49th session of the NASSCOM Friday’s 2.0 Discussing Solutions that have worked for Product companies

July 14th, 2009 § 0 comments § permalink

Here I am Live Blogging the second Un-conference session of the NASSCOM Friday’s 2.0 at the NASSCOM HQ in New Delhi. This session is the second in the series of the initiative by NASSCOM for creating a common ground for the Product companies in India. The topic we are discussing today is: Solutions by Product Companies.

We have Ankur Lal, CEO Infozech Software, leading the session along with Arvind Jha of Movico Technologies. We also have Mr. Sharad Sharma – Chair, NASSCOM Product forum.

Okay so we have Mr. Sharad starting the session with a few laughs. Like many of you Im in the mode of becoming an entrepreneur again! I am also currently an entrepreneur in residence with CANNAN PARTNERS.

Sharad, is now sharing his thoughts on how the community can come together in creating an ecosystem. We as NASSCOM ahould also be looking at the other side of the table. i.e. he demand side and not just the delivery side of the equation. Sharad shares an interesting side story of 3M. In the early days of the CD media becoming popular this man he went to the chair and showed the CD and he was turned down. But the next time he did by positioning it the way that its the surface and not the CD/media that is there. Wallah, the rest is history.

What’s Cooking?

Mr. Sharad is now sharing on how NASSCOM is looking to create possibilities for the industry. interestingly Sharad is sharing some very bright ideas which he and the team at NASSCOM are trying to implement specifically aimed at SME’s and SMB’s. Sharad is surely sharing some really good ideas which if given life, could surely lay down a good path and make the journey smoother.

And since this is an Un-conference session, we now have the participants sharing their thoughts on what Sharad just shared with the community.

Sharad: One of the request that often comes back to NASSCOM from product companies is “Can you help us get buyers”. What we have found is, ther real value that NASSCOM can bring is to really grow the market and hold events where buyers and sellers could meet. What we can do is examine on behalf of these companies we could promote the voice.

Lack of project management and product marketing talent in India is a point shared by one of the participants in the room. Its because of the ecosystem. I definitely dont want NASSCOM to sell my product, I need help in developing the ecosystem.

Sharad: Our buyers are afraid of buying products from the small companies.

“No product that I know of has been successful, that has not been developed in the shadow of friendly sophisticated users”

Sharad: What is happening is that we dont have traction to the products, services are not present like force which could help us reach out.

Arvind: Product management and marketing is going to come out of your domestic customer knowledge. I believe that we will have the largest success for a product in the mobile side as we are the largest user base of mobiles.

Participant: Why not think about launching the next Google/Yahoo from India.

Arvind: There is nothing restrciting us from being there.

Ankur: We are the leaders in terms of these 400 million users. I would not be surprised if we have these small Google(s) coming out of India in another couple of years from now.

Participant: I see more and more companies fading out to the more lucrative services space. The DNA of the Indian industry to reamin/focus into the services domain is something which impacts the product.

Ankur: The challenge is that a small product company has to be dealt with safe hands. In the US there is this small companies fund. the government there supports these small businesses. What you need is a forgiven customer.

Challenges faced by Product Companies

So now we are discussing the challenges faced by product companies which we also did discuss the previous session on the product companies here at NASSCOM. Arvind is leading this part of the session, with the entire room being concentrated to the challenges and surely everyone in the room is agreeing to the same.

Arvind: In the spirit of what has worked, we should look at what companies can look at from these successes.

And now we have companies sharing with the room, their products and experiences

Participant: The planning that we do for the product business cycle is not complete. We dont really understand what to do after we have built the product.

So we have Tarun Anand, CTO, mScriber, its s speech training application. Tarun shares how they have been working on the same for the past 2 years and how they realised that its just the tip of the iceberg. We were lucky to get some early customers, but its harder for us to get the second set of customers.

You just have to wait it out and you have to watch what happens

What we realised, is that even if you have an engine, you still have to go to the customer with the 4 wheels, and the rest so that the customer just plugs in the key and moves on. So we partnered with companies which helped us achieve our objectives, and since we did not have the complete product stack, and hence these partners helped us reach there.

Its really important to see what your route to market is

Our biggest challenge right now is cash flows and we need to address the same.

And now we have RateGain, a company into the Hospitality and Travel Technology Products Company and we have the CEO and Founder sharing his thoughts.

We operate in these niche areas, these products have these niche requirements as a result of which we are pretty successful. And now we have RateGain sharin gthe various offerings they have.

While we were gaining knowlegde, we found that every hotel was published on some website, and we took the intelligent way out, which was more of creating a channel in between for the hotels to reach out with their information.

Sharing the Business Model

We have something called the rate tracking tool, so anybody selling anything online, you would want to know if there are competitive products on competitive prices available? Well, we customized this for the hotels. We found one commercial use of this technology and hence we started with hotels, but now we are launching it for different variants.

Interestingly what we now have is a screen shot of the reports that the product generates for the user. And I must say, is pretty interesting for a good competitive analysis.

  • How did the product come about?

In the US at a point when I returned from there, there were travel sites emerging, and I wanted to build the technology targeting the US consumer and build a metasearch site. And we flipped the Bmodel and created the product for the hotel industry.

If you are working on something new and innovative, customers in the US are pretty collaborative and understanding

Why did it work?

  1. Emerging market need
  2. Niche area/ No limited competition

Recommendation for others:

  1. MR, Market sizing
  2. Test market the product
  3. Agile in bringing product to the market
  4. Greenfield opportunities
  5. SME on board
  6. Passion

We leverage a great great Channel Strategy. We have identified strong players in the hospitality domain and tied up with them.

Okay and now we have RAWZOR standing at the line

Our’s is a product which is similar to winzip but for photographers. We spoke to all the photo editing softwares, to add support to our format, though there was no money involved, but it helped us gain industry support.

There was a lot of resistance from the market, you cannot go on day 1 to Adobe and expect them to support you.

Why did we try this?

First few friends looking to join a startup.

Where did it fail?

  • Lack of experience
  • Lack of discipline

What worked and Why?

Multiple discoveries of the right things to do

I believe we should look inside the team. If you are not good enough in what you are doing, then the level of integrity, honesty and discipline takes a hitm which surely was a challenge for us. People dont know the right things to do and the right things. Its putting people in the right framework to get the right things out of them.

And now we have the founder of Busy Software, Mr, Dinesh, sharing his success story. We have never had big hurdles, though profits have not been huge but somehow things have been moving smoothly.

The problem that we have is that of scaling up. Our challenge is that this market is dominated by Tally which is almost similar to the market and it is available at Zero price.

Now there are benefits to this situation and there are the problems. Such a situation increases the market size, which was good for us. Our pricing strategies is being focused on what Tally has dictated till now. Now the difficult thing is how to sell and how to get into the considerable field of the consumer.

How to get into the consideration set of people – this is our major challenge

Initially we kept the price very low almost 50% of what Tally was. We were not the smartest marketing guys around, but we were sure that we could get the product replicated and we were fool enough to replicate a free software. For us the differentiating factor was getting “Sales Tax” as an inclusive offering.

Our objective was to make people use the software, and we started spreading 90 days free software trial with full functionality on. People tried our software because he has a pain point, thus we pointed on this aspect of the consumer thought process.

Did Tally not include those features?

Well, yes they did, more than 8o% of the features are available, but since we are architectured right from the beginning, and hence that gives us the edge over Tally.

Ankur is now leading the discussion, and we have a request from participants for Ankur to share his story!

What is it that keeps your customer awake at night, if you know this and your product answers the call, well, you have your business – Ankur Lal

And now we have Ankur Lal, sharing his experience. The big problem is, its ironical, software development costs are cheaper in India, if they were expensive, we would not have been discussing this. If you can replicate and duplicate, that is product business.

Participant: we purely lack strategic planning, you begin with a myopic vision in starting out. Interestingly we have people sharing through product management and project management.

The discussion in the room has now shifted to how the ecosystem is getting shaped and it finds people like us at these platforms. And now we have Ankur concluding the session introducing the EMERGE community, and the NASSCOM EMERGEOUT Conclave which is also the 50th session of the NASSCOM Friday’s 2.0.

I am glad to be LIVE blogging the 49th session of the NASSCOM Friday’s 2.0, as today I complete one complete year, LIVE blogging the NASSCOM Friday’s 2.0, surely all thanks to Avinash, NASSCOM

Building Software Products for India – 48th Session of NASSCOM Friday’s 2.0 (Kumud Goel, KLG Systel)

June 13th, 2009 § 0 comments § permalink

LIVE Blogging the NASSCOM Friday’s 2.0 48th session, and well we are going to make it interactive says the session lead Mr. Kumud Goel who is also one of the founding members of NASSCOM and the founder KLG Systel a leading power solutions company in India.

Incidentally its a great day, coz the NASSCOM EMERGE Community turns one today, I must congratulate Avinash (NASSCOM) for the same and now we have the session underway :)

Mr. Kumud Goel a technology veteran for over 25 years, is leading the session. We have Ankur Lal, CEO, Infozech Software introducing to the audience and well as usual we have the participants introducing themselves to the entire audience.

I am surely glad to be LIVE blogging the 48th session and well, always get excited to feel as we near the 50th session. Interestingly we have quite a diverse audience related to the product space today.

I am a case study of failures – shares Mr. Kumud and though this was said at the end, I would want to start my blog with it.

Kumud is interestingly sharing an incident from his life and my respects to the man as for young entrepreneurs like me, its surely highly invigorating and a great learning to interact with learned people like Kumud. And well, let me not keep it a secret anymore. Kumud is sharing the story of NASSCOM.

When we went to COMDEX years back, nobody used to talk to an Indian

That is when this desire of fighting these people came in me and I had a lot of experience in programming and I started my company which had only emotions behind it and no business plan.

On my first wedding anniversary my father told me that you have no money in the back and hence I gave away my dream of creating software for the rural India. At that time most Indian company did the right thing by making things for the foreign market but we were again at the step when we were looking at a product for the Indian market.

After 25 years of my experience I today feel taht what is more important out of a business model and a feeling is feeling, coz I believe that the business model shall follow

Once you have made an emotional decision of making a product for India, there were two drawbacks…I was at the Silicon Valley two weeks back and I met this guy who is regarded as one of the best deal makers in the tech space, and he told me that Kumud what you are doing is worth 500 million dollars and since you are sitting in India it is worth 20 million dollars. I had to go to the IBM’s of the world and get a recommendation that my technology is good.

All the great companies in the US have come about and have based out of the fact that the government has helped them. The SME’s in India who innovate do not have their path as easy.

The tendering system in Government of India is such that an SME cannot ever go up.

Today US is making money out of innovation and not selling someone else’s goods. Kumud now shares a highly interesting insight into the Chinese government way of working and wow I am amazed. Well, I think this is an applausible moment and I am saying this for the first time in a NASSCOM Friday’s 2.0 session, Kumud has broken the wall and is now talking about what NASSCOM should really be doing for the SME’s.

Start-ups and small companies have to get reservation in the government and NASSCOM should take care of that

There Is NO CORRUPTION in INDIA

Do what they want you to, don’t fight them…its your dream, coz you are giving them a poison which will kill them automatically. Corruption is not a hinderance, it is a way to survive. And for the first time I am supporting Kumud on this coz he shows tthe audience the bigger picture.

  • Your cash flow has to be positive, your spirit should not go negative, you have to live through those initial years. for sometime you need to live like a rat if you want to survive.

And now Kumud shares a story on a book he read “the saga of Dharampuri”, which he is relateing to the Indian IT industry. We have so gotten accustomed to the white man that we cannot think of anything out of it.

This life for ME is so shameful that after being 25 years into the industry, I still don’t have a world class  product

The govt. of India will spend 5000 crores dollars to the MS’s of the world and lets say there are 5000 SME’s from India, now if I divide 5000 what do you get? But how many companies are standing today for it?

Psychologically we need to start thinking of ourselves as better people than the foreign lands. We need to just break out of this trap, coz we actually are better than anybody. If you need to create the best OS from India, you need to have that feeling into you and only then it would happen.

The Indian out there is GOD shares one of the participants from the audience.

You have a dream, great! But you anyhow need money to make sure that you survive and take your dream further. You need to somehow find a way by hook or by crook, to reach that 50-100 crore level, otherwise your so called innovation would die.

I made 3 websites when I had 15 crores in the bank and I wen t overboard, we advertised like hell and people came to us. But because we believed into our stuff so much, we never realised the internet bust, and I went bankrupt. So now we had no money, but we had a dream!

Audacity, Audacity, Audacity and Arrogance

We raised money for about 11 million dollars and that came to us only because we had audacity.

The next I thought what is the next problem in India. And I chanced upon power. You need to be like the James Bond, who would take it the way as if the world wont be no more if my software wont be there. I went and borrowed 137 crores and I developed cleantech technology. And I bet my life on this.

And I bought myself a BMW, because I was going to change the world.

Personally I was broke, my stock is pledged, house with a bank, my wife and kids were the only tangible assets I had. And then I happened.

Innovation is like a black Hole, after a certain time you are dead. But once you are dead what can you do – STOP WORRYING!

You have created the aura of being the biggest player in the power industry and since you have already invested into it, you can demonstrate what you have already implemented. For 25 years you have been waiting to say it and when the big companies of the world come for you, to partner, what do you say…Go to !@#!

If you want to be an Innovator, You have to be a great Gambler as well

Anybody who does not listen to you has to become irrelevant!

The last lesson would be – your dream has to be bigger than the world, you will create the biggest product, all you need to do is to make sure that you get some cash in.

Kumud ends the session with some NASSCOM bashing, which he started the session with on a lighter note. I am certainly with Kumud, as this would surely be great for the entire SME community in India.

Small companies should file for patents and should do them religiously. This shall make sure of a winning road for you.

Now we have the participants sharing their thoughts on the entire topic and I can see the thoughts coming in together in the similar direction.

And now we have the session in the Q&A mode.

Thanks Kumud for an amazing session, I have been blogging the NASSCOM friday’s 2.0 for long, and certainly find you one of the best speakers, sharing from the heart.

Confessions of a DOT Com entrepreneur – Deep Kalra, at NASSCOM Friday’s 2.0 37th session

February 18th, 2009 § 0 comments § permalink

“We won’t leave the room, till we answer all the doubts”
One of the success strategies shared by Mr. Deep Kalra, a man who made planning your journeys easier, faster and cheaper, and the process, a whole lot enjoyable, in the NASSCOM Friday’s 2.0, 37th meet at New Delhi.

Mr. Deep Kalra, the founder, MakeMyTrip.com shared his learning’s, challenges faced, business models, entrepreneurship, the Internet, team, regrets, achievements and a turnaround story!

The session kick started with a welcome address by Mr. Ankur Lal, Founder and CEO Infozech Software. We had a gathering of around 33 people, which added to the diversity in experience and learning’s.

Deep started the session with an approach, expected of a seasoned entrepreneur. He divided the session into 3 buckets which contained a story which he started and towards the finish had motivated the participants.

  1. Detailed discussion about MakeMyTrip
  2. Challenges faced along the way
  3. Learning and Takeaways

“Everyone in the world after achieving a certain level of education and experience wants to be an entrepreneur, the reasons may be many”
- Deep Kalra

Deep started with his journey, wherein he discussed about his life as a learner (a student) who started as an economist and “tumbled into a B-school”. He shared his thoughts on the emergence of B-schools introducing the process of taking in laterals from the industry who bring along with them practical experience which helps while you understand the management concepts relating to your experiences.

An IIM-A graduate of the 1989 batch, Deep belongs to a batch of graduates who are today some of India’s most reckoned success stories.

With a career start with a reputed multi national bank in India, Deep got his first learning’s which impacted his life immensely. A confession he made “all this while earning handsomely and learning from immensely successful people, he was always clear that banking was not his defining career choice”. As with every entrepreneur, a strong urge to free himself from the straitjacket, Deep started his stint as an entrepreneur by representing a multinational company dealing into Bowling Alley equipments in India. He was convinced the concept would catch on and the product was sellable.

Soon came the first learning: The product was great, the money was there, but the market was not ready! Hence Deep shared a learning that however specialized a product or service you may have, a solid market research is without any doubts necessary.

An intelligent speaker, Deep had the audience in splits with his wits of presenting his experience doing business with Delhi Businessmen, who are smart!

A very important issue of “Peer pressure” was touched upon by Deep with extreme subtleness. He shared his version of how peer pressure affected him as:

“I was not affected by how much
my peers were making, but about the fact
that I was losing out on my own personal development”
- Deep Kalra

Filling the Vacuum!
Deep, in order to fill this vacuum in life went ahead and joined a multinational as the Head Business Development. Innovation was his motto and Deep proved with his grit and determination, which were properly backed by facts and figures, that the company could be a successful turnaround using the Internet as a tool, which at that time was not something that the Indian consumer would have been very comfortable with!

After a brief stint of 15 months, Deep found his calling!

Before everyone in the room, could hop onto the fast paced F1 that Deep’s interesting life was emerging out to be, he smartly put the brakes and shared a few crucial lessons, which acted as tickets for the participants to hop on for the ride ahead!

“Big companies won’t get on the internet, I realized
change was difficult for them to introduce within
the existing processes. The moment you become large the chips get scattered”
- Deep Kalra

Be Lean, Be Fit!
Vision is never static; in fact the corporate vision should always keep changing with the changing structures of the corporate, as per the market conditions.

Nimbleness and Change, is necessary to be incorporated into the business model.

“You slow down somewhere down the way”, said Deep while he was explaining the growth of a venture and of the entrepreneur.

1999 was the year Deep was struck – with an idea!
After extensive research into the market conditions, Deep was convinced about the idea of either an online Financial Stock trading business or something to do with travel. With a flexible vision and all the life’s learning’s, Deep’s vision took shape with a venture capital funding of $2million for a 70per cent stake in MakeMyTrip.

A lucrative offer, a good salary, a dream getting fulfilled, life could never have been better, was Deep’s first reaction. It was a Win-Win situation for him.

A smart team to be supported by, Deep started off with a website and a vision of defining the travel space in India by becoming the largest company in the travel space. The company was earning good with a sound bank balance, what better for an entrepreneur right?

WRONG said Deep!
A majority of their business was coming from the NRI market and in India; consumers were only lookers and not buyers! Hence the Indian operations were making not much sense as the market was just not mature for such a concept. Deep could have pumped in more money easily but he decided otherwise, and said to his top management “We won’t leave the room, till we answer all the doubts” to where we are wrong! The decision was not an easy one, but was taken and the India model was put on hold for sometime.

A dream gone sour?
With the markets not doing well and the DOT COM Bubble already creating ripples in the subcontinent, Deep was faced with a situation which few had ever imagined. The VC’s backed out and the additional $1million promised never came.

Deep and the team had two choices, either to shut down or else have faith in their concept and buy back the 70per cent equity stake and keep the ball rolling!

As they say “When you set out to do something with all your heart and passion, everything around you supports you”!

Deep got funds from Angels who really proved right to their title “Angles” and bought back the 70 per cent stake, with a team which was not the same as it was sometime back.

How easy is it to take a 100percent cut in your earnings and for the top management a 50percent cut in their salaries? Ask Deep and the team at MakeMyTrip, and they will tell you what sailing on the boat named faith and confidence is when you have nothing else.

The Build-Operate-transfer model was touched upon by Deep and he advised everyone on the “Lure of Lucre”!

You cant Do It Alone!
A team which takes Serious Equity, a prospective for you who is ready to take cuts into hard cash for ESOPS, is the best employee for you!

2004 was the year of reckoning and establishment for MakeMyTrip in India, when the market opened to new models of online travel.

TRY!
Deep was of the suggestion that an entrepreneur should at least TRY! It was this attitude which made him get into the online travel space in India, with a fact backing his belief, that an ordinary Indian gets onto the Internet to book 5000 tickets daily using his/her credit card, in the Indian railways!

Learning’s
- Challenges
“Bootstrapping was the best time during the venture, when we had put all our life’s savings”

– Scaling up
Scaling up is a big challenge for any emerging venture which is looking towards a strategic expansion

Nicely heated up debated sessions have been regular features at MakeMyTrip.

There’s no Hiding!

  1. Get good guys
  2. Share your wealth (ESOP’s)
  3. Hire guys who truly challenge you

“All your Yes-Men are truly useless. It’s about management by exception”

Failures
“The biggest regret and failure was that we outsourced our technology”

None of us knew how to build a web site!

The session drew to a close with an interactive platform for the participants to get their queries answered by Deep himself, which was of a big help.

Link to the post at the NASSCOM EMERGE blog: http://blog.nasscom.in/emerge/2008/07/14/confessions-of-a-dot-com-entrepreneur/

Ajay Jain at NASSCOM Friday’s 2.0 (38th session)- on how to Use Online Professional Networking to get Ahead at Work! Linkedin the tool

February 18th, 2009 § 0 comments § permalink

“It is not about who you know or what you know, but who knows what you know”

Remarked Mr. Ajay Jain, a man who firmly kept the foundation for the discussion on the 38th Friday’s 2.0 session on “Using online professional networking to get ahead at work” at New delhi.Mr. Ajay Jain, the author of “Let’s Connect, (using LinkedIn to get ahead at work)” shared his learnings, his passion for writing and how NOT overlooking intricate things can make your day!

“Indians Build Relationships”

The concept of offline networking and relationship building, remarked Mr. Jain, is still a preferred mode of establishing new relationships in India. Citing the success of the various offline networking chapters across India, Mr. Jain provided an insight as to how the Indian business scene is still the traditional way.The same gave direction to further discussion, which Mr. Jain generated quite an interest with, by introducing LinkedIn as a highly efficient and properly guarded tool for professional networking.

“LinkedIn is like a Business Conference” How to use LinkedIn to your advantage?

Like the Ten commandments, Mr, Jain established 10 effective steps!

  • Your ever expanding Rolodex:Social contact building

All that comes your way….well no! LinkedIn gives an account only 3000 invites throughout the lifetime of your account, which makes sure that the professional ethic remains. - Have a LinkedIn-Thon @ office, if you have created a new account and are thinking as to how to grow your network! The idea that Mr. Jain shared with the community.

  • LinkedIN Answers: A global focus group

Mr. Jain highly recommended the feature of LinkedIn answers which has multiple benefits, both for the community as well as the person answering the question.The answers get rated and the same puts the answering person profile in the limelight, and after a certain top rated answers in a certain domain, the person is profiled as an expert in the domain.

  • Networking Plus: Meet people

Mr. Jain, shared an idea yet again, being a travel writer himself, he travels and meets a multitude of people all across. LinkedIN he said, could be highly instrumental in meeting people while you travel. You can send a message across to someone where you are traveling, to catch up at a certain place for a coffee!

  • Branding and Marketing: Yourself

The topic generated enough interest in the room, to get ahead professionally or to a platform, Mr. Jain, presented to the members, unique ways of leveraging the power of online networking to get ahead at work.

“Dress up your profile, like you do in real life”

Keep your profile updated and leave no chances for networking within the groups that you may have been linked to professionally in the past.In the summary section, be crisp and to the point!

  • Hiring People: Its not a job site

Though LinkedIN is not a Job Site, still said Mr. Jain, the feature of posting and searching for jobs is a high revenue generator.  As a recruiter as well as a prospect, LinkedIn could serve your purpose in an efficient and better manner, as the feature of writing an endorsement, provides a good background to be searching for the right candidate.

  • Finding a job: You Love!

A job you love! Well, LinkedIN could help you interact with your prospective future employer, the employees and may be your reporting manager. You could use it to your advantage in settling down pretty, with the Job you Love!

  • Vendors and Service Providers

Mr. Jain shared an interesting thought which could spell business opportunity for many a participants in the session. LinkedIN could help you find suitable vendors and service providers for your business needs.

  • Running Background checks: A boon for the recuiters

LinkedIN could be a great source of information about prospective employees for the recruiters. the process of background checks could not be fudged on the online platform, as the endorsements for a person come in true, by people whom they have worked together with. Such features make it easier for the future employer to check for the identity of the prospect and also take the authenticity of the employees, relative to the people who have endorsed them.

  • Entrepreneurs: Get investors and opinions

For Entrepreneurs,  which Mr. Jain, himself is, LinkedIn can prove to be a great source of doing market research and netowrk with prospective partners and investors. He again stressed on the Q&A feature, which could be used to one’s advantage and can prove to be a low cost and effective market research tool.

  • Selling and Brand Building: For your company

As an employee, you can be highly instrumental in selling your companies brand value to attract more clients and generate higher revenues. Also the same may act towards making the organization a “preferred employer”.

“The world of business is a small one, LinkedIn made it even smaller”

A few key points that Mr. Jain re-iterated were of Etiquette. He stressed that though online, LinkedIn, still becomes your professional identity. Thus its reflects you online and keeping the rules of the game as in the real world, would help you in gaining traction with the people you wish to network with!The session drew to a close, with the floor open to questions and quite an interesting and knowledge driven debate ensued. With member audience pitching in with answers and solutions.

Link to the post at the NASSCOM EMERGE Blog: http://blog.nasscom.in/emerge/2008/08/11/using-online-professional-networking-to-get-ahead-at-work/

Higher Employee Engagement Today Does Not Necessarily Reduce Attrition

February 18th, 2009 § 0 comments § permalink

Higher Employee Engagement Today Does Not Necessarily Reduce Attrition

What happens when you have a room full of HR pro’s from the industry? Well, sparks fly, literally but in the minds! Human Resource, one of the most crucial parts of any organisation today has evolved and how! A team of experienced human resource professionals came together on the 29th august at VYK, NASSCOM office, a revival of the NASSCOM HR Best Practices. Mr. Aadesh Goyal, Chairman, PeopleStrong HR services, graced the occasion, with his thought provoking address to the members present.

Known for his meticulous business ethics, Aadesh, from the very beginning of the session, had the participants engrossed in the discussion.A two-way discussion ensued, which had innovative contributions by the fraternity. With a strong hold into the HR industry, Aadesh started by discussing the basics, which essentially helped in breaking down the ‘myths’, and giving a new shape and direction to what works, and how as a HR professional you need to mould and create customized solutions for your organisation, in accordance with industry standards. A heady mix of “theory” in the form of an engrossing power point presentation and “practical experiences” which discussed in detail how various companies across the board approach the problem and the various successfully implemented solutions.  Some of the key words discussed in the forum which created the ground for the talk were:Employee engagement, Compensation, Right Staffing, Attrition, Quality, Layered process, Deferred compensation, Line managers. The key words, though initially scattered across the table, were intelligently put together by Aadesh.

What would you say if someone told you, “A 1% decrease in compensation in software business would increase profit by 0.6 percentage points”?

Well, Aadesh did just the same, and the participants consented!

The questions at this stage that came up were:

  • How do we create a nice compensation environment?

Even if as an organisation, we are not the best pay masters, still what is that we provide, which would be a major factor in attracting and retaining employees? See what impacts special events have on attrition!A one liner by Aadesh, powerful enough to have people thinking in the common direction. With a discussion over the same, newer ideas on Employee Engagement came to light!

  • What delivers consistent quality?

‘Quality’, a highly debatable topic was very subtly handled by Aadesh.With a simple example of “if you are a packaged drinking water manufacturing company, how do you maintain quality?” Well, answers by the participants threw light on the importance of the topic and various innovative solutions came to the fore. Examples of organizations like HCL, were put across, which boast of such high HR practices, that allow them to make sense of Employee Engagement in the real sense. With attrition being the basis of the discussion, quality again lead to addressing the issue with a highly effective and efficient methodology of keeping a check on quality, while addressing attrition!

“Look at the kind of different attrition engagement techniques for different types of employees” remarked Aadesh.

The common voice consented to the same! Effectively addressing your attrition concerns, controlling costs, Aadesh put forth the suggestion of employing different engagement techniques for the various set of employees.

“I would not put my best engagement techniques, to the bottom most performers in the team, instead utilize the same for the top 20-25 percent of best performers”

The role of line managers?Research shows, in a normal BPO set up a team lead spends 80 percent of his time in preparing reports on his system, fro his boss and the boss’s bosses. If the team lead does not spend his maximum available time with the team on floor in action, well he is not being effectively utilized. Thus the suggestion of having line managers creating and following proper dashboards, which suggest to the senior management, the quality, attrition and various other factors about the base level employees. A line manager is the best person, who knows his subordinates, hence he should have a major responsibility in catching attrition young and in time, thus allowing the management to take effective measures. The same was put together by Aadesh in a structured three (3) layered process. 

Deferred compensation, does it work?YES! Remarked Aadesh. Its just a matter of mindsets. The same action that you consider as stopping someone’s basic salary, can be more structured in a structured salary break up (ex: incentive based) and told to the employee before joining. Aadesh sees the same as an effective tool in addressing attrition concerns, by the organisation.

Shape up or ship out!Though as an organisation, none would like to enter the hire and fire mode, but measures have to be taken to effectively address the attrition concerns! Training and development was discussed in this part of the session! Shape up or ship out the bottom performers, remarked Aadesh. With an interesting case study which brought about a great deal of change in increasing the effectiveness of the human resources, Aadesh captured the brains of one and all present. An eye opener for some of the non IT professionals and others who did not belong to the mainstream HR. The session concluded with a quick point put forth by Pankaj Bansal, the CEO and Founder PeopleStrong which pointed out the still hanging gaps in the HR industry!

Link to the post at the NASSCOM EMERGE Blog: http://blog.nasscom.in/emerge/2008/09/01/higher-employee-engagement-today-does-not-necessarily-reduce-attrition/

How Startups and Emerging companies can benefit from Social web and Enterprise 2.0 – NASSCOM Friday’s 2.0 (39th session)

February 18th, 2009 § 0 comments § permalink

WEB 2.0, Yammer, Mashup, Dapper, Pipes, Widgets, Open API’s, WOMM…

Greek, does it sound?

Well, the 39th session of the NASSCOM Friday’s 2.0 (Emerging Companies Forum – Marketing) was a big draw, which had people belonging to a wide strata of the industry, participating with varied interests.

The session was chaired by Mr. Jay Pullur, the Founder and CEO, Pramati Technologies Pvt. Ltd. a technocrat and visionary, building teams from the scratch has been a key trait that helped Jay in establishing Pramati technologies, a company known for its innovation and quality.

The session started with Jay introducing innovative products from Pramati in the form of widgets which they evangelized as integral tools for building simple yet highly efficient methodologies for leveraging WEB 2.0

A formal kickoff then followed with Jay presenting the participants with a presentation which was a two sided discussion, with the participants engrossed.

Jay started with defining young companies. A statement which laid the foundation for the discussion “big companies already do all the old stuff well and in good scale”, made quite an impact in the participants and the focus hence shifted to how startups and emerging companies (young companies) could leverage WEB 2.0?!

WEB 2.0 and that too in 2 hours, well Jay smartly divided the presentation into Three (3) parts -:

  1. What is this new WEB?
  2. What does it mean to us?
  3. Why is it challenging?

WEB 2.0, a new style of working!

WEB 2.0 is more about user participation, peer production and not just simple one way publishing.

Social Media
Two simple words, yet they made every mind in the room actively interact and participate. Well why someone would not be interested when you hear “the traffic on my web site has grown 25times over the past 20 odd days, due to the implementation of this FREE widget”!

‘FREE’ strikes! And it struck!

The greek words which we started this post with now started making sense, Mashups, Dapper, Intel Mash maker, Yahoo Pipes are all WEB 2.0 tools which are the most innovative and effective tools in leveraging WEB 2.0 for the organisation.

Marketing Opportunity – Widget

How does FREE stuff adds value?
-    Social Networking Applications
Jay provided with examples from some applications that Pramati did for the recently concluded Olympics at FaceBook, which generated quite a response all across.

Open social platforms were again an interesting topic of discussion which generated quite an interest in the room. Various platforms were discussed. Including the free google platform, open API’s and web services.

Extending the discussion, Jay proved how widgets could be effectively used in the promotion of products.

2.    Strategy needs understanding of distribution models and uptake of new offerings

“Marketing is changing faster than ever”
-    Jay Pullur

“Usefulness is no longer the only thing that matters, it’s the experience that does”
-    Jay pullur

“Indian startups have not really kept the waves”
-    Jay Pullur

An interesting discussion ensued within the participants, which had WEB 2.0 researchers’ sharing their experiences into what they felt was lacking in the Indian startups and how could the power of WEB 2.0 still be leveraged.

Jay mentioned the Enterprise 2.0 platform which he simply explained as a very complex combination of openness and privacy.

The change in the WEB 2.0 space was very intelligently put across which had the participants in splits and was really a thought provoking idea…”who thought a simple application like twitter could ever work”?
Well, since people today are interested into other people’s lives, thus it’s not just working; in fact we all are Tweeting, day in, night out.

Yammer, Crunchbase, Semantic Web before the participants could say why English suddenly has become out of focus again, Jay explained the various tools and how they spell magic!

PART TWO
The session was now much more interesting as now Jay kept his point through which he gave what the audience wanted…good, but what does it mean to us?

1.    Specialize and grow on the fast track, remarked Jay

With a reference to the blue ocean strategy and other such methodologies, Jay was instrumental in providing the audience with methods of marketing new products and service offerings through WEB 2.0 tools.

PR2.0, Blogs, WOMM (word of mouth marketing) etc. were the cited examples

Beat the downturn, commoditization and Market pressures, remarked Jay

PART THREE
Why is it challenging?

1.    Competency bar is growing up

Before the participants could voice their concerns of implementing such WEB 2.0 strategies, Jay was quick in adding the various challenges that could be faced.

“Invest little to gain a standing” – the statement clearly reflected Jay’s long term standing in the IT industry. The experience was speaking for itself.

Post the formal discussion, Jay shared his experiences with the audience. What was engrossing was Jay’s openness in coming out with the go to market strategies that Pramati implemented while they were in the process of launching their Enterprise 2.0 solution.

Lesson well learnt, and such discussion was received with great response by all present.

The session concluded with a Q&A session and the forum opened for networking which also had Jay interacting very openly.

RocSearch also has done a report on Leveraging User Generated Content – An anecdotal assessment on what works for marketers and what does not…download the report at Rocsearch_leveraging-social-media_may-2008

Link to the post at the NASSCOM EMERGE Blog: http://blog.nasscom.in/emerge/2008/09/15/how-startups-and-emerging-companies-can-benefit-from-social-web-and-enterprise-20/