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.

Business Models

While reading about WiMAX (technology I am working on currently), I came upon many posts which said that one major factor favoring Sprint is that it is open to embracing an open business model unlike traditional cellular companies which embrace a closed walled business model. This led me to do a little Googling and find out what these business models are.

Closed Business Model:

You buy a product at a discounted price and you sign a deal that you would use that product for at-least some time during which the company would recover much more than the discounted amount. For ex. For ex. I buy a Mobile connection from a company where I get a SIM for Rs. 1000 and a number. If after 6 months I find company is NOT GOOD, I cannot SWITCH easily as I have given the number to almost everyone. Cool for them but I AM STUCK.

Open Business Model:

You buy a product at a price from the market with no strings attached. You are free to go anywhere, as and when you desire. For ex. I buy a Mobile connection from a company where I get a SIM for Rs. 1000 and a number. If after 6 months I find company is NOT GOOD and other companies support NUMBER PORTABILITY, then I can go to a vendor whom I find is good. Cool for me as I AM NOT STUCK.

Open Business Model is the best for customers. They owe their allegiance to anyone who provides the best services according to them and encourages COMPETITION. It gives them the freedom to try out different options before freezing their likes and dislikes. I would hate it if a company told me before recruiting me that I would need to sign a bond to stay with it for 2 years. Chey......... They are themselves laying the foundation for me to resign sooner than later!

Yeh Hai Stock Market Meri Jaan

Todays episode was interesting, rather very interesting. The steel sector has been very hot for the past 2-3 days and for the past few months we have observed that there have been strong sectoral growth. First it was Banking, then Media, then Energy and now we thought it would be Steel seeing the data for the past two days. So we bought some steel stocks yesterday and my friend bought some today. The stock was already 18% up when he managed to buy it. The steel stocks were unavailable in the market today. NO ONE WANTED TO SELL. Then within an hour of his order getting executed, the price of the stock was 10% down. TO CAP IT ALL, there was a notification that the company is buying the shares back from the market for a sum which was much below than the one he had bought for.

All our data was proved wrong, some precious money lost, but THANK GOD WE ARE SMALL FISHES and 2 or 3 zeroes do not mean THE END for us. BUT Yeh Hai Stock Market Meri Jaan, so be careful.

WiMAX + Android + Ad-Based Revenue Model

WiMAX + Android + Ad-Based Revenue Model

What do the above three things have in common?

Google!

Google is the master of Ad-Based Business Model. Google is partnering with Sprint for providing a portal for WiMAX customers in US. Google is the key force behind Android which is the open source OS + SDK targeted at Mobile Software development.

Google has become synonymous with success during the best part of the decade gone by. If this is not enough to guarantee success for the WiMAX + Android combination, then following are the technical factors that I think would guarantee success for this combination:

• WiMAX network would be open network unlike cellular networks till now that are closed to third parties. Any operator would be free to develop applications and the best will win, unlike current cellular networks where you need to give a good part of your revenue to the cellular operators.
• Android is open source. You would have the power to change anything in the mobile phone and there would be infinite companies that would come up to develop applications on Android. What this means is lots of competition and it is no hidden secret that competition means win-win situation for customers.
• Ad-Based Business model: Would you mind if your call rate is cut to half if you agree to receive an advertisement after the call you have made? Half the cost you pay and half the cost of your call is paid by the company giving the advertisement. This could completely change the cellular world.

Mere Doston Mere Pass Aao (Continued)

In the previous part of Mere Doston Mere Pass Aao I had discussed how Bollywood relates to our day to day life and what different scenes in Bollywood can teach us. The same stuff continues:

Deewar

In the scene from Deewar where Amitabh Bachchan is going Ga Ga on all the things he has managed to achieve in life, Shashi Kapoor says this single line which is arguably the most famous line in Hindi cinema:

• Mere Paas Maan Hai

In one line, he is able to teach millions of young people running mad after materialistic things that there is much more to life than money etc. Count the number of blessings you have and not the money (as they say).

Sharaabi

Amitabh invites Jaya Prada to his birthday party. Jaya Prada has lost a necklace worth 9 lakhs that was gifted to her by Amitabh. She reaches the party late and crying tells Amitabh that she has lost the necklace.

• Do aansun is aankh se gire, phir do us aankh se, phir do is aankh se gire, phir do us aankh se, phir do us aankh se gire, do is aankh se. Kitne hue? Nau lakh ke haar ke liye barah lakh ke aansun. Daddy hote to kehte: Vijay tumhe to business karna bhi nahin aata

Some things money can't buy, for everything else there is mastercard. Okie, no mastercard was there when Sharaabi was released, but in front of the his beloveds tears, even the best believe that money is worthless.

Things that have all right answers

How many times have you come across debates where everyone is right? Many. Just today morning, I was having a debate with a colleague on what is the right way of distributing work among the people by a manager. There were two approaches which we debated on:

a) Give all the features to the individual and let the individual decide how he wants to plan.
b) Give a single feature to the individual and after he has finished with it, give him second and so on.

Approach A: If someone loves to plan for himself, then he would love approach one. He would be interested in knowing what is expected of him for the next three months and he plans it accordingly. This has a good advantage in projects involving peoples brains as the brain might not be working every hour at the same efficiency. Also, you might want to balance your work with other personal things and so on. As long as you can commit that in three months work would be done, the manager would (or rather should) not be concerned whats going on in your life. This has lots of assumptions:
a) People commit and meet their commitments
b) Manager does not like to interfere a lot
c) Manager has faith in the employees
d) People raise concerns whenever they see them, instead of waiting for three months.

Approach B: The other approach is nice if you do not know how much time the different features will take. In this case, if you are giving multiple features to an individual, then instead you can ask him to work on one feature. If another individual becomes free, then he can pick up the second features instead of the first individual. It helps in delaying decisions till the right moment comes. This is also helpful because normally individuals finish the study phase for each feature before starting work on them.

We had lots of discussion on which approach is better. Finally it boiled down that there is NO SINGLE RIGHT ANSWER to this. Instead, it depends on the Manager-Individual chemistry and what suits a combination of them.

Following are the different options that can follow depending on the Manager-Individual chemistry:

Manager: Plans
Individual: Does not plan

Approach B

Manager: Gives Freedom
Individual: Plans

Approach A

Manager: Does not give freedom
Individual: Plans

Approach: ???? Will be cat and mouse where the manager will always try to pounce upon the individual.

Manager: Does not plan
Individual: Does not matter

Approach: Does not matter because your team is anyways screwed in this case.

Fifety-Nine or Unsath

A friend of mine took his dad for a heart check-up to a famous cardiologist (around 75 in age) in New Delhi. The cardiologist started asking questions to my friends dad:

Cardiologist: Whats your age?
Friends Dad: (A little confused) Fifety-Nine (a little pause) Unsath
Cardiologist: Fifety Nine Or Unsath. Bahut difference hai dono mein.
Friends Dad: (Lost in words) Fifety-Nine
Cardiologist: Do you smoke?
Friends Dad: Nahin
Cardiologist to Friends Dad: Lie down on the bed
Friend to his dad: Papa, bistar par late jaaiye
Cardiologist to Friends Dad: Remove your shirt
Friend to Cardiologist: Doctor, my dad does not know English.
Cardiologist to Friend: Mujhe pata hai. Tum chup chap kursi par jakar baith jao. Tabhi maine poocha tha Fifety-Nine yaan Unsath. He replied fifety-nine. I have been in US for seven years. No one speaks Hindi there. Aur hum yahan par bhi hindi bolne mein sharmate hain.

Narendra yaan Yogendra

Early last year I had bought a flat in Faridabad from a property dealer Narendra. I had booked a flat in Triveni-Ferrous (a combination of two groups who were building a society in Faridabad). I was personally keen on getting a booking in Triveni as it was more famous then (infamous now :)). When Mr. Narendra landed up in my house, he came with booking forms for TFI (Triveni-Ferrous Infrastructure). I wanted him to confirm that the flat would finally be booked in Triveni. He said "Worry not!" Some months later, I came to know that I have been allocated a flat in Ferrous (instead of Triveni). Mr. Narendra told me that Ferrous is equally good. Mr. Narendra had promised me that he would be giving me 4% discount on the booking amount. I was foolish enough to believe him. Some months back, I asked him for the discount. He stopped picking up phones and then one day he asked me to talk to Yogendra. Now this Mr. Yogendra (whom I have never met) and Mr. Narendra (whom I will never forget) have come up with this lovely business philosophy of "Here and There Everywhere but Indirectly Nowhere" which states that "Narendra and Yogendra are two good hidden friends who are enemies in front of the world. If you go here, he will refer you there and vice versa and in the end you will land up nowhere". This is a good business model if you are in it for a short term. It works somewhat like this:

1. Two good friends work up a deal beforehand on how to split the benefits
2. They form a team and come up with a business
3. They get lots of customers and sell them something
4. They suddenly fight one day (over anything doesn't really matter)
5. They create lot of confusion. More confusion the better it is for them in this model.
6. Customers run Here and There Everywhere
7. However they reach Nowhere because narendra yaan yogendra, sab ek hi thali ke chathey bathey hain

Its Quiz Time

You are sitting in a room with three switches. 3 bulbs in an adjacent room are connected to these three switches. Now you need to tell which switch is for which bulb. You can go only once in the other room.

A man dies and goes above. There he finds two doors - one to Heaven and other to Hell. There are two persons standing - one each in front of the door to Heaven and Hell. One of them speaks a lie and the other speaks truth. Now you can ask only one question to any of them and you need to tell which is Heaven and which is Hell.

A king gives a horse each to his two sons and tells them that they need to race to city X. The one whose horse is SLOWER will win. The sons are wandering over for many days. When they are dead tired and have no hope left, they meet a wise man. As soon as both of them have talked to the wise they, they jump onto the horses and start walloping towards city X. What did the wise man say?