New Kid in the BLOC..

2010 marks the beginning of a new decade; and here we have the latest jargon—SEP, which is an acronym for Smart Enterprise Process. When I first read about it in the Economic Times a few days back, I was taken aback. After all if  the last decade was jargon- filled this decade promises  to be no different. We had all kinds of outsourcing in the last decade – BPO (Business Process Outsourcing), KPO (Knowledge Process Outsourcing), LPO (Legal Process Outsourcing) and what not. So all of us should be ready for a new wave of outsourcing which has to do with SEP and God-knows-what other smart processes, which would extract even more from the revenues as profits to be reflected on the Profit and Loss statement of the organizations.

What exactly is SEP? Well as the name suggests, it is about making a process smart. By smart I mean more lean, in terms of cost, in terms of use of technology, in terms of manpower. SEP actually applies a framework of analytics, technology and reengineering to the key processes that a company uses to manage its business. Let me explain it in simpler terms. Lets assume that you need a credit card and you walk in to a bank. What would you expect to happen? Needless to say, all of us would expect the credit card to be delivered in the shortest possible time (if we are eligible for the card). But invariably it takes around a good 20-25 days before the card is delivered to you. Have we ever wondered what makes the bank take so long to process a card? Yes, you got it right, they do a round of background checks and other verifications, which at present takes a lot of time.

This is where companies like Bloomingdales are different. Being a retail chain it can set benchmark for many world famous banks. If a bank takes around 20-25 days to issue a credit card then Bloomingdales can issue  a credit card in ten minutes flat. Isn’t it smart? If this is not a smart process then what exactly is a smart process? This is what any organization can achieve by integrating processes. This will not only usher in a new meaning to the word customer satisfaction but will help organizations achieve more profits. Today, it is very difficult to suggest a method which can improve the revenues; such immense is the competition that customer migration is a norm today. Smart enterprise processes will not only take care of the profits; but will give the organization scores of satisfied customers. This will in turn reduce the advertisement expenditure, which otherwise would have been required to woo new customers and also to retain existing customers. I think the organizations of the future will be the ones which embrace SEP and work on it.

N.B Genpact is already working big-time on SEP. My question is why GE (Genpact was hived from its mother GE) always has the upper hand? Six Sigma was developed in Motorola in 1981, but it was the legendary Jack Welch(ex-CEO, GE)  who implemented Six-sigma in GE in 1995, and today it is followed in almost every organization. Are the other organizations listening?

Joyride

        Gosh!!!Roshan you had to be right… That Mohammed Rafi has got a mesmerizing effect in his voice was no surprise, but the real surprise is that it took me around 4 years to realize this simple fact. Roshan and I always had this argument in college that who is the greatest of all—Rafi or Kishore. I always argued in favor of Kishore da and he supported Rafi with such a passion that it was hard to ignore him…but even though he could not convince me. (I will not dwell much on who is the greatest; both are the doyens of Hindi Film Music and I am a ‘nobody’ as far as Hindi Film Music is concerned for a comment) But at last my argumentative instincts were convinced today and guess what it took to convince my logical mind…no not a talk show or a debate but a bus ride to Gurgaon.

        Delhi Transport Corporation’s buses are in news for all the wrong reasons. Around 40 odd buses caught fire within a month (that’s more than a bus a day). The iconic Tata Group’s reputation is at stake and it is at such level that government is thinking to cancel the contract with the Tata Group; though it is a different issue that Tata group has nothing to do with the buses catching fire. The blame should actually go to the growing population of India and lack of public transport. The buses are actually not meant to be loaded so heavily. Anyways, let me come back to the point. I should not drift away.

        Today, I missed my cab to office and I was cursing myself for not being proactive. But nevertheless it took me a lot of courage to decide that I should take a bus to office. And to top it all the bus I embarked was so full of people that I was actually struggling to stand on the foothold. Somehow I took the ticket and when I firmly set my foot inside the bus a cold stare welcomed me. It kept me wondering for quite some time that what actually prompted that kind of a stare from such a beauty. Either I was looking good, which I guess was not the case or something was wrong. But I did not give much heed to the stare and reciprocated with a similar cold stare. All this while, while I was jostling inside the bus, I was caught unawares…a nice background music was being played. And it did not take me long to recognize the mesmerizing voice about which Roshan always talked about. Yes, no prizes for guessing, it was Mohammed Rafi, at his best. Such was the impact of the numbers being played that I was dumbstruck to see that everyone was somehow contended. As if they had forgotten about the dangers of traveling in a low floor DTC bus; not a single soul was complaining. Otherwise such journeys are invariably marred by altercations and arguments and not to mention the ubiquitous Delhi slang in which people always drag others mothers or sisters into reference. The authorities had actually done a good job in putting up so many notices which advised passengers about how to use the fire extinguisher and the emergency exits in case of a fire. But today nobody cared about those warning notes and I was the only one who was busy reading such warnings and of course listening to Rafi. Probably even I was touched. The numbers were all time chartbusters and not that I had not listened to them earlier. But today somehow it had a different meaning.

        I realized Rafi’s greatness when a septuagenarian, barely standing next to me, started nodding his head when the number “khoya khoya chand…” was played. Probably that song reminded him of his wife or of his youth. Numbers like “chura liya hai tumne jo dilko…” or “kaun hai jo sapno main aye…” or “kya hua tera wada…” struck a chord with everyone inside the bus. Had it not been for the legend I don’t know in what state of mind I would have been at the end of the journey. But apart from Rafi the journey had nothing interesting in it. It pointed out the inadequacies of the Indian public transport system. That it requires a major overhaul is not an issue and is probably known to all, but the funny part is how do the westerners think that their money is being utilized for India’s development and India is shinning? Really if this is what India has to showcase during the upcoming Commonwealth Games, then I pity India and its bureaucrats. It’s a shame that we are so awfully prepared for such a mega event, but yes if I would have been given the charge to do something then I would have definitely tried Rafi’s songs (We cannot ramp up our public transport system in the next 6-8 months; that’s a herculean task) to mesmerize the foreigners. I am sure it will work and with less than 8 months to go for the mega event I am sure Rafi is our best bet. What do you think?

N.B. Roshan Dash is a very close friend of mine. We studied the same subjects in college and were in the same team at Oracle. Currently, he is pursuing Masters in Embedded systems in Philadelphia. Incidentally he has got a beautiful voice and is surely making the Indians in his college listen to Rafi.

"PHI"nance...Need Vs. Greed

        Those three letters in the beginning of the title can actually signify a lot of things...let me begin with the simple interpretation—which is: the 21st Greek letter. It can however signify something very interesting. The apocryphal “GOLDEN RATIO”. You must be wondering what it is or what it has to do with finance. For your information the “GOLDEN RATIO” is a ratio which is something similar to the following shown below…read on…

According to the ratio, if ‘a’ and ‘b’ are two variables, where a>b, then (a+b)/a should be equal to a/b. Now here in my case I have taken ‘need’ and ‘greed’ as two variables and it is needless to say that need>greed. But the whole world probably works according to the ratio as shown in the figure below; and aptly so because the simplification of this ratio leads to something very interesting. Let me not discuss it here.

        The planet is home to around 1.5 to 2 billion people who really struggle to survive. And a humongous number of that is in my motherland. I mean it is sometimes baffling to me that what would have Darwin postulated had he been alive today. Really, I salute those “fittest” people who overcome the hardships to survive. The world though moves on without the slightest notice. And that is why I wonder about the ratio. Today the balance is heavily tilted towards need but who cares…we are driven by our greed (N.B. my sincere apologies to those who really think that they are somehow not greedy). Whenever the ‘need’ tries to put its head up the cruel world forces it down…the world or our ‘greed’?

        Seriously it is time to ask ourselves…that whether we care for the needy or we really go on fulfilling our greed. Today the world is on its knees and the west has never been so humble before, thanks to the worst financial crisis in seven decades. But are banks only to blame for this or is it our individual ‘greed’ which is to be blamed? I know such questions are uncomfortable and they require diplomatic answers. But let me tell you how greed brought down the world on its knees. The banks are run by individuals and individuals are run by God knows what. So in the process these bankers kept selling some financial “INSTRUMENTS” for the simple sake of earning fatter perks. Of course they were driven by beastly greed and you heard it right when some wise men called these “INSTRUMENTS” as weapons of mass destruction. I still wonder what was George Bush searching for in Iraq (read oil; though that I would not discuss here) when the weapons of mass destruction were being developed in his own backyard. Yes, the simple greed of earning fatter perks changed the world forever. Probably it has changed the entire meaning of the phrase ‘financial system’. Instead it has now become synonymous to ‘greedy system’. Such is the situation that even now people are back to the old days. By old days I mean the days of sky-high-greed. The recession is not even over and the same old greedy bankers are laughing all the way to banks with even fatter paychecks. God help us.

         When will we understand that the world is actually driven by ‘need’? It is the need that that has given us so many life changing innovations. Can anyone think about spending a day without a cell phone today? I can really think of many such things which have really changed the face of the world. These innovations actually fulfilled our needs in many ways and made our lives a lot simpler. But the need which I actually want to discuss has also changed the face of the world…if not in such an eponymous way as a cell phone (or it actually has) but it definitely has in many other ways. The world should give heed to these needs—the need of a square meal a day, the need of basic healthcare, the need of primary education, and the need of basic transport system for the mass…the list is actually endless. Really can we not think about this on our end? We definitely can, if we can think of the “GOLDEN RATIO”. Had it not been really interesting if we could have achieved a balance between our ‘need’ and ‘greed’? It is really very interesting…if we remember something very simple…need ‘may’ be fulfilled but greed ‘can’ never be fulfilled.

The Nature's Call

             The recent earthquake at Haiti reminds me of the 2004 Tsunami disaster. I think the more we manipulate ourselves the more we become enslaved by nature. It's not so surprising that we find ourselves gripped by nature's fury so often these days. If we talk of the past decade we will find something very interesting. Let me share some of the interesting facts which most of us noticed but very soon it faded from our memories. Thanks to the media and it’s ever increasing influence on our ordinary lives. Even the most trivial news gets all the attention, which most of the times it does not deserve.

             Probably, the last decade had been the worst in human history. The world shook numerous times due to earthquakes. It was also washed by a number of Tsunamis. Okay let me not talk about natural calamities. Let me discuss the man-made disasters which the world witnessed last decade. The wars which America waged against Afghanistan and Iraq, Pakistan’s nuclear scandal (when the world talks about nuclear disarmament, Pakistanis believe in sharing nuclear technology with countries which have not done any good to the humanity), the rising global temperatures, the cyber war with which China is constantly threatening even the United States, and the financial meltdown towards the end of the decade. There are many more. We have seen it all. But why am I discussing all these when I should really empathize with the humble Haitians. There is a twist in the tale.

              Nature has the answer to all of these. Let us talk about the last decade. If we remember the Bhuj earthquake of early 2001, it was just a beginning to the series of events to follow. Probably that was a warning signal. Then there was the American invasion of Afghanistan which was followed by a series of severe earthquakes in Turkey, Mexico and Alaska. As if all that was not enough, America invaded Iraq (the reason still unknown to the world) and what followed? The Indian Ocean Tsunami which killed around 2.5 lakh people worldwide and rendered many homeless. All this while we might be thinking what happened to the Americans? How were the Americans punished when they were responsible for most of the man-made calamities? Well the Americans were also not spared. Hurricane Katrina destroyed many US cities. We humans went to such an extent that we even tried to manipulate weather according to our desire. The result – the devastating earthquake of China which killed over a hundred thousand people (I need not tell you why am I talking about China; for your information: China tried to seed clouds with silicon for early rains in Beijing last year. It even manipulated with the weather to prevent it from spoiling the Opening Ceremony of the Beijing Olympics.)

            Just give it a thought and the sequence explained above will fall in place. Need I tell anything more? I mean when we humans will realize that it’s ultimately the nature’s call as to how it wants to behave. And we forget one very important thing when we relate ourselves to nature. Every relationship works on exchange; exchanging love, exchanging feelings and exchanging many other things. That’s the basic premise for any relationship, be it with our relatives, friends or anyone for that matter. But we human beings, thinking that we are the smartest, forget that basic rule of exchange and end up only in a ‘one way’ relationship with nature. Be it polluting the air or mining the earth or even depositing debris in space we have actually exploited nature. And from the sequence of events described above I need not explain it to you how nature reciprocates to the “love” which we express. After every man-made disaster the nature responded with a fearsome hostility unknown to man. Probably the recent earthquake at Haiti was an answer to the endless greed of the bankers which resulted in the financial meltdown of 2007-08; and as we recovered mother nature hit us back and it was at her deadly best.

            Before I sign off, just a little thought for the poor Haitians; may the soul of the people deceased rest in peace. Plight of a poor country like Haiti, after an earthquake of such a magnitude is inexplicable in words. The rescue workers are helpless due to lack of electricity and water. Even I can’t do much about it but I hope that through this blog I reach out many who can at least give a little time to my thought; and think again before exploiting nature. Because I think it’s the nature’s ire which we are facing, to all the things which we have done and are constantly doing to it.