Monday, October 11, 2010

Grundfos MD at CBS

Mr. N K Ranganath, MD, Grundfos Pumps India Pvt Ltd gave us perhaps one of the most enriching sessions on how to survive in a corporate situation in real life. He shared his experiences with us on how we could learn from anybody and everybody. He told us that the best policy is to tell the truth because false and fake claims would certainly kill you in the long run. He added that one should not have any assumptions about his workplace because in reality the workplace breaks all assumptions. Survival in the corporate world today is not as easy as it was before. Workplaces especially in factory situations could be harsh. To deal with such situations a manager should posses the following qualities he says- open mind, open heart, understanding, patience and commitment.

The corporate workplace also breaks a lot of common happenings like birds of the same feather flocks together. In corporate birds of different feathers flock together and they must work together and produce results. There would be a lot of people who could act as “shrinkers” in various levels. Those are the people who influence u negatively within the organisation. It is you who should be careful. Today more than one’s intelligent quotient the emotional quotient plays a vital role in his or her survival in the corporate world. Accept change and always the ability to change proves that you are progressing.

Mr. Rangarajan said that the most important department in the company is the group of people who face the customers directly. They could actually be from any department within the company but what matters is the impact they create on the customers. He then summed up by saying that corporate 'survival' is not a very tough thing to do -all you have to do is to be boringly consistent and innovate in all ways possible.

Contributed by A. Yuvanath – International Management Varsity (V Batch 2010-11)

Friday, October 8, 2010

Real time thoughts on NPD

On 4th September 10 we had a noteworthy guest lecturer- Mr. Saumitra Prasad, Marketing Manager from CavinKare (CK). The topic for the class was New Product Development. He chose one example and based on that example he explained the whole concept. This was easy for us to relate the concept and it was free from complexity. He chose “Indica hair dye” product of CK as his example. He enlightened us about the stages of NPD (New Product Development).

There are 4 stages in NPD. NPD process initiates with ‘identifying the concept’, where the unmet needs of the customers are ascertained. Based on the unmet needs a product is developed to satisfy those unmet needs. This is the second step in the process- ‘development of product’. Once the product is designed a test launch is conducted in certain parts of the country- for instance, the southern region. This process is known as ‘execution’ which is the most crucial stage. The finale of NPD process is ‘expansion’. If the test launch proves to be a success then the company can proceed with the distribution of the product. The decision of distribution channel must be based on the area in which their test launch was conducted.

Most of the companies skip the ‘execution’ process which proves to be suicidal at times. The reason for such avidity is that if the competitor arrives before, then the company will lose the competitive advantage and will incur colossal loss. As my friend Sathya said it is indeed a ‘rat race’.

It was a valuable session and we couldn’t ascertain the span of the session as it was enthralling. We thank Mr. Prasad for sharing his experiences with us and enlightening our knowledge. We thank CBS for creating such opportunities and training us for “the real world”.

Contributed by K U Mohammad Anwar Sadhath, Marcom Varsity (V Batch 2010-11)

A sip of energy

A few days ago, we had Mr. Chandrashekar, CEO of Java Green, address us. It was a sheer pleasure and honor to listen to him, as his speech was very much like the fresh coffee you’d get in the Reliance’s coffee shop chain. For those who don’t know much about Java Green, it is a coffee shop with a technological difference – what began as a way to make customers stay longer, has now become the unique selling proposition of the chain. Java Green boasts of a high-speed internet cafe for individuals and video conferencing facilities available on rent for small and medium sized companies.

Mr. Chandrashekar had a very captivating way of delivering his ideas. He spoke about how Management as a practice is different from Management as a subject. When we study, we are always given data along with the problem at hand. The pros and cons, the constraints and the cushions are clearly defined for us. “Unfortunately, that is not the case in reality”, he said. “Data is a luxury in most cases. In many situations, we have to go to great lengths to get related data, if not the real data under question”.

He recounted an incident, wherein they had to predict the demand for Tomato Purée, in on his previous marketing assignments. Since the product was the first of its kind and didn’t have previous data for comparison they computed it based on the production, prices and demand for Tomatoes. Now, predicting the trends for tomatoes is tricky, as it depends on the monsoons and they had to get the data from Weather department. It all went to prove the importance of data and that evening, we realized the importance of all those appendixes that came with our case studies which we dreaded to read and interpret and resolved to love and respect them from then on!

The next important thing that we registered in our minds was that, the tertiary job was of primary importance to anyone sitting on top of the Management chain. Simply put, the feed-back of a salesperson was something which should never be neglected by the Top Management. This is because the salesperson is the contact point with the customer and he knows the needs and wants of the customer. Every CEO who wants to know the success of his/her products, must be sensitive to the feed-back of the Salesperson, as they are a direct-line to the Customer’s mind.

Last but not the least, Mr. Chandrashekar also gave us some insights on the trade-offs that we could end up having in our Management careers and urged us to take the responsibility of our own decisions. It didn’t take us very long to understand what he was talking about. Like every other stream, peer pressure could take a toll on us, and he impressed upon us that priorities and preferences vary for individuals and hence our decisions - a point very well taken, Sir!

Contributed by Narmada K- BFS Varsity (V Batch 2010-11)

Real World Gyan From Marg CEO

It was Thursday evening and we were all waiting for our first guest lecturer of the academic year. As we sat there with a lot of expectations and wondered what he would talk about, in walked Mr. Ramakrishnan, the CEO of MARG. Mr. Ramakrishnan’s lecture was thought provoking and filled with a lot of real world gyaan that was required for budding managers like us. He started off saying that ‘every man should know to manage else man will age’ that certainly did the trick of grabbing all our attention. He went on to say that ‘if the man is right, then the world would become alright’, stressing the importance of man management. According to him a man should always aim for more and never be content with how much he/she has achieved. He explained this point with context to his own life and how he has been doing what he loves like writing, real estate, managing etc. He said that we should remove the word ‘if’ from our dictionary as it stops one from going forward and trying something. This was truly inspirational. We should strive to achieve our goals and approach all our problems with a positive attitude…and I just couldn’t agree more. But the fun part was when he spoke about what a husband expects from a wife and vice-versa and how both should work on their marriage to make it a success and he related that to an organization…how you look at an organization and what you expect from it and vice versa. This implied that one has to always realize what an organization wants from you and work together for both individual and organization success. When one of the students asked who is more important- happy customers or happy employees, he said that only if employees are happy, an organization can get happy customers. He ended his mesmerizing lecture by saying that we all should have the sky as our limit and never be satisfied with how much we have achieved and constantly strive to change ourselves for the better.

Contributed by Asif Sultan- International Management Varsity (V Batch 2010-11)