SBI Credit Cards - Impressive Customer Care!

The title might seem contradictory to many residing in India! :)

However, I am just sharing my experiences with Customer Care department of SBI Credit Card. Thinking of SBI, well as a government body in India, one would have expected getting a card that's just working and nothing more! I am happy to say I was proved wrong. I just got to know, its Customer Care department has been outsourced to GE and I must congratulate the team out there for doing an excellent job of doing  what's expected out of them - 'Customer , Care'!

The representatives I have talked to, not just one but each time, I have felt delighted & appreciated at being a customer in every sense. They way they talk, the way they solve your queries and most importantly the way I just need to call once (yes you read that right!) to get it all sorted out!

It's been really really long since I have had that elevated feeling talking to any Customer Representatives of any industry or category for that matter. And for Credit Card it's just like after sales service, which usually is the cause of failures for small to the biggest of big hot shots.

I think every CC needs to learn and take lessons from this team on how to do the job!

I just wish the team best of luck and wish them more business!

Professionals should plan for a house early in their career

As an IT Professional, I have noticed that most of us plan to ‘invest’ in a decent apartment, if not bungalow. Following are the points I have noted from my personal experience which might help you in your ‘Home Plan’:

Plan for a house early in your career: Well this is a tricky & bold at one hand but wise, according to me, at the other! Prices of construction is an ever growing process and it’s never early or late to make a decision on investing in them. In a professional career we can assume our income to be growing* year on year basis

I do not want to kick off my career with a loan!: That’s how most of you would feel initially. Is it a good way to start ‘investing’ early in your career with an amount that you loan from bank? To answer this, there are two parts to it; First, if you are planning to invest in high risk area’s like market funds, then the answer is NO. You are better off without investment than to plunge into with a debt burden on your head. However, as an accounting background person would say, Land is one of the asset class which has appreciation instead of depreciation since its scarce/limited! Therefore, construction done on land is bound to the same rule in long term, if not short term! That’s one of the major reasons we are seeing multi-storied construction (High-rise apartments) instead of ground level constructions (bungalow like)! There are various risks involved, however less as compared to investment in market instruments/funds.

What about EMIs you might ask?:  It becomes difficult to manage the EMI’s along with your other expenses. At least that’s how one would think when looking at their monthly income & expenses put together. However, the sooner you can put behind the thought of ‘EMI as burden’ the better it positions you for your future. Consider the EMI to be an amount you would be putting in your Provident Fund account. The benefits of booming property value & reduction in tax liability are both available here as well, if you compare it with interest earned on PF and deductions you get for income tax calculation. I would also say we can compare it on the point of ‘risk free’ investment here as well, if you will! A simple rule as per financial advisors would be to ensure your monthly outgo on EMI is approximately 25% of your post-tax income. I do agree to this calculation. And to add on to this, if you buy home in initial days of career, you might very well end up with paying almost 50% of your income as EMIs. This would set you back for few initial years on your luxury spending. Considering a fixed increase in your income at a rate of ‘minimal’ 10% p.a.*, you could easily bring the percentage of EMI down to 25% from 50% in a mere 5-6 years of time! Now is that a long period to put some luxury spending on hold considering you started your career say at the age of 22? Well that’s left to be decided by individual’s choices and priorities.

Please note that opinion noted above is my personal choice that I have made/experienced and are strictly mine. And I am in no way a financial expert offering you a  set of magical mantras of investment!

*Well I am not considering recession and assuming you work reasonably good to be put out of job J

Thought for the day!

Futuristic thinking in IT is a tricky situation. You got to be planning enough to accommodate possibilities of future changes, and yet be delivering what’s expected as of today!

Agile Productivity???

First off, this is my 100th post, and I am happy to reach this milestone!

Now to the post, today I am just going to leave you with a question to think about and  to leave your thoughts in the comments section -

In the world of Agile, where we aim in rectifying/identifying mistakes at early stage, should we be bothered to do productivity analysis at the end of a project? Should agility be followed there?

Must have in today’s Modern Offices…

Here are few things that I feel we should start seeing in offices - 

1.       Laptop’s Instead of desktops – Well this is debatable. To me Laptops are better solution with portability & Go Green message. If it has to desktops then it shouldn’t be a ‘Pentium X Inside’! For God’s sake get an updated PC; At least a dual core if not quad or Core iX. And yes not to mention about the CRT monitors which is so energy hungry and should be replaced with LCD monitors (unless you are in a heavy photo-shop business that is).

2.       Do away with phones – No I am not talking about mobile phones that employees’ bring to work J. With 24x7 internet connectivity and computers in front of us, companies should be avoiding costs of hardware phone. There are numerous solutions already, and yes VOIP is the way companies should be looking at.

3.       Do away with wasteful stationery in style – Provide Tablets to employees. There are many cheaper options of Tablets available in the market and not to mention about the bulk ordering bargains that companies might get. We should be looking at saving Paper. It could be provided to employees as a ‘Welcome Kit’ and it could also contain the soft copies HR manuals and other related documents handed out during induction sessions.

Check out this Info-graphic - http://visual.ly/enterprise-tablets

4.       Wi-Fi – There are offices which still do not have this and it’s so not happening. IT offices campus should be a strictly Wi-Fi zone, though a protected one!

I’ll ensure that I provide all these in the company I would own one day!

Leave your thoughts on your must have for the modern day offices or you plan to provide in your company one day.

A Leader Should Know How to Manage Failure

(Former President of India APJ Abdul Kalam at Wharton India Economic forum, Philadelphia, March 22, 2008)

Question: Could you give an example, from your own experience, of how leaders should manage failure?

Sir Kalam: Let me tell you about my experience. In 1973 I became the project director of India's satellite launch vehicle program, commonly called the SLV-3. Our goal was to put India 's "Rohini" satellite into orbit by 1980. I was given funds and human resources -- but was told clearly that by 1980 we had to launch the satellite into space. Thousands of people worked together in scientific and technical teams towards that goal.

By 1979 -- I think the month was August -- we thought we were ready. As the project director, I went to the control center for the launch. At four minutes before the satellite launch, the computer began to go through the checklist of items that needed to be checked. One minute later, the computer program put the launch on hold; the display showed that some control components were not in order.

My experts -- I had four or five of them with me -- told me not to worry; they had done their calculations and there was enough reserve fuel. So I bypassed the computer, switched to manual mode, and launched the rocket. In the first stage, everything worked fine. In the second stage, a problem developed. Instead of the satellite going into orbit, the whole rocket system plunged into the Bay of Bengal . It was a big failure.

That day, the chairman of the Indian Space Research Organization, Prof. Satish Dhawan, had called a press conference. The launch was at 7:00 am, and the press conference -- where journalists from around the world were present -- was at 7:45 am at ISRO's satellite launch range in Sriharikota [in Andhra Pradesh in southern India ].

Prof. Dhawan, the leader of the organization, conducted the press conference himself. He took responsibility for the failure -- he said that the team had worked very hard, but that it needed more technological support. He assured the media that in another year, the team would definitely succeed.

Now, I was the project director, and it was my failure, but instead, he took responsibility for the failure as chairman of the organization.

The next year, in July 1980, we tried again to launch the satellite -- and this time we succeeded. The whole nation was jubilant. Again, there was a press conference. Prof. Dhawan called me aside and told me, "You conduct the press conference today."

I learned a very important lesson that day. When failure occurred, the leader of the organization owned that failure. When success came, he gave it to his team. The best management lesson I have learned did not come to me from reading a book; it came from that experience.

Paitence...

In an Indian temple, when the priest had gone for lunch, the Idol of the Lord and the Stepping Stone were conversing.

Stepping Stone: “What a good fate you have. We both were the same lump of rock for millions of years. The sculptor carved an idol out of you and everyone is worshipping you. And look at me, I am a stepping stone and every one stands on me and stamps on. What kind of life is this?“

The Idol kept smiling and never bothered to answer this, now, routine murmur from the stepping stone. But the stepping stone ( stone used as a step, that is ) will never stop his constant bickering.

The Idol replied: “But do you remember that when the sculptor set out to carve an idol, it was you he chose, first. You were so impatient. In one strike, you broke in to two . But when he tried on me, I grinned and bore all the hammers and chisel strikes with PATIENCE . Here I am the worshipful and happy Idol and you are the Stepping Stone ….“

The difference between success and failure is patience and persistence.

Portable is a buzz...

"Portable" is a buzz these days, be it hardware (HDDs etc) or be it software. Nobody likes it fixed anymore. Everybody wants to save the trouble!

Even the professionals need to be portable, ready to switch work locations between branches 'on the fly'

Portable has become part of my life, how about yours?

Safety of Employees in IT Companies..

In recent time, I have heard a lot of news regarding the deaths of IT professionals, more so with female employees. Everybody knows the reasons for it and this post is not here to discuss the problem, but provide solutions.

While I agree many companies have started taking measures to ensure safety of employees, but it still lacks some place or other. Following are my recommendations to all the companies:

     

      1. Make it mandatory for employees to leave early! This option is most widely preached, but this doesn’t solve the problem for IT companies. What if the project requires the employee to stay late for work?

      2. Make Cab arrangements for the employees going late. This again is widely adopted solution, but again this is not fool proof and we all know how many cases have happened with the employees traveling through Cab, though less but still there are and we cannot deny that.

So, here is my take, why not provide employees, especially female employees with laptops and ask them to work from home if it gets late. This is very simple solution that will ensure that all employees leave early and yet be available for late working hours. Though I do not deny the fact that infrastructural cost of company would go up investing in ‘so-many’ laptops, but look at the benefits you get from it. Now only safety, but we ensure less electricity bills & use of company’s resources!

Don’t you think the cost-benefit analysis here will be fruitful?

There are few companies who have implemented this and let this be the beginning of new safety era.

Saving Energy, Going Green...

Hello people, long time and I have been kept busy with loads of work.

Recently I am planning to purchase a new system and idea overflow is natural to me, so here it is what I thought of…

Computer parts should be able to shut themselves on/off based on requirement to conserve energy. In this age of Global warming one must think and think faster than time to conserve energy. If I have a relatively high-end system that requires ~650 Watts to power CPU, Graphics Card, HDD etc. etc. then why not I should be allowed to cut down on power when I do not require some part’s functionality. For an example if I am not playing games or if I am not working on application that is GC intensive, I should be able to ‘plug-off’ the power to it and still be able to work with a ‘converted low-end system’. This is no big deal, we have seen things with which we can do this, and there we have products like external HDDs which can be unplugged when not required thus contributing to the cause of saving energy. Parts like GCs are power hungry and we do not use them every time we use the system, like while surfing Internet at least not in current days scenario. We have power saving features in monitors, LCD which I am not getting into, those are external to the system.

Some of you might argue that why go for such high-end solutions when you can live without it. Well do you really think that would solve the problem??

It all about mindset!

Nice mail to ponder upon -

As I was passing the elephants, I suddenly stopped, confused by the fact that these huge creatures were being held by only a small rope tied to their front leg. No chains, no cages. It was obvious that the elephants could, at anytime, break away from the ropes they were tied to but for some reason, they did not.

I saw a trainer near by and asked why these beautiful, magnificent animals just stood there and made no attempt to get away.

"Well," he said, "when they are very young and much smaller we use the same size rope to tie them and, at that age, it's enough to hold them. As they grow up, they are conditioned to believe they cannot break away. They believe the rope can still hold them, so they never try to break free."

I was amazed. These animals
could at any time break free from their bonds but because they believed they couldn't, they were stuck right where they were.

Like the elephants, how many of us go through life hanging onto a belief that we cannot do something, simply because we failed at it once before?

Thought for the day

The cruelest lies are often told in silence. -Robert Louis Stevenson

Yes, very true! It’s always better to speak out than to remain silent, because by remaining silent you are postponing your talk for the future. And by doing that you are aggregating those thoughts in your mind. By this you would end up in following problems:

1. You are unnecessarily loading your mind with thoughts and already there are many things to take care of on daily basis. So what’s the point in burdening you mind!!

2. At some point of time, the thoughts would become very heavy to carry on, and it would burst out. Not only that, the worst part is, then would “burst out with a bang!”. I am sure nobody would want that.

Why do I relate this to the above quote? This is because, by remaining silent you are more often than not lying to yourself and to the other person.

On the other hand, if you speak up as and when the problem crops up, you are sure not to burden your mind with repetitive thoughts on the topic later on! And, if you think the things would not go well by talking, remember “it is bound to get worst when it gets out with bang!”

If you ask me, I would just say “Sharing thrills, hiding kills!”

P.S.: Another related topic that might be interesting to read here http://siddhesh-k3g.blogspot.com/2007/12/guilty-until-proven-innocent.html

Client Interaction Tips

This post is picked up from a mail. I hope this will help my readers in client Interaction as well.

1. Do not write "the same" in an email - it makes little sense to them. Example - I will try to organize the project artifacts and inform you of the same when it is done. This is somewhat an Indian construct. It is better written simply as: I will try to organize the project artifacts and inform you when that is done.

2. Do not write or say, "I have some doubts on this issue". The term "Doubt" is used in the sense of doubting someone - we use this term because in Indian languages , the word for a "doubt" and a "question" is the same. The correct usage (for clients) is: I have a few questions on this issue

3. The term "regard" is not used much in American English. They usually do not say "regarding this issue" or "with regard to this". Simply use, "about this issue".

4. Do not say "Pardon" when you want someone to repeat what they said. The word "Pardon" is unusual for them and is somewhat formal.

5. Americans do not understand most of the Indian accent immediately - They only understand 75% of what we speak and then interpret the rest. Therefore try not to use shortcut terms such as "Can't" or "Don't". Use the expanded "Cannot" or "Do not".

6. Do not use the term "screwed up" liberally. If a situation is not good, it is better to say, "The situation is messed up".

7. As a general matter of form, Indians interrupt each other constantly in meetings - DO NOT interrupt a client when they are speaking. Over the phone, there could be delays - but wait for a short time before responding.


8. When explaining some complex issue, stop occasionally and ask "Does that make sense?". This is preferable than "Do you understand me?"

9. In email communications, use proper punctuation. To explain something, without breaking your flow, use semicolons, hyphens or parenthesis. As an example: You have entered a new bug (the popup not showing up) in the defect tracking system; we could not reproduce it - although, a screenshot would help. Notice that a reference to the actual bug is added in parenthesis so that the sentence flow is not broken. Break a long sentence using such punctuation.

10. In American English, a mail is a posted letter. An email is electronic mail. When you say "I mailed the information to you", it means you sent an actual letter or package through the postal system. The correct usage is: "I emailed the information to you"

11. To "prepone" an appointment is an Indian usage. There is no actual word called prepone. You can "advance" an appointment.

12. The usages "September End", "Month End", "Day End" are not understood well by Americans. They use these as "End of September", "End of Month" or "End of Day".

13. Americans have weird conventions for time - when they say the time is "Quarter Of One", they mean the time is 1:15. Better to ask them the exact time.

14. Indians commonly use the terms "Today Evening", "Today Night". These are not correct; "Today" means "This Day" where the Day stands for Daytime. Therefore "Today Night" is confusing. The correct usages are: "This Evening", "Tonight". That applies for "Yesterday Night" and "Yesterday Evening". The correct usages are: "Last Night" and "Last Evening".

15. When Americans want to know the time, it is usual for them to say, "Do you have the time?". Which makes no sense to an Indian.

16. There is no word called "Updation". You update somebody. You wait for updates to happen to the database. Avoid saying "Updation".

17. When you talk with someone for the first time, refer to them as they refer to you - in America, the first conversation usually starts by using the first name. Therefore you can use the first name of a client. Do not say "Sir". Do not call women "Madam".

18. It is usual convention in initial emails (particularly technical) to expand abbreviations, this way: We are planning to use the Java API For Registry (JAXR). After mentioning the expanded form once, subsequently you can use the abbreviation.

19. Make sure you always have a subject in your emails and that the subject is relevant. Do not use a subject line such as HI.

20. Avoid using "Back". Instead of "Back", Use “ago". Back is the worst word for American.(for Days use "Ago", For hours use "before")

21. Avoid using "but". Instead of "But", Use "However".

22.Avoid using "Yesterday" hereafter use "Last day".

23. Avoid using "Tomorrow" hereafter use "Next day".

Corporate Bandwidth 2.0

With the world moving towards Web2.0, the internet of Video’s, Podcasts, Screencasts and everything in your browser window, the hunger for Bandwidth increases! Corporate world does tackle this problem by curbing the access to ‘unproductive’ resources. Well, that’s right in a way, but the question that arises to my mind is How Long? When are companies going to shift their gears and turn themselves v2.0?

All of the content sharing has shifted to video’s which gives the end-user a better UX. Though there could be much content which could be termed as ‘unproductive’, still one must not forget the other side of the coin which offers vast resource of helpful information.

I would just say, Google search could be used for various ‘unproductive’ search as well, but does that qualify to block Google(or any Search site for that matter) from being used for productive use in corporate world?? I am sure most of us would not even live a day without visiting a search site page (for me Google).

I believe no one would like to keep an employee who sits doing nothing but ‘unproductive’ work? And I feel every employee of any organization would be very well aware of that!

So, I would vote for tackling the Web2.0 world by not blocking access to them, but becoming one of them!

Lord, may the Corporate Bandwidth turns green to 2.0. Amen! J

Fresh Fish

The Japanese have always loved fresh fish. But the waters close to Japan have not held many fish for decades. So to feed the Japanese population, fishing boats got bigger and went farther than ever. The farther the fishermen went, the longer it took to bring in the fish. If the return trip took more than a few days, the fish were not fresh. The Japanese did not like the taste.
To solve this problem, fishing companies installed freezers on their boats. They would catch the fish and freeze them at sea. Freezers allowed the boats to go farther and stay longer. However, the Japanese could taste the difference between fresh and frozen and they did not like frozen fish. The frozen fish brought a lower price. So fishing companies installed fish tanks.
They would catch the fish and stuff them in the tanks, fin to fin. After a little thrashing around, the fish stopped moving. They were tired and dull, but alive. Unfortunately, the Japanese could still taste the difference.
Because the fish did not move for days, they lost their fresh-fish taste.

The Japanese preferred the lively taste of fresh fish, not sluggish fish. So how did Japanese fishing companies solve this problem? How do they get fresh-tasting fish to Japan? To keep the fish tasting fresh, the Japanese fishing companies (still) put the fish in the tanks. But now they add a small shark to each tank. The shark eats a few fish, but most of the fish arrive in a very lively state.

Like the Japanese fish - "Man thrives, oddly enough, only in the presence of a challenging environment."- L. Ron Hubbard. Challenges are what keep us FRESH!
Instead of avoiding challenges, jump into them. Beat the heck out of them. Enjoy the game. If your challenges are too large or too numerous, reorganize the challenge, team up, be resourceful and do not give up.
Failing makes you tired. If you have met your goals, set some bigger goals. Once you meet your personal or family needs, move onto goals for your group, the society, even mankind.

Don't create success and lie in it.

Discussions with Client

Before I start writing this, thanks to all my managers out here in Persistent who by their experience say few things which become a "Point to Remember" to me, for effective communication with Client-
Let me mention few I remember -

1. Take a note of even minutest of the discussion with your client or any party related to client.
2. Always mail these discussion details to all the parties involved i.e. your company's team, the client and related parties.
3. This mail should not show the discussion points as "warning mesages", meaning it should not sound "leagal" when read, though, it ofcourse could save you many leagal complications if it has to happen later on!
4. The mail, if possible, should mention the names of the person who has made a statement that you are mentioning with proper reasoning of the statement.

More to come you way, Keep reading!

Lesson for the day

A new vacuum cleaner salesman knocked on the door on the first house of the street. A tall lady answered the door. Before she could speak, the enthusiastic salesman barged into the living room and opened a big black plastic bag and poured all the cow droppings onto the carpet.

" Madam, if I could not clean this up with the use of this new powerful vacuum cleaner, I will EAT all this s...!" exclaimed the eager salesman.

"Do you need chilli sauce or ketchup with that?" asked the lady.

The bewildered salesman asked, " Why, madam?"

"There's no electricity in the house..." said the lady

MORAL: Gather All resources before working on any project...!! ! :)

Self Appraisal

Another one from the collection of my good mails -

A little boy went into a drug store, reached for a soda carton and pulled it over to the telephone. He climbed onto the carton so that he could reach the buttons on the phone and proceeded to punch in seven digits.

The store-owner observed and listened to the conversation: The boy asked, "Lady, Can you give me the job of cutting your lawn? The woman replied, "I already have someone to cut my lawn.

Lady, I will cut your lawn for half the price of the person who cuts your lawn now." replied boy. The woman responded that she was very satisfied with the person who was presently cutting her lawn.
The little boy found more perseverance and offered, "Lady, I'll even sweep your curb and your sidewalk, so on Sunday you will have the prettiest lawn in all of Palm beach, Florida.Again the woman answered in the negative.

With a smile on his face, the little boy replaced the receiver. The store-owner, who was listening to all, walked over to the boy and said, "Son... I like your attitude; I like that positive spirit and would like to offer you a job.

The little boy replied, "No thanks, I was just checking my performance with the job I already have. I am the one who is working for that lady, I was talking to!"

Work can be Fun!!

If you want and make it to be!! Yes, I am not trying to make a humourous statement out here ( You bet I'm! :) )

Let me not start giving you gyan on how to manage your work etc. etc... and straight away get to the point. Here is an example of what I mean -

You are a developer and one of the most boring task could be to support your work with good commenting! I have to prepare a sample application for a web control I have created, now every line I write must accompany with some comment, right! I am trying to show a demo of a Message Box control I had created (Yes, I have :) ) Now just to bring up the box I created a scenario for divide by zero exception and show the same in "My Message Box" (Good Idea!) But now that I am not using a good coding practice to bluntly generate the exception, I must comment it. How do I go about it:

"The following code is not advisable in a real-time scenario. This has potential performance implications, blah blah blah.."

Nah! boring.. Let me make it KISS (Keep It Short Stupid! and what where you thinking ;))

"Disclaimer: Do not try the following four LOCs at home!"

Yes, doesn't this convey what it should. It brings a smile on your face while writing it, and surely would bring a smile to the face of the developer who is trying to use your control and is bored with long steps and comments to start with.

So, you saw the message conveyed what is should have and bought smiles to many faces. However, remember this should not always be the case. Sometimes you need to be serious afterall :| (Must you? :P). This can be implemented while writing documentations or mails, articles as well, use smileys at right point of time and place to bring smiles to readers' face and not with the intentions to mock you reader.

I like to use it more often than not, and surely remember the last point while doing it!

Normal goes Fast!!!

Wondering what the title means! Read on...

Normally my group goes in for lunch @ 1pm. Since today was Monday, the first counter from back entrance contained 'Fast' Food ( Not the 'Fast' as in Junk, but the food for fasting :) ). When we were there one of the vegetable bowl was empty!! (the other one was obiviously not edible as usual) Lunch time here starts @ 12pm and lasts till 2.30pm.

Yes you thinking it right, "So early... WTH!!"

More astonishingly, the section for 'Fast' food had its each and every bowl filled up till brim!! [Reason, as we saw it to be, being "Sabka Bandhu", as we call the person was fasting today. :) ]

And did you note the irony - On one hand Fasting food was available in abundance and on other Non-Fasting had it's counter closed!
And till date I was under impression Fasting meant "Not to Eat!!". I really wonder who was fasting!!

Enjoy Eating!! :)