Wi-Fi in cars - the Chrysler way

Innovation has no boundaries and these days anything that lacks innovation doesnt seem to sell. Value added services is another keyword that companies rely upon - to make a sale. Chrysler, following the footsteps of Ford is now bringing in cool-classy value added services. Their latest proposition is to provide Wi-Fi hotspots in their Chrysler cars.

This is like following cellphone way. Tired of bringing in clarity, easy UI, slimmer handsets and the like, manufacturers tuned in their innovation antennas started adding every value added stuff like camera, speakers, MP3 players, photo albums and what not. Now US Auto-kings picked a cue from this and started adding stuff like DVD players, handsfree cellphone receivers, speed-radar detector and now latest is the Wi-Fi hotspots.

But looks like the Detroit dullheads would never get it. The value for value added stuff comes ONLY when the base product is strong. Would you consider buying a cellphone just because it has camera and maybe even a mini-printer(!!) fully knowing that it has a very poor reception or poor mics or bad battery life? People dont buy Chrysler or Chevy or Ford not because it doesnt come with Wi-Fi, but because it drinks fuel so much. Innovation is not to be done just because it needs to be done. The Detroit cars are BAD - bad for fuel-conservation, bad for purses, bad for environment as a whole. Toyota sells because they give fuel efficient cars - not because they give OnStar or a camera in the hood to take pictures while driving.

Maybe Motown three should stop innovating and go back to working on basics.

Influence lazy government agencies

Last 2 days have been buzzing with the news of how Amazon has stopped shipping to South Africa using their postal service citing rising thefts. Amazon is now offering only priority shipping though reputed courier services as opposed to using the Government postal agencies.

As with any government response, the postal agency has retorted that the thefts were down by 69% from last year and their success rate currently was at 99%!. In spite of such interesting numbers, Amazon, which has a mission to be Earth's most customer centric company, has decided to cut off its shipping through the SA post offices.

Angry customers are now forcing SA post office to look inward to resolve the problem. Few hours after the first announcement, SA post office declared that they were trying to contact Amazon to resolve the root cause of the problem. The post office said that Amazon is a important customer for them.

This signals many things - first being that the government agencies feel the pinch to change their attitude and work culture; second that even private agencies can induce change into such never-changing government institutions.

Will such a thing happen in India?

Camel is a Horse designed by a committee

I hate meetings - long ones; no defined agenda; with few participants who come into work just for chairing or attending meetings. So any research essay that demerits meetings is a cup of lassi for me!

Slow Leadership came out with a strong post that can summarized that more meetings mean less trust.

In the list of activities that waste time and cause worthless frustration at work, meetings rank very near the top. Not only do many meetings fail to result in any clear decision, leaving you wondering why people came together in the first place, others have no discernible purpose at all. Worst of all, holding too many meetings passes a strong message: the boss doesn’t trust the team to function without his or her constant interference; and colleagues don’t trust one another not to undermine them in some way.

I would vote with the article more than one hundred percent. Most meetings dont result in any decision making - all people do is pass the buck. If one takes a bold decision, then he/she shows a dominating attitude; decision by consensus happens in meeting post lunch sessions. Most of the time the only decision taken is when to meet next to discuss the issue.

The status meetings are by far the worst - they are like reading all your spam mails, junk folder mails, bulk mails and forcing others to read them too. In addition to pervasive distrust that the author talks about, I believe that CYA plays a key factor in meetings.

The other funny thing is to keep saying "Lets take this offline". If you were to take it offline,
then why call a meeting in the first place?

As techies say, No-Laptop meetings makes sense. No meetings make more sense!

A Tale of 2 CEOs - Wipro

Well, the tale is just beginning and it will take some time to see how it turns out. Wipro, which has always been showcasing different management stories and strategies has embarked on a 2-CEO model now. After Vivek Paul was summarily fired (though he is supposed to have left on his own), Wipro is experimenting with the new model. The 2 CEOs are from Wipro's school and have spent decades there. Premji continues to be the Chairman of this organization. Wharton calls this arrangement collegiate - where Premji is the Principal. The 2 CEOs - Vaswani & Pranjpe - themselves are gung-ho about this.

Says Vaswani: "Given the size of our business and the ambitions that we have for our business, two is certainly better than one. We do believe that the power of two will help us so far as we are concerned, given our environment." Adds Paranjpe: "Given the enormity of the opportunity and the task at hand, we felt it was worthwhile to have two of us trying to drive this rather than leave it to one individual to try and do [everything]. And from a personal perspective, it can get very lonely at the top. So, having two people helps."

The twin arrangement didnt work out well for several companies - like Unilever for example. But then one cant take them blindly to compare. The business models, cultural climates etc., are totally different here and Premji might just be able to pull it off.

Immaterial of what happens, it will be an interesting management lesson. Am wondering, by the way, is the CEO salary split between these two? Or each of them draws a CEO salary?? Well, it is Wirpo stockholder money and Premji owns 70%+ of it - so he will be careful is my guess..

For the record, Sidney Carton did die at the end of The Tale.

Chrysler catches up with Toyota ! - (of course there is a catch)

Anyone who reads the following article in Detroit News would be laughing; surprised to the very least. By matching Toyota in one metric (Labor hours/car), Chrysler has the nerve to call itself matching Toyota in efficiency. This is a beautiful example of taking one metric, skewing it up, matching with a competitor and say that they are equals. Chrysler would possibly never run into discussions on vehicle quality, fuel efficiencies or overall financial performance in comparison with Toyota.

And this is the problem with single metric comparison. It would have been very easy for Chrysler to add some automation systems and claim that their efficiency has bettered; worse, they could have outsourced labor and claimed that their labor hours/vehicle has actually reduced!. I am not suggesting that they did that, but all this is certainly possible. Skewing one single metric is not a tough mandate at all!!

This is the same issue with metrics captured in IT Services companies. Things like man-hours, lines of code, bugs per 100 lines of code/bug density - these are metrics that are still being religiously followed even in top tier IT companies. There is hardly any realization that these metrics have died their death and any further use will only leave us with useless information. When a metric is defined, it is important to understand the purpose of capture of that information. Just because a BPO calculated number of toilet trips by men and women employees so as to set ideal number of toilets at optimal distance for each gender, it doesn't mean that once the numbers are reached, the BPO can claim a 100% efficiency!

However most of these metrics rest on the smartness of managers who question the need, the data gathering process, the inferences and the side-effects. If not, all we can expect is Chrysler to outperform Toyota!

Why ICICI could eventually fail

I may be laughed at for my title and dismissed summarily as a novice's blabber, but nevertheless I will take the risk of going through with my thoughts on this.

ICICI is a hero in the eyes of Indian industry. In a land where government rank banks through proxies, where modern banking system was virtually unknown, where private banks could never muster enough support to break into mainline, ICICI stepped in boldly. It has gone places where no private Indian bank has dreamt of going before. KV Kamath is now an icon for what he has done. ICICI is a case study in vritually every book that deals with innovation, both in India and abroad.

Then why did I choose such a title? I not just a skeptic who finds fault with a new development. Neither am I to change. It is no secret that success of a corporation is dependent directly on the support it receives from its customers. True, employees, investors do have a good say on the survival, but the key itself is held by customers.

ICICI, while growing fast and bold and monumental, has somehow stopped taking its customers along with it. Somewhere in its journey, ICICI has dropped off customers in the middle of the sky, sometimes without parachutes, while it has sped along. It has become more like a federal company with middlemen dictating terms for end customers. Agents, who have no clue about ICICI's mission or vision, have become customer touch-points - or pain-points. Half baked mergers (with Bank of Madura etc.,) with poor system integration even after several years, have left common customers annoyed.

While corporate customers manage to arm twist and get things done in the bank, common customers are left to fend for themselves. Many of them stick with ICICI because they are either tired to move, or stuck with some transaction that doesn't allow them to move. While ICICI lures customers using all strategic marketing techniques, once they customers are in, they are made to go through all sorts of pain and trouble and poor processes. Customer familiar with latest technologies or with greater disposable income either don't care about hidden charges or just don't realize that there have been deductions without their knowledge.

But the middle class masses do realize. Walk into a ICICI teller counter and you can see customers yelling everyday on some deductions, wrong transactions, ATM charges, irresponsible middle agents, clerks with no clue about abbreviations, managers waiting for approval from "Mumbai". Add to this the irritating phone calls that thrust personal loans and credit cards - ICICI has a truckload of angry customers.

While flying high in quest for growth, ICICI has forgotten to take care of pilots who actually drive the company to success. Unless corrective actions are rapidly introduced and ICICI brings focus back on customer, chances are certain that the Bank will fail, possibly sooner.

Customer Delight and India

These days Customer Delight is the keyword that each company hangs upon. One can hardly see any company that doesn't talk about keeping customer at the front. Amazon.Com proclaims loudly that its goal is to be Earth's most customer centric company. Similar tag-lines for several companies. Even the small Zappos.Com which started virtually with nothing in early 2000 and has grown to a $1B company by 2008, claims that its growth is because of its customer focus.

How these Web 2.0 companies build good relationships to build their brands. Forging strong communities is a key for marketers looking to build brands online. For Tony Hsieh, CEO at Zappos, meeting up with a customer at a bar in midtown Manhattan was perfectly natural. Most execs with 1,600 employees and doing over $1 billion in annual sales would probably pass on having drinks with an individual customer, but Hsieh is not your typical CEO. In the past week alone he had given away shoes on Twitter, sent out an open invitation to a company barbecue and solved a service problem a customer left in a blog comment. If this seems exhausting, Hsieh sees it as part of a larger strategy to build Zappos into a brand on par with Virgin. “We think our brand is going to be different because we want people to feel there’s a real person they’re connecting with, whether it’s when they call us or through Twitter or any way they come in contact with us,” he said. The path Zappos is taking has been forged by some of the Internet’s top brands, like Craigslist. It’s part of a newer crop of companies, including T-shirt phenomenon Threadless, handmade-craft site Etsy and review destination Yelp, quietly building powerful brands online on the strength of communities. For these companies, community is not a tactic or marketing plan line item, but core to what they do. It means being hyper-responsive to customers, laser focused on usability, unapologetically human and OK with customers determining the course their businesses should take. The bonus: When they take off, these brands don’t need to do much in the way of advertising, instead letting their customers spread the word.

(You can read the full article here)

This begs the question - where are the Indian companies in this regard? Is customer delight something that the Indian companies are serious about? True, there has been lot of improvements compared to early nineties, but are the improvements universal? Can one walk into Reliance Fresh or Spencers Daily and claim that they had a wonderful shopping experience? Or are such words restricted to stores in expensive mall-locations - Lifestyle, Crossword, Shoppers Stop and the like? Or are we satisfied that there is at least something now compared to nothing in the past? Do we, Indian consumers have enough power to demand the customer delight experience when we shop?

Customer Service and Outsourcing

All businesses are gravitating towards Customer is the King mantra, well away from the Ford one size fits all model. Customers have also realized their commanding position and have started demanding excellent quality-low cost service from providers. In such scenarios, is it wise to outsource customer service to offshore BPOs?

The traditional Marketing Services teaches you that the customer touch-points should always remain with the corporate entity. The customer service is probably the only channel that helps a company evaluate customer needs and sentiments and plan for future. If this is outsourced to a BPO, how effective will the feedback flow?

On the other hand, no company wants to run a department that doesn't form a part of its core competency. Why bother dealing with the pain of recruitment, training, retention etc., when there are other service providers who have perfected this art and can deliver it for a fraction of the cost? And they do supply back metrics, customer complaints etc., in more concise and analyzable form.

Further, customers these days have started to terribly show their dislike for customer service as they know that they are taking to someone who would possibly act as a postman with no real interest to solve the customer issue. Throw in the offshoring, low-cost into this mix and the whole outsourcing-offshoring creates such a negative feeling in the mindset of most customers. However, on the other hand, investors want companies to perform - slash out unnecessary expenditures and focus solely on value creation; and customers want low cost for everything with the highest quality.

Just imagine the plight of the manager who has to deal with all this contradicting equations trying to solve each one of them. Bharti Airtel which had originally outsourced its customer service has now started to insource them back. ICICI on the other hand is outsourcing more and more of its services to middlemen and agents - to the point where it is facing issues starting from heavy ridicule in movies to court cases on repayment harassment.

Just as any other issue in the corporate world, this has no magic bullet. One thing I feel certain is the fact that if BPOs do not further up their commitment to the companies that they serve as well as the end customers they deal with, it may just be a narrow lane for service providing entities and the road will widen for all captive outsourcing units.

HP marries EDS

HP has now officially joined hands with EDS in holy matrimony. The previous marriage went on a roller-coaster initially; the priest who solemnized it was fired; the family was dead against it. And yet, years later, HP has made the marriage work and has now proceeded for the next. Acquiring Compaq was probably one of the good decisions that HP took at that time, though unfortunate for Carly Fiorina, the "good decision" verdict came a little too late.

With EDS, HP hopes to repeat the story and take on a mammoth IBM. But is EDS a right choice at the moment? I have my own doubts. Questions to ponder:
(1) Does HP really need to get into Services and compete with IBM?
(2) Is EDS a worth choice?
(3) Is the price worth it?

With no proper strategy of its own, EDS has been laying its hands wherever it could to survive thus far. The synergies as explained by HP's executive management are vague and it might well take a long time before anything becomes realistic. My take is that HP has made a well calculated move to expand their services portfolio by mergers/acquisitions, but the EDS purchase is not all that brilliant. I may be proved wrong, but until then I would stand by what I say. One thing is sure though - what good will come to HP after this merger is debatable, but it will sure wake the sleeping giant IBM and make the elephant dance - or shake. IBM is bound to make stern changes to its organizational structures, hiring & firing policies and focus more on customer delight.

Mark Hurd is supposed to be extremely thoughtful and smart, as opposed to blunt Ms. Fiorina and one can only hope that he and his team will put in considerable energies to make sure that they get the necessary synergies. Meanwhile, the BFL investors can laugh all the way to the Bank - their sale to MPhasis and then to EDS and now to HP has definitely made them richer.

Ignition

Welcome to My Biz Musings, another random blog by me because the Internet just lets me do what I want to. I hope to be a regular here with short posts, not wasting too much of anyone's time; posts will be mostly on business topics - ones that affect us in everyday lives. A quick disclaimer is that all views published here by me are of my own and do not pertain any of my past present or future employers.


So lets start the cruise.