Happy Holi from Down Under

Wishing all A Happy Holi from Down Under. Well I am not much of holi or a festival person, but likes to take an opportunity to wish anyone or everyone. Enjoy the festival of colours and help someone to bring colours in his/her gray lives. Of course not to miss me :)

For benefit of those who don’t know about this festival celebrated in India - Holi, or Holli, also called the Festival of Colours, is a spring festival celebrated by Hindus, Buddhists, Sikhs, Jains and others. It is primarily observed in India, Nepal, Srilanka, Pakistan,Bangladesh, and countries with large Indic diaspora populations, such as Suriname, Guyana, South Africa, Trinidad, UK, USA, Mauritius, and Fiji. In West Bengal of India and Bangladesh it is known as Dolyatra (Doul Jatra) or Basanta-Utsav ("spring festival"). The most celebrated Holi is that of the Braj region, in locations connected to the god Krishna: Mathura, Vrindavan, Nandagaon, and Barsana. These places have become tourist destinations during the festive season of Holi, which lasts here to up to sixteen days.

The main day, Holi, also known as Dhulheti, Dhulandi or Dhulendi, is celebrated by people throwing coloured powder and coloured water at each other. Bonfires are lit the day before, also known as Holika Dahan (burning of Holika) or Chhoti Holi (little Holi). The bonfires are lit in memory of the miraculous escape that young Prahlad accomplished when Demoness Holika, sister of Hiranyakashipu, carried him into the fire. Holika was burnt but Prahlad, a staunch devotee of god Vishnu, escaped without any injuries due to his unshakable devotion. Holika Dahan is referred to as Kama Dahanam in Andhra Pradesh.

Holi is celebrated at the end of the winter season on the last full moon day of the lunar month Phalguna (February/March), (Phalgun Purnima), which usually falls in the later part of February or March.  In 2010, Holi is on March 1.

Rangapanchami occurs a few days later on a Panchami (fifth day of the full moon), marking the end of festivities involving colours.

Highlights of Economic Survey 2009-10

Economic Survey 2009-10

Ahead of the Union Budget 2010-2011, Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee today presented Economic Survey 2009-2010. The economic survey focuses on measures to maintain and accelerate economic growth. The main concerns like high inflation and fiscal deficit are expected to be addressed in the upcoming budget. The economic growth is projected at 8.5% (+/- 0.25%) in FY11 and also expected to grow at 9% in FY12, compared with projected growth of around 7.5% in the current year.

Key Highlights of Economic Survey:

• Economy likely to grow by up to 8.75% in 2010-11
• Full recovery; return to 9% growth in 2011-12
• Broad recovery gives scope for gradual stimulus roll back
• Survey recognizes food inflation as major concern. Food inflation is hovering close to 18%
• Industry growth expected at 8.2%
• Higher inflows have policy implications on capital account.
• Moot direct food subsidy via food coupons to households.
• Major decline in consumption expenditure growth in FY10
• Growth in GFCF (Gross Fixed Capital Formation) seen at 5.2% in FY20, up from 4%
• The fiscal deficit for FY10 is expected to shoot up to 6.8% of GDP
• India 10th largest gold holding nation at 557.7 tons
• India can become world`s fastest growing economy in 4 years.
• Trade deficit will increase as imports increase as compared to exports.
• Large decline in customs and excise duty expected
• India not immune to global price situation
• Hike in fuel prices will impact inflation
• Supply side pressure to prevail for near term
• Farm & allied sector production falls 0.2% in 2009-10
• Need serious policy initiatives for 4% agriculture growth
• Direct food subsidy via food coupons to households
• Auction for 3G spectrum to provide existing and foreign players to bring in new technology and innovations.
• India world`s 2nd largest wireless network with 525.1 million mobile users
• Net capital flows to India at USD 29.6 billion in April-September 2009 remained higher as compared to USD 12.0 billion in April-September 2008.
• During fiscal 2009-10, foreign exchange reserves increased by USD 31.5 billion from USD 252.0 billion in end March 2009 to USD 283.5 billion in end December 2009.
• Bank credit grows by 13.9% on year-on-year basis.
• Investment deposit ratio increases to 32.52%.

Who Killed Ekalavya? (Cont.)

Sometime back I wrote a post on “Who Killed Ekalavya?". Though I got many responses for the same but the best one so far is the below. Something that is interesting to know.

Kavach, kundal were donated by karan to Indra devta when the latter had come to him in disguise of Brahmin.

As for the other qs as to how lord krishna "died", it is to be understood that lord never takes birth or dies as he is "shashwat". for the Lord, words appearance and disappearance are  used.

As for the pandavs, they ruled after the war and after krishna's disappearance, went to himalayas where they left their bodies except for Yudhishter who went to swarg in his own body nd where he met the souls of his brothers and Draupdi.the whole of kauravs were wiped out in this war. no one remained from duryodhan's side, the only survivors of this war were the 5 pandavs

Following will tell u of Lord krishna's disappearance. it is from Srimad Bhagwatam, courtesy, The Bhaktivedanta Book Trust International, Inc.

His Divine Grace A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupāda, Founder Ācārya of the International Society for Krishna Consciousness
Lord Kṛṣṇa, the son of Devakī, having seen the departure of Lord Balarāma, sat down silently on the ground under a nearby pippala tree.

SB 11.30.28-32: The Lord was exhibiting His brilliantly effulgent four-armed form, the radiance of which, just like a smokeless fire, dissipated the darkness in all directions. His complexion was the color of a dark blue cloud and His effulgence the color of molten gold, and His all-auspicious form bore the mark of Śrīvatsa. A beautiful smile graced His lotus face, locks of dark blue hair adorned His head, His lotus eyes were very attractive, and His shark-shaped earrings glittered. He wore a pair of silken garments, an ornamental belt, the sacred thread, bracelets and arm ornaments, along with a helmet, the Kaustubha jewel, necklaces, anklets and other royal emblems. Encircling His body were flower garlands and His personal weapons in their embodied forms. As He sat He held His left foot, with its lotus-red sole, upon His right thigh.

SB 11.30.33: Just then a hunter named Jarā, who had approached the place, mistook the Lord's foot for a deer's face. Thinking he had found his prey, Jarā pierced the foot with his arrow, which he had fashioned from the remaining iron fragment of Sāmba's club.
SB 11.30.34: Then, seeing that four-armed personality, the hunter became terrified of the offense he had committed, and he fell down, placing his head upon the feet of the enemy of the demons.
SB 11.30.35: Jarā said: O Lord Madhusūdana, I am a most sinful person. I have committed this act out of ignorance. O purest Lord, O Uttamaḥśloka, please forgive this sinner.

SB 11.30.36: O Lord Viṣṇu, the learned say that for any man, constant remembrance of You will destroy the darkness of ignorance. O master, I have wronged You!

SB 11.30.37: Therefore, O Lord of Vaikuṇṭha, please kill this sinful hunter of animals immediately so he may not again commit such offenses against saintly persons.

SB 11.30.38: Neither Brahmā nor his sons, headed by Rudra, nor any of the great sages who are masters of the Vedic mantras can understand the function of Your mystic power. Because Your illusory potency has covered their sight, they remain ignorant of how Your mystic power works. Therefore, what can I, such a low-born person, possibly say?

SB 11.30.39: The Supreme Personality of Godhead said: My dear Jarā, do not fear. Please get up. What has been done is actually My own desire. With My permission, go now to the abode of the pious, the spiritual world.

SB 11.30.40: So instructed by the Supreme Lord Kṛṣṇa, who assumes His transcendental body by His own will, the hunter circumambulated the Lord three times and bowed down to Him. Then the hunter departed in an airplane that had appeared just to carry him to the spiritual sky.

Śukadeva Gosvāmī said: Then Lord Brahmā arrived at Prabhāsa along with Lord Śiva and his consort, the sages, the Prajāpatis and all the demigods, headed by Indra.

SB 11.31.2-3: The forefathers, Siddhas, Gandharvas, Vidyādharas and great serpents also came, along with the Cāraṇas, Yakṣas, Rākṣasas, Kinnaras, Apsarās and relatives of Garuḍa, greatly eager to witness the departure of the Supreme Personality of Godhead. As they were coming, all these personalities variously chanted and glorified the birth and activities of Lord Śauri [Kṛṣṇa].

SB 11.31.4: O King, crowding the sky with their many airplanes, they showered down flowers with great devotion.

SB 11.31.5: Seeing before Him Brahmā, the grandfather of the universe, along with the other demigods, who are all His personal and powerful expansions, the Almighty Lord closed His lotus eyes, fixing His mind within Himself, the Supreme Personality of Godhead.
SB 11.31.6: Without employing the mystic āgneyī meditation to burn up His transcendental body, which is the all-attractive resting place of all the worlds and the object of all contemplation and meditation, Lord Kṛṣṇa entered into His own abode.

Hare Krishna

IDC Predictions 2010 and the Product Configuration Landscape

International Data Corporation (IDC) does a consistently excellent job summarizing their IT predictions and then regularly critiquing them throughout the year.

In the following five minute video you can get an overview of what IDC sees as the 10 predictions impacting the market this year.  If you are interested in downloading them, IDC has created a microsite dedicated to this topic.

Product Configuration Take-Aways:

• The proliferation of mobile devices is going to make untethered sales and product configuration a critical requirement for more companies than ever before.

• AJAX and optimized XML on private networks are going to be the foundation of distributed order management systems that can manage varying levels of product order complexity.  Think scalability of production process, from assemble-to-order through engineer-to-order.

• The pervasiveness of cloud computing and virtualization is going to be a catalyst for product configuration strategies being used for standard products too.

Bottom line: IDC’s continual updates to predictions are worth paying attention to through your RSS Reader to capture the latest from their site and YouTube channels.

Courtesy – Louis Columbus

The Truth … It Works: Customers Expect a Perfect Order

In the face of economic uncertainty, the inherently unquantifiable areas of a company get a higher level of attention than ever before. The center of attention for many companies today is the integration of marketing strategies and programs to supply chain planning, management and optimization. The extent to which marketing and supply chain management teams are synchronizing their plans together is directly proportional to the ROI both attain together to create a customer-driven supply chain. This has to go beyond Collaborative Forecasting Planning and Replenishment (CPFR) and encompass supply chain management as part of the New Product Development and Introduction (NPDI) process. Companies that take this approach and define dashboards and scorecards that get beyond just measuring their own activity and contributions to measure accuracy, speed and permanency of change they bring to each other through collaboration is what is of the greatest value.

Why Being Demand-Driven Matters More Than Ever

The Perfect Order as a Barometer of Customer Expectations

The Perfect Order Index (POI) is one metric that captures the effects of collaboration on supply chain execution and fulfillment. What’s needed are links to the four main components of the POI that measure how effective demand generation strategies are in general and marketing specifically are in ensuring on-time, complete, damage-free orders that have been accurately invoiced. At first glance, many would argue these four metrics that comprise the POI (on-time delivery percentage) x (percentage of orders shipped complete) x (damage-free order percentage) x (accurate invoicing) are only relevant within supply chains.

Defining the Perfect Order Index

In fact, all forms of demand generation strategies have a direct effect on these measures, because the initial market direction and expectations created by a company through its marketing and selling strategies define, in the customers’ mind, what the minimum level of performance of each of these measures are. Perceptions don’t lend themselves well to the metrics that drive POI calculations, yet they are just as if not more powerful.

Consider the launch of the Apple iPhone to see how the perception of perfect-order performance impacts the calculation of the POI for a new product that relies on a significantly different supply chain. Apple and its intensely loyal customer base have very high expectations of any new product being intuitively designed, cool in ergonomics and navigation and most of all, integrated. Apple has created this expectation over the years of having their products come out of the box and work immediately, and must have PhDs in the fields of ergonomics and user design on staff who study the out-of-box experience customers have with these products. All of these factors together set the POI bar very high for Apple, and having demand generation an integral part of supply chain planning, management and fulfillment was critical for the launch of the product.

Customers don’t think in terms of POI scores obviously, but they definitely can, given the chance, quantify their expectations of a company’s performance. At the intersection of customer expectations, demand generation strategies that create expectations, and supply chains and fulfillment delivering on them, is the customer’s perception of performance. All three-demand generation, supply chain performance, fulfillment and customers’ expectations-are interlinked. Given the pervasive adoption of Web 2.0 technologies, it’s possible to overlap POI data on a per-product basis to customers’ attitudinal scores, creating a barometer of how effectively a company is meeting or exceeding their customers’ expectations. In the vernacular of Web 2.0, this would be called a mash-up, combining structured financial data with unstructured attitudinal data captured through surveys or through comments from customers analyzed through text mining for example. Forward-thinking companies could actual trend line this and see the effects of bringing supply chain planning, management and fulfillment into the New Product Development and Introduction (NPDI) process over time. The goal of having a measurement of how collaboration and synchronization between demand-generation strategies and supply-chain performance would be achieved. Taking this one step further, publishing these measures of performance for customers to see would bring entirely new levels of accountability and collaboration into any company’s daily culture and no doubt bring collaborative efforts to the forefront of any project.

Driving Up Lifetime Customer Value in Tough Economic Times

The saying, “no one ever cost-reduced their way to market leadership,” takes on entirely new meaning given the current economic uncertainty that leads many companies to cut back on investments in integration demand generation and supply chains, production and fulfillment with each other. Arguably the level of sales a company attains is driven by the continual meeting and exceeding of customers’ expectations, and the cycle of supply chain and demand generation being synchronized is essential for a company to continue to grow. Since customers’ expectations are the future of any company, it’s critical to keep demand generation and supply chain, production and fulfillment integrated together. It’s extremely difficult, however, for companies in the middle of tough economic times to look at becoming demand-driven, or be committed to staying on the path to its fulfillment. Costs of integrating demand-driven strategies, including marketing programs to supply chain planning and production to fulfillment that together increase a company’s ability to attain higher POI levels, seem like a much lower priority versus pursuing aggressive cost-cutting. Measuring the Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) for supply chains that don’t invest in becoming demand-driven is like only measuring half of the factors that go into calculating perfect order performance. It simply does not make sense and is short-term as a result. Reduce the cost for any series of systems and processes long enough, and there will be a positive ROI and low TCO. Yet the far greater and quantifiable gains of exceeding customers’ expectations through exceptional performance have a far greater financial impact. When the ability to consistently meet or exceed customers’ expectations are taken into account as part of perfect order performance, ROI and TCO of demand-driven supply chains shift from cost reduction to top-line revenue growth. Instead of worrying about the pennies saved by not connecting one process or system to another, the concern needs to be on how to make more dollars using demand generation and fuel new business growth.

Taking Steps on the Demand-Driven Journey

With so much pressure within companies to reduce costs, it’s important to get started on a pilot project that quickly shows the positive impact of making supply chain planning and management more demand-driven. Product introductions, product-line extensions, the launch of a new service, channel management strategy or on-boarding a new channel partner all are events companies have used to rationalize making investments in being demand-driven. For manufacturers of complex products that have build-to-order strategies, being demand-driven is a necessity. Of all selling strategies, built-to-order most influences the POI score of a manufacturer because it directly influences both the percentage of Shipped Complete orders and the percentage that are shipped Damage Free. Optimizing order-capture systems to make sure a customized order is taken right the first time not only saves the time of production planners, it may surpass customers’ expectations as well. One truck manufacturer known globally for its customized industrial truck designs takes on average seven iterations of an order to get it accurately entered. It’s doubtful the customer expects several phone calls to get the order right, yet it’s a certainty they expect the truck to be configured to their requirements and delivered on the date promised on the quote. This example sets the foundation for the steps needed in making the demand- driven journey:

1.   Get outside your company and see how your supply chain is changing customers’ expectations. It’s too easy to sit back and get complacent in a company and not notice how supply chains are out of sync with all aspects of being demand-driven, from the initial expectations of customers to fulfilling customized product orders. Get outside your company and experience how it sets expectations, and monitor how they fulfill them or not. There are many ways of doing this, but don’t outsource it to a research firm. Get out and experience it firsthand to see if customers’ expectations are getting fulfilled or not. The bottom line of this exercise is seeing whether or all of the expectations demand-driven strategies create are actually being fulfilled through supply chain, manufacturing and fulfillment integration. It’s a good idea to get a sense of your POI score at this point to see improvements over time as well to perfect order performance.

2.   Take the lessons learned and start integrating people, processes and systems together to make supply chain planning and management more demand-driven. Get customer-facing processes-including order capture, quoting and pricing-and with channel partners or retailers, forecasting, integrated back to supply chain planning and management. Redefine processes as part of a pilot in this phase, and measure the impact on the specific area’s POI score. This is a great way to see how changing customer-facing processes impacts perfect order performance.

3.   Take the lessons learned from the pilot and define a plan for integrating all customer-facing processes to supply chain planning and management systems. There are many aspects of this last step, the greatest being to get people to change how they do their jobs today in the demand-generation, supply chain planning, management, manufacturing, fulfillment and services areas of the company. There’s also the need to look at how to bridge the gap between demand-driven initiatives and strategies and supply chain planning, management and production. The Cincom Acquire Enterprise Sales Portal has been specifically designed to enable manufacturers to bridge the gap between demand generation strategies and supply chain, manufacturing, fulfillment and service operations areas.

3. Individual Responsibility and Accountability

The perfect order isn’t just for supply chains anymore. When one considers the impact it has on customer expectations and as a barometer of how well a company is fulfilling those expectations, it forces the issue of how demand-driven a supply chain really is. Since customers’ expectations are any company’s future, it’s also important to not try to cost reduce operations so that high ROI measures are achieved at the expense of being able to fulfill orders accurately, completely, on time with no damage. Creating pilot projects to see how becoming demand-driven in just a single area impacts perfect-order performance is the approach many companies are taking, gradually expanding into all customer-facing channels and processes over time. Even in tough economic times, investing in demand-driven has the potential of bringing in top-line revenue growth and permanently changing a company’s ability to compete for new business.

Courtesy – Louis Columbus

Free Webinar from Stanford University on Cloud Computing Scheduled for March 30th

One of the best series of free webinars available today on design, engineering, innovation, and software development is sponsored by the Stanford Center for Professional Development.

Their next software-related webinar, From Virtualization to Cloud-Computing: Challenges and Opportunities in IT is March 30, 2010 from 9AM to 10AM Pacific.   Daniel Barreto, Chief Software Architect for Wyse Technology is presenting

It is well worth the time to get a free login on the Professional Development site, and often the webinar hosts provide the handouts for downloading before beginning.  These webinars typically attract over 400 people, so be sure to sign up early.

Bottom line: The goal of these webinars is often to recruit students for certificate and degree programs, so the content is often over-the-top in terms of quality. It’s definitely worth checking out if you are interested in cloud computing.

Flickr attribution: http://www.flickr.com/photos/36531501@N00/1623451769/

It’s Complex to Write Simple These Days … But Hemingway’s Rules of Writing Can Still Work

I’ve had Marketing and PR employees work for me right out of college, and found most were woefully unprepared for the real-world new PR environment. Not because of any inherent deficiency in the school they came from, but more from the frenetic pace of change in the Marketing and PR industry. Blogs, Vlogs, Podcasts, Social Media, SEO, SEO PR, Tags, and on and on and on. The technology changes alone can be daunting or intimidating.

Complex and Under-appreciated

It’s a skill and art that is complex, under-appreciated and, as far as I can tell, under-emphasized by schools. Or—if you have the teeth-pulling, Novocain-less pleasure of reading many press releases—companies, for that matter. Why is that? One of the main reasons is …

It’s Complex to Write Simple These Days

Ernest Hemingway had a clear understanding and vision of writing simply and effectively when he discussed the four rules of writing he learned as a journalist at the Kansas City Star.

Hemingway Four Rules (well, not really, they were the Kansas City Star’s actually)

1. Use short sentences.
2. Use short first paragraphs.
3. Use vigorous English.
4. Be positive, not negative.

“Those were the best rules I ever learned for the business of writing,” Hemingway said in 1940. “I’ve never forgotten them. No man with any talent, who feels and writes truly about the thing he is trying to say, can fail to write well if he abides with them.”

These rules still work. Rarely used. But still work.

WHY??? Click Here.

Complex Selling Cycles and Basketball: Both Need Values to Succeed:

Lessons from Coach John Wooden

Recently Cincom Founder and CEO Tim Nies published an article titled “Rhythm and Tempo Must Be Orchestrated by the Maestro.” He draws the parallels to Maestros controlling the rhythm, metre and tempo of a symphonic performance to that of an excellent selling professional who seeks to excel at value-based selling in complex selling cycles. He points out that for sales cycles to be successful, each person and department contributing to their success needs to be synchronized with each other.  Knowing when to jump at an opportunity with total intensity and passion versus when to pull back and use time wisely is a key point of the article.

His many points made me stop and think of the best examples of leaders controlling the rhythm, metre and pace of their teams to their goals.  Coach John Wooden of UCLA immediately came to mind.

With a career record of 664-162 (.804), 10 NCAA National Championships, 13 trips to the Final Four and a member of the inaugural class of inductees for the College Basketball Hall of Fame in 2006, Coach Wooden exemplifies what being a Maestro is all about.

No other collegiate coach has won this many national champions in the history of NCAA basketball. Consider the players he orchestrated through their collegiate careers, including Bill Walton, Gail Goodrich, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Kevin Grevey and many others.

Complex Selling Cycles and Basketball Seasons: Both Need Values to Succeed

Sales professionals who sell on value are a lot like Coach Wooden.  They orchestrate their teams to align with the most urgent needs of prospects, capitalize on opportunities to excel and compete more often against themselves than letting a sales cycle degenerate into a price war.  When entire companies choose to sell on value, just as when entire basketball programs do, they improve over a season.  The same dynamic happens in complex selling cycles. Being more focused on using time competitively is what also differentiates winning sales cycles and winning basketball teams.

Respect and value for time must anchor any long-term selling effort, the same way a coach will look to the hours invested in practice to make their team the strongest, fastest, and smartest it can be. Being a Maestro or coach also requires that a new perception of time be communicated to everyone involved in a sales cycle or team, and it is this: competitive strength comes from how time is used and invested, not in the size or financial might of a competitor.  Coach Wooden could attest to this.

Managing Time Is the Greatest Competitive Strength

UCLA’s first national championship under Coach Wooden came 1964 against Duke, a basketball powerhouse and a financially stronger school than UCLA at the time.  Coach Wooden came into that national championship with a perfect 30-0 record.  How? From exceptional recruiting?  UCLA was relatively unknown for basketball to this point. Exceptional alumni donations?  The UCLA basketball budget in 1964 was less than many pay for a new car in 2010.  It was valuing time and making the most of it, time used well was the great equalizer, the competitive strength UCLA used to win their first national championship and nine more.

Just as any sales professional knows who has managed and won complex selling cycles, the competitor who manages their time the most effectively has a greater chance of winning. Everyone competing in a complex sales cycles has to wake up every day and resolve to be more efficient, more focused, stronger with solutions for the prospect than their competitor – and when this mindset is achieved complex selling cycles are won.

Seeing Time as a Competitive Asset First, Constraint Second

A great coach can control the rhythm, metre and pace of a game their team is competing in.  The same holds true for sales professionals who sell on value when they are managing complex selling cycles.  A common trait both have – and it is essential to control rhythm, metre and pace – is seeing time not in fear but as a competitive strength to be gained by using it well.  Coach Wooden at times quoted verses to his players including Ecclesiastes 9:11, The race is not to the swift or the battle to the strong, nor does food come to the wise or wealth to the brilliant or favor to the learned; but time and chance happen to them all. In other words, everyone has the same amount of time; it’s up to each of us – selling or supporting the selling cycle – how we’re going to use it.

Wooden’s Competitive Secret: Strong Values Lead to Championships

Just as a Maestro conducts a symphony comprised of widely varying instruments, so too a sales professional orchestrates selling teams that each have their unique strengths used in the service of customers.  What unifies an orchestra or symphony and the highest performing sales teams are their shared values.

Coach John Wooden began work on the Wooden Pyramid of Success, shown below and downloadable in PDF format here, over his years of coaching first at Indiana State and through the years at UCLA. Take a moment and read over the Pyramid of Success and reflect on the highest performing sales teams you’ve ever worked with.  If your experiences are like mine, you can readily attest to a very large overlap.  The best salespeople who sell on value are teachers; they genuinely love to serve their customers.  Indeed some see it as a calling to be of service to customers and have a passion for it. Best of all, the Wooden Pyramid of Success succinctly communicates what great teams exemplify and that is a selflessness of service and a willingness to give complete intensity and focus to winning.

Bottom line:

Complex selling cycles are as long or longer than a basketball season.

Anchoring the coordinated efforts of teams in shared values and treating time not with fear but with an opportunistic mindset makes all the difference.  From the Maestro who delivers an excellent performance to Coach Wooden winning 10 NCAA National Championships, to the sales professionals who sell on value and orchestrate their teams to winning new business, all must be anchored in solid, strong values to succeed.

Courtesy – Louis Columbus

About the Author

Louis Columbus has nearly 20 years of experience in the IT industry, specializing in market and industry analysis, sales, product management and development. He's held senior positions at Toshiba America, Lockheed-Martin, Intergraph, and immediately before joining Cincom, as senior analyst at AMR Research. Mr. Columbus is a frequent contributor to industry publications, is a columnist for CRMBuyer.com, and has published 15 books on operating systems, peripherals, and industry analysis. In addition, Mr. Columbus is a frequent lecturer in Webster Loyola-Marymount University's graduate program on International Business. He is a regular contributor to the Perfect Customer Experience and the Complex Selling Made Simple blogs. Contact Information: LColumbus@Cincom.com

The Sales Challenges of Complex Manufacturers

Streamlining the quote-to-order process improves competitive advantage

One of the first sales tricks you learn during your first fast-food job is the process of “upselling.” Say a customer comes to the counter and orders a soda. If they don’t specify the size, you ask them if they would like a large soda. You never suggest a small soda.

The idea is that if the customer really wanted a medium and you offered a small soda, they might take the small soda. On the other hand, if you offered a large soda and they really had a small in mind, a medium now doesn’t seem so “large.” They’ll take the medium, earning your employer a few cents. Those cents — multiplied across hundreds of franchises add up to thousands of dollars a year.

In the fast-food business, supply isn’t a problem. Sodas of all varieties are in abundant supply. It’s how much soda you can sell that sets you apart from your competition.

Complex manufacturers by nature move products that are exponentially more difficult to configure than a large diet soda. But the order process for their products should be almost as simple and transparent to a regular customer. It is a cost-savings and relationship-building process that savvy companies are just beginning to explore.

The burden of excessive supply

Ever since Henry Ford first put cars on a conveyor belt, the keyword for complex manufacturers has been efficiency. In the past, American companies were rewarded for getting more products out the door faster to a world eager to consume their goods. As the global economy emerges as a reality — and not just a buzzword — these same companies now find their manufacturing processes highly efficient, but some of their sales processes woefully out of touch.

These sales processes need to be streamlined to reflect a new business model where it’s just as important to move products as to manufacture them. In order to remain competitive, companies must capture more market share by building relationships and being easier to work with than their competitors.

The quote-to-order process is a perfect example of an area that has not had much scrutiny from efficiency experts. In reality, it can be a serious drain not only to productivity and profitability, but it can also harm a customer’s positive perception of your company.

Getting it right the first time

Like kids playing a game of telephone, the quote-to-order process is not always a smooth path. With too many operators in the middle of the action, there is a great potential for miscommunication and error.

Consider the typical quote-to-order process. A sales rep takes the call from a customer and listens as the customer describes what they want.
Even a seasoned sales rep that has complex knowledge of the product and how it is manufactured can easily overlook a customer request that contains incompatible parts or customizations that are no longer available. The result? Customers end up with quotes that are invalid or functionally not optimal.

This situation worsens when invalid quotes are manually turned into orders with invalid configurations, incomplete information, unsatisfied product outcomes, and unforeseen price discrepancies. These can all lead to lower profit margins or even losses on the sale.

With a more controlled quote-to-order process, these problems can be turned into a major competitive advantage that will capture more market share. Instead of letting the customer drive the order conversation, new technologies present sales reps with a list of questions to ask about each order. Each question, when answered by a customer, leads to another set of questions, based upon the specifications established by the manufacturing floor, procurement and engineering.

Since the system is tied to procurement and the manufacturing floor, the sales rep can instantly give the customer a much more accurate projection of when their order can be delivered. If parts or materials are missing, procurement can be instantly (and seamlessly) alerted to the needs of this order as it is being processed.

This new emphasis puts a new spin on the customer-facing process that relies on knowledge management and rules management. What does all that mean? It means that the correct information is gathered — and quoted to the customer — the first time, every time. In a sense, the configuration is the DNA of the order. If you get it right, the results are predictable.

Efficiencies further down the line

The cost-savings of a more advanced quote-to-order system don’t end in the sales office. When implemented correctly, the return on investment can extend across the enterprise.

Many companies employ engineers who are responsible for double-checking sales quotes and orders. These engineers validate the specs in the order, search for information missing from the order and then develop schematics for that specific order.

With an advanced quote-to-order system filling the need, these engineers can use their skills more effectively for new product development. The system validates each quote based upon the rules specified and begins to create schematics for the order based upon existing knowledge. This allows the shop floor to schedule appropriate staff for incoming orders much more accurately.

Changes to orders are an inevitable part of doing business. Most changes, however, should come from customers, not from an inefficient quote-to-order process.

At multiple levels, changes are expensive, requiring time and resources to process the changes through the product lifecycle. The cost of change skyrockets as the order gets closer to delivery when manufacturers are forced to scrap nearly finished products due to misalignment with customers’ needs. This complicates build schedules, engineering, and manufacturing. The total cost of change is seldom recovered with special prices. Most companies never fully recover the costs of change and see their profit margins erode.

Planning for future demand

Focusing on the customer-facing processes within an organization may be the most important initiative a company can leverage.

Imagine how much more accurate forecasts would be if:

• Quotes could be generated in minutes or hours instead of days or weeks
• ALL quotes were stored in a centralized database and available for reporting as soon as they are created
• Orders were electronically generated directly from the quotes in the quote database
• Win/loss rates were known and predictable based on the history in the quote database
• Future sales could be predicted with a high degree of accuracy several months in advance (at the time of quote instead of the time of order)

If all of this were possible, imagine the benefits to the company:

• The ability to predict labor requirements — increase or decrease labor pool based on forecasted sales
• The ability to predict inventory requirements, and stock what is most likely to sell
• The ability to negotiate purchases more effectively through more buying leverage
• The ability to offer price incentives to improve business before the end of the quarter
• The ability to provide more accurate guidance to shareholders

Focusing on customer-facing systems may be the most effective way to address the sales challenges of complex manufacturers.

Courtesy - This article was originally written by Jim Hessin, a former employee of Cincom Systems.

What Guided Selling Strategies Need To Learn From Social Networking – Part I

The essence of any successful guided selling strategy is the ability to fully understand customers’ needs and recommend the best possible combination of products and services to meet them. For a guided selling to be believable it has to be trusted – even for commodity products.

The good news is that social networking’s many applications have the data necessary for making guided selling highly effective.  To the left is Brian Solis’ Conversation Prism.  This is one the most widely referenced graphical models of social networking because it illustrates simply and powerfully how ongoing feedback and insight drives participation.  Look at the inner three circles of the prism as well, and all contribute to the brand’s position.

Social Networking Has Much Potential for Guided Selling

The catalyst that makes this entire model “move” is trust.  I am currently reading Trust Agents by Chris Brogan and Julien Smith and I highly recommend it.

As I’ve read through the first chapters of the book so far it dawned on me that Trust Agents are a lot like the best guided selling systems you can possibly design.  They redefine their area of an industry (what the authors call “Make Your Own Game”) and they also have many of the same attributes the authors discuss. You’ll have to pick up the book to see the further connections to guided selling and product configuration systems that gain trust and therefore excel in serving customers.

Trust Is Earned When Customers Get Respect

• The best guided selling systems pick up on the nuances of needs and wants customers have and model the application quickly to those preferences. As a result, they are not forced choice Myers-Briggs exercises in navigating a product catalog.  They are experiences being built in real-time.  Go check out a social networking app and you can get a sense of this usability aspect.  From Facebook to Twitter to any number of other apps that have advanced usability, it’s all about streamlining the experience first to make the sales possible.

• Guided selling systems need to be evangelists of product value and exceptional experience. Evangelists seek to understand the innate desires, needs, wants and passions of an audience, whether that evangelist is selling the Apple iTouch as a development platform or Microsoft selling their .NET vision. They get in touch with the passions people have and give them a path to their goals – they enable a vision to be attained.  The best guided selling systems does this – and if you doubt this just go onto Expedia and start thinking about a trip to Tahiti (or your favorite warm destination) and you will find amazing ways to rationalize those airfares. Guided selling systems could learn much more from social networking apps and technologies of how to be even better evangelists.  Again this gets back to earning trust and setting expectations – and then exceeding them.

• Delighting customers by having more knowledge of them and their expectations by mining social networks shows exceptional potential. Imagine being on a business trip and staying at a hotel chain you haven’t been to in months.  When you check in they remember you are a member of their loyalty club, and they have the request you did five years ago saying you like fresh fruit in your room when you arrive and that you like a ground floor room because you like to get out and run in the mornings and don’t like hassling with elevator lines.  Because you’re a Facebook fan of the hotel chain they give you a discount coupon promises through Twitter and Facebook.  You didn’t have to ask, they just did it. You see what guided selling could be?  Like a virtual 24/7 concierge.  I have a friend who manages one of the largest Hilton hotels in the Los Angeles area and the biggest training challenge is to get employees to deliver what he calls “service with heart”.  How much better to give the employees a chance to know customers before they arrive – anticipating their needs and delivering service with heart?  Guided selling with social networks could make this happen.

Bottom line: Earning trust by thoroughly understands customers’ expectations and then exceeding them is what best practices in guided selling can be.  It is far beyond automating commodity transactions – it can be a catalyst for delivering service with heart.

Courtesy – Louis Columbus