Touch down Croatia / Hrvatska

Ever read Alistair MacLean novels, as a young adult or even later? He wrote one called ‘The Partisans’, which I read while in senior school. Never mind what that story was about, but the setting was former Yugoslavia. Exotic sounding Zagreb, Mostar, Sarajevo, Graz, Zadar etc which became infamous later during the Serbo-Croat-Bosnian conflict. Somewhere along the line a city whose name started with a Z, sure did pique some interest in me and that interest to get there, sometime in life, remained.
Just before getting my shackles removed, closing my eyes and forefinger jabbing a map of Europe pointed roughly to Croatia. What shackles, you ask. Ah, but that is a story for another day.

Dealt with the Croatian embassy for a Visa. Have never figured why such seemingly immigration risk insignificant countries need such amazing amount of paperwork to issue a tourist visa and why do they charge so much? Am I about to illegally migrate…to Croatia? Not as if there is a large bunch Indians traveling to Croatia either.

 

Meanwhile, getting tickets on miles from British Airways was as much a bitch as it always has been. Can’t fly through here, not from there, not on this day, not on that, not in economy, not this airline etc etc. Getting some workable, but inconvenient combination is akin to expecting a singularity type event to happen and a space time continuum portal, to the other dimension,​ open up. So they routed me through LHR, but couldn’t find me a miles seat to Zagreb. That is supposed to be my destination, you see. In any case, my return trip on miles and paid LHR->ZAG ends up costing more than flying economy to ZAG and back.

The travel day from finally arrived. BA seems to have fallen on bad times. Their planes lack upkeep, the service borders now on surly, the food is just plain bad. Their Twitter CS team is callous in approach as well.

If you are flying short-haul economy, then you pay for food. Their central software system crashes, and disables online check-in too.

But, still interesting things happen. There are things happening everyday which make one gleeful. Finally the app based check-in today morning, self baggage drop and tag printing, and touch less card swipe on board for a coffee. Technology, when it works, is sheer magic.

Then this beautiful innovation of filter coffee in this cup with a cloth net filter.

Why didn’t someone think of this earlier?

Visible sunrises are still a delight. Even more so in England.

And then, John Cleese is going to be back on the tube; so reports The Telegraph.

…And touch down into sunny Zagreb. After a long line at immigration and a (fleecing) taxi drive, here is the view from my upgraded room

More on Zagreb and Croatia as I travel through next some days…

CIO tending towards CEO?

Been quite a journey for the IT /Technology industry just supporting businesses to gradually, but definitely, starting to hand hold business to directions like never before. In the distant past (at least feels like that) there were the EDP (Electronic Data Processing) departments in companies created to provide support to the Finance folk, and then gradually to point of sale. Over time, companies figured the role of a CIO with the proliferation of technology across their operations. Technology based companies started having a CTO too. Traditionally and because of the support nature, IT continues, in some cases,  to be treated as a ‘cost’ and also report into the COO or the CFO. Happens in many a large multi-billion dollar strategically stagnant corporation. However, we do know (and see this every day) that the world has moved on and there is a clear and present danger for these mammoths that they will be left behind in the race and die out.

Technology today plays a more strategic function, and in many organizations it walks hand-in-glove with business. But, in many others, it leads business designing new offerings or creating new ways of doing business.  Many tech startups have opened up new business areas or have taken existing business models through a discontinuous shift by putting technology in front. Technology and business strategy aren’t really separated anymore and that is why, many of the good CIOs today talk directly to the organization’s business strategy.

The symptoms are everywhere. The WSJ, if you recall, used to have a section called the Marketplace. Sometime, early last year, they changed the name of the section of Business & Tech. The WSJ and other predict that “algorithms will increasingly guide nearly every function in the modern enterprise,” resulting in the elevation of CIOs everywhere and “valuations for Silicon Valley startups [that] march ever higher.”

The word “digital” came with no predefined boundaries and it started with smashing boundaries in the world of entertainment and content driven sectors. As it proliferated to other sectors, we saw there were no industry based rules or limitations. No holy cows, and nothing sacrosanct. Every business, now, is a technology business. Disruption caused by technology is blurring or even eliminating rigid industry boundaries very rapidly

This change is as much external as it is internal. Compartmentalization of data was created in organizations to support divisions and subdivisions in the company. New world organizations are now data driven and barrier less;  many organizations are transforming to be so. Now, data flowing through previously impregnable boundaries can cause these departmental boundaries to dissolve and in some cases even the traditional functions to disappear.

I remember reading an Economist survey a year or two ago which had correlated the strong link between a CIO’s role to the company’s success at innovation. CIOs of strong innovators (organizations) were noted to be more likely to be the principal strategist for key strategic technologies, especially consumer-facing mobile applications, as well as online learning, enterprise social networks, big data analytics and social media. Essentially, digital. Of course, that is only one part of the world of digital. You know that.Forward looking organizations are starting to transform their business culture to creativity, collaboration and innovation. Many of these service transformations are made possible because of investments which are CIO sponsored.

An industry survey run last year (by Harvey Nash) showed that the shift is quite underway, with 66% of CIO projects are those which are designed to make money (as opposed to just support) and for 34% of the CIOs surveyed, digital is now. Some 48% of the CIOs expected their role to change in the next two years. 32% of the CIOs surveyed now report directly to the CEOs, a jump of about 10% over the last year. That takes us to the topic of the next jump.

It’s no tsunami, but it is starting to happen. Mid-year, last year, former Burger King CIO Raj Rawal became CEO of Fresh Diet, a small meal-delivery company. Then, Guy Chiarello quit as CIO of JPMorgan Chase to be president of First Data, a financial services powerhouse. Companies in real estate, oil, services and healthcare have also appointed CEOs who are former CIOs.

Today, monster forces of social media, mobility and analytics technology are causing tectonic shifts in the business environment. The tech shops in smart organizations are in the forefront because IT is now the number-one tool for formulating and executing strategic advantage. A smart CIO using data a and technology smartly to create new revenue may be well-positioned to lead a company. The CEO job has never looked more attainable for a good CIO.

Why Flipkart’s tying up with Mumbai Dabbawallas is a great move

Allow me to start with saying that I am not plugging for Flipkart, and have no love lost for a company with no customer service. But, when something is well done, it is well done.

Flipkart’s tying up with Mumbai’s Dabbawalas is a straight shot brilliant move. Whoever in the company came up with that, thought really out of the box. So, how would this work?

Embed from Getty Images

Flipkart aims to use the Dabbawala’s to deliver the goods when these guys go to pick up the empty lunch boxes. Now their empty run is now being paid for, and they actually have pay load. When they are making their return run with the lunch boxes, they would have made their extra loads and would not be returning heavy either. Because their empty ferry will now get paid for, the cost that Flipkart will have to pay will actually be lower. Certainly lower than what they have to pay for their current last mile drops.Why

The Mumbai Dabbawallas bring to the table their rapid delivery with a Six sigma level accuracy.

What Dabbawalas bring to the table is their accuracy of rapid and on-time delivery. They operate at a Six sigma level of accuracy with really no technology or even paper based system for tracking. Essentially, there is no operations management type of cost at all. That perhaps would need to change a bit for the deliveries that they make for Flipkart. Some amount of paper based (at least) systems will have to be introduced, and there in lies the risk of their Six Sigma levels dropping a bit.

Now only if the ecommerce company could find Dabbawallas in other cities, their per shipment operating cost would be under control and perhaps they would be a viable business too.

The essence of Virality – the ALS way!

All digital marketing gurus will tell you about 20 (plus or minus five) things that you should do to get your message across and how to ensure more and more people view it.
But, how do you really do this? Consider many videos, messages and feeds which have gone viral. These all have just the basic key elements common. If you take a step back, and connect your messaging (very deliberately) with your overall digital strategy, you will see the common factors are:

• A Cause – that people can relate to. Or a need that people see getting fulfilled.
• The Content – that touches people’ emotion somehow. Either in terms of goodness, something shocking or the best of the lot – humour
• and the Hook – something that makes people do the share and the like. The content itself can, of course. But, the desire to show people “I did it” is even more powerful.

  Now, take a quick second and think about the ALS IceBucketChallenge. You have surely seen a few videos, or maybe actually have taken up the challenge and in return challenged some other friends too. Has all the three elements embedded. Its a cause, important enough for people to relate to. The content is humourous for sure, almost every time. The hook is of course, you can challenge other people by taking up this challenge. The only difference is that in this case it is not just one video which is going viral, but the message. That is what one finally cares for anyways…and this is brining in money (in donations).

Customer facing innovation

Customer Facing innovation from Idli Dosa batter maker ID

Are you fed up of politics related posts on your Facebook newsfeed?

There is enough politics that I get to see. On the tube, in the newspaper and of course on Facebook. People posting / re-posting on Facebook are serious about it, and in most cases, mean well. However, like me, you might have had an overdose already.

FB Top bar showing Social Fixer plug-in settings icon

You do not want to see these posts anymore, but do not want to block of the friend(s) who posts these political messages. The bad new first – Facebook does not have a mechanism to do this. The good news – is that there is a plug-in available for browsers to be able to do this blocking. This plug-in is called Social Fixer and you can download it from their web site. There, currently, are separate plug-ins for Firefox, Opera, Safari, Chrome and browsers running a Greasemonkey extension. People on IE, well…tough luck.

It will plug itself into your browser and show up as an icon on your Facebook page top right. It is easy to configure and fairly versatile.

It will run you through a wizard. But the part that you need is the “Filtering”.

It can do text or links based filtering and your filter text could be as simple as “/politics|congress|bjp|aap|/i”. The “i” in the end keeps your filter case in-sensitive, and then you choose what you want to do with that post (hide, minimize or apply a CSS). That is it. You can choose to create tabs to filter, move and segregate posts too.

It takes a while for the filters to start working and might seem as if the filtering is not working too well. Clear the cache, and you will see the difference.

Social fixer has a host of other features to un-clutter, enhance and simplify. But, the filtering is what I needed the most.

Retail 2020 for the Retail CIO

The last some years has been nothing less than a train wreck, and a traffic pile up put together. Things seem to look up for a bit and then go down into the dump. Maybe, its a W-shaped recession after all. But there is a bit of a silver lining.

Retail will have a very different shape in the next decade. How should the CIOs of retail companies prepare? Here are some pointers from my experience interacting with Retail CIOs worldover for about the last seven years.

Proactive alignment with business

IT not always being aligned with the mainline business has always been the bane of many a CIO organization. Right now is the opportunity to make the change. CIOs must choose to drive leadership in IT areas which directly add to the company value propositions, and not wait for business to set direction and strategy for IT.

Act local, think Global

All retailers must think of the world as their consumer base. Thinking global does not necessarily mean proliferation to the scale of Starbucks in which case you could see half a dozen starbucks signs standing any stop lights in downtown AnyCity in the US. The Body shop is a fairly decent example, and so is WHSmiths in gradual global expansion, and reducing overall risk by placing the eggs in different baskets. Of course, this needs the processes and systems to support such geographic diversity and this is where the CIO comes in to play a major part. In some geographies e.g. India, most of this progress will be through JVs, and the CIO plays a part in integration and adapting to local IT needs

Consumer and demand driven

Retailing is slowly becoming, and will completely be Customer driven rather than merchandise driven. The hammer and nail syndrome will have to go away. As shake downs happen, the retail geography changes. New specialty, and information driven retail comes to play very strongly. Here are two examples – Airtel is the largest seller of music in India today. Best Buy’s largest competitor perhaps is Amazon, and not other brick and mortar set ups (now that Circuit City is history). Better understanding the customer behaviour is what will make the difference.

Out of the box

Time to think differently, time to adapt and bring forth disparate step changes in technology. Retailers who are able to harness technology for bringing in innovation will see progress. Technology which brings in quick supply chain squeeze, inventory handling or deliver top-line increase will see being adapted, and CIOs need to be ready to move rapidly.

Cup of coffee, and the biscotti.

My follow up post on the cafe scene is now more towards the new age, new world coffee shops. As I was doing a bit of research for this post, I bumped  across this video on Guardian’s website which you might like.

Bluetooth, at Barista

The older world cafes are on the wane. Oh yes, that is a bold statement to make especially with the type of fan following places like India Coffee House (with its many branches), and Koshy’s have. But, they definitely are limited in number and prices at Koshy’s is driving many of the old timers away to other places for meals. The astronomical prices at Koshy’s for rather mediocre food is sending old timers to a place called Sheesh Mahal (across the street) for lunch. And in large numbers. Just coffee can’t possibly sustain a place, when even the coffee is not really that great.

So, where else is the bite coming from? Of course the likes of Cafe Coffee Day (to a super large extent) and Baristas of the world. There are some international chains starting to open up as well, including Costa, Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf, Cafe Pescucci, Gloria Jean’s and making inroads is Starbucks.

Many of the younger (gen X, and gen Y) type of people do not really identify with the older atmosphere anymore. ‘Atmosphere’ to them is quite different. A profession photographer friend in his late 20s (I think) keeps moaning about the torn chairs, old fans at Koshy’s. I crib about lack of ventilation and lack of air-conditioning.

Get an instant discount at Barista, if you are a member

The New India, and the super consumerist middle class is looking for something else.  And the faceoff is not just that simple either. The (relatively) newer chains like Barista are offering a different, and richer experience.  Their premier “Creme” cafes serve salads, smoothies, sandwiches, mochachhino and a private(ish) space with cushions and sofas instead of the open plan series of tables under slowly whirring fans. The music caters exactly to people who visit here.  A place where younger people can still hang out with people of the opposite sex (in some amount of privacy) without their parents raising their eyebrows.

The success of the new coffee shop chains reflects the change in social taste, disposable income and social customs. Both Cafe Coffee Day and Barista are rapidly spreading into tier 2 cities, and attract young adults with an aspirational target.  Its working!

Of course, a lot of old India still remains.  Why else would you not be able to find yourself a table at India Coffee House in most of the larger cities during lunch time or tea time. Many of these people are not from the affluent strata of the society, and a large number carry a thick wallet but prefer the old world atmosphere.  It is almost an intellectual ‘vindication’ to be seen at Koshy’s where the intellectuals (or the ones who pose) show up,  and rub shoulders with other professionals, politicians, media folk, authors (some absolute rubbish ones) too. You are not the ‘cultured type’ if Coffee Day is your hang out. If you get the drift.

But besides the new atmosphere, and catering to new tastes there is a lot else which goes for the coffee shop chains.  Many of these places have a wifi hotspot, which encourages people to sit around. Some of these places (as in the picture) have a blue tooth point which sends out messages and coupons. And some of these changes have started a loyalty program. Well done, I would say.  Can you possibly imagine any of that at ICH, Koshy’s or any such place? Probably not!

And there in lies the challenge. It is not very difficult to hold on to the old world charm, by putting one foot into the current and future, is it?

Welcome to the world of Socialonomics! (Part 1)

Gartner, in its September 2009 Hype Cycle for e-commerce mentions that blogging has reached the plateau of productivity. Social networking is just a fad for the young, and frivolous in nature. Porn is the only thing that really sells on the web.

Did you say you agreed to any or all of those statements? Think again! Check the factoids that you might want to hear:

Social Networking is critical for Retail

• Social media has overtaken porn as #1 activity on the web. And porn as an industry (on the web) did not do that well in 2009.
• 1 of 8 couples married in the US last year, met via social media
• More people follow Ashton Kutcher and Ellen Degeneres than the combined population of Ireland, Norway and Panama
• Over 200mn blogs, 54% bloggers post or tweet daily. 78% people prefer peer recommendations, than search engine results. Only 14% trust advertisements (including commercials on the telly). Most trust word of mouth!
• 96% of Gen Y (who have internet access) use social media of some sort or the other.
  Facebook reached 100mn users in 9 months. If it were a country, it would be the 4th largest, though China’s Q-zone is larger.
• Ipod app downloads hit 1bn in 9 months.
• 80% of twitter usage is on mobile devices. Youtube is the 2nd largest search engine in the world.
• 34% post opinions about products and brands35% book sales in the US are already on Kindle.
• News is now pushed, to you. Same is about to happen to products, and brands. >1.5Mn pieces of content are shared of Facebook, daily!

Slide 4

—Social media has overtaken porn as #1 activity on the web

—1 of 8 couples married in the US last year, met via social media

—More people follow Ashton Kutcher and Ellen Degeneres than the combined population of Ireland, Norway and Panama

—Over 200mn blogs, 54% bloggers post or tweet daily. 78% people prefer peer recommendations, than search engine results. Only 14% trust advertisements

—70% of 18-34 year olds have watched TV on the web. 25% Americans said they watched a short video in the past month, on phone.

Kaati Zone – (Part 2)

So here’s the second part of my post about Kaati Zone,  and the advent of quick service restaurants in the country.  My last post was more around what Kaati Zone is and where they are located, and what they serve and how new and innovative their assortment set is. This one will be slightly different 🙂

Kaati Zone - Church Street, Bangalore

Though I quite like what KZ offers, they still have some things to sort (not in any particular order):

1. Atmosphere /Ambience : KZ has two / three types of format.  The sit down type (as in Church Street), or counter based in shared space. The latter would be in airports, or in food courts adjoining office complexes where KZ operates a counter and seating is common in the food court. My crib is about the former. I would consider their Church Street store to be their flagship store since it is in a very high visibility area.

• The place is neat, clean and cold (as opposite to warm, as in emotion).  As you walk by the place, there is nothing in the store that beckons you, or welcomes you. Hard tiled floors, plasticky decor and sometimes an individual behind the self service counter. Not enough!
• I have never ever seen more than one table, besides mine, being occupied. Regardless of time that I have passed by or entered. And its brightly lit, so very visible. Doesn’t work well to attract people.
• There are two TV screens which play the usual non-descript something or the other. More often than not, one of the screens is switched off. The music which plays is again rather non-descript western music. IMHO, The music , the type of expected clientele and the food do not go along together. How about just playing one of the multi-lingual FM channels?
• Lighting (as I mentioned earlier) is bright, and white. Not enough warmth, there either.

2. Pinching the penny:

• Example 1 – The packet in which the roll is served is hard paper, which you can sort of spiral tear as you eat the roll. Surely, it costs a bit to produce that packet. Though designed well, it does not tear well. Also, unless the food that you ordered is to go, one does not need this type of paper packaging. Branded butter paper (or something of that sort) would do very easily. The current packaging has parts of the menu written on it; wrong place. No one reads that.  The package also mentions the duration required to re-heat in a microwave. Well, I can’t possibly stick paper into the microwave. That implies that the package is a waste even for a take away which is going to someone’s home (or at least to a place where re-heating is possible). How about a plastic tube, which can be heat sealed at the store? Just the packaging itself will save money.
• Example 2 – The sides are served in boxes, which are way larger than the content would ever need. Designed almost for a largish burger really. Wasted, I thought. Have you seen those paper boat type things that fries are often served in many other fast food places? That is what is required here. Will save money, again!

3. Availability: In most cases, I eat at the KZ counter near where I work.  And almost never have I been able to procure a lite or a diet paratha (as mentioned on the menu). That is a bit of a bummer! Though honestly, a lite paratha with something which is not really low calorie does not make that much sense anyways.  Quite like the double cheese, large fries and the diet Coke!

I do honestly believe that KZ has a good offering, and I would love to take a franchise (if I had the money) and I can think of five different locations where it will do very well, but they need to set some things right.

Kaati Zone – advent of the Indian quick service restaurant (Part 1)

Of course, you have seen (and probably eaten) at McDonald’s, Baskin Robbins, Donut Baker and so many other non-Indian quick service eateries already. The model works, its proven. There are some Indian players getting into the game as well, and food chains are starting to spread. However, most of these are rather city specific – Naturals ice cream (primarily Mumbai), Bittoo Tikki Wala (in Delhi) and one or two more. The only other company which does have a national presence is Haldiram (and their run off the mill, non-descript chaats).Okay, Shaanthi Sagar and Shiv Sagar excluded.

Kaati Zone (KZ) is sort of the new player in the market. They (if you have not been to one yet) serve kaathi rolls (kebabs, eggs etc wrapped in a paratha), parathas etc. Good assortment, and a positive move away from the standard and boring. Especially works in places other than in north of India, where kebab rolls are found in dives only. Kaati Zone is based (with its franchise model) in Bangalore primarily, and has two outlets in Mumbai.  The founders did find a pretty empty market segment to enter and offer a good product line. Their two serious competitors, I guess, are Tibbs and other frankie makers in Mumbai and the dives that I mentioned above on a large scale. Of course, you have the Nizam’s and the usual kebabchis. But, you don’t get kebab rolls with cheese, or kebab rolls on a diet (or lite) paratha, chicken fingers, deep fried chicken spheres, a few types of parathas, fries all in the same place.

What works beautifully for KZ is also the fact that it does not have to manifest itself always as a sit down place, but would be a take away (or delivery) very easily. Most of their locations are really that type, in office complexes, at airports where people want to really want quick service. But making a friend paratha kebab roll can’t be as quick as pre-made burgers lying under warm lamps, agreed!

The environs are always clean, service is polite, the food is good! What more could you ask for? Actually quite a bit…but I will let you think about it a bit (and go eat a kebab roll ), and read all that in the second part of this post. Meanwhile, why don’t you write in with your comments about Kaati Zone?

To be continued…

Walking the Mall

India is rapidly becoming the land of malls, each one competing in size (at least) with the previous one. Each one is getting higher end than the previous one. DLF Emporia in a way set the trend, and  then the about to open at Phoenix Mills, in Mumbai. Both these are high end malls with housing only super luxury brands from outside the country or apparel designers from India. Many of the larger malls in terms of square footage are (or coming up) in the NCR region because of availability of space. Take for example the Ambi Mall which houses a 50K Sq Ft food court, or the Mall of India which is 6mn sq ft in terms of covered area, or the Great India Place mall (in Noida) which is about a million sq ft. No mean sizes these, by any standard and definitely larger than most malls in Europe or Singapore.

The Non-American Scenario

Mall in Bangalore

Of course, there always have been conversations about how successful malls have been in India with real estate prices not making Retail very lucrative. And that most of the footfall conversion for a mall happens in the food courts, or the cineplex on the top floor. Food stores generally do well, whether they are in the food court or outside, whether they sell meals or cookies.

The malls in India, and the rest of the world came up in a completely different economic and social context compared to North America (where malls were first created). So the initial demographic is different, but a completely different set of circumstances still ends up drawing people to a mall. The combination of stores works well; you can shop, eat, play games and also catch a movie. Besides this, in many malls a large number of footfalls comes from people belonging to rural or semi-urban areas who come in as tourists. Many people spend time walking around and buying nothing (maybe a bag of pop corn) just being inside an air-conditioned environment. Hence, the influence of the complete extraneous factor of weather in a country like India or even in the Dubai.

Back to North America

Its not really hot in North America, but of course it can grow very very cold. Bottom-line, extreme weather! American malls capitalized on this and invited people who used to spend the morning walking and getting exercise; mainly senior adults. This was, and is a brilliant plan to invite people into the mall before the mall really opens. The walkers get a climate controlled and safe environment to walk in every morning without having to bump into crowds. Many other malls quickly realized and extended the potential by:

• Getting coffee or juice stores to open up early in the mall.
• Next was the food court, where many of the stores started opening a bit early and started serving breakfast. Each of the fast food places usually do serve breakfast even otherwise, but breakfast time usually ends before a mall opens up. So, that was a smart change!
• Malls got smarter and opened up mall-walkers clubs where people could become members, join a group and walk the mall for a small fee (in many cases less than $20 year). This fee gave the members discounts at stores, and prior notices for sales.
• Many marketing companies also found a very specific niche and target audience to try their new products, or push existing ones.

So, essentially works beautifully for everyone.

Back to India

Now, this is something which could very easily be replicated in our country as well. There are many people who do go out for a power (or leisurely) morning walk. There are seniors, and otherwise. And there are many people who would love to, but do not manage because of no proper ear marked areas. Parks and trails are vanishing before you can say ‘mall-walking is good’! This should work out well for mall owners, stores and the walking populace.

This, of course, sounds easier than it is! Traffic situations are problematic in most cities in India and many people will spend a bit of time getting to a mall in the morning. Not all malls are located very close to residential areas either. The third large problem will be security!

But still, worth a consideration I would think given the sizes of the malls opening up and the actual amount of available walking space and there already are four or five coffee chains in the country with Starbucks contemplating a foray in as well.

Read more about Mall Walking at this Reuters Web site.