Tag: Work

Corporate Blog

Prasad Ajinkya2 Comments

I like the blogger.com blog which comes when you hit blogger.com (its below the login form). Especially this post about babes at blogger. Gives the firm that personalization touch, dont you think? As it is, it is way more interesting than Google Blog :-)

It’s kind of difficult to have a corporate blog that readers come repeatedly to. Generally, if you are a well known firm like Google, HP, IBM, Accenture, et al, then having a blog makes good sense. What we see though is that people use blogs to make their companies famous!! I should not call those people fools since we were about to be one of them, when we thought other wise. Having a blog is good, but it should act as a PR tool and not as a marketing tool.

Succession Planning

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I am now in the process of making a succession plan … for myself!

Why do I want that … to ensure that the organization is not people centric, even if it were myself, I dont want the firm to be dependent on me. What are your experiences in charting out a succession plan for the management of the firm?

As far as I know, it should ensure that the next one who takes up can hit the ground running without any suffrage to the firm.

Quantity v/s Quality

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Today Don and I tried out this new restaurant in Hyderabad, it seemed new; considering the fact that we had not noticed it earlier. Upon entering the restaurant at peak lunch hours, we saw that the place was like a graveyard … rows upon rows of empty seats. Thats not a very good sign, let me tell you at the outset.

We still decided to persist, it’s the never-say-never attitude combined with the kya-hi-farak-padta-hain attitude that pushed us. Prices were decent, we ordered our usual order … one meal and two rotis plus one more dish. This normally is enough for the two of us. Just about more than enough actually :-)

When the waiter came, he had his tray full with dishes … the quantity was huge .. big dishes and loads of dishes (what a meal!!!). It was enough for maybe 5 people, 6 even. The food quality was not that great, neither was the service … but pricing and quantity. Wow!

I wonder, what would have happened had the restaurateer focused on quality instead of quantity.

Hyderabad

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Only in a city like Hyderabad do you see such idiosyncrasies. Our office timings were 9am to 6.30pm, which worked out for everyone (although I found them a tad too early!!). But ever since I have started waking up at 6.30, it has become much easier.

Nonetheless, today when I walked into office … I found that the AC was not working; which was very fortunate considering the fever I was running. After half an hour or so, the enter lights, connectivity, etc went. zook, kaput, gone … silence. The office does come to a stand still, especially the tech department. The newly installed UPS took the brunt of all the machines and the servers … phew!

Upon further questioning, we found that this is now going to be a daily occurence with the AP electricity board. The area is going to face extensive power shedding and daily from 8am to 11am, the lights will be cut. Great!!! Awesome!! As a joke, I asked our admin that maybe we should reschedule our office timings to suit the AP board.

11am, the management decides to reschedule the office timings … 10.30am to office it is!! What am I going to do in the mornings now?!?

Groupware

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So we finally decided that Google Apps is not a sustainable idea without subscribing to their paid service (which costs a LOT by the way!). The only solution – look for alternatives who can give the same kind of service (my Head Ops wants this, thats Manish) and be as easy to administer (I want this) for as less as possible (my finance guy wants this). Yes, we want the BEST :)

So after doing a long due diligence, we decided, that having our very own hosted email server would be better (yeah, the cost-effectiveness hurts since Google Apps was free). Now, my MD wanted an interface where everyone’s schedules and calendars were visible to every other person. So, the need for a calendaring system was apparent, the moment he said that … I realized that we want something like the Google Apps paid version at a cheap cost. Fair enough, we can have that, just buy MS Exchange and enough Office licenses instead of using Gnumeric and Abiword bounded with QMail. My headaches would be resolved. Again, the financing of this exercise looks like a nightmare to me.

So, I have to look the open source way once more. Apple apparently offers CalDav, which works well with Outlook even (Thunderbird needs Lightning extension, or you can use Sunbird). Very good, so I take one derelict machine lying in my office (it’s a P3 you know :-)), and I install Ubuntu 7.1 on it. The installation goes without a hitch, I choose command line and remove the GUI interface, that drastically brings the load on the machine down. Sadly, for some reason CalDav is not installing, I cant compile the @*#@*^ file.

No worries, I look around and then decide to go with eGroupware, which needs not much just apache2, php, mysql and its own binaries. Installation has now begun …

10 minutes later … the file system on the machine has crashed. Some days are just fun days :-)

I am beginning to appreciate Google Apps from a whole new perspective.

Indian SEO

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We are in the process of releasing a website targeting SME’s. The portal is aimed at collecting orders from enterprises for customized corporate merchandise. You select the product, you upload your design, you put in your logo, we will deliver the product to you.

As part of our online marketing plan, we decided to go hire on search engine optimizer. This entire process of hiring an SEO was certainly an eye-opener. To understand this, you have to be an Indian … the way an Indian thinks is slightly different. The exact term I am referring to is jugaad … this very characteristic of an Indian to get things done … by hook or by crook.

So, how do you increase the page ranking of your website the jugaad way? Simple, you become a link-whore, or a forum spammer, or someone who keeps on flooding the open directories of the web.

What happened to the fine art of online PR? Is it alive or do I have to hire on these? Somehow it does not feel right. What will happen later on when the Semantic web revolution begins?

As I edit this piece after 5 years, it’s good to know that I was right (hah!! high-five former self!). There was a spam comment lying on this very post which I have deleted, and we are very much in the midst of semantic and structured SEO.

Online PR these days has become a paid service very akin (and oft confused) to/with SEO.

Corporate Pujari!

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At eYantra Ind Ltd, we have a very nice culture of weekly pooja. Every Friday evening, the employees assemble in front of the office’s devghar and the pooja begins. This rite is performed by our Accounts manager (I do not think its just a coincidence!), Mr. Koteswara Rao. Personally speaking, I like this weekly rite being a god fearing person myself.

Today, while I was talking to one colleague on this, he informed me that many Indian corporates are into this, a lot of SMEs, and some big ones like Satyam as well. He then went on to inform me that his friend does this for a living!! He goes to Satyam every week, and they have set up this employee pooja fund, which is given to the pujari as dakshina! And a pretty decent amount at that. So true, how many of us do take the time to do a small pooja every day? Its not surprising then that many of us dont even know how to proceed when its needed. My daily ritual consists of a simple incense stick and a small prayer, but for formal occassions, I would definitely want one Corporate Pujari for myself!!

Interesting business no? In fact a friend of a friend has launched a business of his own just on this theme. Its known as Sacred Moments, wherein he supplies to individuals and businesses with kits for occassions like these. Looks like some people are into Corporate Karma after all.