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We all know, especially in IT, ‘employee retention’ is bottom line of entire success story. It is not uncommon that group of five to six developers have created marvelous products, SAP is a biggest example of this.

How many times we have read and heard that IT has high manpower turnover, it is very difficult to retain skill employee, other companies are paying like any anything, etc. The X Company is creating bad market trend and trying to hire employees by crock or by hook. They would kill us.

I am sure that we don’t blame employees for high salaries, better job satisfaction etc. We do agree that they have upper hand and it is of course employee oriented market now, they have upper hand, any doubts?

Hey, hold a min, how about your customers? Don’t they have upper hand? Don’t we say that ‘Customer is always right? Don’t we say that we have customer oriented policy and business? I am sure; if you are running successful business then this must be true.

So what’s the point? Customers are giving us business, it’s only because of them that we are doing business and earning, and we are paying our employees, we all know this, there is nothing new in this. Here is interesting twist...
Of course, nothing new in this, but how about your employees? Don’t they give you more business? How do you get more business? Who executes it? You may get ten new customers but who is going to satisfy them? We agree employees.

So don’t you have two customers now, internal and external? If we assume that customers are responsible for our progress, profit and business then definitely this is true. Common definition for customer may not get agree on this, but objectivity remains same.

The moment we put employee on customer list, (come on, you may different categories of customer, don’t you?) it becomes pretty easy to understand where do we lack, what we need to do and what exactly issues are.

How? We know the answer, just start doing competitive analysis (other employers are of course your competitors), so find out

Who are your competitors?

What customer (employee) needs and preferences are you competing to meet?

What are the similarities and differences between their products/services (hum… this are your salary packages, employee policy, work culture, career growth etc) and yours?

What are the strengths and weaknesses of each of their products and services? Have we ever try to find out why few employees don’t job leave and other do, what are the reason why few employees are ready to stay for long? This could be their job profile, geographical location, hometown etc, so you need to find out your strength, you might not be having strength of paying highest salary in Market, but you might having strength of offering job in hometown with better package, so try to find out customer (employee) who are looking for this strength

How do you plan to compete? offer better quality services (HR, salary, working culture)?

Easier access to services? (Better working culture?)
How are you uniquely suited to compete with them? (do you SWOT)


isnt interesting ?





]]> On the job http://www.kansara.org/index.php?itemid=5 Mon, 28 Aug 2006 03:03:43 +0530 http://www.kansara.org/index.php?itemid=4
To run any business today, we must have processes and standards, but this sometimes creates’big’ issues, the policy makers sometimes forgets ‘human’ and practicality in process design. They forget the good saying, “"In theory, theory and practice are the same. In practice, however, they are not."

Highly Process oriented organization creates a ‘typical’ attitude of thinking of process design rather then thinking on solutions. All mangers develop an attitude by which they always think that any problem can be easily solved by defining new process or standards.
If there is no enough good quality of drinking water available for employees, meeting would be called and they would discuss, ‘let us defined a standard and process by which we can assure good drinking water always’. This may bring the solution, however not always.

We are ignoring people skill; attitude and behavioral aspects, there could be other way to find out the solution. Not all problems are being created because of unavailability of process or standards.

You know we had a process to calculate and estimate different type of costing and budgeting, however we never had a process, which can estimate and evaluate a process itself.

You may have standard documents, standard processes etc for estimation but have you ever thought of the efficiency of all process itself? Can less process do the same task?

Sometimes we forget that there is cost involved in different task, a senior manger creating word document or power point presentation to explain the standard process or to define the standard process or for matter of fact, for anything, he is adding a cost to process.

One hour spend by senior manager on word document can have ‘cost’; he can do some decision-making in this time. In a normal size organization, normally they prepare almost 100 of word document in a day and not more than 10 documents are useful, rest of the documents are ‘lying’ just as a paper in file. Have we ever tired to calculate the time and cost spend on creating other ‘90’ less useful documents? Do you really need those 90 documents? Think twice.


We had a problem in organization that, everyone is not following standard process, without going in details, they called up meeting and discussed that let us design a process by which we can make sure that everyone follows a ‘process’.

Of course, not a joke, this is fact. Have we ever tired to find out why people are not following processes? In major cases you would find out that either there are lots of processes or they are impractical.

On other case, we had a problem of not getting proper reporting from employees, this happens everywhere senior management would ask, we want these data and we want these reports, they would always seek a summarized data.

As soon as middle level management gets request from higher authority, they would call up meeting, would draft a report format, and would send a document to all employee asking to fill up that data everyday and send back. They would not even think of designing some kind of computerized system for this.



They think for any problem, for any requirement defining a process and asking information is the best solution, that’s wrong. Before we go for any process, we must think, can be this done by some other way? Can a people skill or managerial skill solve this problem? Is there any easy or automatic way by which we can collect same information?

Have you ever tried to find out how much redundant data you have in your organization? For example, think of project related data; try to find out how many word documents you have with it project estimation? How many prints were taken for same information.

With your surprise you would observer that there are multiple copies of same file and same data, and created by different users. Think of cost here, one hour spend by an employee creating same word document.


Management should try to avoid a ‘process oriented attitude’, all problems are not solved by process, and sometimes there are other easy solutions. I think, sort-term benefit should be evaluated against long-term lose.














]]> On the job http://www.kansara.org/index.php?itemid=4 Wed, 24 May 2006 02:45:03 +0530 http://www.kansara.org/index.php?itemid=3
Raj who started career in IT with me is very enthusiastic, always ready to jump here and there; he must have changed almost 15 jobs so far.
In last 90s he was working on VB then shifted to ASP and then tried to shift to java, and now is working with .NET. However he is still a senior programmer, not more than this.

It is very good and sometimes very much required in IT that we keep learning new technologies, but life gives chance to decide our career path and technology that we are going to work only once. It is first five years of our professional like on which we can play around and we can keep jumping from one technology to other. Within five years, I believe, we must decide our direction, are roadmap, after five years, it is not good to jump from one platform to other one, it is always better to start developing expertise.

The other good friend of me, we used to call him ‘sharma’ started his life as Medical Representative, then did some Industrial marketing, then few years he was involved in consumer marketing and now he is with some retail industry.

He always complains that he is not getting a salary like other friends of his age, and perhaps he is right too.

For me there is not problem with his skill and qualifications, he holds all good attributes but he has some confusing professional track and it is not consistent. It is only your ‘expertise’ and consistent experience, which can give you a ‘Quantum jump’. In IT we have experience that people approaches your from searching on Internet, before they talk to you they knew that you are genius and you can ask for any dam CTC !

In IT we need to be jack of all but we must be a master of one at same time, if we keep change our platform and technology with market and glamorous we might be doing coding even at the age of 40.




]]> On the job http://www.kansara.org/index.php?itemid=3 Thu, 4 May 2006 05:16:40 +0530 http://www.kansara.org/index.php?itemid=2
If you are doing a business or any other profession than it is definitely or we can say it should be a product only.

Both an art and product are complementary to each other, art can be a product and product can be an art. However, when we talk about software or application development, ideally it should be more a product than an art.


An art is normally appreciated by specific segment and it may not be holding a commercial value, of course if art becomes a product, it does have commercial value.

As a programmer we always wish to develop the best application, we always try to get more innovative on our development and sometimes we never know when we have crossed the boundary.

For a developer or commercial application development innovation and creativity are fine if they are adding value to product, but it is not good if it is converting your product into art. In case of art, few people will understand you creativity and will highly appreciate your efforts. This may create confusion to other user and it may look its 'overall' appeal.

For application or product, our main target is a 'common' user; we don't require thinking about the 'administrator'.

Sometimes it would be good to think on 'what is not required' rather than thinking on what is required for an application. We know that there are many application and products in market, which provides 'everything' but does 'nothing'.

We always take privilege on behalf of user and based on our feeling, experience we conclude that this what user would like to have., who cares?

I have heard a story of a man who goes to farm, and he sees lots of mangos on trees. He wanted to take all mangos with him but his honesty stopped him, he felt, I cannot take these mangos without taking permission from farm owner.

The he saw at the sky and asked 'Can I take all these mangos'? And then he replied to himself, 'Yes, please take as many as you like"

The point is, we are asking question to ourselves on behalf of end user and at the same time, we answer it by ourselves, we never bother to really ask this to end user, 'hey do you like to have this'? or would you use this?

So we must develop a product, which is useful to common users, which does have quit good market, and of course which can add values to users.

Combination of product and art would be the best amalgam.
]]> Programming http://www.kansara.org/index.php?itemid=2 Thu, 4 May 2006 04:49:35 +0530 http://www.kansara.org/index.php?itemid=1



]]> General http://www.kansara.org/index.php?itemid=1 Tue, 25 Apr 2006 11:32:34 +0530