FINspeak

The evolution from static web pages to more dynamic (web 2.0) web sites has forever altered the interaction between business and consumer. In order to be more competitive, companies need to adopt new tools to understand changing customer needs and pursue strategies which drive communication and collaboration both externally and internally. 

 

Companies have adopted the internet route to sell products online. Many have also optimized the traditional delivery channels with the latest Customer Relationship Management (CRM) technologies. Today, online market has become more crowded with multiple players striving to create new prospects and increase online presence and market share. This has put significant pressure on marketing spend and has changed the traditional sales cycle. Companies must a) reach the customer faster b) advertise in a way that gives more power to consumer and c) include a feedback mechanism to build new or enhance products and service etc. Banks, Telco's, and Retailers are also making every effort to obtain deeper insights into consumer behavior in order to create more impactful and profitable online relationships.

 

Millions of people currently log on to Facebook, Twitter, MySpace and YouTube, and the numbers are growing every day. These social sites are using Web 2.0 technologies. With these dynamic and semantic websites, marketers have access to a broad array of new tools and techniques.  A well thought out strategy which combines elements of a virtual advisor, podcasts, blogs, video, RSS, and social networking will be vital to the new marketing mix.  Some sites map the feedback received thru social media. Some sites enable surveys thru Ajax. More and more companies follow 'online usage', 'time spent on the site' etc.

 

Organizations are now changing their marketing spends--creating financial blogs, tie-up with industry experts, and re-allocating their traditional advertisement or marketing spend dollars to educate consumers, create positive waves and listen to well-connected digital consumers through online communities and social web sites.

 

The following 3 key elements will play a significant role in Marketing strategy moving forward:

 

1)   Consumer Data

This is the vital information about the consumer. It may be available if the consumer is a registered user of a product/site or information has been obtained on the buyer's opinion about the product/service. This enables companies to understand consumer behavior and reactions faster and in an interactive manner through Analytics and the underlying technology.

 

2)   Analytics 

Powerful analytics tools help analyze the raw consumer data and integrate it with other tools in order to change the marketing mix--product, delivery channels, pricing, etc. If consumer data is the foundation of a marketing strategy, Analytics is the blueprint--a reference point to lay out your online/overall marketing strategy.

 

3)   New Internet Technology (Web2.0 & 3.0)

New technologies (e.g., HTML 5) will help companies offer better content delivery to consumer and act as a catalyst between consumer and the product, without compromising any privacy of their consumers and new prospects data.

 

Companies need data that enhances the user experience and improves their own web site's effectiveness. This is often limited to online behavioral information, providing a limited view of a website user's interests, needs, motivations and capacity to spend.

 

Companies can use various data assets (within privacy regulations) along with the appropriate technology framework / solutions to help target online content and enhance consumer's online experience. Companies can understand the real motivators, interests and purchasing power of consumers--removing the guesswork in the marketing to conversion cycle.

 

Dynamic internet technologies will improve consumer insights. To be successful in the competitive world, companies will need be more agile and adopt these new technologies and integrate throughout the marketing mix.

 

Posted by Mahesh S. Athalye at 3:02 AM | Permalink | Comments (6) | TrackBacks (0)

(versión en español del comentario anterior en inglés)

En España el concepto de "off-shoring" suele asociarse con el de "Factorías de Software". Si bien ambos tienen mucho en común, el "off-shoring" ofrece todo un mundo de beneficios adicionales.

 

Las Factorías de SW existen en España desde hace muchos años. Las Factorías han generado beneficios en eficiencia y calidad, sobre todo a partir de la "industrialización" de los procesos y la estandarización de las tareas. Estos permiten el uso de personal menos especializado (de menor coste) para llevar a cabo las partes repetitivas del ciclo de vida SW. La rentabilidad ha aumentado recientemente por el uso de localizaciones remotas, especialmente en América Latina.

 

Sin embargo, hay mucho más en "off-shoring" que la industrialización y el arbitraje de costes laborales. Aunque estos dos beneficios impulsaron el su crecimiento inicial, cada vez más empresas en EE.UU., Reino Unido y el norte de Europa están cosechando beneficios estratégicos del "off-shoring", confiando las partes más importantes de sus negocios a proveedores de servicios globales:

 

-          Acceso a los Mejores Recursos a Nivel Mundial - A diferencia de los proveedores locales con interés por colocar sus recursos locales, los proveedores globales asignan a sus proyectos los mismos recursos que han trabajado para los líderes mundiales de cada sector. En particular, los profesionales de los proveedores de la India no son aquellos que han elegido la "factoría" por no tener acceso a opciones mejor pagadas. Son los mejores de su promoción, que compiten por trabajar en la industria tecnológica, en un arduo proceso que escoge al 1% de los candidatos. Esta diferencia cualitativa se nota claramente en la calidad entregada.

 

-          Acceso a Mejores Prácticas Globales - Los profesionales de los proveedores off-shore aportan experiencia en empresas de primera línea de su sector. Un recurso de una empresa off-shore trabajando para un banco español, es probable que haya terminado hace pocos días un proyecto en un banco líder de Wall-Street, o una de las principales casas de valores de Londres. Esta experiencia mundial es un excelente complemento para el conocimiento local de los proveedores habituales

 

-          Innovación Impulsada por la Diversidad - Inicialmente puede costar un poco acostumbrarse a trabajar con personas con diferentes antecedentes culturales, prácticas de trabajo, o nativos en otros idiomas, como el Inglés. Sin embargo, el pequeño esfuerzo inicial puede servir para desatar la creatividad y la innovación tan necesarias actualmente en la industria en España, contribuyendo así a la tan deseada internacionalización de las empresas españolas.

 

Posted by Guillermo Falco at 3:12 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

In Spain it's very common to associate the concept of "off-shoring" with that of "SW-Factories". While these have much in common, offshoring offers a whole world of additional benefits.

 

The SW-Factory service has been around in Spain for many years. The factories have delivered benefits in the form of lower costs and higher quality, mostly from the "industrialization" of processes and the standardisation of tasks, which allows the use of lower-cost resources to perform the repetitive parts of the SW life cycle. The cost benefit has recently increased further by the use of off-shore locations especially in Latin-America.

 

However, there is much more to "off-shoring" than industrialisation and labour arbitrage. Although these two benefits drove the initial growth of off-shoring, increasingly corporations in USA, UK and the North of Europe are reaping strategic benefits by trusting more important parts of their businesses to global service providers.

 

-          ACCESS TO THE BEST GLOBAL RESOURCES - unlike incumbent vendors with a vested interest in staffing their large pools of local resources with local experience, global off-shore providers staff the same resources that have worked in the prime global corporations in their industry and area of specialisation.

-          ACCESS TO GLOBAL BEST-PRACTICES AND BUSINESS PROCESSES - these resources bring in the expertise from the prime companies in their field. A banking professional from a global off-shore provider is likely to have finished just days ago an assignment in a leading Wall-Street bank, or a leading London securities house. This global experience is a much welcome complement to the local experience from incumbent vendors

-          INNOVATION DRIVEN BY DIVERSITY - although it takes some getting used-to, working with people with different cultural background and work practices, and in other languages like English, can unleash the creativity and innovation much needed currently in the industry in Spain

Posted by Guillermo Falco at 1:47 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

In last few months, there has been two distinct strategies around captives by two different category of Captive IT centers. First category is the one which has invested in the captive couple of years ago and second where clients are just setting it up.

Sell vs. Scale. What is the strategy?

Continue reading "Captive centers" »

Posted by Mritunjay Singh at 6:36 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times…” – Charles Dickens wrote in his Tale of two cities.

It doesn’t need an opinion poll to concur on the kind of times we are living in today. Amidst a new vocabulary where A stands for Assets, B for Bailout, C for Crisis and D for Depression- there is sense of déjà vu that we have seen it all. Amidst confused reports of whether we are at the beginning of the crisis, in the midst of it or at the tail-end, every morning continues to deliver bad news, as predictably as the rising sun.

What does this mean for IT service providers? Is this a time to sit back, blame it on the bad times and hope the good times will return (while taking a well earned break)? Or is this an opportunity is disguise – an opportunity to recoup, reinvent and rebuild?

Continue reading "The best of times, the worst of times" »

Posted by Gururaj Deshpande at 6:12 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

This is a question that every sourcing professional is asking. More than 50% of the firms would be cutting their IT budget by 40-50%. And guess what they still will have to do a lot more with a lot less. This will result into significant shift in sourcing strategies. Here is what I think will start to happen: Move to transaction/Outcome based pricing, which will transfer the risk from the client to the service provider. This will require service providers to be able to understand the business a whole lot more than what they have had to do in the past.

Integrated Offering will be the order of the day. A lot of preparation has happened and now, service provider will have to deliver the results. Days of lift and shift inefficiency are over. Now, firms will have to redesign an efficient system and then outsource.

So what does this mean for clients - a different risk pattern? Data security, identify management and quality of people. If you are going to ask someone to do lot more with less and do it much better than you then you need to have the right set of people, who can learn quickly and implement the changes, and without baggage.

Service providers who can focus on these two challenges will pull away from the race.

Continue reading "Future of Outsourcing" »

Posted by Mritunjay Singh at 4:59 AM | Permalink | Comments (7) | TrackBacks (0)

In the background of unprecedented financial crisis and rising need to get higher productivity with lower costs using IT, the next wave of global sourcing would be using concerted or collaborative sourcing. It is no longer a nice to hear paradigm or good-to-have, it’s the need of the hour.

Continue reading "Next wave of sourcing" »

Posted by Mritunjay Singh at 5:24 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Right in the middle of the meltdown is the Financial Services and the drama in last few months is slowly started to settle down. We don't have companies going bust over the weekend anymore.

I have been thinking about what's going on in the strategic sourcing world recently and what our reaction should be?

First of all, there is a panic in the market. I could not pick up any other word to describe what is happening out there. Unfortunately, lots of people are not able to see it as either they are isolated or they choose to live in another world.

And, people are acting as they would in any panic environment- decisions are taken by gut-feel rather than assessing the market scenario. Every IT sourcing person that I have met in last few months is looking at only one thing and that's cost. Yep, we can keep talking about the other nice stuff like strategic partnership etc. but right now cost is king. 

At the same time some organization are willing to break the mould and enter unchartered territory. Either way, both will require significant innovation in the way services are delivered to client. And' that's a welcome change for everyone. Innovate and help your client. "When people fear, be greedy"- easier said than done.

Posted by Mritunjay Singh at 10:05 AM | Permalink | Comments (5) | TrackBacks (0)