Incredible October for Incredible India

October is greatest month for Indian sports history. As we have seen CWG medal tally, India is on 2^nd place with around 40 gold medals and total is more than 100. Krishna Poonia won India's first CWG athletics gold medal in 52 years when she led a stunning host nation clean sweep in the women's discus final. In hockey, India is in final after crushing England in a thrilling semi-final that is really a superb performance by young hockey players. After all that  success in CWG 2010 India crushes Aussies on a 2 test match series and clean sweep series by 2-0. India is again back to number 1 in ICC Test Rankings and Australia slip down to mid of the ranking table joining Pakistan and New Zealand.Go India Go............

Twitter - Building Businesses

Twitter provides a public forum, and each post from any company account becomes a form of promotion or market any product or services for other users. These tweets build a reputation for the business as people can visit and look at your Web site and the quality of your content. The business becomes part of the community and many business owners can also use Twitter for market research and to keep an eye on customer service issues.

Twitter co-founder Biz Stone says businesses “that are not quite big enough to make an impact on the Web, or to spend resources there,” have been some of the earliest users of twitter. Some San Francisco-based coffee shops and bakeries have sent tweets to tell their customers about specials or products they may be out of that day.  “Businesses use this as a hybrid between marketing and customer service,” says Stone.Twitter account has been increased by 3m to 165 m in last 3 years that is really a very good opportunity for businesses to promote their products and services.

Twitter can be used by businesses as:

• Build a reputation and brand
• Market products and Services
• Achieve  viral marketing
• Conduct market research
•  Monitor customer service
• Develop relationships with other customers using Twitter.
• Participate in the twitter community
• Use as recruitment tool

Social Media and Its Growth

Social media is an expression used to describe the type of media that is based on conversation and interaction between people online. It is propagated through social interaction, using highly approachable and scalable publishing techniques like web-based technologies to transform and broadcast media monologues into social media dialogues. It bears following characteristics:

• Participation & Engagement: social media encourages inputs and feedback from everyone who is interested. It deforms the line between media and audience.

• Openness: the majority of social media services are open to feedback and participation. They encourage making choices, comments and the sharing of information. There are scarcely any barriers to accessing and making use of content – password-protected content is frowned on.

• Conversation: whereas traditional media is about broadcast, social media is a two-way conversation.

• Community: social media let communities to form quickly and communicate effectively. Common interests, such as a love of photography, a political issue or a favourite TV show are shared between communities.

• Connectedness: Most kinds of social media thrive on their connectedness, making use of links to other sites, resources and people

Social media have become demanding to big and small businesses. . In fact, social media has impacted the way organizations communicate with the customers. This platform is easily accessible by anyone who can have internet access, and it has open ways for the organizations to increase their brand awareness and interact with customers to satisfy their needs and wants. Therefore, marketing within social media is about building a relationship and conversation with the audience, where the simple message delivery is changed by ongoing exchange of perceptions and ideas between company and the consumer. Credible brands are making optimum use of social media to reach customers and to build or maintain reputation and due to its continuous growth; the ability to reach more consumers globally has also increased. Also, social media serves as a very reasonably priced platform for the organizations and they can employ it for the following purposes.

• Customer service, e.g. direct response to customer complaints

• Broadcasting updates, announcements, news, e.g. additional PR resource

• Promotions

• Behind the scenes look at the organization

• Advertising

Varied kinds of platform can be used by organizations for all these purposes. For example, if the goal is for customer service and broadcasting updates Facebook will proof useful while for the purpose of promotions Twitter should be utilized. You Tube could give the more closer and inner look at the organization. Hence the success factor largely depends on the goals of the organization. Social media is an enormous advertising platform. Organizations are able to mark individuals based upon specific interests shared on social media. Social media can be said to have three components:

• Concept (art, information, or meme).

• Media (physical, electronic, or verbal).

• Social interface (intimate direct, electronic broadcast or syndication, or other physical media such as print).

What I learned from MBA @ Exeter

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An Exeter MBA programme exposes to a very wide area of experience in terms of subjects and people. Varied subjects includes macroeconomics, consumer behavior, marketing, Innovation, operations research, quantitative techniques, finance, HR, etc. Apart from exposure to subjects, I met fellow students from various backgrounds and places.

When I arrived at Exeter, it came as no surprise that I instantly felt a culture infused with social and global responsibility. The culture is driven not only by my classmates, but also by the Exeter faculty and administration especially Maureen.

It was truly a new experience to be in a place where teamwork and cooperation were stressed, and where my grades were for my own consumption only, not for comparison with everyone else's.

Everything at the Exeter was centered on enhancing and learning from the community of students and the larger community of students’ families, faculty, and staff.I has learned so much here that really enhance my skills. The learning process of EXETER MBA enhances my following skills:

·         People management: I worked in multiple teams with and without the people I was comfortable with. There were instances where I came across a team comprising of people who had zero overlap with my perception, point of view etc. But the challenge of living and working with them and still getting a quality job done in time was a lesson I can never forget.

·         Integrating Skills: One of the most important skills that I developed during my MBA was integrating skills. I learned how to work on different areas and how to manage the correlations between different functions and verticals. I learned to appreciate how a change in one leads to many changes in other units, components, entities, and developed the technique of managing this dynamic equation.

·         Macro and Micro Issues of Business: Strong business acumen is another skill set that I developed. The various real life cases handled during my MBA made me realize and analyze all the exceptions to theory that practical life is embedded in and how processes and people learn to live with them and how these can be managed. For this, one needs to be aware of events happening in the business world around us. I studied various business models and came to appreciate how simple thought processes and innovation can be a firm foundation of some of the biggest organizations of the world.

·         Confidence: Having had an exposure to a competitive, holistic and dynamic environment developed a deep-rooted confidence in my abilities. The feeling that come what may, I am ready to face the challenge that too boldly comes uniquely with my career option. It might sound biased, but the fact is that most of MBA’s I have interacted with have that “something different” in them as far as confidence is concerned.

·            Helps in improving communication, co-operation and co-ordination skills: In MBA when we work in a different project and with different team every time I learned so much from others.  When a person works in a team he has to communicate with others in the team. He has to communicate his ideas and opinions; he has to listen patiently to his members without losing tempers. This helps him in learning the art of an effective communication. When working in a team co-ordination and co-operation becomes the integral part of a team work.

·            Develop other skills such as project management, time management, problem solving, conflict resolution and negotiation skills.

·             Co-operation: Thus in a nut shell I can say that for making a successful MBA each student of the team is responsible. Their degree of co-operation, understanding, effective communication, mutual respect and mutual accountability will determine the success rate of any team.

Leadership

Leadership is not a written rule of thumb, neither it comes by inheritance nor it can be studied anywhere. However, a person who has all the potential of being a great leader can be educated. Leader is a person who has a desire to see things which are usually ignored by others. An ordinary man manager normally deals with deception and questions others for their mismanagement. However, a true leader deals with deception as well as self deception. He questions himself time and again till the time he is comfortable with the result. Even then the process of questioning facts and figures goes on.

Sir Albert Einstein once said that most of the people see things and ask why, I see them and say why not. He never attended any leadership training program and never worked in any corporate culture. Still, he is regarded as the pioneer of science.

Former American president Abraham Lincoln life can’t be termed as a jolly good affair. After growing up in not so handsome environment, he went through so much in life. His girl friend died, he had a nervous breakdown, lost two consecutive state elections. Theoretically, these are the facts of a great failure but they belong to one of the most admired and recognized leaders of the world.




Walt Disney was expelled from his job at a newspaper citing he was not good and he lacked creativity. The same Walt Disney took the world by a storm and everybody who has ever watched a cartoon show can tell who Disney is.

Another classic example is of the former CEO and the current mentor of India’s leading IT services giants Infosys. The person is Narayan Murthy. He is considered as the pioneer of Indian IT industry. He doesn’t follow any particular leadership model. He gives all the employees of his company an independent space for thinking. All the employees are literally the stake holders of the company as everybody has got the shares of the company. Murthy doesn’t drive a plush wheeler, travels economy class, proactively takes a pay cut when it seems that the company may get into a financial turmoil. This way he is developing himself as well as setting examples for the others so that they too can develop themselves. He was working very effectively at the helm but when he felt that he has achieved and contributed a lot, he stepped aside and took the role of a mentor.

These were a few of the many examples of great leadership which signifies that leadership cannot be owned by following one particular approach. These also say that leaders are not build by reading tons of theories. Reading may give an idea about leadership but the path has to be taken by the leader itself. Certain mishappenings may prove handy to someone and sometimes potential leaders take a cue or two from the scenarios and convert them into a formidable success story.

Without it you cannot live; with it you may die

I wrote two weeks ago about Water: New source of corporate Mantra but here I am going to talk about different phase of water and its solution i.e., SODIS (Solar Water Disinfection). At least one third of population in developing countries doesn’t have safe drinking water. Everyday 4,000 children dying because of water borne diseases.

Is any solution available that is easy, accessible and free of cost? SODIS is simple, sustainable, low cost solution for drinking water treatment at household environment. SODIS uses solar energy to destroy microorganism causing water borne disease. SODIS process is very easy to use:

1- Take clean PET bottles (Coke, Pepsi),
2- Fill with water
3- Place in sun for next six hours.
For this process PET bottle is more useful than glass bottles because it is easily available in remote areas, low weight and chemically stable.

SODIS is already in used more than 20 countries such as Indonesia, Kenya, India and many more. What can we do? It’s available everywhere, sustainable but limited to reach so, need to spread the word. Full Information is available at
www.sodis.ch

Impact of internet in changing the marketing strategies

Strategic change is defined as “change in the content of a firm’s strategy as defined by its scope, resource deployments, competitive advantages and synergy(Hofer and Schendel 1978)
Strategic change can be affected by the internal and the external conditions of a firm because a firm or a company’s performance depends on the opportunities lying externally and how well it can save itself or counter the external changes. Things keep changing outside a company and the threats vary from the competitors to the market status. As a result, companies have to adopt new strategies to avoid biting the dust. It also depends on the way an organization utilizes its resources and the way in which capital is invested. Why marketing strategies are changing because of the web presence. For any business organization in today’s scenario it is very important and urgent not only to show its high-street presence but also to show it’s online or web presence and for the same purpose e-business is the hot favorite of everyone. We can define e-business as operating the business on the Internet, not only buying and selling but also serving customers and collaborating with business partners.
I am looking answer of following question in retail industry:
1. How internet is changing the whole marketing strategies and the overall business process of retail industry?
2. How retail business’s e-marketing strategy forms a platform for the success of a business and a framework for all the stages and functional areas?
3. Is it necessary for a company to carry both types of businesses as it increases the investment and labor for same type of goods & services being sold by both the operations?
4. Are the models complimentary to each other or are they independent of each other?
5. What is the profitability margins in both and which type will dictate in the future?
6. How are retail marketers taking advantage of latest internet marketing tools like social media?
Any comment???

Successful Social Media Marketing-DELL INC.

Social media is contributing to a significant change that take us from “traditional, and objective perspective to a more subjective and personalized perspective. The move from objective, fact-based, third party reporting and commentary (traditional media/advertising/controlled messages/interruptions) to individual, subjective perceptions is very powerful. The new facts are based on real interactions and experiences that people share with each other. Dell provides possibly the best case study of how a company has successfully integrated social media into its marketing communications, and culture. Dell has produced $6.5 million in revenue over twitter presence. Although a tiny percentage of the company’s total sales (Dell generated more than $60 billion in revenue last year), it does represent significant growth in revenue via social media in the past year.
Social media doesn’t only provide medium for sale but it is very strong channel for full cycle of business operation starting from market research to customer support. So far Dell has been pretty successful in using social media to its advantage and maintained its strong presence from the start:

I.Market research: Via platforms like IdeaStorm, more than 350 customer ideas have been implemented into product and business innovations.

II.Brand awareness: Dell has online web community of more than 3.5 million people across the social web, including places like Twitter, Facebook, Direct2Dell and IdeaStorm.

III.Demand generation: Social media presence on sites like twitter, Facebook and linkedin provide effective way to promote new products awareness and deals. Dell built a Flickr page (which recently passed 1 million views) and a Dell YouTube channel to facilitate the sharing of picture and video content produced for Direct2Dell.

IV.Lead generation: All the social media provide most efficient and cost-effective way to be found by or to proactively contact prospective customers; to deliver key messages and offers to them; to motivating these prospects to become sales leads by their responding, providing information or taking actions that identify them as representing real sales opportunities that the company’s salespeople, reps, resellers and distributors can turn into closed sales and revenue for the company.
V.Sales acceleration: Dell’s twitter followers @DellOutlet are more than a million strong (representing more than $3 million in revenue), a robust community of people interested in refurbished units.

VI.Customer support: The Dell Community sites are a great place to go if someone has a problem or want to read about what Dell has to offer. Here one can find great solutions, advice and how-to's, discussions and friends.

VII.Repeat business & referrals: A strong social network of 3.5 million people and providing them with easier and efficient communication channels like twitter and Facebook promotes loyalty and long term business commitment.

Underground Barter system

Barter System is that system in which goods are exchanged for goods. The waiter from the pizza place walks into a café with a bag of French fries and leaves with a best double espresso. Most of the employees had similar friends in low end services jobs like coffee shop, night clubs and they are using this kind of bartering. This isn’t any question that they were stealing but didn’t feel like it because it’s not from cash drawer, According to this useful system who knows businesses is losing 4 million or 40 billion. Movie theatres to bar and even in inter-departmental bartering is happen in hospitality industry likewise production department provides food to F&B personnel and in returns get their favorite fresh drinks. Literature from another screams, "Employees Steal 10 Times More Than Shoplifters!” This is a kind of exchange system which is really not good for any business but mostly using in Food & Beverage outlets.

The Corporate Mantra of Strategic Human Recourse Management in India

HR plays a vital role in creating assets for the organization in the form of quality manpower. Quality people can produce quality goods and services. To that end, programs made for physical and mental well being of employees are getting institutionalized. The most stable factor affecting productivity of workers is stress. This goes beyond the benefit system, standard medical allowance, reimbursement and motivation workshops.Corporations are increasingly acknowledging it. They are looking to traditional Indian systems such as yoga, stress-buster plans, personal growth programs and meditation for inducing peace and relaxation and also Indulge in continuous quality improvement through TQM and HR contributions like training, development, counseling, etc

As an example Tata Tea and Tata Chemicals have got the full treatment from Maharishi Institute of Management (MIM).This type of medication is in demand to help boost productivity, cut down absenteeism as well as medical bills. Other Companies like TELCO, Shriram Fibres, Salora and BHEL are following same kind of stress busting programs.

Social Media Marketing

Why Social Media Marketing is important for MNC?

The Magnitude of Change: One billion people are now online - a figure that will double by 2011. In fact, every day 500,000 new users come online for the first time. Content is exploding. There was more content on You Tube in 2009 than on the Web in 2000. This represents a significant shift in what we think of as media, or put another way, what and how people get information. Taken together, we are experiencing changes to the dynamics of how we process information to form opinions.
News cycles can start from anywhere today. News and conversations are not just local/regional, they are global. Single blog posts can have as much power as major news stories. People are publishers, content providers and decision-makers. There are additional and new news cycles, and a proliferation of outlets for information. There is a rapid and continuing democratization of information.

The Value of Personal: Social media is contributing to a significant change that take us from “traditional, and objective perspective to a more subjective and personalized perspective.
The move from objective, fact-based, third party reporting and commentary (traditional media/advertising/controlled messages/interruptions) to individual, subjective perceptions is very powerful. The new facts are based on real interactions and experiences that people share with each other.

Connecting with Customers: Since when did any business not want to connect with its customers? Seriously, what is the issue here? Do we need to justify using today’s efficient, effective and readily available technology to spend 30 minutes or couple hours a day connecting with real customers?

Water: the Newest wave of Corporate Social Responsibility

One of the serious resources related to global climate change issues is water. In 2030, water supplies will meet less than 50 percent of global demand in many developing regions where water supply is already under stress. On a global basis, the companies have reevaluated its sustainable development priorities to resolve the world's fresh water sustainability challenges. A main example is Ethos, a bottled water brand launched by Starbucks and Pepsi in 2008. Ethos' partner is H20 Africa, an organization co-founded by actor Matt Damon that carries out drinking water projects in African communities. For each bottle sold, five cents go to the Ethos Water Fund of the Starbucks Foundation. Ethos ads proclaim, "Every bottle makes a difference”. As everybody knows beverage companies are very devoted for CSR, SAB Miller, second largest brewery in the world which markets more than 200 brands of beer, hopes to reduce by 25 percent the amount of water used to brew each hectoliter of beer. Another example of the corporate influence is an international public opinion survey found that more than 90 percent of people consider water pollution and a shortage of fresh water to be serious problems. The summary of survey indicating that public-private partnerships are an important component to resolving the world's fresh water sustainability challenges. The survey was funded by the Molson Coors Brewing Company.