Category Archives: Leadership

To be credible or not to be

Spam is unavoidable, but sometimes its interesting. One such mailer I bumped into was a site called mumbex.com that provides fake experience letters. I’m not linking because I don’t want to send traffic to something illegitimate, but I’m sure most of you will still take the pains to key it in & have a look. For such people I have embedded a tracker that will report your details to NASSCOM. For other obedient ones, here are some highlights from their website:

‘Our expertise‘ .. ‘Till date we gave certificates to 5000 candidates’ .. ‘Most of them are in middle management level in India and overseas’ .. ‘No Background verification failed till date’.. ‘Most of our customers came through referrals of our satisfied customers’
‘We are here to provide you the total certificates, id cards and everything’.. ‘Just have a bit confidence in the technology you are keeping the experience’..
‘Companies know this Fact‘ .. ‘Almost all the companies know that 50 to 60 % of the staff kept fake experience in their resume’ .. ‘But they never think of this during the boom time, because they are in deadly need of employees who at least have confidence in their technology’..

The business idea seems strong from a monetization perspective, but its an epic ethical fail when offered as a service. They have loudly spoken about how companies compromise credibility in view of the demand and how resumes are shared with clients. This service helps whoever it does, but it destroys the credibility of every Indian IT company & employee. And I’m writing because I feel affected.

This is the age of startups, Continue reading To be credible or not to be →

Sales & Marketing

Jargon: Wedding test

15 Mar, 11 Prasad Leave a comment

In my reading I came across this funny thing called the wedding test. It involves checking for the male customer’s wedding ring when he’s shopping. The ring signals a very high likelihood that purchased goods will be returned on account of being dejected by the female partner. I’m not being a chauvinist or hinting how complicated & choosy women are, but its funny if this is now part of the sales curriculum. Sure that this makes Inside Sales far more challenging!

eCommerce, Reviews, Sales & Marketing

5 reasons to Spend.. err.. Save smart with the top Indian deal websites

06 Mar, 11 Prasad 1 Comment

Were excited about our 100th post! — This is our 100th post!

It’s the 100th post on prasadgupte.com and it’s time to celebrate! For long, I envied the Americans for having Groupon until I realized that there are several deal of the day websites – in fact, with better business models – to serve us. I have been a regular user of these websites, having bought at least 15 deals totaling over INR 15,000 with overall savings of 69%.

5 reasons to save your riches with these shops

1. It saves money: What’s more important that saving some money?
2. It’s easy: There is no upfront payment to receive these deals – they’re delivered to your phone & mailbox for free.
3. It’s safe, either ways: I have always (knock on wood) had a good experience transacting on the internet, and these sites are safe to use as they transact over a trusted gateway. If you fear spending online, you can always have the coupons delivered to your doorstep – free of cost!* So its safe either ways.
4. Keeps you aware: One huge benefit I found out of following these deals (even if you don’t want to buy) is that it keeps you aware of the new places in town and the margins that you can possibly cut in when striking a deal.
5. It’s cool: There’s no reason to be shy – like my dad likes to make me feel. It’s any day cool to be spending smart!

I’ve put together a list of the creme-de-la-creme in the order of *my* choice:

1. DealsAndYou

I purchased deals worth Rs. 9100 for Rs. 2593. This is one of my favorites! The website is neat, and the deals are fabulous. They take the entire payment upfront – so its a deal in the real sense as against a discount coupon. It covers for roughly 60% of my deal spend and growing, ever my trust in the brand was bolstered by their quick justification email. Continue reading 5 reasons to Spend.. err.. Save smart with the top Indian deal websites →

Operations & Management

Forget PDCA: See, Feel, Change

18 Feb, 11 Prasad 1 Comment

After reading this post by John Kotter at HBR, I really liked the See, Feel, Change approach suggested by him, compared to traditional approaches such as Plan-Do-Check-Act or Analyze-Think-Change.

Kotter argues that the traditional approaches are “all head, no heart, and often fail to motivate people to recognize the importance of a given problem. It’s too easily forgotten or ignored if it doesn’t feel real.”

What makes me a believer of the approach? Decision making will be far realistic when evidence pertaining to the problem is available. And how to get the evidence? Go into the field, get your hands dirty! Take samples, float surveys or just talk to people. After all, empathy is so critical to getting to the root of a problem and delivering a solution that makes people happy 😀

Economy, Life & People

The pursuit of happiness in developing nations

05 Feb, 11 Prasad Leave a comment

This week I read about Brazil wanting to amend its constitution to make happiness a right for its citizens. Having worked its way up to achieve a GDP of over $2 trillion, Brazil is now working towards having happiness on the nation’s to-do. However, it is currently struck with threatening issues such as health, education, poverty & an alarming crime rate. To ensure happiness of citizens means to work around these issues, deliver world class education & wipe out crime on their streets. In-house resources and independence in science & technology that is already existant, accompanied by a loyal travail from the government can pretty much add up to the happiness they seek.

Whenever a discussion around happiness comes up, Bhutan is what comes to my mind first. Ever since I’ve been there, I haven’t been able to neglect its focus on ‘Gross National Happiness‘ that they made part of the national propaganda in the ’70s. And the rest on GNH here is purely my opinion, based on what I heard & understood from locals. The government, backed by the monarchy, is extremely responsible when it comes to delivering quality education, health care services & dealing with crime. Almost everything they need is transported from India and we are in a way responsible for their defense. Despite of the transport costs involved in every commodity, the government subsidizes everything from fuel to cars. Perhaps, that’s the reason why everyone from commoners to monks have SUVs. Bhutan is extremely beautiful and rich in culture. Tourism is already a top 5 contributor to its $2 billion economy, but Continue reading The pursuit of happiness in developing nations →

Finance & Accounting

Effect created by credits & debits on different account types

16 Aug, 10 Prasad Leave a comment

I’ve spent quite a bit of time trying to understand how transactions affect accounts. One should remember that the effects of Debit (dr) & Credit (cr) depend on the type of account you are dealing with. For example, receiving money into a bank account, i.e. debiting it, will increase its balance. Whereas, sale of goods, or crediting the sales account, increases its balance. Hope this illustration helps!

Sales & Marketing

Jargon: Disruptive Innovation

09 Aug, 10 Prasad Leave a comment

Disruptive innovation describe innovations that tend to get competitors jump out of their seats. This is something – highly desirable – that the market has never seen before. Wikipedia gives the example of lowering price, but undercutting is a relatively common phenomenon. However, ‘designing for a different set of consumers’ is quite apt.

It is every product manager’s dream to conceptualize a product, or at least a feature that does creates such a wave in the market! And if you ever happen to be at the receiving end of a product demo – like the one that I usually deliver – this is the best compliment you would give. Cheers!

Finance & Accounting, Operations & Management

Jargon: Incoterms (with a brief on Payment terms & Delivery Terms)

04 Apr, 10 Prasad Leave a comment

Sales Orders (SO) & Purchase Orders (PO) are 2 key trade documents in any business. They usually two important fields: Payment terms & Delivery terms. After a brief on these terms, we go on to explain Incoterms: internationally accepted trade-terms used in international contracts.

Payment terms most often represent the payment instrument (cheques/collaterals), credit period and discounts, if applicable. In the simplest form, P30 indicates that payment will be made 30 days after receiving the bill/invoice. P30/2%20 is a more complex term indicating that if the payment is done within 20 days (instead of the 30-day credit period), the buyer is entitled tot a 2% discount on invoice value. Payment terms could also be based on collaterals like L/C (Letter of Credit) or Irrevocable credits that help minimize the seller’s risk.

Delivery terms are indicative of the agreement on delivery cost, responsibility (=risk) and ownership of transported goods/services. Costs include freight charges, taxes & duties and commissions to clearing agents. As a seller, I may choose to transfer ownership at my premises {ExWorks}, at my port {Free Carrier}, after loading cargo on board air/sea/road/rail vessel {Free On Board}, customer’s port {Delivered Ex Quay/Ship} or right up to ship-to address (address where goods are required to be delivered).

Incoterms are delivery terms standardized by the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC) for use in international trade. The abbreviations along with description & associated buyer/seller liability are mentioned here.

Talking about commission, in reality commission is a sweeter word for greasing charges at ports; needed an example of organized crime, take this! How would it look if I had a ledger account called Bribes? Doesn’t Agent Commission really sound decent? One of my uncles lives of this profession, so I won’t say another word 🙂 Continue reading Jargon: Incoterms (with a brief on Payment terms & Delivery Terms) →

Finance & Accounting

Jargon: Days Sales Outstanding (DSO) as a Financial Indicator

12 Mar, 10 Prasad 1 Comment

Days Sales Outstanding (DSO) is an important financial metric for evaluating the effectiveness of converting credit sales (money owed to you) to cash. Considering the time value of money, it indicates the age of an organization’s accounts receivables or AR (sum of all money owed by debtors) in days and the average time it takes to turn receivables into cash. Ideally, this should never exceed the standard payment terms. So for a 52 credit period offered by credit card to borrowers (which is us, debtors to the issuing company), best DSO for the company will be 52. A higher DSO would indicate inefficiency in their collection cycle (and in our payment which they will gladly oblige by slamming exorbitant interest or by delegating collection to recovering agents).

DSO (measured in days) is calculated for a period,

DSO = Accounts Receivables / Credit Sales for the period * 30 (days)

DSO can vary significantly over the course of a year on account of several reasons:
– Fluctuation in sales volume, due to seasonality, economy, etc
– Negotiated payment terms, promotional discounts
Since these situations are common in business, DSO is argued Continue reading Jargon: Days Sales Outstanding (DSO) as a Financial Indicator →

Finance & Accounting, Operations & Management

Jargon: Evaluated Receipt Settlement (ERS)

07 Jan, 10 Prasad 1 Comment

Evaluated Receipt Settlement (ERS) is an EDI (Electronic Data Interchange) procedure, part of Supply Chain Management. It was pioneered by GM to address the issues associated with payments against invoices (bills) for goods received. ERS is valid in India. Continue reading Jargon: Evaluated Receipt Settlement (ERS) →