Discuss the business of technology with SPI

Save your Planet with simple steps

2009-08-10T05:26:00.000-07:00

We all ought to adopt long-term life style changes (like using less water, driving fewer miles, etc), but you can do in few minutes to save our planet without leaving your chair.

Stop junk mail. We know about “Do Not Call” list - but there is no such list for junk mail. However, you can sign up with DMAchoice.org to eliminate up to 80% of junk mail sent to your home. The trees will thank you, and it takes only a minute.
Asking for the Petition of expanded public transit. Benefits of expanded public transit - including a dramatic reduction in greenhouse gas emissions and decreased dependence on foreign oil. Signing this petition takes only few seconds.
Map public transportation routes online. From home to work place, web can provide step-by-step directions for using subways, street cars and bus routes! All the schedule and station information is built in. Drive less and live more by mapping out your work and travel routes.
“Greenify” your computer in less than one minute. Go to your “Control Panel” (Mac users should access “System Preferences”) and switch your desktop or laptop to a “power save” setting. Modify your preferences so that your computer automatically goes into a low power or sleep mood when idle.
Realize that one person can make a difference. The average person will generate 52 tons of garbage by age 75, uses 24 barrels of oil a year and goes through 4,836 gallons of fresh water a month. In zero seconds, you can understand the impact that you have on this planet and your ability to make a difference.

State of Outsourcing in 2009

2009-08-02T22:02:00.000-07:00

Phil Fersht, a Research Director at AMR Research, and his team surveyed a number of enterprise level and midmarket companies to make predictions about the state of outsourcing in 2009 and 2010. In the report, the team analyzed the drivers and inhibitors of these companies, such as for which services these businesses would likely begin, increase, decrease, or keep unchanged their outsourcing spends. Take a look at the numbers and the trends. From what we’ve seen, is there anywhere you feel they are particularly on or off base?
Visit: http://www.amrresearch.com/Content/View.aspx?compURI=tcm:7-46183

Warming up with OSGi and its importance of Modularity

2009-07-20T22:22:00.000-07:00

Started warming up myself for next level of programming with Modularity using OSGi core specifications. OSGi stands for Open Services Gateway initiative. The new OSGi R4 core specification really provides few advantages over it’s earlier releases. Providers who support OSGi today include Eclipse Equinox, Apache Felix, Newton, Knopflerfish, and OXSA.

I feel Eclipse IDE is the best example of OSGi implementation and it’s advantages. After started working with Eclipse PDE i really feel the importance of OSGi framework. The framework defines an application development lifecycle management model, a service registry, an execution environment and modules. As per Wikipedia, OSGi Framework is a module system for Java that implements a complete and dynamic component model, something that does not exist in standalone Java/VM environments. Applications or components (coming in the form of bundles for deployment) can be remotely installed, started, stopped, updated and uninstalled without requiring a reboot; management of Java packages/classes is specified in great detail. Life cycle management is done via APIs which allow for remote downloading of management policies. The service registry allows bundles to detect the addition of new services, or the removal of services, and adapt accordingly.

If you can start developing plug-in using Eclipse PDE you can very well understand the importance and advantage of OSGi framework. In Eclipse terminology “plug-in” is nothing but “bundles” (OSGi terminology). After reading enough articles and blogs about OSGi i still see OSGi is an example of SOA. And there are many questions remain open in front of us for distributed computing with OSGi. Explore more with the below reference links on OSGi,

1. http://www.eclipse.org/equinox/
2. http://felix.apache.org/site/index.html

CICS Queues

2009-07-08T05:22:00.000-07:00

Queues are sequential storage facilities, generally transitory in nature because of the dynamic nature of transaction processing. They are typically used to process requests or to pass data from one transaction to another . For example, data produced as part of a transaction is usually not printed until well after its task has been completed; the data waits in a queue for the print program to process it when there is no more urgent work to be done.

A queue is a sequence of data elements identified by a symbolic name. Each element contains record-oriented data of a type specific to the application that is to process it. Elements of different types can be placed in the same queue. For the general type of queue, transactions add (enqueue) elements to the tail of the queue and remove (dequeue) elements from the head of the queue in a first-in first-out (FIFO) manner. Each element must be read sequentially and when read is removed from the queue. Queues support multiple simultaneous requests to enqueue and dequeue elements, growing and shrinking in size according to the volume of requests. A transaction can requeue
elements to another queue for alternative processing.

You can use some queues differently; for example, as a common scratchpad of elements to be written, updated, read, and deleted by any transactions. You can also dequeue elements in a different order from the order in which they were enqueued. Before a queue can be used, you must define it. For example, a queue definition is used by CICS to identify the symbolic name and type of a queue, and to define the queue to the appropriate queue manager.

CICS supports the following types of queues:

Transient data queues provide the general queue functions. Temporary storage queues are typically used for shared reading, writing, and updating by multiple transactions; for example, as a scratchpad for shared data. Application programs can write, read, and delete data in a transient data queues, but cannot update such data. CICS provides the following types of transient data queues:

Temporary storage queues are typically used for shared reading, writing, and updating of data by multiple transactions; for example, as a scratchpad for shared data. Also temporary storage queues can be used to store data either in main storage of the operating system, or in auxiliary storage on a direct-access storage device. Generally, main storage is used if small amounts of data are needed for short periods of time; auxiliary storage is used if data
is to be kept for long periods of time. Transactions can write, update, read, and delete data in a temporary storage queue any number of times until the queue is deleted.

Source : IBM Public Documents

Aveen (Technology COE )

Finding Fun in daily tasks

2009-07-01T06:11:00.000-07:00

One of the most interesting books we've read in our childhood was about Tom Sawyer and his adventures. And in this book, among all the funny things there was also a moment when Tom had to paint the fence and he wasn't very happy about it. At the beginning he complained and nobody wanted to help him, but after a while he changed his attitude and started to be excited about painting the fence. Then all his friends wanted to do it too and they helped him. The main idea about all this is that it's very important to know how to present a certain task to the others in order to make them want to do it.

In a project it's esentially to mantain the team spirit high and to make people be enthusiastic about their jobs. It is known that people always work harder and give better results when they work for pleasure than when they work because they have to. And one of the secrets for a succesfull project is to combine the tasks with the pleasure of making them. You should keep in mind that it's not hard at all to share enthusiasm with the other team members. You just have to see the good sides of each task instead of the bad ones... You simply have to remember that every litle thing you do means another experience and teaches you something new about the world or about yorself.

So, just try to say "I like this" next time when you'll feel it. Like this the others will hear you and we'll get a bit of your enthusiasm and the project will work better. After all, isn't this what you want?!
Source -Internet

- Nandini (PMO Center of Excellence)

Willing to make Waves?

2009-06-03T22:59:00.001-07:00

This year at Google IO (Google Annual Developer Conference) besides handing out Android powered Hutch G1 phone to all the attendees, Google announced - Google WAVE, a new way to look at collaborative computing. Also around it was the 3P concept - Product, Platform and Protocol. The platform and protocol are intended to open sourced, to allow developers to independently build "Wave" platforms and also communicate with other "Wave" systems. This was another surprize for Google IO attendees this year and yeah, I don't think they were disappointed.

Google Wave has been built by the same team who brought Google Maps and associated API to the world. It is built using Google Web Toolkit and HTML 5.0. The demos at Google IO, included its usage on Google Chrome (isn't that obvious...Duh!), Apple Safari and Mozilla Firefox. Hmm... I see there is a big browser player missing out here. (Internet Explorer, of course). Though Google Wave is capable of communicate with existing systems like Twitter and Orkut... the most impressive feature was its extensibilty through "robots". They held best of that lot for the last. I was blown away by Rossy... built in collaboration with Google Research.

Here is the You Tube! video, you NEED to watch.

URLS of Interest:

Product: http://wave.google.com

Platform: http://code.google.com/apis/wave

Protocol: http://www.waveprotocol.org

Unfortuately all I did was look at the You Tube! videos about this platform/developer preview and regret not being there... :(

As with every new fangled thing with Google (like the GMail), the subscription to Google Wave platform is limited. Offered only to people who attended Google IO 2009 (A point emphaisized by Lars - Product Manager for Google Wave - not once, not twice but many a times during the presentation... Dang!) and of course, you stand in line and apply for an account on the preview website.

Retail Industry – A Quick Look

2009-05-27T05:23:00.000-07:00

With a quick look let’s see some of the key trends in consumer behavior and the retail industry in recent times. Three deepening trends in Consumer Behavior:

Customers are becoming more demanding – Due to the Web revolution consumers started sharing their opinion/thought through the forum. It makes them much more demanding and expects more out of a product.

Social Media online is exploding – It is becoming a key vehicle for both strategic marketing and customer engagement.

Premium products and services still sell well and Green is becoming iconic – Many of the less price sensitive consumers are still highly style and status conscious, and consumers are going to increasingly great lengths to boycott brands that have poor eco-credentials

These are the consumer trends impacting the Retail Industry. So, now the question is how about the Retail Industry in general?

Three deepening Trends in the Retail Industry:

The credit crunch is getting worse – It negatively impacting retailer profits.

The e-channel is still growing fast – Online spending increasing very fast and tendency of consumer is leaning towards e-channel. Retailers are expecting a major shift to online as well as oppose to the store.

The leaders are merging channels – and providing seamless brand and customer experiences across them all. Consumers in return are becoming rapidly less tolerant of pricing, availability or service differentials online and offline.

Top drivers of outsourcing in 2009

2009-05-21T07:26:00.000-07:00

I thought this article was interesting concerning the various reasons why companies will outsource this year. Phil Fersht surveyed 127 medium to large-sized companies and compiled the research in this study. I’ve posted the link to the data, which is listed on Phil Fersht’s (who also started a group on LinkedIn--BPO and Offshoring Best Practices Forum) blog. Take a look to see what the top drivers of outsourcing will be this year, and if you agree with them:

http://blogs.amrresearch.com/outsourcing/

Management of Elections: See how Project Management is applied

2009-05-21T07:18:00.000-07:00

India, the world’s largest democracy carried out its biggest exercise in conducting the recently concluded elections in which the entire country went to the polls to elect a government at the center. Those who participated by been a voter and had their voice heard should appreciate the fact that it was so smoothly conducted with no violence and rigging.
Kudos to the Election Commission of India! It is pretty interesting to note as to how such a massive exercise is conducted where there is no scope for schedule slippage, every tasks / milestone has to be achieved on time.

The process of Initiation, Planning, Execute, Monitor & control and finally closing has been practiced by using IT-enabled project management tools (like spiProject). The project management knowledge areas like Time Management, Scope Management, Communication Management, Risk Management, Quality Management, and Human Resource Management are in operation in full steam in elections. Here is an interesting article that I would like to share with you all that highlights the Project Management aspects in conducting the elections.

http://eleap.ciol.com/vol1-issue2/digimag.html

The government is re-elected and Jai Ho!!! Stock markets boomed !

Debugging - A way to locate and fix code

2009-05-04T22:39:00.000-07:00

During development, one of the basic lessons that I learnt was "DO NOT USE debug print statements like 'debug.print' or 'System.out.println' to locate a problem in the code. It is time consuming and not effective." The process of locating bugs is one of the hardest tasks a developer will face. It is, however, an essential part of the debugging process.The key to repairing a bug is to isolate the problem to a particular system component and to then locate the exact section at fault. In small systems, it may be easy to spot where a problem lies, but in larger systems that are composed of dozens or hundreds of classes, it isn't quite so easy. Tracking which class and which method is responsible can be a frustrating task.

Working with code written by other developers can be especially difficult, because you don't have the intuitive familiarity that you would with code that you've written yourself. The problem can often be very hard to locate, particularly if one component of a system is interacting badly with another, such as modifying public member variables or passing bad data to methods. This often masks the problem, making a developer think that one class is at fault when in reality it is another. Worse still, certain types of Java software present unique challenges. Applets, for example, are notoriously unstable on certain browser configurations, and network restrictions such as a firewall between users and the Internet may make it difficult to replicate bugs within a developer's intranet. Networking code can cause headaches, as it is often hard to tell whether the client, the server, or both are at fault. Servlets have no graphical user interface or user console, so seeing what is going on behind the scenes is very tricky. Multi-threaded code that works fine at some times may exhibit a bug at other times. Software that relies on other components, such as distributed services like RMI servers or CORBA servants, often is not fault-tolerant and reacts badly (and sometimes mysteriously) if the other components fail. Most of these problems can be alleviated by two popular debugging techniques: logging and tracing.

Logging should not be used for development debugging (but it inevitably gets used that way by logger.info or debug.pring or system.out.print). Logging should be designed for operational monitoring and trouble-shooting. Tracing should be designed for development debugging & performance tuning. If available in the field, it can be use for really low-level operational trouble-shooting, but that is not its main purpose. Given this, the most successful approaches I've seen (and designed/implemented) in the past do not combine the two together. Better to keep the two tools separate, each doing one job as well as possible.

Using a debugger makes finding this information quite simple.Debugging is a powerful technique that allows you to observe the run-time behavior of your program and determine the location of semantic errors. Many of the IDE like Visual Studio, Eclipse, JBuilder etc come with a built-in debugger that provides all standard debugging functionality, including the ability to perform step execution, to set breakpoints and values, to inspect variables and values, and to suspend and resume threads. Additionally, you can debug applications that are running on a remote machine. With the debugger, you can do the following:Set breakpointsConditional breakpointsEvaluating ExpressionsViewing / Editing VariablesRemote Debugging.

I also feel debugging is a good way of learning about the functionality in the code. You can de-bug me if you have any questions...:)

Future of MySQL ?

2009-04-24T04:00:00.000-07:00

The recent takeover of Sun by Oracle poses serious questions on how the software database landscape will look in the coming months. Retailers are one of the largest customers of software database products and Retail CIO's ought to be pondering this question. Would Oracle keep MySQL as a low end offering (less than a terrabyte) ? Will it use MySQL to effectively compete against Microsoft's SQL Server ? Or would it take the extreme step of buying and burying one of the most promising products from Opensource? Here is an interesting article that analyzes these questions and more ...

http://www.storefrontbacktalk.com/e-commerce/analysis-oracles-sun-acquisition-may-have-little-retail-impact-initially/

Effective Task Management using Mylyn

2009-04-16T01:42:00.000-07:00

I always see a gap or a failure of connectivity between the planned tasks (after you identified the WBS, Work Breakdown Structure) and the actual execution of it. Though we have good project management tools, it is difficult to track/record the task activities and its contents apart from the name of the task in the project management tool.
In Other words, once the tasks are planned by the project lead or project manager, the task execution will be performed by the developers. Many questions related to developer task management still remain, such as - How effective is it for one to track/record/manage the task activities, contents, effort or time for a given task to developers? Also how frequently do developers reuse the past efforts or remember the tasks performed earlier in the same environment ?

It is necessary for us to glue/gel the gap with the help of an effective tool so that we can keep the connectivity and evidence the task activities. I recently came across the open-source tool called ‘Mylyn’ which claims the importance of effective task management for developers and also the organized way of working for developers with the help of an industry standard IDE (Integrated Development Environment) called ‘Eclipse’. Eclipse and Mylyn are the right combination to make the task management easier for developers. The following are some of the primary advantages that I see with the effective task management using Mylyn and Eclipse:

- Recording the task activity helps us to reuse it whenever needed in future.
- It reduces the reviewer time drastically.
- It also improves the developer productivity.
- It educates the organized way of working to the developer community.
- It reduces the collaboration communication burden.
- It helps the developer to be focused on his/her tasks.

I personally experienced the effective task management in my projects by piloting the Mylyn tool using an Eclipse IDE and monitoring the pros and cons of the tool. Moreover this helps me to convince our clients in terms of the assured productivity improvements. There are two good articles presented through IBM from the Mylyn team explaining the tool features and its usage. The following are the links.

Part#1, http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/java/library/j-mylyn1/
Part#2, http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/java/library/j-mylyn2/

What is Medical Transcription?

2009-04-16T00:48:00.000-07:00

According to US laws, in every Hospital or Health Care Unit, each patient-related activity and procedure must be meticulously documented and then added to the patient's permanent record. In hospitals across US, doctors do not have time to update the medical records of their patients. Verbal dictation is by far the most common method for documenting and reporting the results of examinations and procedures. Physicians use either a cassette based or a digital voice dictation system for recordings. The process of converting this voice dictation to a typewritten format (hard or soft) is called Medical Transcription (MT).

It involves receiving dictation by tape, digital system, or voice file using earphones, a foot pedal for start and stop control and a word processing programme. Here are some of the basic skills needed to become an MT:

- Sound knowledge of English

- Good auditory skills

- Strong editing skills

- An eye for detail

- Typing and basic knowledge of computers

- Life/biological sciences or Pharmacy background (preferred)

PCMM milestone

2009-04-16T00:39:00.000-07:00

PCMM journey at SPI has been an interesting one with lots of learning. Being part of this process last year and getting involved in the overall consolidation of ratings definitely helped me in understanding the process better and collating all the required artifacts. March 14th 2009 was indeed a historic day when SPI got PCMM level 3 certifiedI!

Active Sizing

2009-04-16T00:37:00.000-07:00

I've been enjoying the discussions that we are having ever since the introduction of the "Active Sizing" concept into the PMT. Thanks to the SQA team who have come up with "Active Sizing" which is only a partial solution in bridging the gap between the "Cost to SPI" versus the "APDR" productivity metric that is tracked in software projects.

Introduction of "Active Sizing" will now expect projects to be reporting all the activities (both Completed and Active) on a monthly basis but the effort towards project management, training and SQA activities and instances where projects are booking time for “no work” (wait-time) is a discussion point of its own.Should see some interesting sessions soon :-)

Measuring Utilization

2009-04-16T00:35:00.000-07:00

One of the key indicators of the health of any IT organization is how busy the resources are. During the boom times, it was common for several outsourcing companies to maintain a large pool of resources on bench. This was done for multiple reasons - large projects that would materialize within days, uncontrollable attrition, new offices starting, aggressive growth plans, etc. But this is the age of lean companies. And the more utilized the resources are, lesser are your overheads. That poses the question of how utilization needs to be measured. Ofcourse the most simple way would be to take a ratio of resources who are invoiced to total resources on any given project. This means that the utilization (for that project) is a fixed number throughout the year (assuming no change in resource count & no change in invoice amounts). A better way would be to track hours invoiced versus total hours spent by all resources. We could refine it further by adding financial data i.e revenues generated on the project to total overheads of the project. A small project might look really good from an hours based utilization but monetarily, it could be that our overheads are much higher than revenues. Ofcourse financial analysis is only one parameter and projects could be done for strategic reasons (getting into new domains, the upside of winning a large project, etc). Neverthless, utilization measurement is critical in IT outsourcing and vendors ought to focus on improvements year on year to stay in the race.

How my mom is proud even during recession!

2009-03-25T22:23:00.000-07:00

As the cliché goes, whenever the US sneezes, the world catches a cold. The most deadly Picornavirus affecting countries is “Recession”. This word I lately realized is more contageous to non-IT people than the IT businesses.

Back home it's a wave that everyone wants to be part of, and everyone wants to show they know. While it's often funny to listen to the weird misconceptions people have about recession, it gets irritating if it goes too far.

The familiar sentence is arguably one of the most frequently asked questions these days, losing only slightly to the even graver one is “did your company fire you?” IT and related topics have such a popular following here, most do not know what they are following, but just drift along to be ‘in evidence’.

I sat along mom to brief her through the definition & causes (thanks to much appreciated education my grandparents provided her, I never have to use lay-man language). I told her that recession is a decline in a country's gross domestic product (GDP) growth for two or more consecutive quarters of a year.

Why does it occur she asked and I told her it is when consumers lose confidence in the growth of the economy and spend less. This leads to a decreased demand for goods and services, which in turn leads to a decrease in production, lay-offs and a sharp rise in unemployment. Investors spend less as they fear stocks values will fall and thus stock markets fall on negative sentiment.

I still saw lot of questions in mom’s expression. Is there anything you are worried about I asked her. “Yes will recession hit SPI” she asked. Coming to my rescue was the recruitment ad that company put up in one of the local papers here with punch line “When every one is firing we are hiring”. She was happy about the Mangalore operations SPI started. I remember Sid telling me that here in Mysore when parents are happy about a company they will not only make sure kids working there stay happy & focused but also put a word of mouth “Branding” about the company & why the budding engineers fresh out of college should start career there.

Next few days I saw mom discussing lot of aspects on recession & how SPI is sailing smooth. Never has she missed to portray SPI setting foot in Mangalore. How we are planning to double our size when other companies are talking about lay offs. Thanks to the confidence she has on SPI I don’t have to attend various ceremonies happening. She never forgets to reason out my absence in all the functions she attends & I miss by “she has lot of work”.

Medical Transcription, Mangalore & Mysore; ‘M’ is the buzz word at SPI these days VP announced. I have added “Mom” in the list too.

Future Trends in Retail Industry

2009-03-22T23:31:00.000-07:00

Any business that sells goods to individual consumers is a retail establishment. Retail establishments are one of the largest industries in most parts of the world; in the United States, 12 percent of all jobs are involved in retail. This retail industry has changed a lot in the last two decades. It used to be comprised of a wealth of small, often family-operated shops, department stores, and shopping malls. Today, however, it is increasingly common to see people doing their shopping in large mass merchandise stores, specialty stores, or online.

Downturn in the global economy means that the future of retail industry will be shaky. Consumers are curbing their spending. Bargain shopping is emerging. Department stores are suffering a decrease in popularity. However strong companies are growing stronger, and the less competitive ones are being swallowed up in this bad economy. The retail industry has started using of CRM, consumer resource management and RFID, radio frequency identification. With CRM, companies started using the data collected about their customers to figure out and suggest other products that might interest them. RFID is being increasingly used to make supply chain management more efficient, since with RFID a company can precisely track their inventory, knowing when more of something is needed as well as how much. This is done by placing a small chip on the packaging of the item itself.

Recently it has been seen that e-retailers, online shopping are doing good comparatively than in-store. Another recent trend is lifestyle retailing, in which stores will sell both apparel and household items of the same style, i.e. Urban Outfitters. Ecologically friendly products are an emerging trend, with items are made through sustainable practices, are environmentally friendly, energy efficient, or “green” in other ways rising in popularity.

Impact of Recession on Indian IT - Part 3 (Final)

2009-03-19T01:51:00.000-07:00

In the past articles, we looked at the root causes and the impacts of Recession. Let us now discuss the strategies that firms can use to control the severity:

Short term Strategies -
Flexible Approach: IT companies need to be flexible in their approach towards clients. Renegotiating Deals is one of the options: In the current scenario, IT companies can look forward to deals with sticky revenues. The deals can now be renegotiated at discounted billing rates but with longer time periods which can ensure strong cash flow pipeline. Operational Efficiency: IT companies need to improve overall operational efficiency. Cost cutting should be a regular exercise and not just one time effort when there is recession. One of the ways is by reducing operational cost like spending what is directly linked to productivity or business; reducing the number of live meetings and doing them online or via video conferences, delay wasteful expenditure, removing the frills like subsidized food etc.
Employee Change Management: Optimum resource utilization by reducing cost is one of the major challenges for the companies. Communication channels should be open. Apprehensions in terms of job loss, reduced salaries should be addressed by the top management. Gossip and rumors harm the productivity and demoralize employees.
Companies need to improve the motivation levels of employees. Linking productivity with compensation and introducing variable salary is one of the tried and tested ways to improve productivity. One can no longer take his/her job for granted. Use this as an opportunity to tighten recruitment and retention processes. However, instead of a complete stop to all recruitment, the IT industry should use this period for a meaningful introspection and a substantial realignment of its hiring and retention processes. Under the pressure to cut cost, companies are heavily resorting to laying off employee in large numbers. It is true that non performer should leave and the number of people on the bench should be reduced but instead of handing over pink slips to them, they should be asked to deliver. Reducing the salaries of employees by a certain percentage is also one of the options.
Tighten the Belt: Any company can shed 10% of its cost without any real pain. This is as good an opportunity as any to remind knowledge workers that 30% - 40% raise year after year is not the natural order of things.

Medium term-
Spread Risk: As of now, for most of the IT companies majority of their revenues come from US market, the dependency on one market should be reduced. They should spread the risk. Companies need to explore other markets including domestic markets. US accounts for about 60 percent of the total IT spending. They should explore other markets outside USA.
Diversification: Sway with the flow of the times. Instead of just focusing on company’s core competencies, provide services in the next best domain for which there is demand. Meanwhile companies should arm them with other emerging technologies which will reduce its dependency on a single product or service. Companies can look for product development if there is a demand for the product
Adopt open source software: In times when companies have to work under tight budget, the open source companies will have upper hand than closed source counterparts. Unix based systems shifting to more cost effective Linux Servers. These migrations will accelerate if corporate IT budgets are cut.
Risk-Sharing: When our US client is nervous and unwilling to invest, and so puts his own expansion plans on hold, the one thing vendors can do is propose something different than the tried and tested ‘time and materials’ or even ‘price for guaranteed volumes’ proposition. It may not be enough to point out that outsourcing will save him money – when he is contemplating 100% saving by not launching that expansion or change initiative at all. Participate in the growth of their clients. In current scenario, the clients are likely to expect overall solutions from vendors. Offer him a business proposition where we share risk - share in the upside (and downside) rather than simply get a fixed revenue and manage costs (which is all most Indian companies do, even the best of them)?. For instance, IT services company need to start offering customers a fee per user (customer’s customer) or royalty models rather than ’60 man-months to build this system’. If the client does well, we do well. Needless to say, it also means we have to learn how to assess the client’s prospects in his market and learn how to actually help him sell better in his markets. It means we will have to think like venture capitalists and investors rather than suppliers.
Business Processes: Need to take a re look at the business processes. This is the time to redefine and strengthen business processes. In recession times companies shy away from R&D, they are in a dilemma whether to invest or no. Hire black belt Six Sigma employees or encourage employees to go in for Six Sigma certifications which will streamline processes and reduce the overall cost. Studies indicate that companies save up to 30% cost by hiring black belt six sigma employees
Employee skill development: Address the skills shortage and train the resources into multi skills.This quiet period needs to be used to get the existing resource pool ready for the next big wave. Most programmers are too caught up in the daily tasks to catch up on the latest technical advances, and appreciate breakthroughs that will sweep the IT world. To address this gap, workshops and technical trainings to educate the workforce should be held at regular intervals. Similar sessions on soft-skills and cultural orientation programs should be conducted to make the people more customer-centric. Look for internal mechanism for soft skills training of employees. Invest in employee development. Employees can go in for certifications for skill enhancement which will help in personal and professional career growth. Look for internal mechanism for employee development like web based training. Change HR policies.

Long term Strategies:
Innovate: The Indian government and IT/BPO industry need to focus on moving up the value chain by cultivating deep and enduring innovation across three dimensions - a) Business model innovation; b) Knowledge innovation; and c) Ecosystem innovation. The innovation needs to be done in three areas that are connected to the information technology industry of India such as business models, ecosystems and knowledge. The trick is to innovate - not necessarily do different things, but do things differently. Create a culture of innovation.
Collaboration with the industry and academia: Create an environment for innovation that could be carried for a long time: The IT sector has to expand to other countries and tap new centers of emerging demand and expand not only in terms of quantity but also in terms of quality of its skilled labor by introducing appropriate changes in the system in collaboration with the industry and academia. This calls for a transformation of Business Process Outsourcing to Knowledge Process Outsourcing (KPO) units. Figures suggest that only 25 percent of the total graduates in India have employable 'production-worthy' skills.
Build Brands: One great business value of brands is that they are relatively immune to economy-wide downturns. The emotional hold they have on customers is such that they can make the customer forget their hard times when they buy them. Indian companies have stayed away from building brands abroad because it is enormously expensive to do so. But increasingly, it is within the reach of Indian companies today

SUMMARY:

This is indeed a tricky time for the Indian IT industry, but there's no real reason to panic. The IT guns showed great character and resilience during the years following the dot com bust. They are wise enough to read the signs and realize that change is in order. With a slight course correction and an unswerving view on the long-term, the India IT industry can emerge stronger and bigger.

Recession and Retail Industry

2009-03-11T04:54:00.000-07:00

News headlines are highly depressing as the economic meltdown is adversely affecting the entire world. But still I read them, especially the news related to money market, retail industry, consumer behavior and various other related articles. It is a rough ride out there and a significant effect is on the retail industry.

There are lots of factors that affect, like consumers’ discretionary spending power is being sapped by higher energy & higher food costs and to beat it all there is job loss. It’s a trickle down effect impacting the retailers negatively. With the goal of maintaining their gross margins as it is critical to be in business, Retailers are cutting prices and limiting inventories. During the past when there was recession and when people cutback on spending, many companies came up with innovative ideas to remain in business and maintain gross margins. To name a few ideas -retailers introduced rebates and discount commissions, banks introduced interests on checking or current accounts, supermarkets & departments began accepting credit cards to encourage people buy and spend money. All were appropriate offers for the times. These offers are still good and have survived beyond the recession times. The companies that invented and employed these recessionary response strategies fared well.

Today, the government’s stimulus funds may help the industry but the retailers should do well to acknowledge the recessionary state of mind, and figure out the best way to respond to it. When money is moving freely, retailers don't have to be all that creative to get their share of it. But when money is slow flowing, it's not enough to just show up. History shows that the retailers who survive economic setbacks are the ones who get inventive, get resourceful, and get noticed. In one of the news paper articles it stated that car sales will slow down. but it’s true that car sales aren't going to stop altogether in tough economic times. Toyota understands that, and is positioning itself not only to be the "official car of the 2009 recession," but also on maintaining its global domination afterwards. First, it is focusing on being accessible with hybrid and ultra-compact vehicles that people will want to buy now, and keep in the future. Second, it is focusing on being affordable by involving suppliers in the design process to save an estimated $10 billion. Third, it is focusing on being cooperative by giving free efficiency consulting to its own suppliers. The suppliers cut costs, pass the savings onto Toyota, who can, in turn, give its customers a break. This is one of the best examples to get creative and innovative to remain in business. I believe that the best place for everyone to focus is on supply chain strategies, for the right retailers; today is a time of great opportunity to eliminate redundancy and increase efficiencies in operations to make profit. Make your supply chain more “Collaborative” “Responsive” & “Agile”

More to come on supply chain strategies,…….

Impact of Recession on Indian IT Industry - Part 2

2009-03-05T02:08:00.000-08:00

Impact of the crisis on IT Industry:

1. Reduced Revenues: Reduced demand for IT services and products in overseas market has reduced profit margins of IT companies
2. Reduced cash flow: Delayed payments from clients have reduced cash flow availability for the companies. This has resulted into deferred spending decisions of the companies. The end result in change in consumer behavior thus trickling the effect to other sectors of the economy
3. Profitability under pressure from all sides: Profitability is under pressure from all sides both vendors and clients
4.Access to Financing: Banks are reluctant to lend money thus further reducing the spending/investing capability of organizations and delay in any investments what so ever
5. Manpower Resources: Reduced revenues and profit margins have forced companies to go into cost cutting including layoffs, salary reduction, job insecurity etc

Challenges for IT Industry :

1. Maintaining Productivity: One of the major challenges for the Information technology industry is to maintain its excellent performance standards.
2. Reduced Revenues: Reduced demand for IT services has reduced their profit margins.
3. Low Cost Advantage: This has been the biggest USP of Indian IT industry but it can no longer take solace in low cost advantage. With stiff competition from new emerging markets like China, Philippines, Korea it may not remain its USP for long. Though low cost advantage is very important at this stage but the organizations need to offer more value for money and not just low cost. Other markets like China, Philippines are going to be strong contenders in future. The challenge now is how to maintain this low cost advantage in turbulent times without compromising on the quality.
4. Resource Utilization: Improving productivity and optimum resource utilization is the biggest challenge for IT industry. The dual challenge before IT companies is to improve productivity on the one hand and reducing operating costs on the other.
5. Employee Change Management: IT Employees are going through a turbulent times psychologically with the sword of lay- offs and salary cuts hanging above their necks all the times.

To be continued...

Technology driving Business

2009-02-25T04:55:00.000-08:00

Talk to a non-technologist and they will tell you that Technology is nothing more than a hype and as with any other trends it will disappear soon. Here is an interesting example of how technology can make a real difference to a business especially in these tough times. A leading nationwide, retailer offers deep discounts every now and then (think of the diwali bumper sale offers at Big Bazaar!) in order to attract consumers and boost sales. This is also a great way to reduce inventories and stay in tune with the latest product trends. Today, the retailer offers these discounts in all stores i.e across the nation. But think about this for a second. It could very well be that in some states or regions, certain products are doing really well and there is no need to offer discounts. So we need a way to control discounts by region and by product. You can add more dimensions to this - There are certain common seasons like christmas, back to school, etc. But there are also seasonal variations (for instance end of winter, ethnicity specific events, etc). And then there is consumer profiles, age demographics, income levels - you get the idea! Here is where technology comes to the rescue! Within a couple of months, an application can be developed that takes into account all these variables and shows you the most optimal prices. Reports can be customized to slice and dice the data. Feed historical data and low and behold - the savings are very visible!

So next time you talk to a poet or a dramatist - dont let them belittle technology so easily ;)

Impact of Recession on Indian IT Industry - Part 1

2009-02-24T01:04:00.000-08:00

Introduction: In these times of global recession and economic slowdown, the news about layoffs, cost cutting and reduced profit margins dominate the print and electronic media. In this three part article, I would like to cover :

Magnitude & Origin of Global Recession
Impact of the crisis on Indian IT
How to mitigate the adverse effects of this crisis

Before I throw light on the implications of global recession, its repercussions and the challenges before IT industry let us discuss in brief the magnitude of global recession and how it originated.

The root cause: Record levels of debt
This global recession is the outcome of years of public debt which originated in US. Debt – GDP Ratio: 400% in last quarter of 20th century. It is not one single crisis but a heady mix of three crises.
- The bubble in the US mortgage market resulted into Asset devaluation
- The leverage in banks’ balance sheets resulted in Low capital ratio
- The increased reliance of banks on short term funding has resulted into liquidity squeeze

Vicious Cycle- Sub Prime Crisis – Asset Devaluation -- Low Capital Ratio (concern about banks’ solvency) -- Dysfunctional Funding Market (credit squeeze) - Derisking and Deleveraging - Asset Devaluation.
To some extent all industries are feeling the heat of recession. This is especially true for those companies which depend on US for the greater part of their revenue such as IT industry. IT industry has always been considered as a privileged industry firstly because of the tax breaks that it enjoys and secondly because of the nature of its work. This is one of the industries on which the global recession has had a huge impact. Here are some interesting statistics that quantify the current scenario:

Annual Global Employment Trends:
- Global Unemployment in 2007: 161 million
- Global Unemployment in 2008: 179 million (increase in number of jobless by 18 million)
- Global Unemployment in 2009: 198 million jobless or 230 million incase it is severe. (Increase of 30 million
or 50 million in 2009)

India specific trends:
The contribution of IT and ITeS to national GDP in 2007-08 : 7%
Av.Growth rate of IT companies during last 15 years – 20% -30% /annum
Av. Growth rate of IT companies during recession – 10%- 15%/annum
IT & ITeS yield indirect employment with four additional jobs being created in the economy for every one job created in the sector. Given this, we get an idea of the scope of impact of this recession on our IT industry.

To be continued......

Future of Medical Transcription & SPI

2009-02-24T00:54:00.000-08:00

Medical Transcription (MT) business has been there for more than a decade in India now. There is speculation that MT business will not survive for long due to research being done in Speech Recognition. The author feels that this is incorrect. People will still be needed to edit the output of speech recognition software since there will be a lot of errors. People with good listening skills and good grasp of English fundamentals and common sense will not only survive but will flourish. Amongst other BPO areas, MT is lot better than working in call centres with the graveyard shifts as MT can be done during any part of the day or night (usually there are standard shifts and MT can also be done in the comforts of one’s home).

Here at Software Paradigms, MT business has been growing steadily. In the last 2-3 years, head count has increased as new clients are added. In a few years, SPI could very well be the largest MT company in the world. If one has the skills required for MT he/she can easily give a try and learn the comforts of working hard. It is a great opportunity for those who want to work hard in a growing business area.

APART from US

2009-02-23T03:28:00.000-08:00

23-Feb-2009 -

Apart from us (Some of the Team SPIrit members and support staff) we had only the
"APART from US" at SPI Offshore office today due to Shivarathri - holiday.
(Tough to decipher right? I thought this was the right one for this occasion - "Accounts Payable Accounts Receivable Team from United States").

After the customary welcome and intro, "APART" had a walk around SPICity and were really impressed with it.

They would be closely working with Rajesh and his team in the coming days with some training sessions and live activities planned.

Wishing the APAR Team a great time in Mysore and SPICity!

"Way to Go" - Mangalore!

2009-02-22T08:09:00.000-08:00

19 Feb 2009 is going to be remembered for two special reasons in the history of SPI.
1. Formal announcement to the world about SPI's intentions to open a center in Mangalore in support of a rapidly growing Medical Transcription business!
2. An excellent meeting with one of the potential customers in systems integration.
Both of these have been examples of SPI diversifying during these tough times.
To add to this, another customer visit on Feb 23rd 2009 for a confirmed AR BPO work augurs very well for Inspinity (SPI's BPO).
Come Feb 26th 2009, the SPI team will be chugging to its new destination - Mangalore.
The new "Way to Go" :-)

Who said we are in recession times?

2009-02-22T07:58:00.000-08:00

Last week, “Team SPIrit” happened to witness a unique and first of its kind experience during a potential customer visit.

The numbers displayed and discussed made everyone look at each other in awe as they were hard to believe. Sanjay at this moment aptly said “who said we are in recession times?”

Need to wait and see if SPI could strike a deal here.

The Business of Technology

2009-02-04T22:16:00.000-08:00

What drives the business of technology? Discuss wide ranging topics like Outsourcing, Domain expertise, disruptive business trends and more in this forum!