"e"xperience sharing

Statutory Warning: Cell phone use while driving is injurious to health

2011-07-05T22:15:00.003-05:00

I have been reading a lot on the law of cell phone usage while driving. As I whizz past cars and vice versa I see every third person either talking over the phone, and probably every 10^th person doing something else on the phone. The more I think about this the more it makes me wonder that do we really need law for this? Why do people not realize that when they lose focus while driving they are not just putting their life in danger but of several other people around them?

I strongly think that phone manufacturers like cigarette and alcohol manufacturers should start having a warning message running on all their ads saying : Cell phone use while driving is dangerous. The statistics clearly reveal that this matter needs extreme caution by young drivers as the under20 age group had the highest percentage of distracted drivers; 16% of drivers under 20 years old involved in fatal crashes were distracted while driving. An analogy to cigarette smoking is that smokers die much earlier than non smokers, but going by the above stated fact looks like phone usage while driving might take this record.

Multitude of such data is available, but what is more important for people to know is that posting on ones Facebook wall can wait, but life cannot. Reply to that one text message from your loved ones can wait if you can wait to meet them rather!

Also one strong message to Apple’s and RIM’s of the world, if they can take up this one social message to the public their reputation only goes higher and may be the sales as well! Also Facebook’s and Google’s too should take a responsibility of promoting not using cell phones while driving. Infact they can promote so many good things like these which can drive such a positive social behavior because people these days are driven by what is socially acceptable and not.

Paperless Mark"e"ting and crowdsourcing

2009-10-10T12:02:00.004-05:00

I had written about the power of one liners on my previous blog and had ended it with how it someday will start benefiting B2B marketing as much as it would B2C today. But I thought that it certainly is worthwhile discussing how this power has been utilized currently, and will gradually be advanced in the B2C space. For product vendors as well as service providers launch of new services or products happen every other day in some region or the other and hence the need to create awareness and gather feedback is vital! Consumer goods manufacturers and retailers can easily gather feedback through the increase in footfalls and through reviews at the malls directly and they do it, but think of the reach and efforts and investments they have to put in to gather this data, with the global tastes and choices of the end consumers as much as the increase in changing expectations from the customers it's important to transmit different forms of communication in different region. Also look at those retailers or vendors who rely completely on the online channel for e.g brands like Dell, Southwest airlines, best-buy etc. These companies have already taken the power of twitter seriously. They have not just started promoting the launch of new products and services to the consumers through tweets, but also started gathering the feedback and providing customer support through Twitter. Some of them have even taken technical support to a different new dimension altogether where they are making the "collective intelligence" of the people solve problems of each other by being able to tweet on the forums and take solutions from others to solve the problem they could be facing with there computers.

Take this hypothetical scenario of a Dell user facing starting problem with his laptop and instead of calling technical support they reach out to the "Tweet force" - this word is coined by me! Tweet force in return would have a set of experts from the Dell end user itself who have by virtue of there knowledge solved Technical problems like these for many other end users of Dell applications and have been made beneficiaries of Dell rewards - and they help this user solve the problem. This scenario sounds familiar when you look at reviews for purchasing so that the end user buys exactly what others have bought and experienced, but this aspect of crowd-sourcing is taken to a different level altogether since here the beneficiary is not just the end user who has managed to sort his trouble but also the company itself-in this case Dell. I believe a solid Tweet force like this might help a company like Dell reduce so much of its customer support cost directly impacting the bottom-line.

While the above example is hypothetical and it involves a superior (Business Intelligence)BI tool to analyze this "Tweet-force" performance and the reliance on this non-committed force could certainly be challenging. Hence it would really mean putting in serious heads together to come up with the working model, but I see the entire B2C business headed towards this model. I would repeat that if a company especially in the online business does not start thinking towards making the most of this crowd-sourcing they would suffer a big setback in times to come.

Before I end this blog, I want to highlight an amazing platform that has been put together for businesses to solve complicated problems through crowd-sourcing. Innocentive- while this forum has been in existence only for last few years I have seen several multinationals trying their luck (many successfully) towards getting their most challenging problems solved and innovations kick-started by virtue of this collective intelligence! Would talk about this platform in one of the subsequent blogs.

80/20 can the ratio change now

2009-09-12T12:36:00.013-05:00

Pareto's principle or the 80/20 thumb rule has undoubtedly been the driving factor for most of the business and personal decisions of one's life, and there's no doubt that adopting this principle people and corporates have achieved a lot.

I have learnt, seen, read and experienced this myself and feel that the rule has somehow gained such a lot of substance over years that businesses today without any confrontations have adopted this for their growth. But what sometimes bothers me is that why is this globally recognized model not being challenged, not because it has to be challenged but because I feel that there is a lot of business sense to really find means of increasing the 20% component of this principle. Look at it like this - it's said that 20% of the customers get 80% of your business that means these 20 % of the people have enough purchasing capital and need to being able to consume 80% of your business, but does that mean that it's only these 20% who have the capacity to give you that business? Similarly it's said that 20% of the workforce does 80% of the work and do organizations blindly believe this fact and let only these 20% people be the real productive ones of the lot.

Although the later example here is more of a phenomena which I see companies tackling through some or the other means, as it might very well be so that these 20% of the people turn into leaders and with their leadership and charisma they aid others to achieve the 80% of the tasks. I would just stick to these two examples so that the blog remains a blog and not a story, and build my viewpoint! So considering the first example of 20% customers getting 80% business - imagine with each and every percent of the 20% that increases how much more business potential increases, with even a 10% increase in the 20% one can really increase the sales itself by close to 20% automatically shooting the revenue figures higher. I doubt if this hasn't been tried or discussed before, but when I went to doing some research on this I could see that there's not a single soul who contradicts this or is really trying to get a shift on this movement. I would say that this shift can really be a paradigm shift; and though it would need an economist to prove it as to how it can be achieved, I would say some basic considerations are important and a company need to constantly strive to take this ration higher. It can be either by means of appropriate profiling, or perhaps doing a lot of analytics around their current customers so as to gauge as to where is the potential to harness more. In a B2C environment it would be making sure that marketers and strategist of the company understand the Segmentation, Targeting and Positioning (STP) even better. Whereas from a B2B standpoint while it's as important to gauge the macroeconomic factors because that impacts the decision making of your customers (this is where PESTEL plays a role) and understanding each and every component of the PESTEL framework are important, but it's equally important to do a very strong research on understanding your customer. While I have seen a lot of companies spending a lot of time and money for doing research and carrying out Analytics around areas like employee satisfaction, competition, technological road map and puts in detailed plans to grow the business or expand the geographies or new logos. But not too many companies really do a research to understand the existing customer!

This might not be the only approach to increase that % percent share and certainly there arequestionable components in the framework I am proposing, but I would want to know and understand these areas better in the near future and would want to discuss these areas with others who might or might not be in favor of this incremental increase in the framework!

Companies that defi"e"d the online sales model

2009-09-11T12:45:00.009-05:00

While "Apple" the big computer and i-tune giant has never really shunned away from innovation and coming up with some of the most coveted products in last few years, it's becoming more and more difficult to call it's name as just one product wonder. Starting from Mac they have come a long way where the i-phones and i-tunes are doing wonder in the cellular phone market. They lead and the rest of the world follow in any new technology they decide to incorporate into their products.

I would have loved to write more about the range of apple products and how each and every of those products in their own way have really changed the market outlook towards that product segment altogether, but to do justice to the Title I would rather shift to the core. While Apple has never really entered into price wars and most of their home and business laptops and PCs are sold at the same price in the retail market or online, but the innovation that they have really brought is by not relying entirely on the online channel and also by not relying on retailers to sell there products along with those of several other competitors. And this innovation was that of the "Apple store" which they decided to launch in 2001. Though slowly but gradually "Apple Stores" have become the talk of most of the tinsel towns - where people if they don't go for shopping at these stores they at least are told to pay a visit to these stores for the sheer craftsmanship that has been put to create these stores. But the financial figures really have a much more positive story to tell. From reporting losses in 2002 and 03 the store profits have grown exponentially YOY, startling from a profit of $39 m in 2004 to $1.33 b in 2008 - four years has been a great turnaround. Although this number is still just 1/4th of the total profits through all the channels (pls note that these are profits figures and not sales or revenue), but it's a lot higher than any other player in this market. Also it's certainly worthy to note here that this also is accentuated by the fact that over last 8 years Apple has built assets worth $1.69b because of these stores, which plays a big role always in improvising their equity stance to the investors always.

Now what led to this success - Forward thinking, Innovation, Solving the complexities approach or just being different to keep your brand identity. I would sum them all and give it one word "Adaptability". While Apple always wanted to be positioned different because their product was a lot different than any of the nearest competitors viz. IBM or Dell, but their products were certainly complex too, because of a unique blend of combo offer of hardware and the OS together. And that was the reason online channels or normal retailers were not able to tackle the questions by the consumers and this was leading to a lot of dissatisfaction. And though the product itself was it's strength the simple complexities were being a bane and that brought the need of the self managed stores - a need to adapt to several situations.

Today's Apple stores have come a long way, starting a new roadmap in the journey of computer manufacturers and marketers- the stores have become a lab, a training centre and people are willing to go there and talk to the learned salesman come trainers and learn about several new products, solutions that they all want to incorporate into their lives! Kudos to Apple for being where they are and it's leadership in the form of the founder and CEO Steve jobs, their marketing leader Phillip Schiller and the Retail channel expert Ron Johnson and many others who have really changed the outlook of the retail industry by formulating this idea.

To mark an end to this conversation I would say Microsoft's hiring of Apple's Ex VP of Retail is a testament of what Apple has done and how others are vying to emulate the same model!

The intention of this blog was certainly not to get one company centric but there was so much to talk about Apple that I could not get into some other examples at all. I would want to expand this further in some of the subsequent blogs, where I would be talking about the Restaurant and Catering business and the Entertainment business which are 2 biggest industries which though having tried several gimmicks have still not gone "e"way and probability of that happening in the near future still lays low, because of the nature of industry and the basic human nature!

Strat"e"gic Acquisitions

2009-08-23T16:04:00.013-05:00

Acquisitions are very easy to look at and talk about especially if one talks and hears about the success stories. Though it's not easy to decide until at least 4-5 years of an acquisition about the true outcome - before either it starts showing some continuous benefits(revenues) or it collapses after a quick growth, and the third and desired option is that it becomes a visionary fitment into the organization and it doesn't just grow because of the acquisition but also gains market value and respect.

There are certain parameters for an acquisition to be successful, these parameters not necessarily are ingredients of a magic potion, but they certainly are worth looking into while I do a necropsy of some of the acquisitions that have happened in the last 10 years I'll try to highlight some of those points and map them with what went wrong and what were the success factors:

Fitment into the business for improvising the business model - "e-bay's purchase of bill-me-later" : Payment mechanism has been one of the most important factors driving success of the online sellers. In today's world even though credit reliance has taken a toll on the economy - it's never been more important to gauge whom to give credit and whom not to. (Bill me Later)BML's model is interesting - it offers transaction-based credit to online shoppers at the time of checkout. Consumers provide BML with their date of birth and last four digits of their social security number. BML's engine decides whether to approve and extend credit for the transaction. Though this acquisition has come in at slightly a wrong time when a seller would hesitate to offer a sale at credit to any individual however excellent the past credit history of an individual be, but this acquisition for $820 mn comes in 6 years after e-bay had done another strategic acquisition to bolster their online payment model - Paypal! e-bay being the gorilla in the online auction market in 2002 they wanted a best of breed online payment mechanism. Even after acquisition of Bill point in 1999 they could not match the trust that pay pal had developed in the minds of the people. And it was for this mindshare that e-bay decided to acquire paypal in 2002 for around $1.5bn. The moved did work wonder very well for e-bay and they managed to maintain their status of market leaders in the online auction world. It would take another couple of years to gauge the true benefit of BML acquisition but I think very few of e-bays decisions have gone wrong in terms of acquisitions or purchase of stakes that they have done. (I would certainly want to talk about they taking 25% stake in craigslist in one of my subsequent blogs)

Common vision - "Google's purchase of Youtube": This was termed as "CRAZY" by strategists when Google decided to do the acquisition in 2006 for a gargantuan sum of $1.65 bn. All google had to do was to fit in the 65 odd employees that youtube then had into their 10,000 + employees. But google had one clear intention that they wanted to continue and enhance their ability of delivering content in all forms to users. Today, 3 years from the deal though am not sure of the financial figures but it's obvious that Youtube seems to be the choice of viewers on any of the social networking sites apart from the demand that youtube has generated and the coverage it gets to all possible TV shows, movie clippings, sports world et al. And google has come a long way since then knowing how to best capitalize with youtube by using various mash up techniques to integrate youtube not just into google acquired platforms but also on outside networks. What's important here is to also understnad that it's not just the common vision that drives this but also a technological fitment in terms of strategy and platform.

Increase the market coverage and penetration - "New York Times's (NYT) acquisition of about.com": New York Times has been one of the oldest and most read newspapers in the United States and currently is the larget metropolitan newspaper in the United States. It was one of the early adopters of the web and it has been available online since 1995 and today it boasts of around 160 mn readers. But in 2005 a need was felt to grow the readers and they had to find a perfect mix of a similar entity that had the web presence for it content in varied fields. This is when they decided to acquire about.com to get the 22 mn users of about.com compared to 13 mn users of NYT to aggregate the users and increase the readership, and this deal came in for $ 410 mn. The deal has certainly worked wonders for NYT and it has been a continuous growth since then for NYT in terms of market presence.

These are some of the acqusitions that according to me have really worked well for the parent company but there have been several other's worth a mention and although they have been much bigger in size in terms of the dollar value of transaction like AOL or Hotmal acqusitions by Time Warner and Microsoft, but they are contentious deals and need a different level of discussion on whether they were success or failures!

Power of on"e" liners

2009-08-23T13:26:00.008-05:00

Who could have imagined in 2006 that the 140 characters that twitter assumes are just sufficient to build an ecosystem will become talk of the town today and it will not just influence social behavior, but also various business initiatives! Today with millions of registered users on platforms like Twitter, myspace and other social networks emulating the model to not let go the immediate connect and impact which sites like Twitter have created. Facebook, Orkut, gmail chat, linkedin and all other social network sites today let people quote what's in their mind and this one development according to me was the next best advancement in networking. Being able to be in a community and chat, write on wall and scrap was started by social networking sites but being able to interact on every moment of life or at times on just a teatime session, walk round the street with Ralph (the dog) or a trip to Smokey's creates so much buzz around you in the community that with these status messages one cannot contain themselves from commenting on these status leading to discussions which would lasted over several snail mails 20 years back.

I am not a very strong advocate of making myself so open to the outside world, that the whole world can do an autopsy of my life. But today the trends are changing & people have been geographically dispersed and hence there is a continuous need for people to know about family and friends! Also there's a lot happening these days in everybody's personal, family, social and sociological lives which has made people try to open themselves to those who are in their network(circle) to share and seek from.

This is one side of the story where companies are creating networks and each and every of the networks have a different region for dominance in the social behavior of people. It's another story worth discussing on how these social networks are led by different factors which in turn had given varied coverage to these in geographies globally. But today corporates worldwide are moving to using these network and leverage the social behaviour of people, and some of the networks like facebook, twiter and Linkedin are gradually establishing leadership status in social, professional and micro-blogging sectors of business. Companies today are working on their web presence to create an impact by having their presence across all the social networking sites and through blogging and various microblogging techniques. It's a way of of not just increasing awareness of various initiatives that corporates are taking but also to get maximum mileage out of the growing acceptance of web 2.0 models. One should not be surprised if very soon corporates would have their own social network platforms to aggregate the various partners, prospects and alliances and use this platform for increasing market presence and transform their organizations.

Might sound overbearing but imagine a status message from a CEO of a Fortune 100 company -" Completed a board room meeting to decide the initiative in the LTAM region towards legacy system consolidation" or a CFO of a multinational trying to discuss -" Latest trends in outsourcing of AP and AR" with his peers! But for now it's just living with reality and predictions by various research research firms on getting the maximum out of the social networking platforms and performing innovative marketing techniques as quoted by Forrester.

"e"volution

2009-07-28T20:07:00.008-05:00

Ever evolving, changing and adapting world - keeping away from blogging hasn't stopped the thought process. While I was keeping myself busy into work it was exciting one day when I got a facebook invitation from my father; it was very interesting to watch this and how the Baby boomers too are gradually trying to get into the Gen V world and the late entry into the online space is not stopping them from taking a plunge in it.

I had a series of blogs on some of those most famous web spaces and how they will be evolving their business models. One of them was on where Linked in could be headed to, and am sure it wasn't just me who had foreseen that - but recession has really made some of my expectations (I don't want to be called a braggart by calling them predictions) come true:

Increased the presence of Social networking and making them the 4th most popular online activity ahead of personal mail
The entire world except for most of the countries in Africa have presence from Social Networking
Linked in has become the No.1 site for job seekers in the current market for IT, Finance and Business professionals

Also I used to ponder on the next steps of Google for their google maps and on how they can really evolve to be a very effective Transportation Management tool, though far from it from a real time commercial transportation management system I think they certainly have managed to get a real solution to the public voes (Also so as not to get sucked into technical gibberish I would rather call it a Route management/optimization system than a Transportation management system). They have grown from being able to provide the shortest route to also being able to give options and leave it to the user to pick and choose. In fact their applicability is recognized by a lot of city transit authorities across the America's on the trip planners!

Lack of time has made some of my latest developments on the e-bizz side a bit rusty but am looking forward to getting charged up again to write on this area of interest to me. By the way before I end, just to let everybody know I am still contemplating whether to accept the invitation from my father on Facebook or not!

Mumbai attack -- An act of "cowardliness"

2008-11-29T11:29:00.006-06:00

11/26 : I had to deviate away from what I write otherwise and I have just a few things about yet another attack on the Financial Capital of India:

I pray for peace and harmony in times to come and may these terror attacks never strike us again .. I hope we all can stand together against these and our system, political in particular move away from fighting internal conflicts to getting together against such unruly attacks.

Widg"e"t for android forked for SAP/Oracle !! Can this feat be achieved

2008-11-05T19:23:00.000-06:00

Off late I have been writing on Web 2.0 and metaphors of several such things which have made IT a common mans terminology. I myself have started getting my hands dirty these days in an attempt to understanding the emergence of technology and architecture that's making the business mammoths run away from IT products and embrace service providers proving service over the web. I read a recent article on Netsuite targeting SAP R3 customers where we can see that SAP can also have a run for their money(may be I am overreacting) if they do not realize that today's customers' needs have become stronger and the fulfillment more difficult.

Today's enterprises are not looking at solutions that are complicated, difficult to implement, have a huge cost associated with them which they can boast of. Rather they want something that is simple to use, not so difficult to maintain and easiest to let go if the service is not the classy self that these product vendors claim of. Also with the growing awareness and capabilities of Web people have started understanding nitty gritties of terms like cloud computing (derived from grid computing), fuzzy logic, smart system etc. All these concepts have started showing off its true colours to business which is the logic behind terminologies like Saas and SOA infact few of the biggest online marketplaces like Amazon have strengthened their backbone with significant improvements in internal efficiencies with the adept use of cloud architecture.

Software as a Service which people from IT world fondly call as SaaS meaning in laymen terms delivering software over the internet, is the talk of the town in the bizz world today. Here's my take on why I feel enterprises are convulsing towards a web based system:

Key objectives today being having a system that's configurable, virtual (decreasing the actual size) and scalable (now ain't that what growing organizations want looking at the plethora of M&As and consolidations happening )
SaaS and SOA becoming bed fellows with continuous evolution of architecture and the IT majors like Microsoft, Google, Amazon, Dell making a foray into it
The model being that of a hosted one where post implementation scenarios are more to just pay the hosting fee

So now this is where I feel like asking some questions about this megatrend called SaaS some of them being :

Will the product vendors like SAP and Oracle really look at providing softwares which will be no different from Amazon or e-bay?
What change will an Operating System like Android (for those who are not aware Android is the latest OS out of Google's stable) get to the web world
Can we ever have add on gadgets which enterprises can make for themselves that would seamlessly fit into the ERP's of the world
Or will these ERP's just cease to exist in times to come and the new league (of extraordinary gentlemen's) in form of SaaS softwares come in and take over the market (and this time it will not be by storm)

Have gone through several collaterals on SaaS, Web 2.0, SOA et al, but I felt that the eight reasons made by Phil Waineright on why SaaS will surge in 2008 are some bold and blinding revelations which one should sit and ponder over and if given a chance act. Feel like ending this post with an inconceivable point in times to come on how about having a ERP solution that has the face of facebook, computing capabilities of amazon, an engine like e-bay, a relationship building capability of of Linkedin, analysis capabilities of w3Schools and so on. I am expecting an enterprise solution from Google's or Amazon's stall that can be a panacea to our voes.

Six degr"e"es of separation shrinking even further

2008-10-31T15:03:00.000-05:00

Think of two subjects and do a search on Wikipedia, you'll realize that these 2 subjects are related to each other somewhere within the range of six links. This might be the average with the maximum link of separation being close to 12 but have we ever thought how true it is for the people in the first world and second world who are really separated by only six degrees of separation. (I will not get into the real existence of first, second and third world country because in times to come, and infact even now this division of worlds will cease to exist).

Some proven experiments done say that this degree of separation might really be just a 5 degree of separation, but will this remain what it is and will the social networking sites and various other modes of getting people together and reuniting lost friends and families decrease this separation further. It has become so easy for one in the networked world to search an information about some individual these days. I agree that not everybody accesses the web world with the same degree as others but amongst all those who are currently reading my blog if they try to identify how far they are with any of my network on facebook they might realise that its nothing more than 5th degree. And I have tried this, myself.

Though the concept of six degree of separation has remained the same for last 30 years. Infact a movie named "six degrees of separation" was made in 2006 on the subject based on another drama featured in 1993 on this subject, showcasing how people are connected with each other and what this connection can do. But now is when I feel with the advent of these social networking avenues this degree is getting more channelized. I am sure that people would have never taken this seriously in the earlier days but in times to come this would become a stronger selling point over the net as if utilized effectively, word of mouth which already is the strongest point of marketing would grow even further and faster. With mobile marketing and the refinement of 3G Technology and Mobile 2.0 (again a concept) and the evolution of 4G Technology it will become easier and easier for marketers to reach out to consumers and the viral marketing would be easier than ever before. But as Malcolm Gladwell says in his book Tipping point that behind every thing to happen there is a reason behind it to happen, I really feel that the face of modern day marketing would be in understanding how this six degrees of separation can be used better than ever before. Also am looking at that epidemic called social commerce and internet to reach the tipping point from where marketing ans sales adepts will have no looking back !!

N"e"xt generation search - Necessary evil or necessarily an evil

2008-10-29T18:59:00.000-05:00

What is it that Google, Yahoo and MSN have in common. They all do search the same way as others except that google has gradually become the unanimous winner when it comes to the no. of areas from where it gathers its data from.

So what is it that is still lacking in the search results?

What if I want my results to be more coherent to what I think and want rather than get the similar mundane results that every other user gets?

Am sure with the web that the search engines and others are trying to build around people they would certainly know in times to come each and every users every single need. So how about explaining it with an example - We have an user who searches for the term "baseball", considering that this user is based out of Chicago and he has bought online tickets through the google desktop, of the much awaited Cubs v/s Sox match already he might be looking for more details about the two teams under discussion rather than getting the results on places that sell baseball bat. Another scenario my friend on Orkut has been visiting websites that talk about the countries where baseball is played as he and I have to together write an article on baseball playing nations. So my search results on Google Chrome (Just to make sure no doubts are left, Google took full control of Orkut in 2007 )should be able to throw results that match results similar to that of my friends.

This might sound very sweet and easy and a lot of people will give a thumbs up to a search like this. Scour a new generation search engine which is trying to give users a similar opportunity to get customized search (luckily they are still leaving it to the users to rate and tag search pages) like this but aren't we giving too much intelligence to the system. Isn't technology being empowered way too much so that the system might some day start thinking beyond humans could imagine. I keep going back to thinking what John Mc Carthy must have had in mind while coining this term and can the 2001 movie on AI be a reality in times to come. Though I am a strong advocate of Google but at times I really think that Google someday might become an evil beyond what people could have thought of.

Wher"e" is it going

2008-09-23T09:56:00.001-05:00

While I was away following the US Financial crisis rather the forthcoming global financial crisis and see a mammoth like Lehman Brothers fall to what people call bad debts, my favorite topic of discussion has not been discussed much by others either.

The SAP's and Oracle's are no longer fighting to get new clients, they are only shielding themselves from not facing the brunt of existing clients and wait for a slow exit. Is this financial crisis only affecting the financial sector or the IT sector or is it affecting all other sectors. Tourism dipped, Auto dipped, Infrastructure was on a rise until recently, the demand for textile and clothing in the USA and the Europe has gone down. The only solace that govt. must have had is that the global crude oil price has come down to the present $ 107 over last 2-months, from the peak level of $146/barrel 4-months back.

The new start ups which were growing MoM and YoY and they were doing wonders in getting C2C and B2C links and were being profitable within months from starting, where are they all gone now, why is it that nobody is talking about them now and no new flamboyant entrepreneur with a great idea is coming up with a new start up, are questions that I keep pondering !! Is the year of 2000-01 going to be revisited and if yes then are we going to face once every decade this kind of slowdown ..

Some thoughts on :

Is this slowdown going to become more frequent in the times to come and knowing that US economy which is still the locomotive of global economy will gradually run out of steam ?
Are the emerging Asian giants strong enough to drive a revival in world economic momentum ?
Will the reliability on e-business continue as it is and even grow further in times to come or we are going to look back and decide on what has gone wrong while adopting e-business and take evasive or corrective measures ?
Are the SaaS and SoA going to continue gaining more and more importance with the cost cutting spree that companies are running towards?

As far I am concerned I would continue being a strong advocate of e-business as that's what I feel will be the driver in times to come..

Link"e"d in - Colligating jobs,partners & friends

2008-08-20T16:41:00.000-05:00

Link"e"d in as the name says really has been instrumental in creation of one of the strongest and inviolable networks (one of its kind as there aren't many professional networks in this sea of social networking sites). And very easily Linked in has scaled up beyond being just a professional network to a combination of network and job portal that's has quality jobs (or does it not..)

What's surprising about Linked in is that while there were pioneers like monster, dice, jobsearch, ladders (Another website with a different model of functioning), sixfugurejobs (quite an ambitious name) who have been working on assisting jobseekers and headhunters to get the right fit, but post the advent of Linked in I personally feel that the process of job search will actually alter in the coming few years. I really don't know what could one get by the recommendations in Orkut or Facebook except for some ego massage but in Linked in the recommendations assist the user to apply for a job and might really help the user get a career push as well. I know enthusiasts are going to come back and corner me for other social networking sites are not just targeting professionals but infact they are actually doing what they are meant for. But I would leave that for discussions and as a subject for one of my next blogs.

I would actually give the credit for what Linked in is to its founding members and the Management team. Reid Hoffman has worked with iconic companies like PayPal, eBay, Allen Blue who mastered concept of social networking during his stint at socialNet, and Lloyd Taylor who worked with the biggest ever online company, Google. And then the current team of Linked in including CEO Dan Nye who managed the Investment Management business at Advent Software and CFO Steve Sordello who previously worked as CFO of Ask Jeeves.

I am not taking names just to promote them (and neither am I getting money for promoting Linked in) but to drive the point that each and every individual from this team actually gets a lot to the table from their diverse backgrounds and that's clearly visible from where they are headed to.

I am sure all these social-professional sites would be scaling themselves to a different business model but in Linked in I can see a big consulting company in the times to come with expertise on each and every industry vertical or horizontal and the stakeholders would just be the loyal members and these stakeholders would get a share of the pie of the consulting assignments they would be part of. Even if this sounds far fetched how about having the potential to be the No.1 providers of professional headcounts for any possible profile with their vast sea of networkers and information about the various job profile details. (And needless to say as networking sites, they are and they will remain pioneers in professional networking and we all know that networking is going to remain macrocosmic).

I would really want to understand from the fellow experts and enthusiasts in e-business as to how these socio-professional networking sites would be evolving themselves and whether their is a need for them to really evolve (going back to my previous post on change or perish, I think they will have to evolve)

Fac"e"book --> Tumblr.. moving towards Gen V(Virtual) .. POS

2008-08-20T12:44:00.009-05:00

Recently "Tumblr" founder David Karp was in picture for having come up with one of the easiest platform for users to start blogging and I decided to have myself registered into it. When I looked at the features I realized that there is nothing out there that can actually differentiate Tumblr with other blogging sites, but that's what it is and we already have .17 mn registered users on that website. So what does this imply are we saying that tomorrow Facebook, Orkut Twitter and others will have to get meatier to keep up with the competition or will they just the way they always have will keep churning more users and keep making money out of the advertisements. Atleast that's the only mode of making money that these social networking sites have and the model seems to be well accepted in the e-business world.

But do we see an evolution in these social networking websites. Are these social networking sites going to remain what they are with the several widgets and application incorporated them or the architects of the web world and future entrepreneurs or some existing giant going to come up with more models to make these social networking sites a bigger point of sale. The reasons why I see in what I say happening, in times to come are cited below:

A dedicated user base which is increasing exponentially on the web with the advent of Web 2.0
A targeted audience for selling, easily meeting the criterion's for selling a product with the multitude of groups and communities being formed online
Detailed profiling of the users available in the hands of the content managers who can easily do segmentation, targeting and positioning with the current set of information
We haven't yet seen the end of marketplaces and aggregators, some new player might astonish the world with something bigger because technology never fails to throw surprises at us

This thought certainly needs more discussion and deliberation as to what the future of Social Networking is ...

"e" tales

2008-08-19T11:09:00.000-05:00

IBM sold primarily through its "brick and mortar" model before this huge giant named Dell transformed the way computers were sold. It wasn't just a strong focus on Supply Chain with the JIT (Just in time) inventory and decision to just assemble (that aspect has a different e-tale on its own) and not manufacture, but also a focus on having an on-line customer service where any customer would get the first response to their queries in within 2 hours and an appropriate link to the Dell website for any kind of support that's why Dell is called the pioneer in providing on-line support to their customers through the website.

Shopping stores were dictating terms before a bunch of guys decided to start a marketplace that could increase the purchasing power of the customer manifold by launching a portal named e-bay. Not that there was a dearth of marketplace, they were in plenty and everybody had focused on either B2B or B2C but e-bay realized the true potential of having a C2C marketplace (with specific focus on how to sell second hand stuff with their selling tips) and end users embraced this concept with open arms.

Each of Amazon, Citibank, Sears, Overstock have epitomized online selling and are continuously transforming themselves to meet the end customer needs.

While amazon claims that they are the biggest seller on the earth and there logo signifies they can sell anything from "a" to "z" with an arrow going from a to z and living up to the expectations of being the No. 1 book sellers the latest to come from their stable is a "Kindle: Amazon's New Wireless Reading Device" which is a Revolutionary electronic-paper display provides a sharp, high-resolution screen that looks and reads like real paper.

Overstock on the other hand with its over sized "O" to signify that they have all thats in this sphere which is directed towards the shape of the earth and, now are close to the real world when they advertise on the net that "Carlos Boozer " who would be playing for US in the Olympics '08 is sponsored by them.

Sears typically plays with the human mind of buying products only when they see a discount available on it through any form. Hence they have promotions of Sales and Coupons on their website and its affiliates. So if we look at it the typical advertising angle of "Aware-Interest-Trial-Adoption" Sears focusses directly on Adoption as they know that giving discount coupons would immediately take an user to the last hurdle of purchase if they are really interested in buying a product.

There's never a famine of examples and if you pick up any of the Marketing books you might see all these compani"e"s listed in them, but the point that I am trying to drive here is that how these companies are continuously enhancing themselves to live upto the expectations that have been set on them by the users and how competition is making them evolve continuously.

Wh"e"re's Google headed ...

2008-08-18T10:50:00.000-05:00

Google - a company that has literally reinvented the wheel by having a business that runs entirely in a virtual world. It's like having a whole new world with its own countries, states, languages, politicians, musicians, movie makers, scientists, doctors and a continuous aggregating population that's all gaga about this virtual world.

When I think how Google has evolved in the last 10-12 years from being a search engine dedicated to the Stanford University to now being a company that seems to be making the moves that no other company can match. AdSense & AdWords, Doubleclick, Orkut, Google maps, Google grid, blogger, Google checkout, translator and they all have direct competitors in aQuantive, Real, Facebook, Yahoo maps, Paypal( who had imagined Google's credibility to be at par with paypal) ... and to sum it all a solid user profiling by means of :

The Google cookie
Personalized search
G-mail (All the contents of mail are actually scanned by Google)
Google documents and spreadsheets
Google Toolbar (Spyware that logs every click you make)
Google web stats (Provides them with not only site-wide but also user-level statistics)

I am sure as times go by Google would be doing acquisitions of some Content Management softwares, proxy server vendors, ISP's so that they can reach uninterrupted to their users.. But moving on will that be it.

Will Google stop there or are we looking at an Googoperating system that would be available online for each and every user to download based on their need. Imagine having a customized Operating system with all the add-ons like docs, spreadsheets, project, communicator, video driver, audio driver depending on your system specifications and user needs and a varying cost for this operating system as you pay for only what you use - " A $50 for the first time installation ", I know it's far fetched but can it really happen and if it does happen then the Microsoft's, the Mac's and the LINUX's are certainly going to have a run for their money. OR say how about taking the Oracle's and SAP's headon by having the most effective and efficient Transportation Management and Warehouse Management systems by letting the user's decide based on Google maps and Google earth as to what can be the best location for a W/H or a Route or least to say partner with an organization and tell them that your employees don't look happy with your company and in last one month we have had 1300 of your employees looking at job portals through i-Google desktop.. Though I am sure they would not want to do the last and loose out on such a loyal customer base ...

Was wondering if there are people who think like me and I am sure experts have written a lot about the next move on Google so any pointers to that will be appreciated and never know we might have a new story brewing up for yet another book " Google - The chronicles lead to a bigger story"!!!

"e"lectronics products - Dell or Amazon !!!

2008-08-17T22:14:00.000-05:00

Whenever I plan to buy an electronics item after looking at all other opportunities like e-bay(could have left e-bay aside as these guys are primarily resellers and work on a marketplace model), best buy, deals4all, circuit city, buy and several other online vendors my gut insists me to keep going back to Dell or Amazon (Not considering the one time opportunities available with vendors like woot, dealcatcher etc).

I wonder if this is something to do with just me or it happens with others as well. I am sure and the numbers can talk that all the former set of online vendors that I mentioned too have loyal customers and they have been pioneers in doing a several strategies that has wooed people to them. But even then why is it that Kotler's and Drucker's of the marketing world just don't have too many words for these other vendors. I can cite some reasons for the same :

The brand built for over (at least) a decade
A strong focus on customer satisfaction and customer retention
A strong collaborative relation with the payment & logistics partners
Solid technology focus as support functions
Economies of scale (knowing that most of the other vendors are present only in US)
Outsourcing

I am sure that these points are cliche' as they have been repeated over and over again by people but the point I am driving here is that these brands have done it over years and hence they manage to be No. 1 or No.2 in the business they are in and this trend is suspected to continue further. So what about these other vendors, do these vendors come take advantage of the windfalls during peak periods and then focus on regular sales if any from their loyal customers.

So some questions that I pose to myself and to the rest of the people who would be interested in participating into this forum are:

How long would these vendors survive?
Are we on the edge of another dotcom burst?
If most of other vendors manage to meet even 4 of the 6 points I mentioned above then what changes would the leaders have to do further to ensure that they remain leaders?
What can be some new initiatives taken by the other vendors so that they can get a First Movers Advantage (FMA)?

To answer these questions I just have a one line answer " change or perish " and this principle needs to be followed by not just the followers but also the leaders else we might expect another burst in the years to come.

Any takers .....

The word e-business

2008-08-17T19:41:00.000-05:00

"e-business" this word is become ubiquitous today and each and every company and the marketing gurus across the globe are advising companies to embrace e-business open heartedly.

When I talk to people in the business world and specially if he is a marketing guy all that he would talk about is how e-marketing and e-advertising is changing our outlook towards promoting our company and examples like Google's ad-sense, double click and Microsoft's acquisition of aQuantive are given. If the same question of how business is embracing the "e" to a manufacturing guy he would immediately quote e.g.'s of the SAPs and Oracles of the world(which are still just ERP's and not completely run with the e-ngine) and of the Sterling Commerces and Aribas on how these best of breed packages are making the supplier relation so manageable and how web has helped them build lasting partnerships... And similarly if I talk to a Human Resource professional he would immediately lay out the best practices that are being adopted to have an internal (and this no longer remains internal with excessive amount of outsourcing done on the HR front) portal within the organization through which the employee can get the best of benefits and all the queries, suggestions, salary disbursement, leave tracking et al happen effectively, and all this to keep the internal customers happy... One can go on and on and the e-business saga is becoming an integrated part of each and every organizations and departments.

In one line I would describe e-business as "Virtual world being created at the backend in organizations to make the front end look like a child's play".

Curious if adepts/tyros can give me more such one liners to really define "e-business" ....