Managing Relations between a customer and your product they own

I have been thinking about the different management ways which the companies use to manage the relations between a customer and one of the companies product owned by them. I have till now come up with three different ways of management which I call:

• Multi Password Way of Management
  
• Password Way of Management
• Token Way of Management
• Cobbler Way of Management

These ways of management are basically different in the way they relate a product owned by the customer to the customer.

To summarize:

If I go to a cobbler and give him a shoe to repair and later someone else goes to collect it, the cobbler uncle would be unable to recognize. He relates the product directly with the customer.

If I go to a parking lot, then they give me a parking ticket. Anyone who has the parking ticket can take the car.

If I go to an ATM, anyone would need my card and PIN-ID to get money from my account.

If I call up the Customer Care of my credit card company, they ask me a few queries to establish my identity.

Do you know of any thing which falls outside these categories? If yes, please do leave a comment.

Multi Password Way of Management

Lets say I call up the customer care of my credit card company. Before interacting with me, the customer care would ask me a few queries to verify my identity like:

• Card Number
• Date of Birth
• Mothers Maiden Name
• House Address
• Mobile Number

After I have given satisfactory answers to these questions, they would consider my identity proved and answer my queries.

You create a many-to-one relation between the customer and the product. If the many is verified by the customer, then he / she has got the access to the product.

This way is used when you need to ensure with a good probability that the product is being associated with the right customer, so instead of having a single token, there are multiple different tokens associated with the product.

Password Way of Management

I need to withdraw money from the ATM using my debit card. I go to the ATM, take out my card, swipe it in the machine, enter my PIN-ID, enter the amount I need to withdraw and I got money. This is the ATM Way of Management. You create a one-to-one relation between the account, the card and the PIN-ID (anyone can withdraw money provided he / she has the card and the PIN-ID). It is normally used for some amount of security is required. It is commonly followed in:

• ATMs
• Internet Banking
• Using Railway / Airport Tickets using Net Banking (where you need an identity proof in addition to the Railway / Airport Ticket)
• Using your credit-card where in addition to your card, your sign is matched with the sign on the card
  

Token Way of Management

If you go to a big retail store, they would request you to keep your baggage in the store house and hand you a token-id. Anyone who gives the token-id back to the store house would get the baggage back (be it you, your wife, your friend or your friendly pick-pocketeer) . For the StoreHouse, the token-id represents everyone associated with the product they are safe-guarding. The StoreHouse creates a one-to-one association with the token-id.

This is commonly followed in:

• Store houses at Retail Stores, Theatres etc.
• Parking lots
• My office where they have given me a card to swipe and the door opens
• You go to a courier company to send a courier and they give you a receipt
• You go to a dry-cleaner and give your clothes. They give you a receipt.
  

Cobbler Way of Management

How does a cobbler manage his business?

Today morning I had gone to give our nearby Cobbler Uncle a footware that had broken. He told me to collect it from him sometime later in the day. In the evening, my wife and I went to the cobbler to collect the footware. We went in a car and my wife got down to collect the footware from the Cobbler Uncle.

The Cobbler will associate the footware he receives with the image of the person delivering the footware to him. Now if another person goes there to collect the footware from him, his association rules break down. When I got down from the car and went in front of him, he remembered the footware that was given to him in the morning.

This is the Cobbler Way of Management. You create a one-to-one association between the product and the customer which has the risk of breaking down in case the customers friend goes. If instead of this, the Cobbler Uncle associates the footware with the address of the house, then even if another person goes to collect the footware, the association will still work. This is the StoreHouse Way of Management.

I have got a courier!

OR MAYBE I HAVE NOT. Early this year, when I changed my company, I got the addresses changed for all the correspondence that used to happen at the address of my old company. I changed it to my home address, which does not change as often as my companies :). Early today I received a SMS that a courier to me was not delivered as no one was at home. I was also given a number to get in touch with. I called them up and inquired about my treasure. I was told that it has been sent to Noida to my office address. Well Well Well. It was fine till now but as soon as he said that it has been sent to my office address, I smelled something wrong. I have not given my new office address to anyone till now so this one had gone to my old office address. So my courier has no address as of now. I told the guys that I can collect the courier from their office address. But they do not allow people to collect couriers from their office (which is rather bizarre). If I can show an identity proof which is well known (PAN card, Driving License etc.) then why should they not allow me to collect courier from their address.

OneFamily and Google Earth

A friend of mine has joined an Internet startup. One of their websites OneFamily allows you to create family trees. You can neatly arrange all the members of your family and add their snaps to the tree.

Now Google Earth allows you to create Placemarks. Placemarks is a technique to mark the place where you live on this Earth.

If OneFamily and GoogleEarth can combine the two features together, you should be able to associate the family tree with a map created through GoogleEarth and where different leaves of the tree are residing.

Sounds cool when you need to send invitations out to all the people in the family where the latest information would be placed at one place.

ARZ kiya hai

Ho agar khata humse bhula dena usko samajh kar udta dhuan

Kyunki khata bhi hoti hai wahin dher saara pyaar ho jahan

Lagta toh nahin koi khata hui hai aap se
Bas mood-mood ki baat hai jaanu, pehchano usko dhyanse

Main Ser to biwi sawa ser :)

Financial Queries I have

I used to work for a US MNC. I sold shares at a loss in US market. Can I balance that loss against the gain I have in the Indian Stock Market?

Lets say my income is Rs. 9,00,000 from salary and I earn 2,00,000 from stock market (Short-Term Capital Gain) in the financial year. Now will I need to pay the surcharge on income when it crosses Rs. 10,00,000 or is income from salary only factor while calculating surcharge above Rs. 10,00,000?

If I am calculating the tax on the Short Term Capital Gains I have from the stock market, then can I reduce the gains by showing the expenditure such as Internet expenses from the gain before calculating the tax?

Lets say I bought 1000 shares of company X at Rs 10 per share. My total Cost Price comes out to be Rs. 10000. Now the share price is at Rs 20. If I sell 500 shares at Rs. 20 within an year of purchasing the stocks, then I earn Rs. 10000. Now is my profit NILL for the purpose of calculating taxes or is it Rs. (500 * 20 - 500 *10) == Rs. 5000?

Guesstimate

A search on Merriam Webster Online gives the following result for Guesstimate.

Etymology: blend of guess and estimate

It is a very common phrase while doing planning in software projects. You have to make your best guess to estimate how much time the human brain would take to complete a certain task. At the start of the project, it is just a guess. Slowly as you get on top of the things, the guess part of the estimate goes and it becomes the real estimate.

This whole process often reminds me of a game I played while attending a birthday party as a child. We were shown a bottle that was filled with lots of same sized pebbles. We were to guess the number of pebbles that were there inside the bottle. It was an easier job because the bottle size was fixed and the pebbles were same sized unlike the current software projects where the brain of each individual involved has its own complexity.

Om Shanti Om

*ing: Shahrukh Khan, Deepika Padukone, Arjun Rampal, Shreyas Talpade

Director: Farah Khan

The movies tries to link the 1970s with the present day cinema. Good in parts but average as a package.

My take on the movie:

If you love Om Shanti Om, then you love Bollywood.
If you love Bollywood, then it is not sure that you will love Om Shanti Om.

Google Earth and Making your Mark on the Earth

Google Earth guys call the process of Making your Mark on the Earth as Placemark. To get started visit this link: How to put Placemarks on Google Earth?

I also managed to mark our Home on Google Earth and save it. I am not sure how to post it but I have it in my collection now. Google Earth creates a file with the KMZ extension. If you have Google Earth installed, then you should be able to view this file anywhere and get to the saved location.