Thought for the day!

Simple rules: Be curious like a kid, asking questions about everything, and remember that there are not definitive answers in our lives. ~Unknown

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.

Thought for the day..

We have understood the computers enough, it’s now time for computers to understand us!

New Definitions to old Words...

Dictionary - It is a thing similar to google search with "define:X" tag, and it takes more time to give the same result with manual intervention!

Encyclopedia - It is a something similar to Wikipedia

Thought for the day...

The positive thinker sees the invisible, feel the intangible, and achieves the impossible. ~Unknown

Thought for the day!

Do not pass on the complexities rather simplicity!

Due credits to original creator.

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.

Auto Backup

With Windows Live integrating all the users storage needs into one place, Sky drive, I think I have another idea for easing user’s life.

Why not provide facilities to ‘auto-backup’ contents from various other sites! So I, as a user, should be able to click on a checkbox and Live service will take care of backing up my Blog posts to Sky Drive. In case of Google, my blogger posts should be backed up to Google Docs ( or maybe Gmail itself). Not only blogs, but this could be gradually extended to Contacts, Calendar and the services are unlimited.

Your thoughts/comments…

Thought for the day...

Silence between two unknown people creates a relation, but silence between two known people breaks it!

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?

Tought for the day!

"A true friend is the greatest of all blessings, and that which we take the least care of all to acquire."

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??

Nice Quote in the times of recession

A day may come when the courage of men fails… but it is not THIS day. The line must be drawn HERE. This far, no further! I’m not saying it’s going to be easy. You’re going to work harder than you ever worked before. But that’s fine, we’ll just get tougher with it! If a person grits his teeth and shows real determination, failure is not an option. That’s how winning is done!