Human energy Crisis sucks Information Technology

Can you work for 43 hours a day? I repeat, 43 hours a day! You must be thinking I am not talking sense. But this is the true scenario for many of us who are working in the Information Technology sector. The exponential growth of user expectations and regulatory requirements led to multitasking. The decreasing headcount and increasing workload have immensely contributed to the fatigue factor of the employees. A study reveals that the impact of multitasking has compelled the techies to work for 43 hours a day.

Information Technology is now benchmarked not against line-of-sight competitors but against “best imaginable” practitioners. This has raised the performance bar for IT. But where is the energy to respond? The future CIOs will have to re-energize the human energy level of their teams. People who are always negative suck the energy level and they may be removed from the enterprise. The organizations should be exothermic and not endothermic. If you know the cost and value that IT generates for the business that will release all kinds of positive energy. So there is a need of World Class IT accounting.

We need to pass over fatigue as a motivator. Ingenious work requires intellectual thinking and emotional engagement. We need to ensure positive work culture by offering people a sense of security so that they can really focus on their work with enthusiasm. This will really improve productivity and will bring solution to lots of business problems.

Contributed By:
Rik Das
(Globsyn Business School)

Pix Source: http://energyzarr.typepad.com

Concerto with Dot Matrix

Old is gold. Once again this proverb is rightly proved with Mutek Electronic Music Festival. The festival is organized in Canada from June 2-6, 2010. Architect and installation artist Thomas McIntosh and composer and sound artist Emmanuel Madan has redifned the relationship between technological systems, culture and human experience in conspicuous ways. “Symphony for Dot Matrix Printer #2” will be performed to coordinate the operation of a variety of rapidly clacking dot matrix printers to produce musically fascinating sounds. Madan and MacIntosh have gathered as many dot matrix printer as they can and carefully auditioned each of them. Some of them print a lot faster, some of them print slower, some have low rumble sounds, some of them are more prickly. The duo vigilantly assembled the printers to make an orchestra.

Each printer is paired with an old PC, all of which are networked to a file server. At the beginning of the performance, each computer downloads the text it will print from a file server. Each then waits for instructions from another server, an old Next box in this case, for when to print some text on its printer. The PC is the musician, the text file is the score, the printer is the instrument, and the server, which instructs the PCs at the precise moment when to print a section of their files, serves as the conductor. Those hearing any given 10 seconds would associate it as nothing more than office noise, but a few minutes' exposure reveals amazing achievements of rhythm, harmony and composition.

Our society is fueled by the ideas of unending advancement. The archaic equipments can be readily used for a range of purposes. We have to think that how we are going to reuse the waste products even as ingredients to our progress. The “Symphony for Dot Matrix Printer” throw the leading light to this idea. This June the world is waiting to welcome the amazing achievements of melody, composed by the genius duo which open up new doors and ideas of tapping unused and abandoned computer equipments that can be readily used for other purposes.

Contributed By:
Rik Das
(Globsyn Business School)

Pix Source: www.fondation-langlois.org

Taming The Giant with Novelty

Which one is the world’s most valuable technology company based on market valuation? The answer that flashes in millions of minds is undoubtedly Microsoft. Unfortunately, this is the wrong answer. The population should bring in a paradigm shift in thinking while rating the topmost technology company. The correct answer is Apple. On 26th May,2010, Apple passed Microsoft to evolve as the leader based on market valuation.

People have started scratching their heads to discover the secret weapon of Apple that helped the company to surpass the software giant. If we observe carefully we may find out that Apple takes the time to explain things to the consumer that no other vendor bothers to do. This has played a key role in the success story. During the launching of Apple I- Pod , the tight synchronization with ITunes and FireWire support in speedy transfer has differentiated it from the existing MP3 players in the market. Apple has concentrated on conceptual marketing with simple tagline for iPod “1,000 songs in your pocket” that moved the mass.

Started with a smaller base Apple has continually dazzled the market with new things like iPod, iPhone, iPad. Traders seems to be somewhat bore with Windows and MS Office inspite of its billion dollar revenue. Traders may be considering Microsoft products as old business. On the contrary Apple built a lot of successful new businesses. The new addition in Apple’s success story is iPad which is somewhat in between phones and computers. Most consumers will easily understand the key features.

The Apple story once again proves that there is nothing permanent except change. Apple has converted their retail effort to practical laboratories where people can have easily accessible hands on classroom. Apple has succeeded where others failed miserably due to its novelty and uniqueness. The magic of education has driven the current success of Apple and has crowned it as the world leader.

Contributed By:
Rik Das
(Globsyn Business School)

Image Source: http://www.westmont.edu

Google TV : Redefining Entertainment

The Internet companies justify the law of Digital Darwinism. The one that adapts the best to the environment will be the most successful. Google TV has proved this fact once again. The attraction of audiovisual media for the mass is unquestionable and the indigenous entertainment device for people is the one and only television. However, in recent times the definition of entertainment has been changed with the introduction of computers. The web has become an interesting tool to find and access exciting internet contents. But the viewing quality is not always as good as the television.

Google has evolved with the solution with Google TV and created a huge impact in the marketing and media ecosystem. With Google Chrome built in it has revolutionized the traditional television combined with the power of Internet. One can easily move between the television and the web which opens up the television from a few hundred channels to millions of channels available across the web. The television no longer remains confined to video shows but has emerged as a multispecialty device. It is a photo slide show viewer, a gaming console, a music player and much more. The functionalities described are nothing but the beginning of the triumph. Google has already started collaboration with several companies to provide semantic search, personalized recommendation and social features for Google TV.

Google TV is the elicit solution for the population to experience their diversified likings of television and web on a single screen. You can start innovating sitting right in your living room with this new venture of Google.

Contributed By:
Rik Das
(Globsyn Business School)

E Commerce Promotional Techniques

To win in e-commerce you must promote. Your visitors won't hear about you unless you tell them about you. But don't dive in. Try out several promotional methods before you decide on the best combination for your products or services. There are no rules; the best combination will differ greatly from site to site. So test as many promotion methods as you can. Here are seven of the best for small to medium sites…

PR

PR is about getting magazines, newspapers, and e-zines to tell their readers about your site. This is hard. The editors demand interesting stories. To get ink, you need a twist. If you think you might make a good read, work hard on the PR. Ink is gold.

Referrals

If you have a great site, your visitors want to tell their friends about it. Make it easy for them and provide incentives to do so. Make it easy for them to send email to invite their friends to your site. Include the name and email of the referrer in that email. These will be some of the best leads you generate. Print Ads

Your potential customer reads magazines. Go there. Run small ads in publications carefully targeted at your customer. Keep the message minimal - just tell us what you sell and list your URL. Start with the cheapest classified ads in the best publications you can afford.

Banner Ads

Create a nice banner, buy lots of impressions, then watch the orders roll in. Simple, right? Not always. Find out if banners work for you. Create high quality banners. Run the banners on several well-targeted sites and buy enough impressions to determine if they perform.

Affiliate Programs

You should get other sites to send their visitors to your site. But how? Give them something. Provide a reciprocal link or give them a cut of the revenues generated from their referrals. Do not affiliate with mediocre sites.

Contests

Hold a drawing. You need a compelling prize, a recurring drawing, a database, and most importantly, a well-crafted email campaign as an adjunct to the contest. Manufacturers of unique and interesting items have the best chance of winning with a contest promotion.

Search Engines

All web businesses must implement an effective search engine strategy. Follow the basics - submit to search engines, insert meta tags, and use well-crafted titles, but don't obsess. Very few businesses thrive from search engine traffic alone. It is only one of the seven promotional methods you should try.

Internet business is tough. If you already have a great site and a compelling value proposition, you stand a chance. But if you are really serious, you must attend to promotion. Don't waste money. Test to see what works first. Then go for it - spend big money on promotion. Winners do.

Contributed By:
Rik Das
(Globsyn Business School)

NASSCOM CEO Summit: 'Beyond Horizon'

The National Association of Software and Services Company (NASSCOM), has organized its 1st. national event, “CEO Summit : Beyond Horizon” in Kolkata on 11th and 12th November 2008. NASSCOM is a global trade body comprising of member companies that includes software development, software services, software products, IT-enabled/BPO services and e-commerce. It has over 1200 members that includes 250 global companies.

The event has focused on the key issues of the industry today.

During the Inaugural Address, Mr. Som Mittal, President , Nasscom pointed out

• the effective use of tech resources by IT-BPO industry
• emphasized that its time to make investments with domain expertise
• that small industries need support for growth and prosperity to become big corporates

Mr. Raj Jain, Chairman and Managing Director , R S Software said that

• he truly believes Kolkata to deserve the brand for IT in India
• he recollected the memories of early days of today’s IT hub in Kolkata
• he admitted that the barren place on 14th Nov. 1991 has emerged a lot
• SME s being the core of Entrepreneur’s dream
• he suggested “SME Mantra”, viz., stay focused and stay flexible.

The phases of evolution of Satyam Computer Service Limited as described by Mr. Ramlinga Raju, Chairman, Satyam Computer Service Limited, has encouraged the participants to set new visions for life. Mr. Raju emphasized on the fact

• that knowledge allows growth
• that resources to be available globally
• to mitigate the risk by spreading access to customers beyond U.S
• focussed on leadership and innovations in offering newer services for customer benefits.

Kolkata has the capability of handling the many fold growth of Nasscom , said Shri Siddharth, Principle Secretary, Department of Information Technology, Govt. of West Bengal. He has the dream

• to connect the villages with broadband
• to make the villagers computer literate
• the children to handle computer like any other acquired reflex like cycling or swimming.

Dr. Debesh Das, Minister-in-Charge, Information Technology Deptt. has

• encouraged the SME s by revealing their contribution in quantity and quality towards the growth of the economy.
• described the present recession as a passing phase and addressed all to get ready for the next boom.
• ensured that Govt. will pay the subsidy for the rigorous training needed by IT companies.
• discloses that Govt. has taken up projects to support business to be started within 24 hours.

While addressing the session on Leveraging Global Delivery Management Mr. Ambarish Dasgupta, Executive Director, PWC, said that

• services sector has adopted Global Delivery Model model far later in compared to manufacturing.

Mr. Robert Latimore, partner, PWC, depicted the transition from outsourcing to global delivery model. He believes in providing

• maximum efficient service delivery with right skill, in right place and at right time
• his views are supported by the drivers of global delivery model
• drivers comprises of the managing cost, improved services, increase agility and access to high skilled labours.

According to Mr. Sanjiv Puri, Managing Director, ITC Infotech Ltd.,

• the new forces that drives business are de regularization, digitization and globalization
• the ongoing trends shows 80% of the world’s GDP will be sold across intrnationl boarders
• to create shared strategic vision with high degree of collaboration
• R & D and analytics as the unexplored areas of innovations in I.T.

Mr. Sunil Bhaskaran, Chief, Global Wires Business – TATA STEEL

• discussed the application of wires in power industry as well as in merchant products.

During the session, The Emerging Entrepreneur, Mr. Avi Basu, CEO, Connectiva Systems, emphasized on

• the burning zeal to do something on your own
• discussed the requirement of a strong team which eventually being the DNA of Connectiva, as the investors enquire about that primarily
• his vision is to prove products not as luxury but as a commodity.

Mr. Sanjay Chakrabarty, Partner, Columbia Capital has shaken the conscious of the audience by saying

• all business plans are wrong as you cannot predict the future
• has discussed some major issues like predictability vs. flexilbility which says that whether the cost flexible enough or not relative to the revenue streams
• coverd the issues regarding scalability and differentiation and approached execution along with vision
• suggested that to be a successful entrepreneur it is required to be alert at all the times and should have a resilient mindset.

Mr. George Zacharias, CEO, 7 Strata, who have been a very successful professional earlier and now an entrepreneur has shared his valuable experiences and said that

• passionate people are required
• the key figure for growth is to identify a strategy and to execute it with right people.

As delivered by Mr. Sashi Reddy, Founder & Chairman, Applabs,

• it is very important to get the first customer.
• an entrepreneur must be optimistic and learn to think small initially to get the first customer.

The third session on the 1st. day on Looking at tomorrow : Digital Divide and Digital Union the paradigm of the changing society was explored.

According to Mr. Satish Jha , President & CEO, One Laptop Per Child,

• it is very important to get acquainted with the technology right from childhood
• shown a model of a laptop which is shockproof and is meant to be used by the children.

The 2nd day started with the session chaired by Mr. Bikram Dasgupta, Chairman and CEO, Globsyn Group of Companies based on Competency vs. Experience: Is It an HR Issue. Mr. Bikram Dasgupta has

• entitled this period as the google- facebook era
• approached the speakers to share their views regarding the fact that whether niche skill set deserve much higher salry than the experienced employees or not.

Based on the above topic Mr. Kiran Karnik, Immediate Past president, NASSCOM, expressed his thoughts by saying that

• experience is truly required as they have seen the downturns and are aware of the ways to overcome the crisis.
• may be a competent person who is not experienced enough can get puzzled in such a situation.
• also narrated the importance of having diversified experience.

Mr. R Sankar, Executive Director, Pricewaterhouse Coopers,

• defined experience as a competency that is required sometimes.
• said that seniority is not the necessary tool to measure competency whereas experience can be considered as one.
• the way of behavior should be rational towards the experienced person showing him respect.
• encouraged the youngsters to get diversified in terms of their skill sets and to gain the experience based on that diversification.

The vision of Cognizant is to define competency as a combination of skill, knowledge and behavior as per Mr. Bhaskar Das, Vice President- Human Resources. He said

• experience enables the ability to see a pattern from an emerging trend as per his vision
• that wisdom really blooms
• agreed upon the point of necessity of diversified experience as per the version of the previous speakers.

Dr. Gautam Sengupta, Chief Operating Officer, Kitchen Appliances India Ltd. approached to the audience to

• remove the attitudinal clots.
• Defined the problem as common for both the experienced as well as the inexperienced persons.
• suggested to set inspiring goals inside the organization to resolve conflicts and to ensure competency.
• The organization as a whole should become a learning organization by adapting changes and removing the segregation between the new entrants and the old legacy.
• showed a new way in exploring the Bottom of the Pyramid (BOP market) in our country itself.

Finally Mr. Bikram Dasgupta, Chairman and CEO, Globsyn group of Companies addressed the audiences by

• thanking NASSCOM for such a wonderful effort
• added that this knot of NASSCOM which has brought everybody under one roof
• we should look forward to work together and explore the pool of talents available in our country.

The mega event came to an end with everybody participating there in the summit having new views towards life and with a refreshed mind thinking differently, positioning differently and encompassing differently.

Contributed By:
Rik Das
(Globsyn Business School)

Impact of E commerce on Business Analyst’s Role

Everyone wants to win and to be a successful business man. It requires changing the way we visualize the game. Enterprise Solution gives Business focused analytics and flexibility.

The Business Analyst with a strong sense of business technology and a primary facilitator for e commerce communication can transform the business which will radically alter the very nature of the firm and how it creates value.

E Commerce has a huge impact on the role of Business Analyst.

Business Analyst works under the following six situations :-

Organizational chart and Organizational Process: The Business analyst need to prepare the hierarchy inside the organization to identify the different individual as well as the different ongoing process inside the organization that is going to get impacted by the new software. In the process of developing the automation it may be found that a position in the Organizational hierarchy is not required any more as the things are getting automated.

Domain Modeling: Under this situation the anatomy of the organizational setup is not needed to be scanned by the Business Analyst. It means that the Business Analyst is unaware of the scenario that who will provide the input to the system and who will receive the output for that. The type of output will be different as well for different users. So it maintains confidentiality as no one can access the whole system.

One business many systems: This scenario is totally different from the previous ones. In this situation the company which requires automation is solely unaware of the required infrastructure needed for the system. So the Business analyst need to mention all the specifications regarding hardware and software. Finally the customer has the free hand to decide that whether it is feasible for him to implement the system or not.

Generic Business Model: It is a retail kind of environment where the software is developed without having any specific customer in hand. A survey is made beforehand by Business Analyst based on common features in all business segments and the software is developed to meet these needs which is of common interest to all.

New Business: A Business Organization may diversify. ITC group is ruling the tobacco industry and thought of exploring the hospitality sector now. So the Business Analyst should find out the IT infrastructure required for this new venture.

Revamp: The business Analyst is responsible to change the scenario of existing business process.

The Business Analyst is to work with warehouse, finance, marketing department etc. to determine, document and define e Commerce online and operational requirements.

So the Organizational chart and Organizational Process is essential to have these ideas. If the Business Analyst is going to develop the site without having these knowledge about the organization then the E Commerce site development will not be possible. So the Business analyst will not be able to estimate the requirements of the site under the Domain Modeling scenario.

One Business Many Scenario is more required for B2B aspects. The business partners may ask the firm to go for automation through E Commerce to sustain a healthy partnership relation.

Ramco systems established in 1989 by P R Venketrama Raja provide user ID and password to create the E commerce site for any company.

This is an example of Generic Business Model , where the Business Analyst found out the common requirements of organizations and the companies are adopting it because initially they r not applying the entire module which incurs less cost. Gradually with the growth of business the full system can be implemented if required at additional cost. So it provides the flexibility of choice indeed.

If the Business Analyst find out a new venture in the business which is purely online then E Commerce is the only way out for it under the New Business environment.

The existing scenario of the business can be changed to a great extent under the revamp model with E Commerce. The Business Analyst plays a major role to find out diverse ways of implementation of the automation.

Impact of E Commerce on Business Analyst’s role has enabled the industry to innovate and stay ahead of competition. No industry is immune from this trend. This is a welcome change for the growth of the new business era and opening new ways where business process is benchmarked to ensure that they follow the best practices to achieve improved targets.

Contributed By:
Rik Das
(Globsyn Business School)