Journey of Samvad !!!

The Marketing Guru- Philip Kotler

Contributed by: Chandni Tolaney (2012-2014), WeSchool

The most dreadful thing for the first year students was the 600 odd pages textbook of Philip Kotler.Although the Indian examples mentioned in the South Asian Perspective of the Kotler-Keller-Koshy-Jha were easy to relate to the concepts mentioned in the chapter.Philip Kotler (born 27 May 1931 in Chicago) is an American academic focused on marketing. The author of Marketing Management among dozens of other textbooks and books, he is the S.C. Johnson & Son Distinguished Professor of International Marketing at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University.

Marketing Students specifically read Marketing Management by Philip Kotler to understand the core nature of Marketing in Corporate terms.Today Kotler is considered to be the best Marketing mind in business world and his experiences in the form of booksare helping a lot of students to understand marketing better and in a more efficient manner. Also a lot of Professionals from Corporates and Professors take the lessons from Kotler’s books.

The most distinguishing fact about Philip Kotler is that he never won any degree in Marketing. He did his master’s from the University of Chicago and then did Ph.D. in economics from Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He served different positions in Corporate before becoming a Marketing Professor in North Western University. His articles in ‘Financial Times’ and ‘New York daily’ are appreciated throughout the years and received an award in 1985 for distinguished Marketer of the year.

CRUX of Kotler

·   He always writes about Marketing as the primary activity of the Organization. Many Companies who use to concentrate on Manufacturing only, are focusing more on marketing to promote their Manufacturing.

• He gave more Importance to Customers than anything else in its books. Company’s focus needs to be on Customers rather anything on else.
• The most important thing here is that he separates the Marketing from Selling as large number of people use to think Marketing as same as Selling. The confusion was corrected by the examples which he put to clear the differences between both the terms.

Work of Mouth Publicity in Today's Era

Contributed by: Omkar Kelkar (2012-2014) , WeSchool

In today’s times, the entire world has come very close due to Internet and various social Media. It is now possible to connect with any individual quite easily irrespective of the geographical boundaries. Due to these developments, the word of mouth is increasingly becoming popular. Many times wesee Facebook posts such as “Which smartphone should I buy” and “Which college should I apply”. All the expert friends are very happy to answer the queries and they give their opinions which are very crucial in making a choice.In fact, some of them insist so much that we feel very convinced to accept their opinions without a second thought. Thus, word-of-mouth has now become words-on-Facebook.

Word of Mouth is increasingly becoming popular in products where we have little or no knowledge and in things where we feel it is very difficult to make a choice. The most common situations where word of mouth becomes important is especially when we buy electronic goods- we often get confused due to the large number of brands at a competing price. One option which we adopt is putting the question on social networking sites and getting the answer without much trouble. The second situation is mainly when we want to take important career decisions such as choosing a college or deciding when to do MBA. The main advantage of taking decisions based on word of mouth in these cases is that we have insufficient information and it makes sense to ask the people who have “been there and done that”. Experiences of others can be leveraged and shared to take appropriate decisions. Thus, the satisfaction level of a person will decide not only whether the company retains him as a customer but also determine how many people does he recommend. What is very important is that due to the advancement of social network, a person can influence decisions of large number of people unlike earlier days where word of mouth was only face-to-face. But now, imagine the impact of giving product reviews which hundreds of friends are reading and taking decisions based on that.

Other important applications which make use of the word of mouth are the e-commerce websites which not only describe the product, but lets users give reviews of them. Users can also give stars 1 to 5 for the product. This makes it very easy for new customers to make a choice. Also, the number of reviews is mentioned which help in determining the trend of how many people are buying the product. In fact many people have become so dependent on reviews that they don’t even think on their own and simply follow the reviews and make choices.Sites such as Goodreads.com help in deciding which book to read, tripadvisor.com gives recommendations on tours/trips, sites like imdb give movie reviews while some like glassdoorgive company/job reviews. So, the word of mouth in this case is not just limited to products but also has an impact on important decisions in life. Word of mouth has now become a part of almost all phases of life right from decisions of school admission up to investment of retirement corpus. And its influence has multiplied several times due to social networks.

While there are lots of advantages of word of mouth recommendations, there are some things which are negative. The decision making power of an individual has reduced and “herd mentality” has increased. People have become very lazy to try different things themselves and blindly follow the so-called experts who may misguide them in some instances. Also innovation is disappearing since people feel safer to follow the tried and tested path rather that doing something new which does not have word of mouth reviews.Word of mouth thus has to be certainly used for considering various opinions but should not be followed blindly so that it kills our creativity and increases dependence.

Image Source: flickriver.com

Adam Smith

Contributed by: Chandni Tolaney (2012-2014), WeSchool

He is the Scottish philosopher who is best known for his work An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations. Another famous work of this pioneer of political economy is The Theory of Moral Sentiments. He was born on 5 June 1923 in OS Kirkcaldy, Scotland. He studied in one of the best secondary schools there till the age of 14 and later entered University of Glasgow and studied moral philosophy.

The Wealth of Nations was published in 1776,the book offers one of the world's first collected descriptions of what builds nations' wealth and is today a fundamental work in classical economics. This is the reason why no class of Economics goes without a mention of this book.Through reflection over the economics at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution the book touches upon broad topics as the division of labor, productivity and free markets.The book received splendid response and its first edition was sold out in the first six months.

Back in Edinburgh, Adam Smith moved in intellectual circles and gave a number of public lectures that brought him to the attention of the wider intellectual public such that at the age of twenty-eight he became Professor of Logic at Glasgow University in 1751. Shortly thereafter, in 1752, Adam Smith secured the more richly rewarded professorial chair of Moral Philosophy at the University of Glasgow.

Some of the interesting facts about Adam Smith:

• ·         As a child he was always close to his mother and she was the one who motivated him to pursue his scholarly ambitions
• ·         He remained a bachelor his entire life
• ·         Smith was a reserved and absent minded individual much inclined to enjoy the books in his own library
• ·         In 1777 he was named lord rector of the University of Edinburgh and in 1778 was appointed as commissioner of customs in Scotland
• ·         During the latter part of his life, he took a tutoring position that allowed him to travel throughout Europe, where he met other intellectual leaders of his day
• ·         Smith has been commemorated in the UK on banknotes printed by two different banks, making him the first Scotsman to feature on an English banknote

On July 17th, 1790, Adam Smith died at Edinburgh; he was buried in the Canongate churchyard.

Book Review: Connect The Dots

Contributed by: Aniket Sawant (2012-2014), WeSchool

Rashmi Bansal’s latest book ‘Connect the Dots’ is a follow up to her preceding and hugely successful best-seller ‘Stay Hungry, Stay Foolish’. On the paths of her first book, which had stories of successful entrepreneurs who were graduates from the IIM’s, ‘Connect the Dots’ is a book comprising of stories of 20 entrepreneurs without a formal MBA degree, who had a vision and the audacity to find their own way to live their dreams.

The book has stories classified in 3 main sections:

·  Jugaad

Here in, we have stories of entrepreneurs like Prem Ganapathy, the founder of Dosa Plaza, Kunwer Sachdev, Su-Kam inverters and Sunitha Ramnathkar, Fem Pharma Care. These people had no formal training or experience in business. They learnt primarily through observations, experimentations and application of mind.

·  Junoon

This section comprises of stories of people who were driven by a particular passion in their mind or an idea. N Sriram, the visionary of Crossword and Sunil Bhu, Flander’s Dairy along with other inspiring entrepreneurs form this section. 

·   Zubaan

The third and the final section includes creative geniuses, who needed a platform to showcase their amazing abilities and after doing so they eventually turned out to become successful businessmen themselves. The inspiring stories of Abhijit Bansod, the creator and designer of Titan Raga, Paresh Mokashi, the film-maker who’s movie ‘Harishchandrachi Factory’ took Marathi film industry to unparalleled heights and Kalyan Varma who left a dream job at Yahoo and pursued his passion of wild life photography are stellar examples which prove that Artists can cross milestones when it comes to entrepreneurship.

Rashmi Bansal has yet again succeeded in delivering the best to her readers. Her simple yet methodical and narrative style of writing has won the hearts of many. To know about an entrepreneur is one thing and to portray about them so effectively is another and Rashmi Bansal has managed to do it perfectly. So much that her writing surely inspires many a budding businessmen to emulate the success stories about the people she has covered in the book.

To sum it up, ‘Connect the Dots’ is a beautifully composed novel and it surely stands as a must read for the new generation of India.

Platform BPO - Platform for Growth

Contributed by: Omkar Kelkar (2012-2014), WeSchool

As the software industry is growing and it has matured to a great extent the thing that is worrying the IT Companies is “How to sustain the Growth” and how to find out ways to increase the revenue without increasing the workforce by the same rate. This is also called as non-linear growth.

Current situation is that if an IT company grows the revenue at 30 percent, it has to increase the workforce too by 30 percent which will not be sustainable in the long run. Thus the companies are looking at the non-linear growth models where revenue growth is faster than the workforce. The only thing that can make it possible is “Re-usability of applications and using Shared services”. One of the major area in which every IT company wants to invest for the long term is “Business Process as a Service (BPaaS)” or “Platform BPO” or “Technology cloud” which can improve the efficiency greatly and helps them to increase  revenue per employee and achieve a non-linear revenue trajectories.

What is Platform BPO?

Platform-based services can be defined as “hosted technology services delivered on a pay-as-you-use model.” When hosted technology services are offered on a managed services model, they are referred to as Business Process as a Service (BPaaS) or Platform BPO.

Platform BPO is basically a new business model in which the company uses Platform-based system as a service. This may be an ERP system such as SAP or Oracle. Not only is the Server managed by the vendor but the service delivery also is managed by the vendor. The company will get entire benefits of a full-fledged ERP system without actually owning them and without actually buying the license. The company simply has to pay for the implementation and maintenance according to the use.

Platform-based BPO is the new buzzword in the industry with most big players betting heavily on this segment. Though the concept of platform BPO has been around for some time, it is only now that they are picking up. Platform BPO marks a paradigm shift in the way outsourced business processes get delivered.

In Platform BPO, applications, infrastructure and BPO services are bundled into a single service framework where the vendor  takes complete ownership of customer’s non-core but critical activities, thus enabling them to focus on core and strategic functions. Platform BPO, a bundling of technology, consulting and BPO, helps synergistic value creation and delivers transformational value using strategies such as global sourcing, technology innovation, process optimization, scale and centralization.

Platform BPO is about providing ‘Business Processing’ services using a domain rich vertical or horizontal application (platform). Good examples for Horizontal application would be F&A, Human Resource Outsourcing, and Procurement etc. There are innumerable vertical platforms. Some examples are Mortgage Processing, Collection Management, Insurance Benefits Administration, Policy Administration, and Claims Processing.

The Evolution of Platform BPO

Platform BPO has evolved gradually over the years from Pure BPO.

Image source : http://www.sourcingnotes.com/

Why Platform BPO

Platform BPO is best suited for Small and Medium Businesses (SMBs). These are companies which are showing growth but typically don’t have the resources to adopt a full-fledged ERP system. Even though they may afford to use ERP, there businesses are small and hence the capacity of ERP is wasted.

Hence they can adopt the Platform Based ERP system such as SAP Platform which is owned by a third party vendor. Once the implementation is done, the company can use the ERP system on pay-per-use basis. Typically the company can make a implementation contract along with the Service delivery contract for certain period e.g. 5 or 10 years.

The vendor studies the business process of the client and implements the ERP system. The vendor basically customizes the standard processes according to the requirements. Even though there are more than one client using the same ERP hosted by the vendor, the client data is strictly safe from the other tenants in the platform. Only the client specific data is provided according to which client is using the ERP. So, for e.g. if 3 companies A, B, and C are using the same platform based SAP system owned by vendor V, the companies will A B and C's data will not interfere with one another.

Who are in the Game.

There are 3 players in this space

1. Pure Play BPO Providers : These companies have a strong capability for Service delivery operations but they do not have the experience to implement and transform the business process to the technology platform. E.g. Genpact, WNS

2. IT Services Companies: They have a strong implementation capability. Many IT companies also have BPO division and hence they are best suited to adopt Platform BPO. The only thing they may lag is the domain expertise. E.g. Infosys, TCS

E.g. certain project may require the experts in US Payroll process which the IT Company may not have.

3. Product (Application) Vendors: They already have the product ready but they cannot make so much customizations that the vendors are looking at. E.g. Ariba

The boundaries of pure play BPO providers and IT Services companies have been shaken in the last few years and are virtually non-existent.  The percentage of product vendors going the BPO route is very less. However, the distinction between pure play BPO and IT Services companies is gone.

Book Review: I Too Had A Dream - Dr. Verghese Kurien

Contributed by: Susmita Paria, PGDM (2012-2014), WeSchool

 “In every crisis, if you look carefully, you will spot an opportunity. My insistence is on finding and seizing that opportunity.”  The above line is rightly quoted by Dr. Verghese Kurien in his autobiography; “I too had a dream”. His book will leave no stone unturned to give inspiration and motivate the reader at every page of this marvellous book.

A simple autobiography explaining how an individual can dare to dream, can dare to achieve what s/he aspires and how to turn tides in your favour with the simple mantra that “Nothing is Impossible”.

What will keep the readers hooked up is the truth mentioned right from Dr. Kurien’s disinterest to study Dairy Farming to taking up the manager’s role in farmer’s co-operative in Kaira District in Anand. The book takes the reader through the entire, detailed and a very vivid description of his life journey from thereon. How the “Amul” brand was born, developed, nurtured, diversified and how it is still growing creates ripples in the minds of readers and s/he yearns to know more and more. Mr. Kurien humbly mentions about the support he got from most notable people including Sardar Vallabhai Patel, Maniben (Sardar Patel’s daughter), Jawaharlal Nehru, Moraji Desai, Lal Bahadur Shastri etc at various phases of the cooperative and later on National Diary Development Board (NDDB), which made ‘Amul’ the largest food business brand of India.

The ‘Amul’ model of the cooperative movement not only made the farmers earn more, but also brought about a social revolution by empowering women, increasing the hygiene and medical standards of both people and cattle, breaking caste and religious distinctions, and most importantly making the nation self sufficient in milk production and distribution by implementing the famous ‘operation flood’ program across the nation through the cooperative model that he perfected through ‘Amul’.

Dr. Kurien passes the subtle message to the young generation that everything is possible if one believes in one’s self. He demonstrated Nationalism through the different endeavours in his life. A must read to understand and imbibe that Job Satisfaction, being altruistic is what matters and not money or a White Collared job. Fame and peace of mind is thus the by product of the former.