Dec 27th, 2009 Nov 2nd, 2009 Aug 10th, 2009 OfficeTiger is the story of Joseph ‘Joe’ Sigelman and Randolph ‘Randy’ Altschuler, two unusual Americans who left their high paying jobs in the United States, traveled half away across the globe to India, checked into a hotel in Chennai and started a company. Office Tiger was recently sold for $250 million but their founders continue to work with the company and haven’t checked out of the hotel yet.
Feb 18th, 2009 
Power of Ideas is a Times Group campaign to promote entrepreneurship.
The invited members for the Ahmedabad edition were -
*Live Updates*
14:00 – Dr. Barua, Mr. Khambhatta, Mr. Soparkar and Mr. Shroff have just come it. Pleasantries are exchanged and some jokes are shared.
Panel discussions will begin shortly. We are still waiting for Mr. Patel to come in.
14:05 – Mr. Khambatta says 7 – 8 % growth is good for the economy and society.
14:10 – I just gave my introduction. Reporters are sitting in the room and warming up the discussions while we wait for Mr. Patel.
14:12 – Mr. Patel just walks in. Okay, we’re set now!
14:14 – Mr. Ashwin, Chief of Bureau – Economic Times gives a brief intro on the Power of Ideas. Question to Dr. Barua – ‘Do you think there is a slowdown? Are you scared of it?’
14:16 – Dr. Barua – “Yes, there is a slow down and it will affect the lower rung of the society.” 2009-10 will be the real test and it is likely to go down even further.
14:17 – Mr. Khambatta – We look at the consumers directly. In India there is a great deal of consumption. We have to ensure that financial markets should be better aligned. We cannot distance ourself from the Word Economic situations. Indian Govt should look into more transparent regulations instead of less. There’s a demand across all sectors and I dont think there’s a recession. The whole issue is with the financial mess around the globe. We should strive to come out of this mess. We should see a better growth (7-8%) by next year!
14:20 – Mr.Shroff – Our services are aligned with the American and European markets. I’m not scared about the adversity. True mettle of companies show how they steer out of adversities. These are the good times to put proper structures in place. Karl Marx is being revived. I think this is a great time for newer startups.
14:25 – Mr. Soparkar – We have 75% exports. We are far better than our competitors in European and American markets. The slowdown will definitely hit the demand. This is time to reduce our costs, better align our manpower and put things in place. We believe we will come out as a winner when the turmoil ends.
14:27 – Mr. Patel – Every business will get affected. There will be some impact across industries. Pharma companies will also be impacted but it will be minimal. There’s is an opportunity for our industry in this slowdown.
Ashwin – Do you see a brakes on acquisition?
Mr. Patel – Good assets will have acquisitions. If you are cash rich, there’s always opportunities to look at.
14:30 – Mr. Ashwin – We would like to know a brief about your journey. If you had some cash with you right now, would you get into startup mode once again?
14:31 – Mr. Khambatta – Rasna has always been an entrepreneurial company. Just recently we launched Devils’ Workshop which is a new product for Indian market. India as a country does not eat doughnuts. But we still went ahead. We as a company believe that we should try different things. Its good to fail.
Youth of today have better ideas than our existing managers. But these youth lack a lot of things – commercialization, scale and business model. For eg, in todays paper there was a story about a student who won a bplan competition with a syringe. But there are aspects that these people dont understand.
14:35 – Mr. Shroff – e-infochips is about 12-13 years old. Its a services business which began as a bootstrapped operation. We have expanded to over 700 professionals so far. We have already funded 2 ideas – one in India and one in US more or less in our space. Tough times are better times to start companies. Less money is a great strength to test your ideas. In tough times, everyone tries to be very frugal. All of these things contribute to a higher probability of success in tough times.
14:35 – Mr. Soparkar – Funds will never be an issue for good ideas anywhere. We are looking at increasing our services with more value added products.
14:38 – Mr. Patel – We are a 55 year old company started by my father. This is the best time to invest in new ideas and also acquire. This is the best time to get talent as it will be more easily available. You are forced to think about market expectations. IBM and Apple are some of the best examples of companies that have steered from worst times.
Real globalization will begin after we move away from this crisis.
Ashwin – The cleansing process is whats happening now.
14:41 – Dr. Barua – If we dont do anything in the window of opportunity that we have now, we will go down even further.
14:42 – Mr. Soparkar – Fraud is different and regulations are different.
14:43 – Mr. Khambatta – Our banks are one of the best regulated in the world.
Mr. Patel – This is the time to flex your muscles. We as a company decided not to do any layoffs as its more difficult to get jobs. Any company has 10-20% of cost as a personnel cost. Look at your business strategy – get rid off assets that are becoming a liability.
If you’ve got talent gaps, this is the best time to get the best talent and build the organization going forward.
This is the really the time to innovate. You have to think differently to become really successful.
Ashwin – Do you think this is the time for more entrepreneurs?
14:48 – Mr. Shroff – There is a good chance for quality entrepreneurs rather than quantity. Mentions about Bill Gates. Entrepreneurship has to do with something “within” an individual.
Mr. Khambatta – You should first take a job and learn at somebody else’s expense and then become and entrepreneur.
Dr.Shroff – Great time to cleaning up of operations.
14:54 – Mr. Soparkar – No college teaches entrepreneurship. They only teach business. Entrepreneurs needs to have a drive to do so many things. A business man will always be comfortable.
Mr. Khambhatta just gave me some gyaan on going the incubator way. Why dont you use the incubator at NID??
Ashwin – Are you happy with the incubation happening at the moment?
15:00 – Mr. Patel – There is a demand for more and I think the govt will come out with more.
Ashwin – What are the hurdles for entrepreneurship?
15:04 – Mr. Soparkar – Unless an idea is well communicated to the masses, it becomes a little difficult.
15:05 – Mr. Shroff – We should first look at all the opportunities for an entrepreneur. All CEOs begin to look at cost cutting measures during recession. If you’ve got an idea that is capital intensive, then it becomes a little difficult. What we lack, at least in Ahmedabad, is people who are role models and those who can mentor the young guys.
If you have passion to build a company, then you will go a long way. If your aim is to only make money, then you will get tired at some point. The hurdle for an entrepreneurship will be the individual himself.
15:09 – Mr. Khambhatta – The hurdle for an entrepreneurship is the govt. beuracracy thats involved in starting a venture. Incubators should make administration easy for entrepreneurs and leave them to do their work.
15:11 – Mr. Patel – Idea is basically innovation. Unfortunately, in our institutions there’s no freedom for ideas that are generated by individuals. Idea generation should be encouraged by institutes.
15:13 – Dr. Barua – Patenting is a western concept which is being imbibed by Indian companies now.
15:14 – Mr. Patel – There was an act that was passed in the US ( doesn’t remember which one) was instrumental in creating American entrepreneurs in institutions. There should be a legislative change to generate more ideas in India.
Dr. Barua briefly talks about Media and Entertainment course in PGP-X and Aamir Khan‘s recent visit to IIM A.
15:15 – Dr. Barua – The education system needs to changed to encourage more innovations and creativity.
15:16 – Mr. Soparkar – We should change society. We should teach our children to question. We always kill curiosity. Indian society has fundamental weaknesses. We are heroes but we cannot write. Thats a reason why we don’t patent a lot.
You should be interested in what you are doing.
15:19 – Mr. Khambhatta – India’s strength lies in its masses. Simple, low price ideas will be a great one. These are ones that fetch better and faster returns. People dont have basic access to clean water. Think of a cheap water purifier that masses can buy. These are ideas that are yet to find competent solutions.
15:21 – Mr. Patel – You need to have a niche idea. You need to differentiate yourself from others – you will get your success.
15:24 – Mr. Shroff – Ideas are dime a dozen. What makes for an entrepreneur is the execution irrespective of the failures that come by.
Ashwin – Is there a stigma for failures in India?
15:26 – Mr. Patel – If you don’t learn to fail then you’re not an entrepreneur.
15:27 – Mr. Khambhatta – Schooling system needs to change.
Theres a new question from Jitendra of Ahmedabad
15:31 – Mr. Khambhatta – Big busines today is small car.
Ashwin – Any cracker of idea in your sector, Mr. Shroff?
15:32 – Mr. Shroff – Renewable energy, infrastructure, educational are all opportunity areas. 60% of our population can’t read or write. There’s an opportunity there. There’s a company called educon that is working on this idea. There are always opportunities.
15:34 – Mr. Khambhatta – New ideas should align with existing or future trends. If you’ve got an idea and there’s no trend for them in the society, then its likely to not succeed.
15:35 – Mr. Patel – Outsourcing is going to be a big opportunity for the pharma industry.
15:36 – Mr. Soparkar – Entrepreneurs should not look at export to start with, in the chemical industry. Indian companies serving other indian companies will start booming up sooner than later.
15:38 – Mr. Shroff – IT is becoming a utility. There is a lot of opportunities in how to deploy IT. For eg, how do I use a mobile to deliver innovative healthcare? Fundamental trend – average selling price gets halved every year. You start thinking there and try and validate that in the market.
15:42 – Mr. Soparkar – Funds are always available for a good idea.
15:44 – Dr. Barua – [To Jitendra] – Yes, the education system definitely has to change.
15:45 – Mr. Patel – You need to have clear focus in your business. Venturing into different business will only lessen your focus.
15:47 – Mr. Khambhatta – Entrepreneurship has to be taught. Youngsters should be taught how the industry works. We have to work very closely with academia to encourage such activities.
15:50 – Mr. Soparkar – I went to US and met a 7th grade student. These girls were asked to create a county. They had to worry about the infrastructure, how to organize transportation, etc. These things make their imaginations go wild. In India, on the other hand, our youngsters are taught to rote learn.
15:54 – Mr. Khambhatta – We don’t encourage entrepreneurs because they will become our competitors. We encourage ideas in our organization as a contest every year. These ideas are then selectively imbibed in our organization.
15:55 – Mr. Patel – We do have idea generation workshops in our organizations. We spend time to assess the situation and come out with a way to steer away from it. We will definitely get affected by the global crisis. It will stay for another 2 year. Given that, we are running offsites to discuss what we need to do to survive these tough times. You need to remain prepared at all times.
16:00 – Its over.
Thank you all for pouring in with your questions and participating in this panel.
Feb 3rd, 2009 This is the text of the convocation address video by Kumaramangalam Birla, Chairman of Aditya Birla Group, broadcast at NID Heritage Campus on December 7, 2008.
Governing council members, Mr. Succena, Faculty, Graduating Students, Ladies and Gentlemen. First and foremost, let me apologize for not being there with you in person. Keen as I was to visit your school, one of India’s finest institutions, unfortunate circumstances have compelled me to stay away. As a start, let me state quite frankly that I envy all of you who can draw, paint and design. Sadly, I wasn’t born with the kind of talent that you have but I do have great admiration for your skills. And after years in business I do know that good design is not only good for business, it positively impacts the way we live.
When I took over at the Group, there were two people, two men among others who really inspired me – Steve Jobs of Apple Computers and Akio Morita, the cofounder of Sony. Both of them are survivors who braved tragedies to come out strong. And interestingly for you, their most important ally was good design. Let me tell you two stories from their lives that inspired me. Steve Jobs dropped out of college and ended up attending a calligraphy class purely out of interest. He obviously didn’t know at that time, that ten years later when he designed the first Macintosh, he would incorporate all of that into the Mac. The Mac as we know was the first computer with beautiful typography. It had multiple typefaces and proportionately spaced fonts. So if it was not for Steve Jobs interest in graphic arts, we would not have computers looking the way they do today. If you work anywhere in the graphic arts – advertising, design, photography, product design or even jewelery design and architecture, the person who profoundly changed the way you work is Steve Jobs. I’m sure those of you who work on Mac or use an iPod will agree with me. The other is Akio Morita. He started Sony in a bombed out headquarters after World War 2. Realizing long before others that design would be the key to success in the future, he gave his designers a leading role in his organization, and look at the rewards that they have brought in. In short, what I mean to say is, that a lot of the companies I admire have great design at their core. And today more and more companies across the world are realizing this and design is finally getting its due.
So what really is the role of the designer today? The role of design and the designer in today’s business environment has changed. The historical role that the designer had was that of being a beautifier at the end of the value chain. “Hey thats my great idea. Come and make it look good.” That’s what the big inventors condescendingly said. While designers still added tremendous aesthetics and appeal that went a long way in reversing the products desirability and value, it was still only a peripheral role. Fortunately for me, for you and for the world the role of design and designers has since undergone a drastic change. Let us take a look at the evolved role of the designer today.
Gone are the days when designers were treated as mere beautifiers; people who were called in as a mere after-thought, simply to add the final fit and polish. Gone are those days when in the 1990s, industries like consumer electronics and packaged goods, treated design as a later stage add-on. Today companies look on designers as ideators – professionals who are at the core of the business and involved in all aspects of the business right from the start up to the finish. Hence its important for you to be aware and accept that the company and the people you will work for, will expect you to play a larger role in the organization. What this also means is that you will get a lot more important and at the end of the day, you will have the greater satisfaction of a job well done.
Moving forward, what really are the vehicles, parameters and requirements for a new-age organization to excel in? It needs at the outfit a strong and cohesive image and identity. With that in mind, it need to get its product, people, processes and the environment to flow in sync with the image that it has created for itself. Let me illustrate how design today can play a central role in each of these critical requirements by taking a few examples from the Aditya Birla Group.
Building the image and identity of a company is the foremost part of design management. The graphic communication or visual identity of a company contributes significantly to its potential. Twelve years ago, the Aditya Birla Group, as a cohesive entity, did not exist. As in, there was no one strong brand identity tying all the group companies together. What we hadn’t checked were many companies and diverse industries, each of whom had their own logos and their own established identities. The common man and even some stake-holders did not even know that these were Aditya Birla Group companies. This meant that the Group were not reaping the rewards and equities from these companies and at the same time companies were not reaping the equity of being a part of the Aditya Birla Group. Hence was felt the need for a strong brand identity that would unify the company under one banner – The Aditya Birla Group’s banner. As far as the stake-holders were concerned, we also had to change perceptions of the Aditya Birla Group. Considering all of this, we decided it was time for the Aditya Birla conglomerate to re-group, re-focus and re-position. We developed a whole branding strategy with key long term objectives were to inspire confidence amongst investors and share holders, retain and attract quality talent, boost employee morale and transform ABG into a well known, recognized, high value corporate brand not just in India, but across the world. Designing our logo was the first step in the communication plan and it helped us lay the foundation for all future brand building.
We christened our logo – Aditya, the rising sun. Aditya also stands for Aditya Birla, the name of our founder. It also means the sun in sanskrit and even as the son which is after the world, it is a universal symbol – a symbol of positivity, life, growth, prosperity and leadership – all the things that we stand for in the Aditya Birla Group. Take a look at our logo. The sun rises over two circles. The inner circle is the internal universe of the group. On the other hand, the outer circle is the external universe of opportunities. The inner beams converge to form a focused core and the outer beams depict the brightness and the expanse of the sun. The logo depicts energy, solidity, vision, progress and of course, our Group’s omnipresent spirit. The next step was to carry the logo across to our group companies and therefore create a synergy. This was not as simple as it seems since a number of companies had an already established visual identity of their own – companies such as Grasim and Hindalco. We had to synergize the group logo and the company logo without compromising on the equity our group companies have earned over the years. This is where the role of design was crucial.
The next task was to change the perceptions of the Group, both internally and externally though communication that respected one Group. This began with the creation of a Brand Identity Style Guide which was given to all our companies to follow, after which we sought to change perceptions internally and externally through multiple communication interfaces; be it to top managers, share holders, employees, investors or even to the public at large. We then followed this up with our mass communication campaign, ‘Taking India To The World’, which as you may remember positioned us as a global leader with a world-wide presence
Not only did we achieve what we set out to, we at times exceeded it. Today the Aditya Birla Group’s image is at an all time high. I’m proud to say that we are placed among India’s most respected companies, we attract some of the best talent in the industry, our revenues and earnings across the world has risen exponentially and what is truly notable is that the total awareness of our Group went up by nearly 100% in key metros. Today the equity of our Group has risen manifold both nationally and internationally. Design helped us weave our Group into an integrated whole and it no doubt played an important role in us recognized as a truly global Indian multinational.
Let me take another example from our Group which probably you’re familiar with. This illustrates how design helps create powerful and cutting edge communication. The brand is Idea and the role of design-thinking was to bring up a human-centric approach to cellular technology. In the clutter of mobile communication that largely dealt with technology’s snazzy but rather useless features, we leveraged design approach of seeing the category of mobiles from a socio-cultural eye – interpreting mobiles as an Idea for social empowerment and for change.
We as a Group, entered the retail sector last year. Currently we have 660 super marts and 2 hyper marts under the brand name more. Today more is already one of the largest players in the retail market. Private labels or our own ‘in-house brands’ as they’re called are an important product offering. They have two key objectives. One is to provide great value for money to our customers. And Two, and importantly, to create brand differentiation and loyalty to our stores. Our private labels are not known brands and we do not spend money advertising and promoting them. However the sale of private labels earn greater profit for more than what branded products do. So while private labels are a challenge, they are also very important. Packaging design plays a vital role in the retail space. In supermarkets, shelves are cluttered with various similar products from different companies. So, the only thing that separates you from the competition is your design of package. And as I’ve mentioned, since we don’t advertise private labels, the brand name and packaging design has to work really hard to induce ‘pick me up’. Hence, the packaging design challenge for Aditya Birla retail was to create the correct perception in relation to the price, quality and packaging of our private labels. To ensure shelf space, attract customers to pick up our products and easily communicate the essence of the brand, and all this in one glance.
Lets take a look at some of the more products and their design. Feasters is a food brand from our private label. We carefully chose this name because it had dual connotation – of a celebration and of a tasty meal. It clearly talked to people who wanted to feast. We wanted the Feaster packaging to shout out from the shelf. So our packaging used vibrant colors and mouth watering food shots to communicate great taste. It appealed to our young target audience and people were immediately attracted to it.
In the case of ‘Maha Saver’, it had to stand out as a no-frills brand so the name instantly spelled out the savings. The packaging design used a clean minimal background, simple font and a red circle as a mnemonic for savings across categories. Even the packaging material we use was basic and simple in order to keep the costs down and to convey how economically priced the ‘Maha Saver’ brand is.
As we know, the FMCG soap and detergent category is very performance oriented. To show how our brand more than delivers on its promise, we chose the name ‘110%’. The size and bold color of the logo were very prominent on the packaging and reinforced our brand promise. Our brand’s key functional benefits were emphasized on the pack.
So what did design achieve for our brand? I’m happy to say that Feasters noodles has actually achieved 55% of Maggie noodles sales from more in less than a year. Also for every 100 bottles of Kissan ketchup sold, we sell 88 bottles of Feasters ketchup. ‘Kitchen Promise’ another more private label brand and ‘more pickels’ together out sells Mother’s Recipe by more than two and a half times and ‘Maha Saver’ has been dominating the competition across categories. I’m very proud to say that this year Aditya Birla Retail was conferred the Golden Spoon Award for the most admired private label food and grocery brand.
Design has also helped up in seeing, what would be relatively mundane for the general public but, are of huge interests to businessmen like us – process efficiencies and savings. Let me take you through an example from Novelis, our company that makes aluminum roll products on how design has proved efficiencies for Jaguar.
Traditionally the bodies of Jaguar cars have been made of steel. In 2002, Novelis partnered with Jaguar to become its technology partner. What Novelis did was to totally revolutionize the Jaguar. Novelis used aluminum to design the Jaguar XK making it ultra-modern and strong. I think one of our biggest design innovations was the adhesive bonding of the aluminum panels in combination with the rivets for the Jaguar. Novelis has also worked with Jaguar on every stage of its development; starting from the initial design going right through to the product development stage and finally we took it to completion till the end manufacturing stage. As a result of this design innovation, Novelis managed to reduce the weight of the Jaguar by as much as 40-50%. The car now had high torsional stiffness that gave it improved handling. It had increased joint fatigue resistance that gave it structural integrity. And even more important, it had excellent crash energy management and field resistance that made it a safer and more durable car. In addition, this simple change in design led to a chain reaction of benefits to the car maker, like reduced maps, better fuel economy, improved performance, less emissions, 100% recycling and improved safety. So, thanks for some innovative designs at Novelis, the Jaguar XJ and XK today are lighter and roomier and yet larger. They are easier to handle, accelerate faster, deliver well on fuel economy, emit less green house gases, offer greater safety and they are more affordable than competitive car brands.
As we all know, today protecting and preserving our environment has become critically important. This is something that I’m personally very concerned about and as a Group, our companies make a concerted effort to see where we can do our bit to minimize emissions, recycle and conserve. Design, we believe can play a key role in helping the environment and a classic example of this is our Grasim cement factory.
Lastly, there is the inspirational role that design and designers can play. This is the story of the Gandhi museum. As some of you may know, our family shared a long association with Mahatma Gandhi. He spent his last days in the Birla House, which was our family home in Delhi. In his honor, we have converted the Birla House into the eternal Gandhi multimedia museum. Instead of filling the museum with exhibits that visitors passively view, we designed the museum using hi-tech digital 3D exhibit to capture the attention of and to inspire the youth. Our museum presents the story of Gandhi-ji in an arresting interactive digital way. Its the first of its kind multimedia museum. Whats really interesting is that everyone from scholars, artists, craftsmen, to electronic designers, digital artists and animators have worked on this museum to keep Mahatma Gandhi’s vision alive. Visitors can actually walk around and interact with the exhibit. These are some of the exhibits you will find at the museum -
The shadow charka is a exhibit where Gandhiji’s charka casts a shadow. When visitors touch the shadow it changes into a quote of Gandhi.
The children’s vision exhibit is unique in that visitors can peep into a kaleidoscope to explore stories of Gandhi. These stories have been specially composed by children.
In the freedom songs exhibit, each time a visitor strikes a sing on the harp, songs like the National Anthem and “Sare Jahan Se Achcha” start to play.
Well, the future truly belongs to the designers simply because good designers and of course, good entrepreneurs listen to their eye. They see future possibilities and thats why the future belongs to them. The world you visualize today is the world we all will live in tomorrow. The cars we drive, the houses we live in, the clothes we wear, the gadgets that makes our lives easy – everything starts with the designer. You. So continue to dream and dream well because the future really is in your hands.
Finally, to conclude, I would like to offer you my take on the qualities you need for success once you step out of this fine institution and into the real world. Contrary to popular belief, you don’t need weird shoes or long ponytails to be a design thinker. In my view there are these five straits that designers should have to be designers of the future.
Collaborating, assimilating, enterprising, experimenting and being hopeful – interestingly all these traits are integral to the melting pot that is India. Its time for you to take it to the world and to make us proud.
I wish you all the very best.
Thank you.
Dec 1st, 2008 
Photographer David Freidman, shot some pics of a denim factory in Kentucky that distresses jeans for high-end designers. I’ve always maintained that you got to find a pair of denim with the right fade. Most of the jeans you see these days have very poor or highly ‘manufactured’ fade in them. I’ve recently spent a small fortune on getting a couple of pairs of jeans and I’m thoroughly satisfied with the fade and colors. Like David says, “They can’t just be faded. They have to be the right color.”
Jun 12th, 2008 Mar 4th, 2008 Feb 4th, 2008 Feb 4th, 2008 Jan 31st, 2008 Jan 23rd, 2008 Jan 18th, 2008 Dec 30th, 2007 Dec 20th, 2007 Dec 20th, 2007 Dec 12th, 2007 Oct 22nd, 2007 Typing airtel.com on your browser takes you to spanish Vodafone site. Funny this!
Imagine a company that gave you absolute freedom to do what you want – you determine your salary, your boss, what you wear to work and also your work timings. There are no fancy titles like General Managers, Vice Presidents, etc. Sounds too good to be true? Well thats what SEMCO SA is all about.
Ricardo Semler is the CEO and majority stake holder of SEMCO SA, a Brazilian organization known for its radical management structure and industrial democracy. SEMCO religiously follows a democratic work atmosphere with very few management levels. Its not surprising then, that SEMCO is one of the most profitable and admired companies in Brazil today and Ricardo is often considered to be amongst the top management thinkers in the world. Semler’s book – Maverick tells you about all this and more.
The basic premise of the book is about empowerment. When you empower people to take their own decisions and give them absolute freedom and responsibility for their work, they will almost always deliver the best. One of the best lines from the book, that captures its essence is as follows -
To survive in modern times, a company must have an organizational structure that accepts change as its basic premise, lets tribal customs thrive, and fosters a power that is derived from respect, not rules. In other words, the successful companies will be the ones that put quality of life first. Do this and the rest – quality of product, productivity of workers, profits for all – will follow.
A truly inspiring read and one that I would recommend to all the “bosses” out there.
Sep 15th, 2007 Sep 10th, 2007 
Some notes and quick thoughts on the launch
Mitsukoshi is one of Japan’s oldest retail chain having branches spread across the globe including Munich, Paris and Shanghai. The company had recently implemented RFID technology in several stores in Japan witnessing a 13.3% increase in sales.
Mitsukoshi’s “Smart Shelves” scan the contents of the shelves and alert store employees when supplies are running low or when theft is detected
The technology is being increasingly experimented with by retailers like WalMart and Tesco. One of the earliest to start experimenting with wireless inventory was Metro Group’s Future Store Initiative. As with all new technologies, RFID has its own share of shortcomings with read-range and cost being a couple of them. But with stores like Mitsukoshi who go on to experiment and optimize business processes using the technology, we can hope for more good things to come. RFID’s potential is best realized when implemented across the supply chain, making inventory and logistics simpler and more actionable.
Read The Mitsukoshi Case : interaction design for RFID Retail
Software companies, BPO’s and other medium to big organizations across the country have adopted stringent security measures. (actually this is nothing new. They’ve been having this for quite some time but its only recently that I’ve been annoyed to the extent of me having to write this.) They’ve basically outsourced the work to various security services companies in the country. Thats good news. However, whats really annoying is the processes that these companies adopt in the name of security.
The ‘process’ begins the moment you step into the facility. Image capturing devices including camera-phones aren’t allowed in the premises. If you happen to have one, you need to surrender the phone before entering the facility and take it back on your way out. This is pathetic. For a person who’s work depends a lot on telephone, this really put me off. I’d rather ask the person I need to meet to come out instead. By asking visitors for phones, they are indeed inviting trouble. I was tempted to take some shots of the facility just for the heck of it and publish it online.
Then comes the register entries. Signing registers is a must and not doing so is almost sacrilige; before you actually get to the purpose of your visit. If your work involves moving to different floors within the same building, you need to sign-in and sign-out each time you move from one floor to another. They do this to track movement of visitors or contractors within the facility. All I see is, stack of register with pages and pages of crap. Small wonder, why forests in the country are fast depleting.
The point is, one needs to spend almost 15-20 minutes complying with these security procedures for a work/meeting that would hardly take 5 minutes. And this is repeated every time you walk into the building. A popular argument would be that this helps keeping trouble out. But does it really? Here’s the twist.
This particular organization (an MNC) that I’ve been frequenting for the past few weeks, have security personnel that work on a shift basis. I know most of them because of my frequent visits (duh!) and as such, they are quite easy with me on a few of the procedures. Now I happily carry my cameraphone, skip signing a few registers and even drink coffee whenever I feel like. Thats the level of security that we were talking about earlier. Now all I need is some RDX, a liquid that aids explosives (whatever that may be) and the media informed before setting off the bomb. The next morning, as we all can expect, the bombing will be somehow linked to Lakshar-e-Toiba/Al-Qaeda and the current peace process with Pakistan will come to an indefinite halt.
Ok, so whats the solution?
Instead of having a lot of security personnel hovering around each floor and inviting trouble from otherwise normal people (like me), they can reduce the workforce and increase the use of technology. Every visitor could be given a smartcard embedded with an RFID tag that gives them controlled access within the facility. Simply put, this means giving access rights to areas in the facility that the visitor wants to go. Other areas will be not be given access without prior approval. The access rights can be remotely programmed on to the smartcard. So all you need is a single card for entering the premises.
From the security company’s view, they can map the location of the visitor in real-time and even set alarms or activate closed circuit cameras upon intrusion into non-designated areas. The security company can maintain a movement log in a database and thus minimize use of paper. On leaving the premises, the visitor hands over the smartcard.
All this is an effecient and time-saving way of doing the same thing. It only invloves utilizing available technologies and making things work better.
