence  our reactions and decisions. Hence our personality is a sum total of all the conditions in which we're brought up.
As we grow, our elders teach us how to do things. Their elders taught the same to them. This is how how-to-do-procedure is passed on from one generation to another generation. If somebody tries to do things in a way different from the traditionally accepted way, they are criticized and their ideas are met with skepticism. And some doomsayers predict the end of the world. This is one major reason that prevents innovative thinking.

Business Intelligence... the life saviour

London Fire Brigade, the UK's largest fire brigade uses BI Solution for identifying potential spots, making decisions in allocating and deploying resources. This way it has reduced the number of Fire incidents. And hence reduced the number of causalities.

Fall of financial giants has put the world markets into a tail spin. This has caused a stress on minds of investors. They may not be aware of this. Research says this kind stress can actually shorten lifespan of a human being. Some experts opined that the crisis and its aftermath would have been avoided had there been a sound BI solution in place. Which means a better life for investors. A sound BI solution will guarantee better future for a company. Better future of the company will ensure better future for its employees. It is good that, of late, companies started realizing it.

SaaS in Business Intelligence...

SaaS... Software as a Service. The moment we say this, the name that strikes everyone's mind is Salesforce.com. It has revolutionized the way solutions delivered to customer. It provides the necessary hardware and support of hardware. All a customer needs to do is pay for the volume of resources used. This will take the responsibility of maintaining the hardware and human resources for maintaining it and instead the customer can concentrate on his core business process. The same rational has fuelled outsourcing as well. Salesforce.com's services are mainly related to the field of CRM.
Of late importance and potential of BI is recognized increasingly. We see BI is used in many fields which we never thought will. For example, Police department is using it in observing the trend in crimes. Experts feel that had all all big financial institutions in US (Lehman Brothers, Merill Lynch, America International Group etc.) used a proper BI solution, they wouldn't have landed in the current quagmire. In the current scenario, an organization needs to set up its own infrastructure its users' needs. It would be a dream come true for many business users if BI is delivered as a service. We see that there a paradigm shift is happening. Tools like Cognos are now delivering reports over Web.
Ideally a Bi solution should be user friendly. It should very easy to navigate and should be less complex in filtering and getting required data. In general, people are more comfortable in using portals. It would be good if we can have a BI solution that is delivered through portals. Such a solution will truly empower the frontend sales folks and help them in making judicious decision, which will bring in lots or returns for the investment by a company.

Custom BI solution vs Package solution:

These days there is a lot of talk about use of package solution like Jaros as a BI solution. This will save lots of effort needed in the analysis and design phase. Jaros provides BI solution on top of Oracle ERP. It uses the metadata of Oracle ERP in creating the metadata for ETL. Currently it supports 14 modules in ERP. Normally, a big organization will have lot of customization on ERP. This requires good deal of efforts in customizing the package to business. Jaros is not a feasible solution that use more than 14 supported modules and also for large ERPs with heavy customization.
When we develop a BI solution we will have the liberty to choose the ingredients of our BI solution. We can have the state-of-the-art tools in each phase of the Data Warehousing. Every problem in this world is unique. Each requires a unique way of addressing it. Ideally it suggested to deal it specifically rather than generalizing it and using a general solution available in the market.

Proper Project Management:

Research shows that about 47- 49 % projects are over run either in terms of schedule or budget. This could be because of various reasons like dependency on an external events, occurrence of unforeseen events. Good delivery of project needs competency in many areas. Technical competency is the foremost. Other paraphernalia like preparing project plan and updating it at regular intervals and Communicating effectively among the team and to customer are necessary.

There are many technically competent people who are bad in communication. These people did not feel the necessity of effective communication. Proper communication is necessary in a project. Messages we communicate will provoke feelings and these feeling influence the reaction and decision of the other party.
Every Project will have dependency on external forces. These forces are out of our control. So we should give proper lead time while making our project plan. We should be more watchful as the planned date approaches. Proper alerts should be raised if any delay is suspected. customer should be notified and alternate arrangements should be made.

Team motto should be placed above personal motives. Lots of times, we see that a person with lesser experience will leading a person with grater experience. In such case, if the manager fails to win the confidence of his/her subordinate chances are good that team members do not show commitment. Commitment should start from the manager. So is the manager, so be a team member. I read a sentence about importance of employee management. Quoted here for your quick reading.
"Employee and management stress costs companies billions of dollars annually through increased absenteeism, lack of enthusiasm for the job, and poor performance. According to several industry surveys, the following factors cause the most stress in the workplace: unclear policies and direction, failure to show appreciation, lack of communication, and lack of control."

Proper project management is a vast subject. However i tried to give a bird’s eye view of it.

How to contain inflation?

Inflation is a common phenomenon experienced by every country in the world. This phenomenon is acceptable as long it is there in the limits. When it grows beyond the limits, it has serious implications on many things. Particularly millions of common people in developing countries are effected. Governments round the world should take proper measures to prevent this evil force from rising its ugly head.

Inflation in India is currently hovering around 12.5 %. Many times Government of India in unison with Reserve Bank of India has taken many measure to contain this. Even then, unfortunately it is growing. There are two types of indices in India used to measure inflation. They are Consumer Price Index (CPI) and wholesale Price Index (WPI).

Growth in inflation is attributed to availability of excess credit in the market. Government was under the impression that if the excess credit is removed from the market, Inflation will be contained. Increase of Reverse-Repo rate is one such measure to remove excess credit from the market (For definition of Reverse Repo rate, go to comments). There are many instances where RBI has increased this Reverse-Repo rate during its periodic review. In the name of this, every bank has increased the interest rates on the money lent by them. As a result of this, one thing that has happened for sure is the EMI of the loans (particularly housing loans) has increased by 50 to 70 %. Inflation continued to rise. Does this mean that government does not know the root cause for inflation? or the quantum of increase in Reverse-Repo rate is not sufficient to contain inflation?

Inflation the un-flattener...

Thomas Friedman said that 'The world is Flat' . He explained the ten flatteners in his book. One of the ten flatteners being the Outsourcing and offshoring. The prime motive that aided the growth of outsourcing and offshoring is cost cutting. The outsourcing has caused backlash in USA. Benefits of outsourcing are so strong that media rating agency Nielsen forgo the tax breaks provided by Florida state government.

Inflation - the Un-flattener...
The reason for cost difference is mainly because of the availability of cheap labor in countries like India, Philippines, Mexico, China etc. India is known to outsourcing destination. Inflation has increased the cost of living around the world. This increase in cost has narrowed the cost difference between US and outsourcing destinations.

The other day i read an article on how inflation has changed the business dynamics of furniture business-owner. He used to purchase raw material in one country and have it shipped to a different country, where the product is manufactured and shipped to United States. Of late, because of inflation the difference of the cost for producing it in United States and else where in the world. He now started producing it in United States.

Also, some of the major banks in Europe who outsourced their IT work to India and other countries are now toying with the idea of having work transferred to Europe. Is the world un-flattening?

Beauty of IT Industry… Prepares people to face change and not run away from it…

Every project that you deal is unique in its own way. Though every company has a broad strategy in place to deal with projects, they have to tweak their strategy while dealing projects individually to to cater unique requirements of each project. The topography of the industry is very rough because of competition from other service providers.

Previously projects use to last long. Vendor's job in that case was relatively easy. Once it bags a project it can guarantee revenue for good amount of time. In the present day, a big project is broken into pieces based on functionality, technology, phase of project etc. These pieces are awarded to vendors who are specialists in their domain. This way they will be getting the best product by combining the best of all.

In the current scenario, vendors should be more watchful and see the project does not over run in terms of budget or schedule. To ensure this, every company needs to develop competency in every aspect of delivering a project.

These days, because of fragmentation of big Projects, each project lasts for relatively short time. Bagging a project will only guarantee revenue for a short period. To sustain revenues for a long time, companies should constantly win projects and deliver projects successfully. Winning projects constantly demands changing the strategies frequently to meet the need of the hour.  If the strategies are not changed, then they are lost in the evolution. Because of the short-term projects, companies need to change their strategy very often. This makes people working in IT industry face any change. Change is always draconic.

Of late, every industry is experiencing this phenomenon of fast change. Every industry needs people who can face change and not who can run away from change. They definitely look for people who have deftly handled change. I am sure all other industries look for people with IT background in future.

Teradata, Netezza, The HP Oracle Database server…

Traditionally a query was processed sequentially. As the need for trend analysis grew, it is required to query tables with large volumes of data. As a result these queries took longer time. With the use of the various optimization techniques, the query processing time was reduced. But by the time we rejoice the benefits of this improvement, volume of data to processed increases and we are back to square one.

A typical Data warehouse contains large volumes of Data. Traditional oracle database could not handle this data. Oracle 8i, 9i, 10g etc. are designed for better performance of transactional system. I see that off late companies started using Teradata, Data Allegro, Netezza etc. for implementing their BI solution.

What makes Teradata different? Parallel query processing, fallover mechanism, distribution of data across AMPs makes it process query parallelly and return results in less time.

Is this the end? Reducing the query process time is always a good thing to cheer. Oracle’s claim of The HP Oracle Database Server being fastest on earth is a good news to big organizations with large BI environments. The system consists of

How is the query time reduced? Data is stored in the form of blocks on the hardware. When database processes a query, it fetches all the data blocks from the hardware and then processes the query. When the size of the table is huge (which is typically the case with BI solutions) lot of time is taken in transferring the blocks from hardware to database. Oracle bypassed this part and instead took the query to hardware and processed it at the hardware level. The end result is then passed to database. This results in saving the time for transferring data blocks from hardware to Database. This makes Oracle Exadata database as the fastest database in the world.

Architecture of The HP Oracle Database server: There will be three grids, grid of Database, grid of Fusion middleware and grid of storage servers. The connection between the storage server and DB is infiniband pipe as that can practically transfer data at 1 GB/sec.

Importance of cost-cutting for an organization

Importance is explained with the help of an example. A company XYZ Ltd. has a revenue of 100 units with a profit percentage of 10 (Profit = 10 units). Let us say the company saved 1 unit as a result of minimal saving measures. Now the total profit is 11 units.

To have the same increase in profit by doing more business, the business has to be increased by 10 percent. Increasing business will require a great deal of overhead and increase of expenditure. Increase in profit through cost-cutting is a simple process to show increasing margins.

In cases where the markets are saturated, increase in business will be lot more challenging. It requires extensive work on the organization's part. Under such circumstances, simplest way to show increase in profits to wall street is to implement cost-cutting measures.

Save more for better tomorrow…

Importance of Persuasion…

Persuasion is important art. We use it in many ways in our daily life. A salesman persuades customers, team member persuades customer, a boy persuades his girl-friend etc. I will be talking about the use of this technique for business persuasion.

People into field of sales know the importance of Persuasion. Many times customer may not be interested in listening stories about our product. As a salesman one has to initiate thought process in customers’ mind about the product. This is the first step in the  process of persuasion. There are many other steps that has to be followed to persuade the customer successfully. They are mirroring the customer, timing etc. These are well explained in the following article.

Persuade with Subconscious techniques

Fall of Markets…

Central banks of Europe, Canada, Japan and US have infused 300 billion dollars into market to address the fall of major banks. The noble acts are not gaining the confidence of the investors. Governments should hear the voice of investors. They should come out with a detailed estimate of the damage and remedies to correct the damage.

As Fed chairman Ben Bernanke told, it is time for the Congress to take a serious look at the issue and act promptly and proactively. Billions and Trillions of investors’ wealth is at stake. Crude prices are retracing the growth trajectory, depreciation of dollar. It is high time for governments to take stern action and gain investor confidence.

Apple i-Phone success - Proof of customers' dominance...

Customer rules the market. Customer is the king. These sentences tell the importance of customer. If you want to make good business, all you need to do is understand customer and customers' needs. Solution that addresses the customers' needs will have greater business oppertunity. Identifying an oppertunity is first step in making a good business. Next important step is building a proper business model.

Life cycle for Right-time Data Wareshouse:

Ideally everybody should start with a traditional Data Warehouse. This stores data of historic value. The delay between source data base and Data Wareshouse depends on the refresh freequency. This delay can be reduced by having Data Warehouse refreshed more freequencty. Freequency of refresh should be decided by the business requirement. Eventually one arrives at Right-time Data Warehouse.

There are tools available in the market that help in building a Right-time Data Warehouse. Infosphere from IBM will help in a building a Right-time Data Warhouse.

It's Right-time and NOT Real-time Data Wareshousing...

People often use 'Real-Time' to indicate quick turn-arround time. In reality, a real-time system has a turn-arround time to the order of nanoseconds. It is good to have a Real-time data warehouse. However due technological limitations we can not have a real-time data warehouse. It is apt to call a Data warehouse with less dalay as a Right-time Data  Warehouse.

Change is draconic...

Change is the unstable state that comes between two stable states. Elements that embrace change will survive. Others will get eliminated in the evolution. Darwin's theory of 'Survival of the fittest' applies here. Element can be a person or organization etc. We do see many changes in our daily life. These days it became a pretty common phenomenon.
'These days one has to run faster to remain in the same place.'

Everyone should understand the situation and respond to need of hour.

Mastering the game of BUSINESS

Dictionary.com says a 'game' is  a competitive activity involving skill, chance, or endurance on the part of two or more persons who play according to a set of rules, usually for their own amusement or for that of spectators. 

A Champion is a person who has defeated all opponents in a competition or series of competitions, so as to hold first place.

What it takes to become a Business Champion:

An aspiring champion needs to understand the rules of the game well. Then he/she has to define their best strategy (without violating the rules) to defeat the enemy. Rules for the game of BUSINESS are pretty complex. They often vary from one geography to another.

Many times governmets prevent the exploitation of rules by legislating new laws or creating regulatory bodies and vesting them with powers to curb exploitation. One wants to grow their business quickly, one needs to identify such gaps and use them to his/her advantage.

Will the bailout package help?

It is good that US government is toying with the idea of having a bailout package for banks. People are apprehensive about the good this move will make. Before making hasty moves to rejuvenate the US economy, the government should make a complete estimate of the quantum of demage caused by sub-prime crisis. 

Without proper estimate of the demage, no corrective action can bring the economy out of tail spin. It is foolish on government's part to waste tax-payers' dollars on the hasty moves.

Intelligence...

Intelligence is like an underwear, it’s better to have it but not necessary to show it. If u don't have better don't show it, else something else might become visible!!!.

Indian IT Industry - Changing Scenario....

A major share of revenue for Indian IT majors namely TCS, Infosys and Wipro come from banking and fianancial sector. Currently all major financial institutions are in a turmoil. Also, Economic slowdown in US has forced many companies to cut down on their IT spend. This is a big set back to all indian IT companies. 

China government's incentives to IT companies make it an alternate IT destination. We see companies are pressurising service providers to move the operations from India to China. 

This reduction in number of new projects and shifting of existing projects from India to China results in loss of oppertunities in India. Effects can be seen in the form IT companies giving pink slips to its employees, delaying offers made to freshers etc. 

Fall of financial gaints...

Fall of a well known investment bank, Lehman Brothers and acquisition of Merill Lynch by Bank of America is a setback to entire world. Repercussions will be felt in every country and in every business. We witnessed fall of market indices in developed and developing countries. Investors became scary. Bears are reigning the market now. It is good that USA government came out with a package to bailout the financial institutions from endanger.