Purchasing Power

This week’s business week has an article about V.P Purchasing of GM and how it is trying to cut the purchase cost, streamline the purchased products, thus reducing the cost. This triggered me some thoughts.

When I was working in mechanical industry in India, I closely observed the purchasing manager. If you have purchasing power, then you can control your vendors. This is true with any business off course. The bigger companies can get better deals, better quality and better service.

Typically, purchasing managers are helped by vendor development managers; who develop different vendors, who can give better deals. If you have a stronger purchasing power, actually vendors come to you!

Off course, I couldn’t understand how the whole system works then. But, that is just like any other business.

Inside Disney World

I am reading a book, 'Inside Disney' an amazing story. This is about how Disney parks are being managed.

The first two lessons, which I read so far, 1) Know your competition 2) Give attention to details.

According to Disney, the competition is not only coming from players in the same sector. The moment some one; it could be bank, post, pizza delivery, or any thing; delivers a superior customer service, people start comparing you with them. Thus, there is a new competition. Like, 'I ordered pizza last night, their service is not as good/bad as this company' etc.

This is a truly amazing explanation and notion. How many businesses feel and managed in this way?

Is BlogSpot blocked in India?

Is it true?

Need to check with some of my friends in India.

Midlife Crisis for Mid-size companies

Economic times has this article, where it raised a good question by and large.

Does mid-sized companies facing mid-life crisis?

This report says, top tier companies are doing great, posting market-beating results. But, the mid-sized companies are facing the 'mid level talent' problem, where most of the managers are shifting to MNCs or bigger players.

I am a firm beliver of leadership develop programs within the company. Companies need to groom people. Typically, with all its disadvantages, having two separate tracks of technical and non-technical streams help to groom correct people.

Having top leve technical knowledge is not enough, mid level managers with business focus is the need of the this knowledge economy.

Relience and Mukesh Ambani in NewsWeek

I read a cover page story about Relience and its big plan going forward in NewsWeek.

Since last two days I am thinking, how high those kind of thoughts are! I am amazed.

Building and running the business needs, thinking and that too big thinking.

Human Resource Department

In his weekly column in Businessweek this week, Jack Welch, a famous ex-CEO of GE, has pointed out the importance of HR in any company. How it is important and why it should take employee initiatives.

Some weeks back, I wrote in this blog about HR and its importance. People still believe it is a supporting cast and HR should make policies for employees. But, HR has a broder scope, its work starts in hiring a correct candidate, the candidate who can add real value to company and grow along with company. It’s important to develop culture of this sort, which encourages or challenges the employees to perform more.

People are the major part of any business; people are DNA of any business for that matter. So, having good, energetic people around is the first firm step towards having success.

The major role of HR is to keep employees motivated. Being human being, how ever self starter he/she may be, employees need external motivation. This is the big responsibility of HR to build and develop this culture.

Identification of correct talent within the organization becomes immense important. Some are good in sales; some are in people building etc. It is important for company to put correct people in correct places. Promotions just because of number of years of experience, has absolutely no meaning. Experience and/or personal interest should go hand in hand; this is the simple way to increase productivity. We all work harder on the work which we like most.

So, it’s rather sad that most of the companies treat HR as support, perhaps it is the important wing of the organization.

Spyware!!

Business week has very good article about Spyware and how they make money and how it gives trouble to people's computers. It's amging to note, a company specialized in this popup spyware is making millions!

It obviously cought my attention as I mysef got hit by this kind of spyware and I had tough time in getting rid of them. What all I did was,
1. Installed Windows Defender and Adware softwares
2. Cleaned the .exe files from harddrive.
3. Increased security in browser and set the trusted sites.

I have not seen any popups, at least for now!

Reginoal Cinema Vs bollywood Cinema

I was reading an article in the net paper, where author compares Regional movies with Bollywood movies and categorily labels Bollywood movies as just copies of Hollywood.

Agreed, there are few which are remake, but how to justify this statement as general?

-Is there a movie like ‘Bagaban’ which upheld the family and society values?
-Is there a movie which is as pure as ‘Maine pyar kia’?
-Is there a pure comedy movie like ‘Munnabhai MBBS’?

My point is, in glorifying some thing; we should not overlook the obvious facts of other things. Perhaps, we need to watch all, take the essence and throw out which we don’t need. This is how one should/will develop. There is absolutely no point is fighting about my mother language is good or your’s is bad.

Grow up guys! We are the pepole who quenched the term ‘Global Village’, let our mind be not restricted by any thing.

Why Toyota is not a darling of Investors?

I was reading an interesting article, author with data asks question, inspite of good numbers and good return over last few years and solid growth and sales, why Toyota is not a investor darling? Typically, in stock market good performing companies tend to attract more interest, but why not Toyota?

Honestly, I never thought about this from angle. It is true, volume traded in NSE is very less compared to Fort and GM. Author points out, even despite of 'not so good' performance of auto majors, they tend to attract investors.

Pretty interesting article.

Royal Gorge and Pikes Peak

Went for two days trip to 'Garden of Gods' and Pikes Peak in Coorado Springs and Royal Gorge Bridge and Canon in Canon City. It was a good, fun filled trip.

And went for a 5 miles hike on Tuesday on Rocky Mountains in Loveland.

Totally, it was good long weekend.