Nokia abandoning Symbian for Windows Phone

It is interesting to read that Nokia is abandoning its mobile operating system, Symbian, for competing Microsoft's  Windows Phone (See - Sinking Nokia Prepares to Abandon Symbian for Windows Phone) Both Nokia and Microsoft believe that by combining Microsoft's 'excellent' user experience with Nokia's 'excellent' hardware, they could be in a position where they can compete with iPhone and Google' Android. Well, makes sense :-), especially, when both these companies are not doing good in mobile market.

Personally, I think the most important thing that these companies have to realize is how soon can they build a community of 'free' programmers who would be willing to build mobile apps. The reason for success of iPhone and Android to a large extent has been because they have been able to position themselves as an excellent platform and monetary tool to programmers world-wide.

Indian domestic market- Numbers for Obama to look at

While Obama is putting up policies for preventing any outsourcing to non-US company, a look at Indian IT domestic market would show that most of the work is being done by IBM with govt. being the major customer for IBM.

Reference - Indian Express

'Extreme Offshoring': Guess whats this?

I don't know why some brands have a penchant for creating new words ! One such new word added to dictionary is "Extreme offshoring" used by Infy in its latest press release Infosys plans 'extreme offshore' model to tide over visa crisis.

Well, after going through the news article and subsequent googling, I figured out its nothing more than simple off-shoring, that is, moving jobs to offshore locations.

Well, probably I should put this word in my sales presentations :-)

Digital fasting - required?

'Digital  fasting' is a recent term which refers to withdrawal from all online identities, like the ones on facebook, orkut, blogs and twitter. Contemplating digital fasting: How much Internet is too much? talks about this recent trend in detail.

Knowingly or unknowingly, all of us are addicted to internet and our online presence. Personally, I don't see a problem in this. All web 2.0 tools are a good way to keep connected not only more frequently but also cheap (compare the price of a SMS to an international friend vs the cost of dropping him an elaborate e-mail). Blogs like this one are an important part of a virtual identity and a way to connect with unknown.

I guess the whole problem is one of 'excess'. People start their day with Facebook and twitter with updates as unimportant as "I hv got up" to "hate going to loo" with a friend list that responds to such tweets or updates ! Obviously, the time saved from such 'excesses' can be better utilized in making a face to face connection and face to face discussions.

True cost of hedging

An interesting article from McKinsey on hedging (The right way to hedge) tells that apart from general buy and ask spread cost that's associated to hedging, there are more indirect cost to it as well which needs to be considered. The following exhibit shows the other variables. 

The details of what these indirect costs mean and what should the overall strategy for hedging should be has been discussed in the article. 

An Intro to Social CRM

In nutshell, Social CRM adds the 'social' angle to traditional CRM. 'Social' means use of web 2.0 concepts such as blogs, wikis, social networking, twitters etc. Social CRM does not replace existing CRM efforts – instead it adds more value. In fact, Social CRM augments social networking to serve as a new channel within existing end-to-end CRM processes and investments.

For a company, it means -
1. How it intends to participate in the ongoing conversations taking place in the industry.
2. How it embrace non-traditional influential people like popular industry bloggers, and social sites on the web frequented by audience.
3. How it engages in discussions on social networks to help build the kind of reputation needed to become a valued member of the online communities important to the business.
4. How it adds information from the social network to find out how successful a campaign is running and/or the chances of an account success.
4. How a company uses customer feedback to improve existing products and find innovative ideas on new ones.
5. How to respond to customer tweets in real time and also incorporate them into the knowledge base as well as share them with partners

A more formal and high level representation of social CRM is explained in this diagram from Deloitte.

In the long run, I believe, social CRM will likely just become part of CRM and no distinction will be necessary.

Arvind Eye Hospital- another innovation

Arvind Eye Hospital is an example of how low cost, self-sustainable CSR (corporate social responsibility) models can be built. I remember Arvind was my first case study that I deliberated upon in my MBA program at XLRI. Today's concept of CSR is not about doing a charity which is funded by big corporate houses but one where a corporate provides a kick start and then the whole model works on its own to generate money for itself and serve the cause of society. There are number of examples of such CSRs. Coming back to Arvind, for people unfamiliar with this name, it provides free and paid eye care facilities where the paid eye care subsidizes the free. The health-care facilities at the hospital is world class and there is no difference between whats available to paid patient and to free. The hospital also runs manufacturing facilities where they manufacture glasses which is one-fourth the market-price.

The latest innovation from Arvind has been low cost maintenance of high-end equipments. These equipments were traditionally managed by costly technicians most of which took up contracts of similar equipments in an area introducing delays in servicing in case a complaint arose. Arvind started training some low-end support staff of their hospital leading to most of the maintenance work being done in-house than outsourcing it. As the word spread, more such hospitals from India started sending their folks to Arvind for training and soon Arvind had a dedicated center for training. This center today trains people from other third world countries too including Vietnam, Nigeria etc.

I would suggest readers to read more about Arvind. Obviously, there is more to read and learn from such CSR models.