Margin game

Writing this blog from Istanbul Ataturk International airport. (Having my favorite Starbucks coffee while I write this). It’s a different experience to visit a different country, which has loads of history. I was first amazed by the cultural mix of this city.


Back to business, TCS has toppled Relience Industries as number one in terms of market capitalization. Given the global economic situation, the kind of growth TCS has reported is tremendously impressive. Not long ago, many investors believed, even within Information Technology sector, that rival Infosys has bright future. Though TCS was always ahead in terms of revenue, Infosys got all the attention. Over the years, not only it has reversed but TCS is the biggest company in India in terms of market capitalization

While the two successive downturns of 2008 and 2011 in the US and Europe- from which Indian IT companies earn the bulk of their revenues- ravaged rivals like Infosys and Wipro, TCS has held its grounds. The TCS scrip, at 526.80 RS on Jan 1 2008 (Adjusted to bonus issue in June 2009) gained 147% since then to 1305 RS on October 18, 2012.

Since 2009, TCS has more than doubled the revenue gap over Infosys. Infosys is always known for its better margins but in recent years TCS has bridged the gap as well.

Imagine improving the operational efficiency while managing close to $ 11 Billion revenue.

What TCS have done correctly?

• It focused on infrastructure management much earlier than its peers and that is the fastest growing service line in the Industry. This clubbed with business transformation deals pushed TCS ahead of curve. Customers just seem to love the pro-activeness TCS brings in to its engagements.

• It has been able to maintain leaner cost structure than Infosys/Wipro. That has helped it maintain profitability despite getting into low billing contracts in emerging markets or running infrastructure systems. This is what its rivals call ‘Under Cut’. But amazing part is, even if playing cost game the profitable numbers look good because the attention to cost angle.

• It has been aggressive in investing in new growth geographies such as Latin America and parts of Asia Pacific and Europe. Clearly understanding the difference between cost and investment.

Another angle to this whole story is the management and the leadership. It’s extremely important to have a clear strategy and work towards that with great amount of energy and passion. TCS seems to have done exactly that while Wipro and Infosys struggling to align their management structure. TCS restructured to position itself to serve customers better, constantly focusing on customer needs and reinventing itself to make business simple for customers; doing all these while focusing on delivering the quality services and adding value.

This strategy seems to be working for now.

Pain-Gain of reorganization

The company where I used to work earlier, used to get reorganized on regular basis; then it didn’t hit me much because reorganizations doesn’t really change how a junior management guy works.


But, I am experiencing yet another reorganization now and I was thinking about the difficulty of this whole process. Every reorganization seems to be aimed at ‘better alignment with customer needs’ and ‘to become more nimble and responsive to customer needs’.

However, imagine a major structural change at the top will have eventual impact at the operational level. New guy, different strategy, middle management have to align themselves to this need and it all takes little bit of time.

And top leadership do matter, I have been advocating this aspect since for a while now. Change in CEO/top management can change fortunes for company (Look at Geometric, it seems to have completely transformed with new leadership)

Question really is how much customers will be impacted by all this? Any changes done without impacting the operation and for better focus towards customers will be appreciated largely. However, what if customers have to adjust to new way of working regularly?

Answer is not simple.

But, reorganization done at correct way, brings lot of energy, brings competition & focus. This also allows executives to re-align, refocus and re-prioritize themselves.

A Journey called life

We have celebrated our company’s 9th anniversary, on 6th October.


We have gone through many milestones, metamorphosed ourselves, made mistakes; learnt from them; started many initiatives, as management team made some decisions; most importantly we grew; in business, in size and in experience.

Personally speaking this also marks my three years in SPAN (Earlier IONNOR); incidentally I gave interview on this very day. It has been a satisfying, rich experience so far. Started with a Norwegian company, (I had to admit, I didn’t know about Norway before this) started working on IT Operation kind of business (I again need to admit, I didn’t know about IT Operation work, never heard about ITIL and never knew there is some business to do with servers/networks/storage; looks quite funny now); met some wonderful people who only enriched my experience.

Most importantly it gave me an opportunity to build a business from scratch. It was wonderful experience, setting up processes, business models, offerings, presetting to prospects (Without getting disappointed), sales processes and importantly start working towards winning business, making partnerships and creating customer base and don’t get defocused when criticisms were made. It all seems now as if it just happened during the course.

I need to admit, the team made all this possible and I am just a medium to do my part of the job. However, what is important is the experience I personally gained during this journey; which can’t be matched.

These last three years also marks my new stage of life, more exploring, more passionate, and more intense. Started looking life with different perspective, built passion on many new things and started dreaming again. In this journey called life, you meet some people whom you think are just made to share your dream, vision with. It’s all about finding those wow moments in life and I think I found my wow in last three years.

Incidentally, until now I am not able to come to a conclusion as how did I make this decision to come all the way to Chandigarh? What is that connecting the dot moment?

Our life has so many dots, which we never understand when we go through that phase. But, if we think back and try to connect the dots, the meaning comes out, the clear path comes out, and then we understand why those dots came in our life at first place. Simply put we will understand all these dots contributed to what we are today.

I am sure the future looks even brighter, even more interesting and canvas is even bigger now. Sky, it seems, is only the limit.

But, I felt of stopping for a moment, look back at life; smile and then move forward, in this beautiful journey called life!

CEO and communication

Given the enormous range of functions that CEOs of large organizations have to fulfill through the exercise of indirect and direct influence, CEOs have to decide how to best allocate their personal time and presence. At first blush, this seems straightforward. After all, the CEO is in charge and can do whatever he or she wants. In practice, however, everyone wants the CEO's time and attention, whether it is people inside the organization or outside. Most recognize that the CEO can't possibly meet all these demands for his or her presence.


Thus, where and how the CEO chooses to be present or get personally involved is a very important signal that accents his or her priorities and interests. CEOs need to be conscious, mindful and strategic about how they use their presence. Presence is not just about how the CEO allocates time across various activities and constituencies. It is the nature and quality of involvement the CEO brings to each occasion. CEOs must use their presence to decide, and even more importantly, to amplify the indirect levers they want to shape — by communicating, clarifying , educating and reinforcing how people inside and outside relate to the organization.

Communication

To accomplish their agenda, CEOs have to communicate it relentlessly. The CEO's agenda and related message (whether it be about the goals, the strategy, the execution priorities or the organization’s values) need to be communicated and understood as broadly as possible inside and, as appropriate, outside the organization. An effective CEO uses his or her presence ubiquitously to actively communicate and shape how all constituencies think about the organization. Communication helps the CEO frame issues for others, define what's important and relevant, and more generally direct the attention of the organization.

Communication also has the power to shape the language or discursive practices in the firm. There is always a possibility the CEO's message may be not be transmitted with high fidelity — it may be distorted, amplified, revised or modified. The same message may also be heard differently depending on the perspective and biases of the listener.

Information Gathering

The other side of communication is listening and gathering information. Given the paucity of reliable information available to them and the necessity of having good information to make sound judgments , CEOs make the gathering of information, like communication, a constant personal task. They are constantly asking questions that help them get a better sense of how their business is doing. Information gathered through field visits, open forums with employees, customer visits, industry groups, outside consultants and board members — for that matter, any credible source — is prized and valued.

Bottom line is, it would be simple task to have everyone in fold when you are small; however as the size grows; one need to adopt to different gear and start adopting new ways.

Who said its easy to be a CEO?

Age No Bar!!

I was reading Ashok Sotta’s interview about being serial entrepreneur; its amazing to see the energy and dedication at that age.

He has entered the market to start it all over again!!


This begs a question; what is the correct age to be an entrepreneur?

I am thinking on this…

Change in image: Infosys buys Lodestone

Infosys has reached a definitive agreement to acquire Zurich-based SAP implementation and management consultancy Lodestone, for about $350 million.


Lodestone, with 850 employees including 750 consultants comes with about 200 clients across manufacturing, automotive and Life Sciences verticals. Post acquisition, Infosys will have about a billion dollars coming from its SAP practice.

While it's still too early to say how the buy will play out, there are some immediately visible benefits.

1) Clients: Lodestone will bring in its more than 200 clients across sectors, including manufacturing, automotive, life sciences, chemicals, and consumer goods. Its clients like BMW, Allianz, Kimberly-Clark, Sandoz SHAPE, Warner Chilcott, Munich Re, Roche will now be with Infosys, which has a client base of 700 firms. The acquisition is also expected to boost Infosys' SAP client base.

2) Revenues: In 2011, Lodestone reported revenues of 207 million Swiss Francs (Rs 1,200 crore), up from 181 million Swiss Francs in 2010. This will increase Infosys' annual revenue and help it maintain its lead over other rivals like Cognizant and Wipro. Post-acquisition, the consulting and package implementation revenues of Infosys are expected to be more than $1 billion.

3) Geography: The deal will bolster Infosys' presence in Europe, Middle East and Africa. The acquisition will also enhance the presence of Infosys in new markets like Latin America and Asia Pacific.

4) Employees: Zurich-based Lodestone has about 850 employees, including 750 SAP consultants. The consultants will help Bangalore-based Infosys to ramp up expertise in SAP-based solutions.

5) Perception: The deal will go a long way in helping Infosys shake off its image as a conservative company hesitant to make bold acquisitions.

It looks like a great-fit acquisition; however the time will tell how it will help and how far Infosys can leverage this to generate more business.

The Power of Perspective!

Its sad part of the world is that so many people see the worst in others. They see through their own eyes of anger, fear and limitation. We tend to see others through our own perspective and make judgements, rather than understanding the truth.


Only few human beings in this world get up every day in the morning and think how to screw someone else’s life today. Most of the mistakes people make are due to lack of awareness. So, a true leader sees the truth and analyse with other’s perspective.

I was watching an interview of Raj Thackeray in Times Now (This was in Hindi and I would have been more happy if this was in English because of the fact that both host and guest were struggling with Hindi and more ever I had a tough time in following the speed); I realised how important is thinking through other’s perspective.

Through many years I have been questioning the stand of Raj Thackeray when he says he will not allow North Indians (Read UP and Bihar) come and settle in Mumbai/Maharashtra. I always argued that what if, other states where people from Maharashtra have migrated start saying the same thing? I always felt constitution gives us right to migrate to any state and settle. I simply thought he doesn’t support anyone coming to Mumbai.

But now, I got the other perspective. What Raj argues is that he is never opposing the migration to Mumbai; in fact, he says; he never said anything against Karnataka, Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh state people who migrate to Mumbai/Maharashtra; which is true. I never heard such opposition to at least Kannada people of Pune/Mumbai; where I have some contacts. They are being treated as part of the main stream and being actively involved in business and politics.

His argument is, the people from certain states migrate and they get involved in criminal activities and that is what he is opposing and he gives statistics to prove that. He proves through crime data that more than 50% crimes are being committed by certain set of people.

No, I am not defending Raj Thackeray or supporting his party or I support his thought process. But point I am making is the different perspective people might bring in to our thought process. In this above example, my thought process changed when I heard Raj’s perspective on the subject.

Point I am making is, how many times in our life we fail to understand other perspective and end up in making a mind-set which is not the truth?

How many times we failed to understand a colleague who is trying to give a true perspective about the business he/she is running and we have tried to pull him down saying he/she is not performing?

How many times we have simply failed to understand the underlying truth because we tend to see the things in our view rather than other perspective?

Forget about, migration, Mumbai, North India migrating and the political mileage someone might be trying to gain. What I am trying bring up is a pure learning of seeing the things from other’s perspective.

Great learning ..

Too big athlete to fail!

The biggest news of last week was Lance Armstrong’s decision not to defend himself against the latest round of allegations from US-Anti Doping Agency.


It was shocker to me and many sports fans, who idolize him. Personally I got interested in cycling after reading his two books, his survival story is motivational factor for so many cancel patients and the way in which he came back to win seven Tour titles is been an amazing story by itself.

As Lance himself says, he is ‘most tested athlete ever’; been tested around 500 times. I am not still sure or ready to believe that Lance has taken any performance enhancement drugs, or maybe I am commenting purely on emotional grounds. However the impact is much wider, stripping of all seven Tour titles, including return of $7 Million prize money, returning of 2000 Olympic bronze medal and a life time ban on participating in cycling related activities.

But Lance said, ‘There is a point in life for everything where you will feel that’s it and I have reached that point here and now I want to let it behind and focus on family and cancer foundation’.

There could be several arguments to this, one argument is; as when the situation is tight and rather than facing the testimonies of eye-witness comprising of several of his team members and fellow-participants; Lance decided to pull out. Hard to believe for me!

Armstrong accepted the sanctions as a way to limit his liabilities as any large corporation would do. Not only his image emerged intact but in pure financial terms he is benefited. A day after his statement, the donation to his foundation has increased many times and the sale of merchandise also took a new height.

All of the cyclist’s major sponsors- Nike, RadioShack, Okkley Unit, Trek Cycles and Anheuser-Busch- said they will honour their existing contracts.

Whatever the impact is, he is been a hero to many, like me; he is the one who motivates thousands of people around and constantly been source of inspirations through his ‘Livestrong’ foundation.

To his iconic status as a survivor, underdog, champion and philanthropist; he can add another distinction. He is an athlete too big to fail.

Time to think

I am back from two weeks of business trip to Norway/Sweden, perhaps most hectic one. I got to chat with different people, at different level and there were few interesting discussions around what customers need in this globalized world.


One common factor emerging out of these discussions is today’s customers need ‘More for less’; they want vendor to be more proactive, suggest ideas to improve the ‘Customer Experience of their end Customer’. Basically they want vendors to be their business partners such that vendor can help them in driving more revenue.

There is a very powerful concept called ‘Client Partner’.

However, the most interesting discussion I had was something to do with personal growth, as how to manage the professional life. This discussion was very interesting.

I met a business unit head and discussion was around ‘Making time to think’. Very simple strategy in life, but to me it sounded very interesting.

Basically what this means is to take out time of a particular working week or some time of the day, out of operational issues and think about a big picture. Think about your strategy towards business; think about how you want to build the team; think about how you can add value to your customers; think about how you want to drive more revenue; think about a great product idea which will help the business or simply think how you can be effective at work.

Making time to think is a superb strategy for success at leadership and in life. Most of leaders spend the best hours in ‘doing things’, in execution part of it. Sometimes by end of the day we feel we are busy and we don’t even notice with what we are busy with. Thinking and reflecting makes sure we are on the right path. By thinking more we will have a better sense of our priorities and what we need to focus on. This ensures we are on the correct path. We can make better decisions and wiser choices.

More time in thinking will make us more reactive as we will have better control. We will become clearer in what we need to do with our time and thus achieve better time management. And our ‘think time’ will provoke some amazing ideas and inspire some big dreams.

And I know the fact for sure as this is how most of the top executives work and strategize. It might look simple but strategizing for the business and devising the vision of the business is not simple. In today’s ever demanding world of customers, being ahead of the curve of customer satisfaction needs a deep thinking and great strategy. And in my opinion this thinking time will help in that.

From personal front this helps in understanding the purpose of life; from broad level perspective. And it helps in cleaning the clutter of mind and helps in having a focused vision on what I want from my life.

Time to learn more!

A Coach

Started thinking when I saw role of coaches in on-going Olympics. Why we need couches?

Coach will help you have both the big picture view and focused attention to details. A coach can help you see patterns that you might forget to notice.

Sometimes we are not even aware of the potential of creating a minute change that could lead into a major breakthrough in our lives. Imagine: a ship sets sail from London to Venezuela and its compass bearing is 5 degrees out, the ship would reach New York.

So a 5-degree course correction in our life now can lead us to a very different place. A coach can help identify this area and support you in creating the 5-degree change today. This change could be in the area of a relationship, breaking out from a habit or addiction, creating certain changes in lifestyle etc.

Again, despite being successful and achieving important goals, you might still feel a certain emptiness inside, or feel that you are not in the flow. This is when we are not really connected to our life purpose. A coach can help you explore your life purpose, what gives more meaning to your life and the legacy and contribution that you want to leave behind.

The coach is non-judgmental and does not have an agenda.

The coach is not an expert of your field. If you are an actor, the coach does not know how to act like you or direct a film. If you tell a close friend something you are going to do, he/she will have an opinion about it. But the coach supports you non-judgmentally and confidentially.

The Coach creates awareness and accountability.

A Coach helps you increase awareness and see why you do things the way you do. Awareness about our patterns is the first step towards creating change. The coach then holds you responsible for making the changes. It's a self-directed journey.

Coach is an expert in his/her field

A coach is a professional trained in the process of coaching, holding unconditional space for your growth, guiding you through ups and downs of the journey and holding you responsible for your actions

We all know it's lonely at the top. Highly successful people lead a complex and high-pressure life, and often they have no one they can reach out to. A coach can help them be more aware of who they are, help them align their physical, mental and spiritual self. A coach can thus reduce burn out, help develop more emotional intelligence and enable them to manage success effectively.

Fate of Social Movements in India

I don’t want to sound pessimistic about future of my country, but why it seems that a noble anti-corruption movement appears to be reaching dead-end where as it has just started?


Yes, I am talking about Anna Hajare’s anti-corruption movement and team’s sudden decision to end the fast and launch a political party.

In first place, I was not completely convinced the way in which ‘fasting’ was used as an instrument to arm-twist the government. I completely agree corruption is the major problem and like you I also hate my hard earned money is being wasted. But, listen-to-me–otherwise-I-will fast approach is a bit going an extra distance.

The Mastermind of Team Anna, Aravinda Kejriwal, who had called for total revolution on the final day of the 10-day fast, said, "People will select the candidates... they will decide the manifesto." For her part, IAC (India Against Corruption group) media coordinator Aswathi Muralidharan says Team Anna will look into the issue of discontent among volunteers.

She says, "However, I didn't sense much anger against calling off the fast which was done when we realised that the government is not ready to even listen to us... our leaders will now tour the entire country to collect people's views." Asked how long it may take for IAC to float a political party, she said, "We are not in a hurry."

This it-self is so unclear as how this movement is going to get converted in to as political party? Such plans are easier said than done. It is not easy to get people select candidates for polls, imagine the confusion when you have to select an unanimous candidature, support that candidate and see him/her through to Parliament?

While the UPA government's wait-and-watch policy has clearly made the Anna agitation transform from a roar to a grunt and then to a whimper over the past one year, many political analysts feel that Team Anna was meant to peter out, especially following the "Mumbai debacle" of last year. Many feel, Team Anna has no ideology. It has no clear-cut agenda. It has no ingredients of being a political party. It is merely a forum. And Anna is no Gandhi to transform a forum into a movement.

Team Anna did achieve one purpose: further dent the government's image. While we are seeing many setbacks to the current UPA government like, policy reform paralysis, sudden drop in the investment world confidence and inability to handle many issues effectively. Team Anna further dented the image.

Having said that, I do support any movement which brings any change; I firmly believe that change should start with me, myself. And Anna’s agitation, if not done anything else, has certainly given a wakeup call to us, to common people who wanted to see the change. Good part is; there are some changes happening, perhaps more silently. And personally I am very delighted to see how the social fabric of India has been changing since last two decades, as how our young leaders have started bringing the change, as how new industry sectors have bought in a revolution.

Question I am asking is all these socials movements are short lived in India? In seventies India witnessed Jayaprakash Narayan’s social movement and which set started to bring the social justice to all. It was short lived practically, though the disciples of JP have left that route long back.

Let the change begin with me/myself to bring the change.

Evolving

After recent quarter’s result; everyone is getting ready to write-off Infosys; that fundamentals are not right, that it has to change its business model, that the strategy is not inline with market etc.

There is an interesting article by Rama Bijapurkar as what’s wrong with Infosys. Its more of an analysis and comparison between PepsiCo and Infosys.
Author argues that Infosys did change and produced a new strategy called Infosys 3.0

Thus began Infy 3.0, widely reported in the media and in company literature. The good news is that at last a company that always segmented its market game and its internal structure based on service lines, geography and verticals, has recognised the concept of business-market segmentation based on what customers are looking for; using it to determine its market game externally and its structure and delivery system internally.

Segment 1, game 1 (SG 1) is customers who want to transform or "change the business", segment 2, game 2 (SG 2) is about helping customers run the business in a cost-efficient manner, optimising business operations etc, and segment 3, game 3 (SG 3) they call "innovation". It still isn't clear whether it is innovation for Infosys or helping customers innovate, but here resides all the products and platforms and readymade solutions offerings. While not exactly there, it is a big step.

Clearly SG 1 (transformation) and SG 3 (innovation) are where the nonlinear growth will come from. SG 3 maybe greenfield yet, except for the hitherto under-appreciated stepchild of the business, Finnacle, the core banking platform.

SG 1 on the other hand seems to have been around for a while and growing roots nicely. According to a Tech Business Research Inc report late last year, transformation services (SG 1) already accounts for 25% of the company business, and innovation services (SG 3) accounts for 10% business running and optimisation services (SG 2), which is the traditional value space of all Indian IT business, still accounted for 65%.

"The effort of Infosys 3.0 is to bring a balance between the three

Very informative article and thought process, the link to the complete article is below.

http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/tech/ites/it-major-infosys-needs-to-sound-more-confident-about-its-strategy/articleshow/14911847.cms?curpg=1

Jugaad Innovation

Have you ever wondered why there are not too many India multinational companies? Even the few who acquired this status in the recent years, companies within Tata, Aditya Birla and Mahindra & Mahindra groups, have done that through oversees acquisitions.

One reason for this is the fact that Indian companies don’t have the knowhow of the products which will appeal to the developed counties.

Innovation has been traditionally happening in the developed countries and later followed downhill to the emerging markets. This is not surprising, since rich customers in the emerging market countries usually seek ‘modern’ or ‘latest’ products and can actually afford them. Developing countries, which are usually in catch-up mode, end up importing them. So MNCs mostly innovate in US, Europe or in Japan/Korea and then employ a process, ‘localization’- altering the product to suite the local country and to the purse of the local customers. Indian companies have been busy in fighting these products and are thus left with little time/money to take these MNCs in global companies.

This is how the technology transfer concept came in, for example Indian automobile industry got the technical knowledge in the past and developed the local products, with little export portfolio. Maruti-Suzuki, Bajaj-Kawasaki, Hero-Honda etc.

But this is very fast changing. MNCs are increasingly seeing merit in innovating in emerging markets rather than just exporting products to them. They are not doing this just to capture market share in low cost countries but more importantly, to tap new, unexpected values which are overlooked in developed markets. The traditional view that a rich man will not buy poor man’s product is changing fast and have given birth to a new concept of ‘reverse innovation’- developing products for emerging markets and then taking them to developed countries where they are seen as value proposition and wholeheartedly accepted. Procter and Gamble, PepsiCo, GE etc are few companies who have been doing this reverse innovation.

In addition to this reverse innovation, emerging markets are used to do something we call in India as Jugaad innovation.

Jugaad innovation is a science and art of improvise the solutions, that are born out of ingenuity of doing more with less, which are commonly practiced in emerging markets. In a way, a structured, well defined innovation process looks completely different compared to Jugaad innovation, which aims at making things work.

In addition to this, services industry has done some innovation, through redefining new business models, which aims at improvising the total cost of ownership of services to customers. That is another way of innovation, though it can’t be called as a product.

Happy Father’s Day to all wonderful dads of the world!

It’s a special feeling.


Thanks to my daughter, Aprita, because of her I got the post of ‘Father’.

Fathers are special, they teach you how to stand up and live with your head above rest of the world. He acts as a friend when you need a suggestion, he acts as coach when you need some guidance, he runs with you so that you don’t fall, he walks with you so you don’t get bored, he sings with you the song of joy, he consoles you when you cry.

That is the world of dad for you!

As a father, it’s a learning experience for me each day, to answer her questions or it might be just a feeling that she might not like it; it may be change in behavior because of the fact that she doesn’t like it. Or it could be as simple as sacrificing my favorite baseball game such that she can enjoy her cartoon. Or trying to teach me to make some drawings or force me to dance like her. It feels great. I feel I have also grown with her as a person, as an individual.

Simply put, I have learnt to see the world through her eyes!

Thanks Arpita, you made me a father, bought me in to a separate world. It’s a wonderful world of dads.

Changing Customer Demands

There are many talks on Euro zone and about the predictability of the business from that geography.


The market dynamics is changing every day and Indian IT companies are responding with new/different business and operational models; which focuses on maximizing the total cost of ownership. Customers would love if some vendor comes and tells them how to reduce the cost and give them predictability and sustainability. Unlike earlier demand, which was driven by offshoring and access to large talent pools, today's customer wants solutions that can improve business.

Ok, now lets understand from a CIO perspective, what do they really need?

Let us consider a case, where customer is a telecom major and CIO wanted to outsource, what he/she will expect from the vendor? To list few important expectations,

• Reduce the cost: This has to be on the main agenda of outsourcing, if not why to change the running model? The reduction in the cost of contact could be achieved through offshoring (to gain cost arbitrage), or it could be because of tools/processes/reusable components or productivity gain because of high skilled labor or domain expertise. Indian IT industry has mastered this art of reducing the total cost of ownership by investing in domain expertise, process and tools and skill building.

• Predictability: In changing economical conditions, most of the CIOs need a predictability of spending, on IT budgets. No one wants to have a flexible cost structure which becomes difficult to manage. IT industry has designed fixed cost models to reduce the cost risk and give more predictability.

• Risk Sharing: Today’s customers want solution, for a telecom customer what means is; they need a vendor who can say, I will take care of your wireless business at this price, I will take care of your fixed line business at this price. Meaning, vendor needs to divide customer’s business in to different value chains and take care of IT systems end-to-end with complete ownership to these value chains. Indian IT industry designed a very good SLA regime which aims at sharing the risk with customers; which puts CIOs in more comfort level to share the contract.

• Sustainability: The biggest challenge of IT projects is initial transition to a new vendor and how the change management is managed by that new vendor. Initial few months is where the business users or customer’s customer will feel the difference and vendors must ensure that this transition goes smooth and there are not many teething issues. A well defined plan and approach takes care of such things.

• Understand business: Most important part; vendors must understand customers business and design the solution based on that domain experience. Customers don’t want to waste time in explaining the business needs all the times. Building the domain competency has been one of the core strengths of Indian vendors and they have learnt the art of talking the same language. In this way, its more on moving up in the value chain and becoming more mature in the services they are providing.

Indian IT industry has reached a maturity where they talk about ‘Transformation Projects’ where a business of a customer is transformed by changing the business processes and integrated stake holders. This is a more matured move ahead of being system integrators of the IT systems.

Industry has come a long way now..

World Chess Championship and Vishwanathan Anand

Congratulations to Vishwanathan Anand, for regaining the world chess championship; this was a great show and he made every Indian feel proud.

In the process of becoming world class player; what he has done is building a strong support crew. A group of seconds, computer analysts and logistic organizers.

The key to all this has been reinventing himself. In a position, Anand is known for his uncanny ability to sense key changes that suddenly offer chances for the lightning attacks that he is known for. He has a superb intuition for the ebb and tide of the game, the inner flow in a position. Vladimir Kramnik, Russian grandmaster, has said, "Each champion has had some sort of speciality, and his is creating counterplay in any position out of absolutely nowhere.

He's got an amazing ability to constantly stretch himself so that even in some kind of Exchange Slav he nevertheless manages to attack something and create something."

Congratulations..

Battle of Mid-Sized IT companies

At a time when the big guns of Indian IT are tempering their business outlook, four companies from the midtier set are demonstrating performance and projecting confidence of the kind usually associated with an Infosys, TCS, Wipro or Cognizant. In a drifting stock market over the past year, when the benchmark BSE Sensex has dropped 8%, Infosys 17% and Wipro 14%, these four companies have delivered returns of between 20% and 87%.

Those stellar short-term returns delivered by Hexaware, MindTree, NIIT Technologies andZensar are backed by business performance, which, in turn, is being steadily shaped by a fundamental change in thinking. In varying degrees, these companies and some of their other peers, are morphing from being generalists to specialists.

It's a battle of intellectual capital now, not about labour arbitrage advantage to customer.

Generally  the large peers are beating these mid-sized companies when comes to pricing, as larger players seems to benefit from the operating efficiency and size. And more ever when comes to larger deals in generalist area, these mid-sized companies are not even invited for the bidding process.

Mid-tier IT companies-those with annual revenues of Rs 500-2,000 crore-have spent much of their existence aping the large players by offering a similar suite of low-end software services built on the foundation of labour arbitrage. But, with speedy growth and plum profitability eluding them, they are increasingly going from doing less in more areas to doing more in fewer areas.

In the process, such companies are changing the contours of the debate on whether the perennially underperforming mid-cap set can create a comfortable identity of its own, or whether it is resigned to remain trapped in its choices and drift along. They are going deeper in their chosen verticals, and building capabilities where revenue growth is not linked to adding employees. For instance,  MindTree has built capabilities in Bluetooth technology- short-range wireless that helps mobile phones interact with wireless ear-plugs. MindTree counts itself among the top five suppliers of this technology globally and has done 32 licensing deals.

Elsewhere, NIIT Technologies is offering software solutions for cargo handling and airline systems at airports. Its clients include the airports at Beijing, Hong Kong, Singapore and Taiwan. Hexaware, in 2008, re-organised its business along two major industry verticals, each managed as a standalone business: banking and financial services, and travel and transportation.

Much as specialisation gives traction and a unique positioning with clients, it can also be a barrier. It is an asset when the chosen area is doing well, but a liability in bad times. Specialisation also means a company is defining its playing field narrowly. "The more you specialise, the more you constrain your ability to scale.

In general, mid sized companies have lot of operating challenges, a below picture describes them. In such a challenging environment, its important to build a constant revenue stream and ability to build the business. This step of focusing on niche market and being specialized in some verticals and do well in them is what seems to be working, considering the market results.

Success

So many individuals fail in personal life, stumble in their personal dreams; this doesn’t mean they are ordinary people in their life, they are those individuals who have achieved almost everything in life, they are experts in their own field. However, they are failures in their personal life.


The biggest problem with such people is that they don’t know how to manage the success. That success becomes a big burden on their head and ultimately they spoil their entire life. Getting success may not be difficult, but managing the success is a big task. There are many examples, they work hard to achieve success and work harder to keep it and ultimately fail due to the sheer pressure of that success. There are only few who can manage both.

Wanted to talk on this..

There are only two in that house, father and daughter. Since mother passed away daughter became very close to dad. She used to share everything with her dad. Be it the college day or the movie she has seen or her arguments with her boyfriend; they used to talk everything.

As days passed, she graduated from a reputed business school and she got a very good salaried job with decent responsibilities. Since she was a smart worker, she got a very good name quickly. She took more and more responsibility and as generally happens in corporate life she got to handle even bigger responsibility. Her immediate managers were extremely happy about her hardworking abilities and her willingness to work extra mile.

She got ‘Best new comer’ award on that particular year.

A jubilant dad went to the function and was very happy to see her getting the award, but did notice that his daughter is not mixing with her colleagues and there seems to be some element of proud nesting in her.

Next day morning, while he was thinking about his daughter; she was talking to someone in the phone. “I got irritated when managers said in last night function that there was lot of competition for this award, lies. Is there anyone in this company who can match my ability? As a matter of fact I know more than these managers, what this management does? What all they do is weekly review meetings and project they are really working hard. All are liars”.

Disturbed by this behaviour dad said, “by just getting one award you are thinking that you are great and no one else is good, remember one thing, you might be great, that doesn’t mean that others are not worth. You called your managers as worthless guys, but let me remind you, these managers are those individuals who started like you sometime back and they moved up to become managers. They are managers means they deserve to be in that position. And you should not talk so lightly about anyone”.

He continued; “Success if not managed can be really spoil your head, you need to have your head on your shoulders. Once your mind gets masked due to success, you tend to neglect the small feedback or alerts from others, you start behaving as if you know everything. You start to walk six steps at a time and stumble badly. The success which was with you until that times slips out. Its important to be down to the earth, rooted and knowing where are you”.

Started thinking about Sachin Tendulkar..

Connecting the dots

"Your time is limited. . . . have the courage to follow your heart and intuition."--Steve Jobs

 “Your time is limited so don’t waste it living someone else’s life”—Steve Jobs.

Finished reading a book ‘Steve Jobs: The man who thought different’. Its catchy and realy made me to think about life.

From the start, his path was never predictable. Steve Jobs was given up for adoption at birth, dropped out of college after one semester, and at the age of twenty, created Apple in his parents' garage with his friend Steve Wozniack. Then came the core and hallmark of his genius--his exacting moderation for perfection, his counterculture life approach, and his level of taste and style that pushed all boundaries. A devoted husband, father, and Buddhist, he battled cancer for over a decade, became the ultimate CEO, and made the world want every product he touched.

This gracefully written biography of the founder and spirit behind Apple computers and the iworld covers is grand reading. Organizing her material around the three stories he told at his Stanford University commencement speech, author covers his life from conception and adoption to death as well as his remarkable career. There's plenty about the business world and about the development of personal computers but also details of his personal habits - eating, bathing, dressing - that will intrigue teen readers. Overall, she gets across the complexity of this flawed but visionary man. The book is thoroughly researched and documented with chapter-by-chapter endnotes

Author draws Steve Job’s convocation speach at Stanford University where he talks about connecting the dots. These dots are incidents of life and Steve Jobs believed that these dots connect somewhere. He says, dopping out from colleage, getting fired from Apple etc are such dots which ultimately resulted in to what he became or produced.

Our life has so many dots, which we never understand when we go through that phase. But, if we think back and try to connect the dots, the meaning comes out, the clear path comes out, then we understand why those dots came in our life at first place. Simply put we will understand all these dots contributed to what we are today.

Krishna says in BhagavtGita: ‘Nimitya matra bhav savyasachin’. He tells Arjuna, ‘everything is decided and you just become an instrument in my hand’. This is nothing but connecting the dots.

I don’t think our lives are different in anyway. Everything is predesided and we are supposed to be instruments and create a dot. Just think back on the number of dots of our life and all the dots have meaningful turns and have resulted in to where we are today. We seems not to understnd this and thus feel bad about the immediate results. But, in end, whatever happened, happened for good.

Connect those dots!!

Managing Customer Expectations

During my last business trip to Norway, I encountered a strange problem with FinnAir. I generally travel by Lufthansa, as I am member of ‘Miles and More’; but this time around due to schedule I had to travel by FinnAir.
The argument was that i have more weight in cabin bag and I was arguing that my total weight is much less then the limit plus I am not crossing the cabin bag limit by much.

Ultimately, I transferred some of my jackets to my check-in bag and managed to get out.

What prompted me to think is how important to have a better customer handling guy at those points where your company meets the customers. Be it front desk at a hotel, a bar tender in a restaurant or a customer relationship manager in any customer engagement activity.

The front desk lady of that airlines could have told me this in a totally different way, this is what happened when I was returning. Stockholm FinnAir handled me in totally different way (Not on the same issue though).

Imagine, you go to get any service and you are well treated and asked to have a seat and initially asked if what they can do for you? Take example of a saloon for a hair-cut, if the haircut reception doesn’t treat you well, however well the haircut may be you will think twice before you go again to the same shop.

Customer is a king and understanding the psychology of the customer needs a great art. It can be any industry. You need to have your best employees at those points where your company interacts with customers in order to do a better customer management and to have repeat customers.

Imagine, a ‘bad-customer-facing’ guy sitting at customer place and not able to manage the expectation. Your company will get a bad reputation and the whole company will be branded based on that experience. Resulting in to no further business or strained relationship.

On the contrary there are several examples where a great customer relationship management by certain individual has resulted in great business.

I have been arguing that India needs a better training to handle customers and especially when we are moving towards service driven industry. I personally feel we lack the art of handling the customers.

Cost of not learning it is high, so better learn it!