Its only managers in India who call the final shots when it comes to taking decisions. Though it is in our culture, but nonetheless it need to change immediately for better results.
The Indian economy opened to the world in early 90’s’. Till then, there has been a dramatic shift in workplace reforms in the country especially with the entry of MNC’s. Despite the economy opening up, the two signboards (Come in, we’re CLOSED and Sorry, we’re OPEN) which I came across during a session on leadership actually portrayed the mindset of Indian managers. It’s nothing absurd. It’s our culture. A culture is something which comprises of norms or values which are learned and it usually govern our behavior and is difficult to change. In a recent interview in TOI, Infosys CEO, Vishal Sikka considered the Indian mindset as his biggest challenge as it restrict our thoughts. As per him, “we Indian’s don’t speak up….we have this cultural thing - if we speak up, it is questioning of authority which is contrary to western companies mindset, which expect us to speak up”. Mr. Sikka is an Indian by birth is aware of our culture. For expat like Marten Pieter, Vodafone CEO, this is really annoying. His views also showcased the Indian manager mindset which he had dealt during his current assignment. As per him, “In India, the managers are more willing to debate, but finally decision is yours as you’re the boss’. This trend is disturbing as on it doesn’t build people. Also it becomes an excuse to shun failure as it was manager’s decision. I came across a PhD dissertation by Dr. Shaidul Kazi at Tampere University of Applied Sciences, Finland on “Managerial Decision-Making Behavior and Impact of Culture” which summarize the decision making style of Indian managers. As per his study, with a top heavy approach, subordinates hardly ever oppose any decision made by seniors. In our societies, South Asian in particular, there is a moral obligation on more powerful people to look after the less powerful people in exchange for loyalty. With increasing complexities key decisions are critical moves. In many organization the decision making is becoming consultative from autocratic, however it needs further encouragement. Managers need to be more open with subordinates to create and inculcate the so-called culture of “teamwork”. A strong leader can develop such culture. One such culture I came across was with Hutch (now Vodafone). Such workplaces are usually informal and countering to the bosses’ argument is taken positively, respected and considered as a viewpoint. Such culture develops trust. A manager should not consider his/her subordinates as a threat. He should rather learn from their experience. The onus of opening up does not reside only with manager, the employee also need to come up in open. While the implementation of their views into action will build their faith in system, the outcome of their decisions will make them more responsible, be it success or failure. For manager, the viewpoint may help him to gain a new perspective on some matter which he have never imagined or believed. So let’s welcome views with an open mindset… (c) Sunil Singh Rana
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(Flash) Sales have become a rage in online world which is evident with the hype created with the Flipkart’s “Big Billion Day” sale. Practically it is no different from offline retail, however the implication of such sales are different in online world. The blog summarize some of the learnings which can be used as checklist by the online retailer while creating such sales.
Flash Sales (or call it a Deal-of-the-Day) usually refers to the business model in e-commerce where a website (portal) offers a single product sales to the customer for 24 to 36 hours. The customer can either register for the sale or it could be offered to selected customer by invitation. The concept started picking up with the launch of Woot.com in 2004. In United States, a marketing campaign, termed as “Cyber Monday” for the Monday after Thanksgiving was created by marketing companies to persuade people to shop online. The term made its debut on November 28, 2005, in a Shop.org press release entitled "'Cyber Monday” quickly becoming one of the Biggest Online Shopping Days of the Year". In India, the push to replicate Cyber Monday was done with launch of Great Online Shopping Festival in December 2012 by Google India in partnership with e-commerce companies including Flipkart, HomeShop18, Snapdeal, Indiatimes shopping and Makemytrip. Seeing is believing (The Big Billion Day) The e-commerce milestones in India will remember the date 6/10. On 6th October 2014, India’s biggest e-retail firm Flipkart vowed to offer the biggest sale ever to billion people of country with “The Big Billion Day” sale. It was also promoted heavily by Flipkart. The sale concurred with the festive season of Diwali, during which the consumer spending usually increases in country. On the D-Day as per Flipkart it took just 10 hours for them to hit $100 million in gross merchandise value (or GMV, a term used in online retailing to indicate a total sales value for merchandise sold through a particular marketplace over a certain time frame). With such a heavy discounts offered the net value may be low, however the site witnessed more than 1 billion hits and its traffic exceeded that of Facebook in India. The Big Billion Day also ended up with lot of disgruntled (potential) customer who retorted to social media to vent out their anger against the company. With limited capacity to deliver, many of the customer (mostly not hands-on in terms of technology) went empty handed while competition wooed some of them with their offers. As per the report by social media service provider Airwoot, 78% of the customer expressed their dis-satisfaction with Flipkart on the Big Billon Day Sale. The apology mail from the founders (Binny Bansal and Sachin Bansal) was a timely move to pacify the wrath of the customer especially for a company which topped the overall brand index in a survey of online purchase behaviour by Nielsen in Jun-Jul 2014. The overall impact on brand perception due to BBD sales whether positive or negative will only be known in due course of time. In a traditional retail sale the customer physically sees the stock available on sale. With the visibility of merchandise in terms of quantity and quantity along with the discounts available, a customer is able to gauge the opportunity loss in case he is not able to get his hands on the offering in the sale. In online market place with virtual quantity and virtual competition in terms of customer looking to buy same merchandise may lead to air of ambiguity. The customer is not able to make whether the demand of the product was really so high or it was just a marketing gimmick. These perceptions build by the customer impact the relationship of the customer with the online brand in the long term. In e-space market, the competition is also fierce. As evident in case of BBD Sale, the competition reacted with above-the-line communication even before the sale with their ambush marketing moves. It even lured them during and post the sale with their offering aggressively. The fact of life is that the competition is not so rosy even in offline brick-and-mortar space. To sum up, the following are key learning for online retail world based on current flash sales trend and BBD episode: · Creation of spike whether seasonal or crafted require big budgets. So plan for all possible scenarios. · Create campaign objective for flash sales and monitor and measure it on real time basis. · Brand Promise as per the promotional campaigns in terms of deals and discount need to be fulfilled for all visitor especially registered regular online customers. · Maintain transparency in virtual space be it response to customer complaints or offering them a good deal. · Online Reputation Management (ORM) is critical for e-space ventures. · An ideal combination of offline-online marketplace can do wonders as one can harp on the unique strength of each. · Differentiate a sales from a lottery in the mind of customer to create long-term business. So quantity and other terms and condition should be made available to customers. (c) Sunil Singh Rana Sergey Mironov, Dy. CEO, MTS India
The below are the key learnings which I gathered from an open house session during his visit to circle. It highlight the key area of focus for managing operations including shareholder returns: Key Focus Area: To ensure better performance, the Business Head of an organisation need to review the 4P’s of business time over time and ensure that they remain competent in these 4P’s. The 4P are: Products, Placement, Promotion and People. Product need to be competitive and should fulfil the explicit and implicit needs of customers while the Placement should be adequate to ensure wider availability and thus better distribution. Promotion are required to ensure that the product offering and the benefits and communicated to the customer and finally People who make difference with their skills and performance. Apart from reviewing them one need to strive to improve the organisation’s edge in these 4P’s. A proper balance and growth of these 4P’s on various parameters improve the organisations competitive edge and performance in a longer term Shareholders Returns: Movement towards being OIBDA positive is a critical journey for any organisation. An organisation becomes self-sustained to generate revenues to meet their operational expenses. It is important to consider our shareholders as our parents. The parent spends money on their kids to nourish and groom them to grow and become self-sustained and independent. It is the duty of the child to return the money and take care of the parents in times to come. A template with detailed indicators to measure and monitor organisations’ development on these 4P’s and returns can be created. The incremental growth of these parameters in long-term can create a bigger impact for any organisation. Jeff Bezos, Founder and CEO of Amazon.com
In Five Competitive Forces that Shape the Industry Competition (also called as Five Forces Model) as proposed by legendary management guru Michael E Porter of Harvard Business School, the core force is the Rivalry Among Existing Competitors. Therefore competition within the industry shapes the strategic and tactical action undertaken by any company. However some business leader have different view and Jeff Bezos, Founder and CEO of Amazon.com is one of them. In recent interviews (to Itika Sharma/ Nivedita Mookerji of Business Standard and Sunny Sen/ Josey Puliyenthuruthel of Business Today), Jeff Bezos speaks his mind. As per Bezos, on the Flipkart hoardings which were put on the highway road from the airport the city, he responded that “Amazon did not believe in such distractions and he would like to put heads down and concentrate on customers. “Rivals don’t get us revenues, customers do”’. Therefore he puts customers at the core of strategy for Amazon rather than competition. As per him, most companies spend too much time thinking about the competition, talking about the competition, obsessing over their competition. It is true to a large extend. In one of the bestseller on strategy by Richard Rumelt (Good Strategy, Bad Strategy), a key fact unearthed was that many of the CXO’s are well aware of competition actions, however they are still unclear on what their own company do. The company (Amazon) adheres to three principles i.e. Customer Centricity, Invention and Long-Term thinking. Hence a customer plays a pivotal role in their strategy. Bezos said that a customer only want three things – Fair and competitive prices; choice of products and accurate delivery. Therefore his organization strives to improve on these parameters to ensure higher customer satisfaction and retention in long term (rather than competition). (c) Sunil Singh Rana |
A working professional with 19+ years of experience in Sales, Marketing, Strategy and Operations, I am an avid reader and quizzer.
My areas of interest are Business Strategy, Marketing, Customer Management and Digital Media. With my blogger mission as "Learn, Think and Share", I would love to share my thoughts on business strategy, leadership, management, marketing and business quizzing. If my blogs help you out in your professional growth or my quizzes provides a perfect match of infotainment, then I will consider my little attempt as rewarding. - Sunil Singh Rana ABOUT AUTHORArchives
December 2018
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