Resonance Newsletter -03

Editor : Balaji OS http://osbalaji.blogspot.com [email protected]

Issue:3 Resonance Newsletter March ’09

Kickstart Dear Reader, Greetings! Cost optimization and productivity improvement are the top themes which are now inevitable in every organization’s strategy plan. When business loss, layoffs, reduced revenue projection, stalled expansions—have become order of the day, initiatives aimed towards bottom-line improvements are highly valued. Organizations are revisiting and refining their business processes to make them more efficient and result oriented. Many thought leaders are advising Executives to look towards innovation and calibrate their business models. In this context looking outside one’s domain and learning from other industry processes could be a great avenue to generate ideas. Companies have done that before and succeeded to a great extent. Ford’s mass production inspired from slaughterhouses, Home-Car Service inspired from food home delivery — success stories are many. In this edition we look into the distribution process for newspapers, a new business model in online TV entertainment, short note on IDEFO process maps, gist of Emotional Intelligence , peep into the Advertising world and finally review of recently released Indian business novel -’Aligning Ferret’ . Enjoy reading.

Sighted & Spotted Deloitte Study Shows ‘Green IT’ On the Rise A study by Deloitte and CFO Research Services reveals an increasing number of companies implementing so-called “Green IT” strategies in order to cut costs. According to the study, reducing energy costs and carbon emissions make a company less vulnerable to unpredictable energy prices.

Lean Techniques for Hospitals Georgia Institute of Technology’s Enterprise Innovation Institute through a $349,000 grant from Healthcare Georgia Foundation, will help train hospital staff in “lean” techniques that identify waste in processes and find ways to eliminate it. Georgia Tech has successfully used the approach with hospitals in Atlanta, Columbus, Newnan and Vidalia. Its “lean health care” training programs have been licensed for use nationwide by the American Hospital Association.

http://osbalaji.blogspot.com

Inside this issue: Insight

2

Sharpener

3

KIKP

3

@ Action Book Review

4 5

Handy Widgets

6

The Guru

Joseph Juran Famous for : Juran's Quality Trilogy December 24, 1904 – February 28, 2008

As said.. A public-opinion poll is no substitute for thought. - Warren Buffett Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail. - Ralph Waldo Emerson We lost because we told ourselves we lost. - Leo Tolstoy

Edition : 03

Page 2

Insight NEWSPAPER DISTRIBUTION PROCESS Ravi is watching an exciting cricket match at 10 pm and falls asleep without knowing the end result. At morning 6 am, he wakes up to find the newspaper next to his bed; He hurriedly reaches to the Sports section and is fascinated to know India has won the match by 4 runs. ‘Wow! That’s great’- the surprising fact is not Indian team’s victory but the process that made it possible to bring the news that happened at 10.30 pm to Ravi’s doorsteps at 6 am. Yes, the point under discussion is about the Newspaper distribution process. It is a set of coordinated activities between what is generally called as ‘Day organization’ and ‘Night Organization’ in Newspaper distribution. Right from circulation planning, route planning, order intake, transportation issues to retailer commissions , a highly orchestrated set of events runs the show.

The critical business parameter for this process is ‘On-time delivery’ as Newspaper is a perishable product that loses its value if it’s not available at the morning prime time.

http://osbalaji.blogspot.com

Edition : 03

Page 3

Sharpener

Emotional Intelligence - the self-awareness, self-regulation and motivation needed to manage yourself and the empathy and social skills needed to manage relationships with others. Five components of Emotional Intelligence :

Know a Industry ,Know a Process In this section, a brief of some of the critical process used in various industries are presented Industry : ADVERTISING “Above the line” is a type of advertising through media such as TV, cinema, radio, print, banners and search engines to promote brands. Major uses include television and radio advertising, web and Internet banner ads. This type of communication is conventional in nature and is considered impersonal to customers “Below the line" advertising, refers to forms of non-media communication, even non-media advertising. Below the line advertising, which believes in unconventional brand-building strategies, such as direct mail ,store brochures and printed media (and usually involve no motion graphics).

http://osbalaji.blogspot.com

Edition : 03

Page 4

@ Action

HULU.com— Top Innovator in Online TV Screening

Background

Hulu - has nabbed one of the top spots in TIME magazine’s Top 10 Innovations of 2008. In Only One Year, Hulu Becomes Fourth Largest Video Site in U.S. Company •

Hulu is an online video service that offers hit TV shows, movies and clips at Hulu.com and other online destination sites — all for free, anytime in the U.S.

•

Founded in March 2007, Hulu is co-owned by NBC Universal, News Corp. and Providence Equity Partners. It is operated independently by a dedicated management team with offices in Los Angeles, New York, Chicago and Beijing

Business Model •

Hulu is a free online service for consumers that generates revenue from advertising sales. Ad revenue comes from the ad impressions generated from Hulu.com, video streams from our distribution partners’ websites and from the embeddable Hulu video player

Business Goals •

Hulu is focused on helping people find and enjoy the world’s premium content when, where and how they want it, for free, anytime in the U.S. Their goal is to serve all customers, which include users, content providers and advertisers, with a high-quality online video experience built around premium content.

•

They strongly believe in the ideology that media is an impulse business, so making online video easy-to-use and consume when, where and how people want is a prospective business.

Advertisers •

Advertisers benefit from Hulu’s environment, which is clean, simple and elegant, and has an audience that is engaged in the viewing experience. Additionally, with Hulu’s substantial and growing audience, advertisers’ brands can reach consumers wherever they’re online, whether it’s on Hulu, through our distribution partners, or on the network of viral video players that have been embedded across the web.

How is it different from You Tube? •

You Tube, the leading video streaming site now owned by Google, mainly hosts user contributed contents. It has all sorts of videos ranging from Toyota’s production system, your friend’s birthday party to clippings of movies. Most of them are not of great quality.

•

Hulu which attached great importance to viewership experience only hosts high quality videos from professional video houses and media agencies.

Times ahead Currently available only in US, the site is fast expanding to reach out to global audience. Watch out!

Known is a drop

http://osbalaji.blogspot.com

http://www.mbavid.com/ - Business Videos Education portal

Edition : 03

Page 5

Book Review

ALIGNING FERRET Written by Swapna Kishore and Rajesh Naik , the story of the book is set up in an software organization 'Ferret'. The story is narrated through the hero ,'Sunny' alias ' Sunil Chinnappa' , who after successfully leading a CMM initiative is entrusted the job of charting out a robust organization strategy . With a parallel track narrating ' Sunny's ' personal life incidents the story maintains the right tempo sustaining the readers interest . Inspired by one of the greatest business novels 'The Goal' , 'Aligning Ferret' speaks about the management challenges which most of the IT organizations go through. Day to day work pressure in the IT world, employee's expectations and need to survive in a competing business is well etched out through interesting events. Characters like Sheri ( always loaded HR ) ,Rajiv ( ever demanding Sunny's boss), Raman ( methodical project manager) and Sunny's wife Shubhangi are people one would come across day in day out. Overall, the book is definitely a very good read both for its informative content and excellent narrative style. "You can get more information about the book and order copies from its website http://www.postscript-impressions.com"

BPM Buzz In the Business Process Management(BPM) notation , there are different ways to define and model process. One such method of definition is using IDEFO maps. IDEF0 (Integration Definition for Function Modeling) is a function modeling methodology for describing manufacturing functions, which offers a functional modeling language for the analysis, development, reengineering, and integration of information systems; business processes; or software engineering analysis. Most of the BPM tools support IDEFO process mapping. You can try them in VISIO 2007 also. Semantics of IDEFO IDEFO diagram :Example

http://osbalaji.blogspot.com

Edition : 03

Page 6

Handy Widgets

BOX .NET Want to share large files that are not Confidential ? Having problem with Mail box restrictions ? Try this tool www.BOX.net Box.net becomes particularly useful when the user needs to share documents that are too large for email. Some such items that the user could share with a client, family or friends are documents, photos, videos and other information. The file system for this product is very straightforward and well organized. When the user creates a new file folder, a unique URL is generated for the folder. That URL can then be sent to the collaborating party for access to the information in that particular folder. An additional ability that Box.net gives a user is that that user is given an administrative status over his or her information. The user may add or remove collaborators to certain folders, give them permission or deny access to specific folders and information and also may make folders absolutely private. This option prevents anyone but the user from accessing the data in question. This unique set up allows the user to have complete control over all of the data in the account and

WINMERGE ( Contributed by Surya Prakash Garg) WinMerge is an Open Source differencing and merging tool for Windows. WinMerge can compare both folders and files, presenting differences in a visual text format that is easy to understand and handle. http://winmerge.org/ it.

Comments & Contribution Hope you enjoyed reading ! Now ,don’t sit back :-) Drop in a mail with your feedback and suggestions. Your views are highly appreciated. If you are interested in contributing to the next edition ,your are most welcome. Lets share ,learn and empower ourselves ! Mail ID : [email protected] http://osbalaji.blogspot.com © All images and illustrations are copyrights of original sources referred. Contents are referred only for information sharing purpose .

http://osbalaji.blogspot.com

Edition : 03

Page 7

Voice of Community

Enjoyed reading especially about ToolPack. - Nishith Trivedi,Pune very useful/wide coverage. simply superb! - Ram ,Management Consultant Resonance is truly very informative - Sandeep Khera ,Bangalore good stuff. The standard on green buildings is interesting. Will explore further. - Arun Aravindan,Bangalore I loved all the short articles from the diverse set of industries. This can be way of learning and adapting best practices across dissimilar industries - Rajesh Naik, Co-author of "Aligning Ferret" (http://www.postscript-impressions.com) This is good stuff. However at places when I was getting interested in reading more...suddenly the section ended. May be little more content could be helpful. -Manu Tayal. Hyderabad

References for this edition : •

www.hulu.com, www.bpmni.org , www.qualitydigest .com ,Georgia Tech University site ,www.inventorspot.com

•

Information Flow and Physical Distribution Planning in Newspaper Delivery, Jonas Rehn Licentiate Thesis, Royal Institute of Technology

•

Wikipedia

http://osbalaji.blogspot.com

Edition : 03