My Clone @ other end of Globe

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Title might misled you but, it is true. I was not believing that someone exhibit the similar characterstics and behaviour as I exhibited. I even confirmed about it with few of other blogger friends and Collegues/Ex-collegues. I came across this article from CIO.com.

Best part of the attractive title to grip your attention from neck. "Work For A 24/7 Entrepreneur". True to it's characterstics, I must admit that, Brent is genius and appriciate the frank and true description about his habit by his collegue.

I admit that, my ex-collegues have told clearily about my nature of demanding for best and restless followup (similar to what is described as calling guys from holidays but, preserving the privacy and freedom of guys known to be on Holiday).

Rented Life - a Poem

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I rented my soul to Soil of Mother's womb with Father as Gardener.
We bartered Love....we are rich with Love...
We remain eternal soul

I rented my lovely soul to friends heart.
We exchanged love and hate...I left with balance of Tears and hidden foes

I rented my lovely soul to my employer's heart
We exchanged work and money.... I left with balance of ever growing debts and betraying

I rented my lovely soul to my wife's heart
We exchanged love and faith... I left with balance of incompetent and failed marriage

I rented my lovely soul to God
I offered unconditional Love and God gave me pain, sorrow and failure
I left with feeling of emptiness and shattered into pieces.

Still, I don't get tears drying on my cheeks as they dried in my eyes.
Still, I don't feel pain surfacing on my face as it remains in my soul and body
Still, I don't bother fear my life as it's jammed in my brain and mind
Still I don't get failure bothering me as it's all around my life
Still I don't get sorrow shattering me as soul and body is pierced

Any way deducting Zero out of Zero results in Zero
Love is Priceless, Yes, u can't get anything out of Love all other comes free.

Meanings and Mind Reflections:

I got love when born from my father and mother. I thought that, all human being dwell on earth and expects only Love. All human being I met, shown that they acknowledge my love.

I loved all in this world unconditionally. I came to know that, all relations ended in mean ends of profit, advantage and exploting. Glass wall of Love shattered into pieces to see I am surrounded by world of mean pepole. Each interaction has some means to serve rather than love.

I got feeling of being robbed physically and emotionally. I went and asked God. God never responded as if Love was burden for God and he got ride by giving it to me.I felt I will die due to this burden some love. Life has come to cross road of Zeros. Each path looks empty. Each day looks empty. Energy of Life have dried.

Waiting to die is everyday job accomplished successfully everday. God also achknowledge the day with bestowing feeling of being useless character on earth. GOD THANKS for making me what I AM? I DESERVED IT.

GOD THANKS FOR ALL YOUR PRAYERS OFFERED. BAD AND MEAN GUYS ALSO OFFER AND U ACCEPT IT and BESTOW ALL TRESURES OF LIFE TO THEM. I GOT PRICELESS LOVE FROM YOU.

Supply Chain Management for Banks

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Supply chain management is the combination of art and science that goes into improving the way your company finds the raw components it needs to make a product or service, manufactures that product or service and delivers it to customers.

The following are five basic components for supply chain management.

1. Plan-This is the strategic portion of supply chain management. You need a strategy for managing all the resources that go toward meeting customer demand for your product or service. A big piece of planning is developing a set of metrics to monitor the supply chain so that it is efficient, costs less and delivers high quality and value to customers.

From Banking prospective, it's developing a new loan or retail product. Let us say, Credit Card (revolving loan credit product) linked with Fixed deposit customer.

2. Source-Choose the suppliers that will deliver the goods and services you need to create your product or service. Develop a set of pricing, delivery and payment processes with suppliers and create metrics for monitoring and improving the relationships. And put together processes for managing the inventory of goods and services you receive from suppliers, including receiving shipments, verifying them, transferring them to your manufacturing facilities and authorizing supplier payments.

From Banking prospective, for credit card product that we are exploring requires team of product managers and business analyst who come up with feasibiliy study, business plan and return figures as well as marketing strategy. Most important is the selling agent empowerment plan, card vendor, authroisation and issuance related IT components.

3. Make-This is the manufacturing step. Schedule the activities necessary for production, testing, packaging and preparation for delivery. As the most metric-intensive portion of the supply chain, measure quality levels, production output and worker productivity.

From above banking product, going into bits and bytes of IT and busienss. Gettign the action plan into action. Marketing and branding for the product and putting the back office process to ensure that, customer application is processed and customer gets the credit card at his door step. Most important is making customer use it " That's trick of trade". Stage is ready for the Roll.....

4. Deliver-This is the part that many insiders refer to as "logistics." Coordinate the receipt of orders from customers, develop a network of warehouses, pick carriers to get products to customers and set up an invoicing system to receive payments.

For above banking product, it means getting the Credit Card application from differnet channels like Web, ATM, Direct selling and other outlets. Ensuring that, bakc office process designed are getting the inputs as planned.

5. Return-The problem part of the supply chain. Create a network for receiving defective and excess products back from customers and supporting customers who have problems with delivered products.

For above banking product, it means rejection at application level, post product delivery, post usage (Customer feels billing is imporper) for the Credit Card.

For a more detailed outline of these steps, check out the nonprofit Supply- CChain Council's website at www.supply-chain.org.

Credit card product is more than that but, considering SCM fundamentals, credit card is nothing but getting the FD customers (To averse the risk) and converting this customers into credit card holder who use the card.

Banking sometimes I feel is nothing ut SCM where, depositors are the Suppliers created in the form of Retail and corporates keeping their money in different forms and Borrowers are the customers gettign this fund and returning it also. The difference comes here which differentiate Manufacturers from Bankers as Bankers make the money on both the side of Chain. Thus, somebody has well said.

"Bankers are the guys who lends you umbrella when it's Sunlight (Summer) and takes it back (Banks like HDFC Bank snatches) from you when it is Raining"

One of the strong reason is I noticed that, bankers offering ATM card and Debit card free in Welcome Kit but, they don't issue Credit Card. One of the reason might be they feel keeping customers money is safer than lending money.

Why do Enterprise Resource Planning?

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What is ERP? Nice question and single breath answer is "Ek Bar Rona pade ga" (That was Hindi - Translate into English literal - We will have to cry one more time or simply

Enterprise resource planning software, or ERP, doesn't live up to its acronym. Forget about planning—it doesn't do much of that—and forget about resource, a throwaway term. But remember the enterprise part. This is ERP's true ambition. It attempts to integrate all departments and functions across a company onto a single computer system that can serve all those different departments' particular needs.

That is a tall order, building a single software program that serves the needs of people in finance as well as it does the people in human resources and in the warehouse. Each of those departments typically has its own computer system optimized for the particular ways that the department does its work. But ERP combines them all together into a single, integrated software program that runs off a single database so that the various departments can more easily share information and communicate with each other. That integrated approach can have a tremendous payback if companies install the software correctly.

Take a customer order, for example. Typically, when a customer places an order, that order begins a mostly paper-based journey from in-basket to in-basket around the company, often being keyed and rekeyed into different departments' computer systems along the way. All that lounging around in in-baskets causes delays and lost orders, and all the keying into different computer systems invites errors. Meanwhile, no one in the company truly knows what the status of the order is at any given point because there is no way for the finance department, for example, to get into the warehouse's computer system to see whether the item has been shipped. "You'll have to call the warehouse" is the familiar refrain heard by frustrated customers.

ERP vanquishes the old standalone computer systems in finance, HR, manufacturing and the warehouse, and replaces them with a single unified software program divided into software modules that roughly approximate the old standalone systems. Finance, manufacturing and the warehouse all still get their own software, except now the software is linked together so that someone in finance can look into the warehouse software to see if an order has been shipped. Most vendors' ERP software is flexible enough that you can install some modules without buying the whole package. Many companies, for example, will just install an ERP finance or HR module and leave the rest of the functions for another day.

Online Shopping - Volusion

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These days, it's easier than ever to sell goods on the Internet. And to do just that, Volusion offers a complete e-commerce solution that builds a first-rate online catalog and shopping cart. It's among the best on the market and gives other like-minded companies — ShopSite for example — stiff competition.

As you would expect, the best e-commerce solutions combine ease of use — like not having to learn HTML — with comprehensive feature sets that let you build sites, manage and submit sales, handle credit cards and more. Volusion lets business owners quickly build professional-looking sites that customers can navigate and use easily, and it adds lots of extras for handling inventory, affiliate management, tracking customers and working with e-mail.

Like ShopSite, Volusion employs server-based software that you access through a Web browser, and you don't need to download or install a program on your computer to create and manage a store. Small business owners will have no problems using Volusion to build an e-commerce site by following a simple wizard that presents a variety of options through its on-screen forms.

Pls. visit E-commerce Guide for detail product Review.

Make a Wish True this Christmas

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Be the FIREMAN
Helping Guy make Poorer's Dream Come True

This is the Story as shared by Joke of the Day - Humor Network.

In Phoenix, Arizona, a 26-year-old mother stared down at her 6 year old son, who was dying of terminal leukemia. Although her heart was filled with sadness, she also had a strong feeling of determination. Like any parent, she wanted her son to grow up and fulfill all his dreams. Now that was no longer possible. The leukemia would see to that.

But she still wanted her son's dreams to come true. She took her son's hand and asked, "Billy, did you ever think about what you wanted to be once you grew up? Did you ever dream and wish what you would do with your life?" Mommy, "I always wanted to be a fireman when I grew up." Mom smiled back and said,

"Let's see if we can make your wish come true."

Later that day she went to her local fire department in Phoenix, Arizona,where she met Fireman Bob, who had a heart as big as Phoenix. She explained her son's final wish and asked if it might be possible to give her six-year-old son a ride around the block on a fire engine.

Fireman Bob said, "Look, we can do better than that. If you'll have your son ready at seven o'clock Wednesday morning, we'll make him an honorary fireman for the whole day. He can come down to the fire station, eat with us, go out on all the fire calls, the whole nine yards! And if you'll give us ! his sizes, we'll get a real fire uniform for him, with a real fire hat-not a toy one-with the emblem of the Phoenix Fire Department on it, a yellow slicker like we wear and rubber boots. They're all manufactured right here in Phoenix, so we can get them fast."

Three days later Fireman Bob picked up Billy, dressed him in his fire uniform and escorted him from his hospital bed to the waiting hook and ladder truck. Billy got to sit on the back of the truck and help steer it back to the fire station.

He was in heaven.

There were three fire calls in Phoenix that day and Billy got to go out on all three calls. He rode in the different fire engines, the paramedic's van, and even the fire chief's car.

He was also videotaped for the local news program. Having his dream come true, with all the love and attention that was lavished upon him, so deeply touched Billy that he lived three months longer than any doctor thought possible.

One night all of his vital signs began to drop dramatically and the head nurse, who believed in the hospice concept that no one should die alone, began to call the family members to the hospital.

Then she remembered the day Billy had spent as a fireman, so she called the Fire Chief and asked if it would be possible to send a fireman in uniform to the hospital to be with Billy as he made his transition. The chief replied, "We can do better than that. We'll be there in five minutes. Will you please do me a favor?

When you hear the sirens screaming and see the lights flashing, will you announce over the PA system that there is not a fire? It's just the fire department coming to see one of its finest members one more time. And will you open the window to his room?

About five minutes later a hook and ladder truck arrived at the hospital and extended its ladder up to Billy's third floor open window 16 firefighters climbed up the ladder into Billy's room. With his mother's permission, they hugged him and held him and told him how much they loved him. With his dying breath, Billy looked up at the fire chief and said, "Chief, am I really a fireman now?" "Billy, you are, and the Head Chief, is holding your hand," the chief said.

With those words, Billy smiled and said, "I know, He's been holding my hand all day, and the angels have been singing." He closed his eyes one last time.

This is Rex Barker C.S (Caring about all of our Sons) reminded that we never know just when our "special gifts) might help make someone's dream come true. Have a magical day.

Best Christmas Gift by Telecome Provider to Customer

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Dear Customer Support Team@ABC Telecom,

Sub: Christmas Gift from ABC Telecom to one of Loyal Customer (Four Years)

I have been using ABC's Services for last 3 years in LA (98#$%^315). I was one of the happiest customers of ABC. I relocated from LA to NY and opt for the Post Paid connection and paid USD 200 in advance as rent for six month as per their ongoing scheme as of Dec 8,2004.

1. Connection got activated and I got my number as 983232%$^ on Dec. 9,2004.

2. I started sharing with my business partners and customers ABC's number for business purpose as well as to all my friends and relatives.

3. 1st Mistake: DSA Uneducated about the ABC's Telecom Scheme

At the time of filling up the form with ABC, I opted for STD connection and dealer simply took the form and processed. Ideally Dealer should have apprised me for any additional deposits as might be required. Dealer in the quest of getting customer and commission forget to mention the same.

4. Dec 11,2004: I receive a call and SMS that, my documents have not reached and same need to be submitted
ASAP. A call to dealer and issue got sort out.

5. Dec. 13,2004: I receive a WELCOME call from ABC Call Center Agent and apprised me about the Telecom services and portal. I forget to ask about STD facility.

6. Dec 25,2004: I wanted to make STD call and message heard that, facilities is not activated and call on 9892012345 - Customer call service no. for getting it activated.

Call Agent Meg's Interaction:

• I made a call to call center and verified as authorized customer by Agent named Meg. I explained the problem and she kept in on Hold to check my telecom service plan. ( I assume she is being provided a PC using which she verified my credentials instead of checking paper records. ABC is supposed to have CRM software displaying customer details).
  
• She informed that, Mobile-to-Mobile STD is activated but Mobile to Landline facility is not activated. She informed me to deposit Rs.500/= to activate Mobile to Landline STD facilities. (Many might feel that it is funny to have such kind of offerings, which are neither full nor half).
• I expressed my loyalty to ABC for last Three years in LA as well such deposit being not asked. Apart from that argued that, ORANGE is not asking such deposit and usually ORANGE on case-to-case basis based on Report by the Surveyor. She requested me to talk to Reporting Manager Mr. Ryan.
• I requested her to appraise Mr. Ryan about the conversation rather than I explaining the full thing. She assured the same and I started talking to him.
• Mr. Ryan has provided standard answer and reasons for deposit, which I refused to accept, and given the same reasons of ORANGE and Bangalore case. All in vein and I expressed my di-satisfaction about ABC's policy and intent of switching over to ORANGE and disconnected the call.

I did not know that ABC Customer Service dept. Rep. Mr. Ryan has decided to present as Gift to valuable customer of ABC "we_d_living" >> Owner of ABC Post Paid Connection. Loyalty of Four years with ABC paid nicely.

ACTION Taken by Mr. Rahul - DEACTIVATING the CONNECTION with reason as per System stating that CUSTOMER REQUEST for DEACTIVATING the line. Despite the fact that, I never ever used the term "DEACTIVATING the CONNECTION" during my entire conversation.

The most inspiring and perfect example of ABC's Customer Service:

• It seems ABC has taught during Customer Service training that, in case customer express dis-satisfaction of service, despite the fact that deposit of Rs. 600/= is with ABC, make customer life miserable by DISCONNECTING The line.
• Take the Power of Control available and high privilege access of playing with customer's Telecom Account.
  

SANTA Came One Day Late:
Dec 26,2004: Few calls and another set of friendly voices of Fern and Nick helped in resorting the connection.

Going Further:

I have decided to take up the challenge of being David against such a prestigious Organization (Goliath) where few of them feel that Citizen is not Empowered and they can dance at the power Play of Telecome provider like ABC.

Same copy is shared with leading newspaper Editor to feature in TALKING POINT as a better way of using it to create awareness in consumers about their rights of getting harassed mentally and remotely by such managers.

Sarbanes Oxley: What to Control and How?

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When sections 404 and 409 of the Sarbanes Oxley Act of 2002 were written, they were originally designed to encompass financial controls only. Kept well within the realm of the internal audit staff, the rules were designed to ensure the accuracy of the financial reporting at each month end. What the PCAOB (Public Company Accounting Oversight Board) quickly realized was that the controls that affect the month end financial reporting stretch well beyond the internal audit group and into the very operations of the organization. Daily changes in the physical environment of a company rarely hit the financial statements until journal entry postings, consolidation and reconciliation are completed at month end. This is especially true for larger organizations that have to gather data sometimes from the other side of the world.

Groups that have been performing the internal compliancy work in these organizations have quickly realized that failures in the underlying processes within organizations are more often the cause of catastrophic corporate collapse. Undisclosed ownership structures that reduced the level of debt and risk and overstated the revenues were the biggest single failure points in Enron. But the ability to establish structures such as those that brought down the major energy trader rested well outside the realm of financial disclosure rules and regulations. They rested with the executive ethics and oversight committees that were never created at Enron and were never supported by the board. Just like this example, there are a wide variety of significant continuity threats existing in organizations that could be interpreted by the PCAOB and the SEC to be failure points that required control mechanisms. One such example is Information Technology assets operations and policies of the organization and its external IT suppliers.

How IT Operations Can Fail Sarbanes 404/409

Compliancy Sarbanes 404 states that there must be a clear declaration of responsibility by management for establishing and maintaining an adequate internal control structure and procedures for financial reporting as well as an assessment of the effectiveness of the internal control structure and procedures of the issuer for financial reporting.

Sarbanes 409 states that boards must disclose to the public real time information concerning material changes in the financial condition or operations of the issuer including trends.

Impact of/on IT:
Both of these two sections rely on the control of and physical processes within organizations. Without controls on an information infrastructure, the company will be unable to declare and assess that their controls are effective for financial reporting simply because the information generated for the financial postings are derived from the physical activities of the organization that are controlled by these very systems.

It's those systems and those physical flows that require the same level of control infrastructure and testing for management to be able to attest to the effectiveness of their entire controls structure. For example, a chief operations officer delegated the authority to book income based on delivery of goods or services, can easily manipulate the revenue figures by altering the derived delivery date within systems (which may fall under his control) to equal the contract signing date. The result may be booked income that is effectively not realized in a later time period as it should and possibly without any corresponding offset. A control that limits the individual's capacity to alter system functions can effectively eliminate the potential requirement of restatement and the potential negative impact of such an event in the public realm. The test plan would incorporate a functionality test in which the auditors attempt to alter the systems invoicing date functionality through the security level of the COO. A failure to alter the date would result in a 'pass' on the test that is then documented complete with the test plan and outcome, process chart, control report and sign-off.

There are numerous areas that can be tested to this level of detail regarding all physical functions within an organization. However, the narrowing of the controls to those functions that have a material impact on the financial statements greatly reduces the workload on companies trying to comply with 404. 409 on the other hand, requires less of an actual control and more an ability for the organization to gain "real time" information from systems on the physical flows and inventories of that particular company or division. However, controls and real-time information are not the complete picture.

The Role of Policy in 404/409

Policy is a very strong tool of organizations working toward compliancy. Policy forms the statement of intention that provides a strong indication of management's work toward compliancy. For example, an organization that is attempting to 'lock down' potential ethical misdoings by its executives would be well advised to start by creating a comprehensive ethics policy for the organization and then have each executive sign the policy as part of their agreements. This won't control the behaviour of executives that would breech ethical guidelines but it will send a clear message that the organization does not condone specific types of activities. The addition of an oversight committee and 'whistleblower' mechanism continues to add to the position that the company is seriously backing the controls structure. Now as individual and detailed controls are added, the organization is well placed to provide attestation. The same type of policy must be formally created and accepted by the board regarding the operations of the information systems infrastructure. Without the overriding policy regarding such things as physical IT security, the attestation of the controls will be ineffective.

Seven Important IT Control Considerations

1. Create an information security policy that governs both the physical access to systems as well as the virtual access. Back it up with physical stress tests of the security infrastructure such as ethical hacking, rogue RF detection, portable device policy and planned security breeches. Ensure the policy regulates such things as password rotation, authorization levels, functional security control mechanisms, audit trails, etc.
2. Create a policy regarding outsourced and supplied IT functions relating to such aspects as the protection and control of sensitive information, the level of SOX compliance from support organizations, new software controls policy, upgrade and test reporting policies, etc. Ensure that a formal digital rights policy is in place for the organization as well as a public information control and release policy.
3. Identify each sub-system that has the potential to materially affect the financials or other systems and provide an assessment of the risk for each one. Use this list to identify the most critical systems and controls and apply resources to those first.
4. Create a hot site, back-up and failover policy along with testing and failover operational guide. Remember that backups must be periodically tested to ensure that critical systems have the capable redundancy required for continuity and non-material impact limitation.
5. Provide an audit capability to change, update and testing processes to ensure that standards are upheld and that the effects of rogue activities are minimized.
6. Map each of the physical control processes in the IT department and ensure that the correct level of responsibility and oversight is applied. Test the controls by following and auditing the processes utilizing any audit trails available or mapping current activities.
7. Perform tests of system accuracy, completeness and appropriate authorization of physical data that is materially relevant. Ensure such factors as numerical sequencing, separation of duties, physical reconciliations and exceptions are tested, performed, managed and overseen.

The information infrastructure of an organization is a critical component to compliancy for 404 and 409. Without an assured amount of testing and controls, the management will not be able to certify the controls processes with any level of certainty. The failure to adequately test the system controls will provide the next level of issues regarding Sarbanes Oxley compliance and will undoubtedly lead to stronger regulations regarding underlying systems and processes.

Next Challange - Treasury management in emerging-market banks

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Elevating the treasury from a support function to a bank’s primary instrument for managing market risk can have a far-reaching impact throughout the organization.

Interesting survey findings by McKinsey's Team spanning across banks operating in Developed and Developing Countries.

I feel Indian banks can learn more from it and look beyond Money Market, Bond MArket operations and venture into Securities and Commodity Trading. Indian retail space has started Commoddity trading in big way with value trading equal to BSE and NSE volume.

Pls. comment on article......

Drivers for BPM - Few Writing on the walls

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In late 2000, Gartner predicted that business process management (BPM) would become the next big phenomenon. The "thought leadership" expressed then has been reflected in the current popularity of business modeling.

We have seen demand grow from 15 percent of our client base (which primarily involved businesses with planning cultures) to more than 35 percent of our client base across all businesses, regardless of their cultural tendencies.

1. Build New Process for New products but Preserve the Business model
BPR geeks have dismaneled the process in the quest of operational efficiency, cost effectiveness... Business came up with new products and services due to new mode of trades and delivery modes like Internet, Mobile Commerce, Workflow, Document Management, XML ....Again New Processes and change managements.

Why few IT Managers are crying that, they don't see BPM appriciate it's investment ?

Successful businesses have not changed their business model and thus gained from new technology by changing the process not the customer benefit. Some enriched the experience and some failed to do anything but annoy the customers with their new ineffcient processes and product/services.

2. Process followed the business
Business underwent strategic changes like Merger and Acquition, BPO, Innovation... process across two different organisation requied to be integrated and streamlined. Few cases like Compaq HP merger has shown that, organisation is not able to fully leverage their competitative edge after such strategic changes.

Process were treated like Centralised Knowledge Entity and looked upon under lens of aging, change history, customer orientation etc. Process were changed several times and significance of defined and assigned to it. It's like chemical reaction on Golden metal plate and entropy of metal is calculated after each exposure. Process are also needed to be treated once it looses it's basic characterstics or value and evolve new process.

3. Age of TEchnology and ORganisation learning:
Each of us would have rid on hype wave. It can be technology, process or innovative way of use. In order to fit the technology, organisations changed themselves (E.g. typical ERP implementation in XYZ Industry/sector). few wanted to convenience and felt pressure from board/investors about org.(and IT Managers) capability to implement ERP solution in org. and they Changed themself to adopt the IT solution.

Few went otherway round and I feel they were smarter, They felt they have efficient and effective process ( Some deed process evaluation) and customised the product for MATCH MAKING but again it was also tainted sometime for making their board/invesor's (or their biz. partners) feel happy.

BPM is still going to remain the major force as more and more such changes are ineviatable in present trough of economic cycle.

Above were drivers from Human and ORganisation strategy and operational aspect as well as touch upon the market place.

Few other drivers are due to the perceived advantages of BPM.

1. Automate...More.. and Connect More ...
STP (Straight Through Processing) and SCM (Supply chain Management) is the main driver for biz. to look at changing the way they do their business with their suppliers, distributors, Creditors (Banks and FIs) etc...

Each business manager is looking under the magnifiying lens such business interactions happening either human to human as well System to System. Collobrating and influncing their partners for SCM and STP to create new or enhanced business value.They get faciliteted by simulated process using BPA tools to testigy and justify their strategies and decisions.

2. Milk the Networked Business
Once you are on the go of BPM... business manager start using few jargons in their corporate presentation to board/investors/partnes ..."optimized cost, time to market, resource loading, risk indetification and management, quality optimsiation (SIX SIGMA Jargons) through the use of models for initial design and ongoing improvements.

But, it is sure that, business using BPM effective and efficienctly has seen by numbers that they are milking the market place.

3. Create newer market place or market conditions.
Few corporates are able to realise their process model strength explore weakness of either competitors or peer level corporates in other market place. Few of the business users are able to apply their process capabilities to unknown territory.

They simulate and anticipate opportunities as well as threats usig such simulations. One of the example I remember is a financial institute able to manage account receivable for Telecom giant. It has better process of rating customers from it's past credit record to provide additional talk time or request for offering credit against their account balance as additional talk time. IT resulted in increase in revenue for Telecom. Bank is able to get integrated view of such customers for their demography and spend pattern to device new products.

In case u liked /disliked above blog... drop a word... I believe that I can improve...

Business Value of Data Warehousing (Unfied Custome View)

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Financial services giant ING Group has been getting kudos from industry observers for developing a unified IT architecture that more effectively pulls customer data from multiple accounts. The company’s construction of multiterabyte database “hubs” for its seven U.S. business units has resulted in a comprehensive, unified view of customer activity. Thomas Hoffman and Lucas Mearian report on the success of this enormous project in the September 27 issue of Computerworld.

The data integration effort began in July 2001 with the goal of creating a reusable architecture that would both drive down costs and mitigate risks. Chief Technology Officer Raymond Karrenbauer tells the journal, “The hubs are for centrally structured data ... enterprise value data that’s commonly used across all lines of business, [including] customer information, agreement information and product information.”

In May 2003, the company began to implement its integrated data environment. According to Computerworld, the structured data resides in a set of partitioned IBM DB2 Universal Database EEE databases.

The project relies on data-mapping software from Informatica Corp. that lets ING cross-reference customer information among databases at business units. Data profiling software from Evoke Software Corp. is used, along with ad hoc reporting and analytical tools from Business Objects SA. The result is an object-based database infrastructure that blends unstructured and structured data from 2,000 databases into one logical view of customer and operational information.

The journal reports that ING created DB2 repositories to aggregate a subset of structured data from each business unit’s database that may be relevant to other business units. The system funnels source data through a hub where a series of transformation and de-duplication steps is conducted. A separate repository stores unstructured data. Karrenbauer explains that an architectural layer sits above this, which uses metadata to determine common traits between structured and unstructured data.

While some data is transferred in batch mode, ING is also piloting real-time, bidirectional data updates between the databases. As part of the data integration process, ING centralized some of the source data from existing databases and classified it with common terminology so information could be shared across business units, Karrenbauer tells Computerworld.

He notes that each information hub has hardware costs of between $2 million and $4 million, but he adds that several projects have resulted in an internal rate of return of more than 100 percent by avoiding project delivery duplication. Karrenbauer explains that ING’s standardized project delivery model can be repeated as each business unit pursues its own relational databases.

Other ING divisions in Brazil, Chile, Canada, and the Netherlands will be able to apply the information-hub approach adopted by ING Americas as a template for their own data integration efforts. Karrenbauer tells the journal that he estimates they should be able to reuse 50 to 65 percent of the IT architecture created by his division.

ING’s Chief knowledge officer Linda Marr tells Computerworld that the unified IT architecture is already paying off. She cites recently enacted antispam regulation requiring financial services companies to provide customers with an e-mail opt-out option. Marr explains that ING is about to comply with the regulation because it has all of its customer information accessible from a single environment.

What is Wrong? IT Investment or Strategy

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To protect shareholder value, companies must link risk management with strategic planning and avoid overreacting to regulatory compliance mandates.

Above was the wisdom of recent research findings by BAH(Booz Allen Hamilton). It is real story of facts about corporates missing the train and burning investor's money.

Here’s a fact that bucks conventional wisdom: More shareholder value has been wiped out in
the past five years as a result of mismanagement and bad execution of strategy than was lost
because of all of the recent compliance scandals combined. This is a key finding of a recent
Booz Allen Hamilton survey and analysis of the performance of 1,200 firms with market capitalizations of more than $1 billion for the five-year period from 1999 through 2003.

Consider the 360 worst financial laggards. 87% of the value lost by these firms was attributable to strategic missteps — management ineffectiveness in reacting to competitive pressures or forecasting customer demand — and operational blunders, such as cost overruns and M&A integration problems. Only 13 percent of the value destruction suffered by these companies was caused by regulatory compliance failures or was a result of poor oversight of company operations by corporate boards.

Read the complete article for more details.

Temparament of CIO

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Sara is Deputy IT President and her temparament is described as case study to unerstnad criteria affecting
INTJs typically are imaginative and determined innovators who are stimulated by difficulties and attracted to bigger and bigger challenges. INTJ is also the most independent of all personality types.

INTJs and the Five Criteria for CIO Success

#1: Defining and communicating a shared IT vision, strategy and tactical objectives. Sara's intuitive orientation means that she has the insight to identify issues and patterns and the inspiration and imagination to define a better way. Unfortunately, her introverted nature means that she treats strategy-making as a solitary pursuit. Setting direction is a participative process; otherwise, the commitment necessary for action will be missing. To guard against her natural tendencies to go it alone, Sara must define a process that ensures participation of key stakeholders across the organization. She must then assign IT professionals who are intuitive extroverts (ENs, in the Myers-Briggs shorthand) as key resources in the effort.

#2: Delivering quality results on time and on budget. Sara's judgmental nature means she is comfortable with planning and making decisions and is determined to get things done. She is stimulated by difficulties and loves to solve problems. But since INTJs get bored with details and, at times, do not live in the world of "what is" (that is, facts), Sara needs to refine her thinking process. She must ensure that her project and operational leaders do not consist of people just like herself, or there is a good chance that her IT organization will not deliver on time or meet the needs of the business. These unlike-minded people will act as "sensors" to keep the project grounded in reality (but beware - too many sensors can limit project creativity or result in analysis paralysis).

#3: Helping the business realize value from IT investments. IT value is a dual challenge: first, governance needs to be established, and then business leaders need to be convinced that following the rules is in their best interest. Sara has no problem defining what mechanisms are necessary to promote value realization, but she does not inherently possess the gifts of persuasion to get the rest of the organization on board. To balance her strengths and shore up her weaknesses, she will need thinking extroverts (also known as ETs) on her staff who feel comfortable with the collaborative process of negotiation but who will not give in on key principles or avoid conflict just to make everybody happy.

#4: Fostering good relationships. Executives derail themselves if they are intimidating, abrasive, aloof or arrogant. Since Sara is more comfortable with ideas than with people, she tends to make decisions without considering the feelings of others. She often approaches situations with her mind made up and is surprised by the opposition that results. To be sure, quick-and-easy relationships will never be Sara's strong suit, but she needs to at least neutralize her natural tendencies by forcing herself to interact with others - even though, in her mind, there is no real purpose to it. She can force herself into business relationships by making it a project (for example, defining who she needs to talk with and scheduling regular interactions), improving her cocktail party conversational skills (by preplanning conversational topics and using reflective and active listening), and refining her negotiation skills (using principled rather than positional negotiating).

Once again, Sara can use her staff to bolster her weaknesses. In this case, she can ensure that her client-facing personnel include an adequate number of extroverts.

#5: Building and leading a credible IT organization. Executives also derail when they fail to staff correctly. Since introverted thinkers (ITs) like Sara connect to others through ideas rather than feelings, they don't get to know people on a human level. Therefore they have a tendency to appeal to the head and hands but not the heart. Sara's people are stimulated by her vision, clear direction and delegated authority, but they feel their personal needs are not necessarily understood. Their assignments may not be relevant to their career aspirations. For Sara, the answer is to carve out time to get to know others by asking questions about their goals, values and perceived strengths and weaknesses. Then she can apply her intuitive, thinking skills to define a development plan that will meet the needs of both individuals and the organization.

Each of you shares Sara's predicament, if with a different mix of personality tendencies. Every day, your talents and weaknesses fight each other for their chance in the spotlight. The extent to which you are filling your role with the necessary skills - yours or others' - defines how successful you are and how much you enjoy what you do.

Dust off your latest personality assessments and extract the insights necessary to become better than you really are. The MBTI® isn't the only assessment, nor are such tools the only method of learning your strengths and weaknesses. Make sure you work for a variety of bosses throughout your career. Sign up for the right kind of 360-degree assessment (see "An All-Around Waste of Time"), so that you are able to validate your progress.

Armed with self-knowledge and with their egos in check, executives like Sara - and you - can use every resource and tool to become better than they really are.

Google Unveils Froogle Product Reviews

Online Product Rating is Big Opportunity
What is the best way to buy a product online?? Ask any online shoppper and invariably he will list out 5 to 10 tips of validating product and vendor genuiness. One of the item to come up in such tip is look out for product and supplier rating.

With online shopping growing year on year and some of the labour pains of online shopping portal, innovative ways to reinforce confidance in online shopping like - Froogle.

Wise Web merchants will start paying attention to the reviews their products are getting online, since more consumers will have ready access to those reviews -- thanks to recent additions to Google's online shopping engine, Froogle.

The new feature, Froogle Product Reviews, aggregates product ratings culled from the media and product-rating Web sites.

Froogle, of course, pieces its product database together by crawling the Web and integrating feeds from merchants. Search results typically show photos, prices, and the online merchant carrying the product.

Now, when Web users search for "digital camera" on Froogle, a ratings score appears beside each result, aggregating the product's ratings on Web sites on a five-point scale (similarly to how Metacritic.com gathers movie reviews and generates an aggregated score). Froogle also posts the number of reviews for the product.

Google's Search Engine Enpowers Froogle:
Key differentiator for Froogle from some of the similar services like Product Reviews, Store Ratings are culled from end-user ratings sites like BizRate.com, Shopping.com and ResellerRatings.com is the Google's Search Engine capabilities embedded and working behind.

Users can click on the rating or number of reviews to see a listing of relevant reviews -- and moreover, can then search within the reviews for specific phrases like "battery life," "photo quality," or "customer support." Shoppers can also sort the reviews by review source, relevance (Google's search algorithms determine from the search term) or by date.

Consequently, it behooves merchants to polish their reputations on those ratings sites -- ideally, by giving good customer service, which will then be reflected on those sites.

In addition to Product Reviews and Store ratings, Froogle also recently introduced a customizable shopping list, which can be shared with friends as a Wish List.

The McKinsey Global Survey of Business Executives

The second McKinsey Global Survey of Business Executives finds that corporate leaders are still confident—especially about hiring, IT spending, China, and India—though they’ve tempered their earlier enthusiasm.

McKinsey is taking ot of pain in monitoring and researching on Asian continent especially China and India.

Visit the Survey for interesting survey of more than 5500 executive across the globe conisting of Investment Managers, Analyst, CEOs and Chairman.

Merger and Acquition - IDBI and IDBI Bank

IDBI: The way forward?

Challenging one of the most aggressive banks in the country i.e. ICICI Bank in the retail space and gaining market share is no mean task! But IDBI Bank, post its merger with parent company IDBI, seems to be gearing up to achieve this feat.

A scrutiny of the fundamentals of the two merging entities (read IDBI and IDBI Bank), suggests that both the entities will be equal beneficiaries of the synergy. The “merger ratio”, which will reflect their respective bargaining powers, will also give an indication of the future valuations to be assigned to the merged entity. The following is an estimation of the said valuations in two different scenarios.

IDBI Bank merges with IDBI...
In this case the synergies will act in favour of shareholders of IDBI, as their upside in terms of EPS will be higher than the IDBI Bank shareholders.

Reverse merger of IDBI with IDBI Bank...
In this case the IDBI Bank shareholders will be the undisputed beneficiaries of the merger, as every share of IDBI (current market price Rs 97) will then be valued at Rs 25 or lesser (i.e. 74% cheaper than the market price!).

Let us look at Reverse Merger of ICICI with ICICI Bank:

Post its reverse merger in FY02, ICICI Bank has emerged as the strongest entity in Indian private sector banking. The investments and advances of the bank have augmented by 19% and 32% respectively over the last 3 years, while the deposits have grown by a whopping 112%. This gives a clear indication of the momentum that the bank gained, post its merger. Are we looking at a similar story in case of IDBI? Our estimations of the financials of the merged entity present the following picture….

	ICICI Bank	ICICI Bank	IDBI	IDBI Bank	Consolidated Entity
	(Pre merger- FY01)	FY 04	FY 04	FY 04	FY 04
ROA	0.40%	1.40%	0.60%	1.30%	0.95%
Investments (Rs in m)	358,911	427,429	98,800	39,100	137,900
Advances (Rs in m)	470,349	620,955	451,100	74,000	525,100
Deposits (Rs in m)	320,851	681,086	49,800	100,500	150,300
Net NPAs (Rs m)	26,292	14,226	11,244	623	11,867
Net NPA to advances	5.50%	2.20%	2%	0.80%	2.26%
Credit / Deposit Ratio	146.60%	91.20%	85%	73.60%	349%
No. of Branches	540	413	101	92	193
ATMs	1,000	1675	NA	298	298
No. of Employees	7,700	13,609	1,400	1,700	3,100
Business/employee (Rs m)	103	95.7	-	108.0	108
Business / branch (Rs m)	1,465	3,152	-	1,517	1,517
Profits/employee (Rs m)	4.8	39.6	2.7	0.8	3.5
Profit after Tax (Rs m)	4,249	3,788	3,789	1,326	5,115
No. of shares outstanding (m)	613.0	616.0	652.8	214.2
No of shares held by IDBI in IDBI Bank (m)			120.0
No. of shares outdg post merger (m)					684.2
EPS (Rs)	4.2	26.6	5.8	6.3	7.48

The above comparison is intended to give investors, a futuristic view of the strength of the merged entity, as well as the figures that the entity should benchmark against, to achieve its goal of replicating ICICI Bank’s success. As the figures suggest, we are likely to witness a head to head collision between ICICI Bank and IDBI Bank in terms of corporate financing. But when it comes to retail, it is evident that, IDBI has a long way to go. Nevertheless, IDBI scores immensely in terms of its efficiency ratios. In spite of having one third the number of employees and half the number of branches, the merged entity (IDBI) is likely to outperform its prospective retailing rival (see the business per employee and business per branch ratios of ICICI Bank and merged IDBI).

However, the caveat in this case is the true quality of the assets. Although IDBI has been successful in pruning its Net NPA ratio to 2.4% in FY04 as against 14.2% in FY03, thanks to the Rs 90 bn government bailout package, 37% of the “restructured loans” still have a high probability of slippage in future.

Watermark for Fundamental Analyst:

At the current price of Rs 364, ICICI Bank is trading at a price to book value ratio of 2.7, while at Rs 97 and Rs 51, IDBI and IDBI Bank are trading at price to book value ratios of 0.7 and 2.0 respectively. When and what will be the true valuations accorded to the proposed merged entity, depends upon how soon the respective entities (IDBI and IDBI Bank) are successful in displaying the true colours of their synergy.

Do open systems compromise performance?

I am keen follower of anything and everything happening in Open system space. Let it be small scale upgrade of non critical system from Microsoft to Linux in corners of so many companies around the world. All qudoes to guys who struggle to convenience thich skin Crocodile bosses. Even bigger place like German Railway Transporation Agency moving their 40 ciritical server to Linux (Over S/390 with virual partition).

I come across interesting survey conducted by Asian Bankers debating on most important aspect of Open System deployment. Few extracts from the same is reproduced for your reference.

Asian Banker Research has found that the total cost of ownership advantage of open systems versus proprietary systems may not be as great when issues such as scalability and stability are considered.

Cost remains the fundamental issue in core banking systems decisions. A recent survey of 17 banks in Asia by Asian Banker Research showed that 47 percent of the institutions are choosing to replace their legacy systems with open systems rather than with proprietary technology to obtain cost efficiencies, despite a possible sacrifice in performance, stability and availability.
Asian Banker Research found that total cost of ownership (TCO), the Gartner-formulated industry standard for measuring and managing IT investments, is significantly lower for open systems compared to that of proprietary technology. Although the cost benefits vary among banks, savings as high as 50 percent are not unheard of.

In core banking, the biggest savings can be obtained through the reduction of operational costs – specifically the costs of hardware support, operating systems and software licenses maintenance. Studies have shown that the TCO for UNIX is competitive against other operating systems, while Linux’s TCO is even lower.



Reduction in no. of Vendors:
The key driver for cost reduction in the open systems space is the number of vendors for hardware and software, of which 37 percent of banks agreed is an asset of open systems. Unlike proprietary technology, open systems allow for a freedom of choice where customers are not locked into one particular vendor, hence, spawning competition that drives down costs and stimulates a wealth of product offerings.

Reduction in Development Cost (Talent rather than Salary):
Across the board, banks agree that the cost for hiring proprietary technology specialists outweigh those of open systems. A source cited that salaries for PL1 programmers are one and a half times those of Java peers. This trend is particularly evident in India, where the ease of procurement of CMM level 5 professionals and competitive costs of local talent are highly attractive.


Concurrently, 11 percent of banks cited the availability of third party applications compatible with UNIX as a key strength of open systems. Although the presence of standard protocols enables UNIX packages to be comparatively easier to implement into the core banking system, integration remains a complex endeavor, complicated by the existence of various configurations of UNIX.

Another 37 percent identified open systems to be more scalable. Despite the relatively unproven technology of deploying open systems on a massive scale, one large multi-national bank that is planning to migrate from their legacy platform to an open system is confident that any scalability problems are rapidly disappearing.

Critics, however, opined that open systems do not measure up to proprietary systems in this aspect because an increase in transaction processing volume would require the incremental addition of CPUs, which in turn may affect the performance of software applications that are not developed with this scenario in mind. Furthermore, the relational database nature of open systems places a relatively higher demand on the overhead of the CPU and storage disk than the non-relational database nature of proprietary technology.

Stability and availability remain areas where open systems fall behind. While the proprietary systems are known to be stable and less vulnerable to attacks, outages can occur in open systems as often as once or twice a month. Remedy of problems such as clustering, mirroring and fall-over processes will add to the TCO of the enterprise.

In view of open systems’ cheaper technology, even banks without prerequisite UNIX and Linux skills are willing to work around this problem by outsourcing or developing the skills of their internal employees to benefit from its cost advantage.

Asian Banker Research expects that TCO for open systems will become even more attractive as further convergence between open and proprietary systems coupled with heavy research and development ensures that technology of open systems keeps maturing and improving.

A New Metrics System for IT

How Cisco is approaching the Holy Grail of truly measuring IT value.

The old effort to figure out IT's impact on organizational productivity has new life.

At Cisco Systems, a cross-departmental council has been working to hash out metrics for improving business process operations, according to CIO Brad Boston. In 2003, the council developed metrics to evaluate the efficiency of its online order processing. Less than 30 percent of orders were getting automatically routed to manufacturing, since high error rates necessitated manual input, according to Boston. "We mapped the process of orders coming in and developed metrics. We optimized the process, put new tools in and doubled the percentage of orders that went directly to manufacturing within six to nine months," he says.

A new twist in productivity metrics is the brave new world of business process design and analysis. CIOs are using (and in some cases creating) performance metrics to help their organizations get a better handle on partnerships and service agreements, and to claim (or keep) a place at the strategic planning table. CIOs say that these emerging "value" metrics

Value metrics occupy the intersection of hard and soft performance measures, combining observation and intuition.

1. What value are we contributing to revenue growth,
2. to being able to roll out new products and services,
3. to cut the time to do those things,
4. add to customer satisfaction and retention and cut costs?"

Metrics as Tool used by CIO:
While acknowledging the limitations of productivity metrics, CIOs use them to strategize, budget, weigh outsourcing decisions, run (and terminate) projects and communicate with other senior executives.

Pitfalls of Productivity
Ironically, the preoccupation with productivity can be a drain on productivity. "We don't have a good way to [calculate IT productivity], either to forecast or to measure," Intel's Busch says.

"As a result, we end up justifying and rejustifying, and analyzing and reanalyzing stuff, and coming at it from different angles and trying to persuade people with different measures."

"I don't think personnel appraisals are as dependent on productivity metrics," Busch says. "We measure people on results rather than on unit output per period of time.

"It may sound a little philosophical, but I'm not sure whether you can talk about productivity in a world where you're not actually talking about repeatable tasks," BT's Stockman says.

Productivity metrics are morphing to fit the environment. The key is finding a way to establish a productivity baseline, according to Busch. "I don't think we're very close to it," he says. "It's hard to tie [economic measurement of companies' results] back to individual project activity in a lot of cases. We need something that's much more trackable."