Browne & Mohan

Browne & Mohan is "full cycle" management consulting company with offices at Bangalore & Mumbai and partner offices at Dubai, San Francisco and Toronto. At Browne & Mohan, we not only strategize, but work hand-in-hand with the clients to ensure successful and impactful implementation. We advise private sector, public sector and government agencies. Our primary areas of competencies are strategy, marketing, operations, HR (transformation only) and financial consulting. We advise clients on business growth, expansion, business models, pricing, product positioning, branding & social media engagement, working capital & investment decisions, risk management, productivity & quality improvement, supply chain optimization, etc. We also offer high impact "non-executive independent board" services to companies, bringing in rigorous governance to the board around strategy, finance, marketing and HR. Our senior consultants act as "lead directors" on several corporate boards. Our other unique offerings include board level or CEO (including interim CEO) coaching and mentoring (based on proprietary PPSD and Value configuration framework), growth audit, innovation audit and innovation lab. Our consulting engagements are mainly long term transformational in nature with definite impact on business outcomes, and project based. Your suggestions and comments matter to us! Write to us at [email protected]

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Teen turfs: Effective marketing for a successful Innerwear Brand

Teen turfs: Effective marketing for a successful Innerwear Brand  

Why should brans like Nova, Bodycare, Softy, Red Rose, Shalini, Sonari, Ragini and others care about teens, young customers in the age group of 12-17. There is a lot at stake in selling and branding for teens. According to recent census 2011, Teens form about 9.2% of the youth population. Teens form about 12% of ₹9,100 Crore women inner wear segment in FY2016. Teen brands are the most underpenetrated with highest growth rate amongst all segments of the women innerwear market. Teen innerwear is about 21% of the unorganized women innerwear market. Surprisingly, the price differences between unorganized and branded innerwear varied just about 15-25%.  With value engineering and smart distribution, an organized brand could easily gain market share from unorganized segment. What is more alluring is that an average teen today spends 7% of ₹1000 on innerwear, on average buys 6 pairs in each year and expected to experience 3 sizes in 4 years.  Rural teens in average brought 3.2 pairs per year. Young girls develop at different ages and everybody’s experience is unique. Teens also lead and live a busy life. Teens juggle between studies, sports, Dandiya and Dance floor with aplomb. They participate in NCC training and retreats, volunteer as traffic wardens and lead their houses in major events.  They hop and jump out of buses or ride bicycles or two wheelers with gaiety.  This means a ton of possible fashion and usage environment to take into consideration.

Teens are important to brands because they tend to be early adopters and often their brand preferences are yet to be formed. However, unlike the teens of yesteryears, teens of today are most active user group on online. Teens today are scanning trends and deciding for themselves. The first thing they are likely to ask the host is whether the Wifi in their house is on.   On an average a teen spends 3.5 hours a day and an average, teens send 1480 messages and receive 2170 messages per month. Studies have shown with an underdeveloped prefrontal cortex, teens seek immediate gratification and thrill. They are expected to exhibit more impulsive behaviors. Well, it seems like it should be pretty easy to market to teens. So one would think it is easy to create and slip into a niche teens innerwear brand. Not so. Marketing to a teenager is a labor of love.

Studies have shown that peer pressure is big for teens. Acceptance and belonging to a group is paramount for their psychological wellbeing. That is why branding, especially of community branding works best for teens.  In fact for most teens, social media is just that a platform to express traits and seek out others with similar leanings.  So what must be the marketing strategies one must adopt for a teen innerwear brand.

First, choose your online platforms to engage them actively and direct your time and efforts towards the most relevant platforms. Popular opinion is that Instagram, Snapchat and What’s App appear on the top with Facebook and Pinterest up the rear. If you are pursuing a low cost viral strategy, creating tiered gaming campaigns using Snapchat or Instagram may work well.  If you are just looking to widen your reach to teens targeted Facebook campaigns may work better.

Social media campaigns targeting teens is also about brevity and personalization. With shorter attention spans, teens are likely to respond more positively to short text posts and links. Bite-sized post with Big feet You approach works best.

Teen’s major sources of information about innerwear are opinion of friend (22%), store display (18%), social media (17%) and celebrity endorsement (15%).  Where most brands fail is the poor execution of store display. Standees and banner ads are passé and so are the garish looking mannequins.  Teens seek out more touch and feel experience and likely to lean more towards technology led experiences including AR.  A less tech savvy salon experience also satiates exclusivity positioning and works well for exploratory or label lioness.  Teens are less influenced by Bollywood stars, but certainly a swash bucking Cricketer or a badminton champ certainly gets more eye lashes.

From a marketing perspective teens not only consume information, but are also effective co-creators and distributors. Teens tend to use online media to share, create their own by-lines and funny one liners about the brand. For an innerwear brand it is best to emulate social engagement models that are espoused by companies like HP, Microsoft or Oracle in Open source arena. Involve teens to voluntarily create content, create a consumption community and turn ambassadors.  Gamification tools involving rewards and recognition including Badges, Angelhood, High Princess work best for an innerwear brand. A low cost rural consumption focused innerwear brand can adopt gamification principles with multi-level marketing to reduce distribution costs and gain viral visibility.  Volunteering is another platform that works best for teen innerwear marketing.  Companies can create smart campaigns that can bundle social messaging on CSR programs and reach target populations. Incentivize them to comment, retweet, mention or getting involved in creating awareness about your innerwear brand.

A key point to remember is teens abhor preaching and explicit advertising. They may skip an advertisement if seen as an interruption or pushy. Communicate to establish relationships and association. Authenticity is what they seek and story selling works best.  Humor and human-centered stories work best to build relationships with your brand. Communicate they are special and your brand blends with who they want to be and what they wish to be leads to better marketing outcomes.

For an innerwear brand it is imperative to remember teens are not completely independent consumers. Their parents open the purse and indulge in their purchases. Cultural sensitivity in campaigns and functional design over intimate one are keys to teen innerwear sales. You can’t afford to ignore them in your innerwear campaign and design. Finally, keep your marketing as fluid as possible. When tide turns, you must have the flexibility to turn quickly.

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Expansion and diversification of Family business

Family run businesses are a significant segment of any nation’s industrial structure. In India 95% of business are family run, and 30% of BSE listed companies are family owned. Anecdotal data indic…

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Online campaigns to build a rocking Footwear brand

Online is becoming a major channel for footwear market. Online sales contribute to $41 billion of $74.5 Billion footwear sales in USA. Even in India,

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RENAISSANCE OF ITES COMPANIES.

ITeS industry is witnessing dramatic changes. From initial years of voice based support it evolved to support non-voice requirements of many a Fortune 500’s. They brought process efficiencies and cost advantages to their client organizations.  However, in last few quarters, these companies are witnessing a double whammy on customer and technology fronts. With increasing automation, emergence of AI and ML on the corner many of these firms are worried about the likely drop in revenues. On the other hand, customers are seeking out a partner to manage and deliver business excellence, not just cost arbitrage advantages. Companies outsourcing are looking beyond cost arbitrage and buyer-vendor relationships but one that sustains long term value and flexibility. Many contracts are becoming more flexible, with more leeway to buyer changing needs. According to IAOP research 80% of customers are looking at outsourcing to improve business performance and their overall business models.  A major shift is also coming from segments that hitherto did not outsource much, mid rung players.  In coming years, about 2/3rd of requirements is expected to be driven by midsize companies. Unlike their large counterparts, midsize companies are not just seeking scale efficiencies, but instead to import functional expertise from outsourced partners to remain competitive. ITeS markets is moving away from a transactional cost focussed relationship to a multi-term outcome focussed ownership driven managed service play.

What is therefore needed is look beyond voice and non-voice support centres, but becoming functional support partners who can manage revenues and costs and offering omnichannel customer engagement. Transformation journey of ITeS companies can happen if they pursue a 8 steps journey as described below.

On the lines of Chinese proverb, all long journeys start with small step, the first step required to consider what is required to position them from a FTE based company to non-FTE based company. First step is to envision the offerings beyond FTE model and define the elements of the offerings that address the pain areas of the customers.  Automated services, augmented management routines or standardized processes that can eliminate the “friction” in the client organization, whether on the revenue side or the cost side or both are the keys to enriched offering. Realign complete service delivery, HR, training and support for transformation. This would mean identifying existing contracts where optimization of resources can happen, codification of SOP and routines can happen, and recruitment options that offer continuous stream of low cost resources with right attitude.  Define service offerings that may extend beyond the process and that can impact financial or non-financial aspects of client business.  While FTE continue to be a revenue stream, extend the offerings to cover solutions that impact revenue, cost, asset utilization or customer experience using technology.  Design services that exploit the elasticity of cloud and automation of benefits of RPA, analytics and other tools. Once relevant offerings are identified it is important to rearrange organizational units so that some can prepare the ground work in terms of definition, validation, structuring and packaging of the offering. RPA helps companies to automate repetitive manual tasks so that attrition and knowledge management challenges can also be better addressed. From a delivery side, RPA eliminate human variance, help standardize process routines, and reuse of process components. Automation helps companies move from pain vanilla services to high value “production”.  The offering becomes highly scalable, knowledge intensive and opens consulting opportunities for ITES companies.

Invest in a tightly joined at hip sales and marketing motions so that repositioning is consistently and continuously managed. Develop a smart marketing team that consistently conveys the change and reinforces new positioning. Sales organization has to be revised to ensure segments are appropriately covered by complementing inside sales and direct sales resources. High touch direct sales resources are key to drive transformation and appropriate sales enablement activities including training, marketing assets and walkthroughs is required. Finally, the key is to manage the transformation while being asset and investment light. For this, ITeS companies need to exploit the ecosystem of partners who can offer complementary advantages.

There is no silver bullet for effective transformation and positive outcomes. Along with multiple actions, mind-set changes, behavioural corrections, transformations are successful when resources and initiatives complement each other. For transformation to be successful, management must follow a comprehensive approach. Transformation requires high intensity of both intent and follow up.  Intensity can be sustained with dedicated outcome driven reviews. Finally, no transformation is possible without adequate ownership and self-management of teams and people.

Dr TR Madan Mohan

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Are you measuring your start up performance rightly???

Do you know the most common reasons for failure of startups? CB Insights report (July 2016) based on 166 startups reveal some interesting insights including running out of runway and poor finance management as primary reasons. These startups could have survived had they implemented effective performance management system to keep their heads up. Running a startup is akin to successfully landing an aircraft. The pilot needs to have right information about length of the runway, visibility, height and should know when he should switch to fly by wire. A plethora of measures only adds to complexity and confusion. What is needed is a simple set of integrative financial and non-financial measures (leading not just lag) to avoid a crash.

What are the key financial aspects every startup must track? Do you know which lead measures can help you decide immediate corrective actions? The most important financial measures include revenue growth and revenue indicators such as bookings which your customer is obliged to pay over the course of your contract, billings which are collected in advance at the time of booking, and gross merchandise value of transactions. Another key element to be tracked is cash in the form of net cash burned as well as cash earned. Your startup could be a brilliant idea but wouldn’t be able to survive long enough to become profitable if you can’t manage cash efficiently. Due to this reason, it is equally important to monitor account payables and reduce pressure on your cash balance. As a startup, tracking the maximum earnings decline ratio for each quarter is the most effective signal to save the business before it drowns. Finally, as important as it is for your startup to build traction and deepen revenue streams, be aware of how much you’re spending to attract more customers. Monitor the customer acquisition cost as well as the customer acquisition payback period so that you don’t end up burning a hole in your pocket.

Do you know the non-financial metrics that would help you in making better sense of the financial measures? The Pirate Metrics devised by McClure is a powerful customer-centric tool that could be used. Rate of Acquisition, Activation, Retention, Referrals, and Revenue are good measures of dynamism of your startup. Measure customers acquired through discounts as well as freebies as these tell you about your customer acquisition. Knowing the percentage of active users will provide better insight into your business performance by eliminating the accidental one time users or first time users. Percentage of orders that required rework, the delivery time per order and percentage of deliveries achieved on time are key measures you must have to capture operational excellence. How does your business measure customer satisfaction and loyalty? The net promoter score is an excellent tool to gauge customer satisfaction. It measures how likely it is that your customers would recommend your product or service to others. Make sure you bean count time to hire, cost to hire and quality of hire to know how good your HR team is supporting your startup dreams.

Finally, remember the measurement must be to drive managerial effectiveness, ownership and accountability at different levels. Remember to keep your cost of running the measurement system low. What you do not need for a startup is a superfine measurement system that comes with a huge cost of collecting, collating and making sense of data. What you need is simple guideposts that tell you whether your direction is right and the speed is right. Keep it simple and stupid (KISS!!).

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How companies are adopting Holacracy principles to build effective sales teams

For many companies, sales function is an area where outcome is never closer to expectation. Companies suffer from weak funnels, missed closures, lengthier closure cycles, order losses and attrition.  These are the waste that emanate in sales function. It is well known sales teams that hunt as a pack always produce better results than those that hunt individually. Unfortunately, many sales teams discourage sharing of information about networks & influence of client organizations across team members. Many a times a particular sales resource may be approaching a client organization in a certain suboptimal way without privy to alternate courses. Other colleagues may have prior experience of the account and/or situation to tide over the apprehensions. Bereft of multiple perspectives, the sales cycle would linger, and eventually the sales resource will lose interest on the account and drop it from his hunt. Incomplete sharing of information and inadequate planning for a particular opportunity is another challenge sales team face.  Weak alignment, between inside sales and direct sales teams or KAM teams with others is another area that leads to sales inefficiencies.  Role conflicts and tensions may also arise due to operational and personality issues.  Poor policies on account transfer between direct and inside sales team, weak sales operations, and ineffective review can exacerbate drop rates. A salient issue in solution selling companies is lack of comprehensive involvement, poor alignment and ineffective role management between pre-sale and sale teams across various stages of a customer acquisition. Diffused and selective ownership without a complete coverage of customer experience management leads to lengthy customer requirement cycles, protracted customer sign off process and potential financial loss.

Companies are realizing to counter bounded rationality problems, improve commitment and camaraderie within the sales teams, they need to build coopetition teams.  Teams in a coopetition collaborate to address common challenges, and address gaps and yet can remain competitive in pursuit of the individual goals. In recent years, companies like Ternary software, Zappos, David Allen Co, Precision Nutrition and others have adopted Holacracy (the system of self-governance) as an approach to build self-managing teams. Holacracy is an approach to distribute authority across the organization. In a Holacracy the organization evolves continuously adapting its structure and process through ongoing peer-to-peer governance. Common elements of organizations adopting Holacracy principles are a) constitution that defines the roles and distribution of authority related to tasks or outputs, b) roles and accountabilities, c) collaborative decision-making process enabling change in roles and authority consistent with evolution and d) meeting process that promotes co-creation and collaborative working.

Companies adopting Holacracy principles for sales organization implement following. Firstly, they create a leadership ring to build multiple owners who can eschew same corporate and sales dream and chase the horizon. However, unlike the Holacracy organizations, these rings are limited to the first level of sales, pre-sale and delivery management, the organization below each leader is still hierarchical. The leadership ring collectively evaluates opportunities, discusses approach or various sales motions (national, key accounts, acquisition, strategic account, label wins), creates proposals and pricing models, and comprehensively manages customer interaction.  The group runs as a virtual organization within the company. They validate customer requirements, aligned design and delivery, and eliminate rework. Recognizing the need for flexibility to counter exigencies, leadership ring has weekly rhythm meets to discuss progress and exceptions. Any engagement model deviations, change requests, requirement changes or client leadership exits are discussed openly, opinions are considered and a comprehensive approach is arrived after considering multiple perspectives. One strategy is collectively approved individuals are given complete ownership ad freedom to pursue the actions. To support the changes in the roles and ownership of different teams over the life cycle of a customer engagement, the sales teams build a culture and process where different people wear the leadership hat. In the initial part of customer engagement, sales resources own and direct inform and influencing of customer. However, a pre-sale expert takes over the solution enumeration and client acceptance, after which the sales leader and pricing teams dons the mantle. Finally, the crown comes back to the sales resource to chase the closure. Once the order is picked, the mantle moves to delivery as the prime owner and sales as the secondary owner. Finally, what distinctly distinguishes “Holacracy” team sales reviews, is this is not the typical high octane name calling threat laced ritual. The review system moves away from status and fault finding to status and solution offering. Each review meeting is initiated with a revisit of the purpose and with a focus on actions by individuals and team can impact positive outcome.

Companies adopting Holacracy principles for sales must understand it is a cultural change and requires both management investment and patience.  Sales team members must experience the trust and openness to share everyone view and the collective decision making. Parochial leaders may find the process limiting insular control of team and threatens group politics.  Importantly the ability to steer the focus towards “problem solving” than “one man up”  behaviour is the key to the success of the program.  

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WhatsApp marketing for B2B

With over 42 billion messages sent daily across 109 countries, WhatsApp is a veritable platform for marketing. Recent State of Inbound Report states that 30% of the respondents have used messaging aps like WhatsApp or WeChat as a business communication channel. Many B2C businesses have started to market and promote their products and services through WhatsApp. Unlike email or SMS, it has high delivery incidence and less restriction on the format. One can send not only messages, but Images, videos, and audio files. As marketing trends become more personalized and user controlled, aps like WhatsApp lend themselves to promotion and lead nurturing.

Where can B2B businesses use WhatsApp?. It is an effective platform for managing internal communications. Sales teams can build an effective channel to discuss the best practices, share novel approaches or just keep sharing the status. Multi-functional groups may find a common WhatsApp group lining disparate information silos and bring in transparency across the organization. Personal, Group and Broadcast can be used to share information across pre-sales, sales and delivery groups. SME can use WhatsApp as Knowledge management tool to disseminate status around key projects or learn form an order. Companies can use WhatsApp as an alternative channel for helpdesk or complaint logging. Customer support team can also use toll free number or WhatsApp live chat for online queries.  WhatsApp can be used as a CRM tool to retain the customers. Once the WhatsApp group is formed follow-up with the customers by asking feedback on products and services. WhatsApp can be used to offer discounts and coupons as enticements for loyalty or even recognizing and rewarding brand ambassadors. B2B can also be used for after sale service support including service bulletins and recall information.  B2B can use WhatsApp to reconfirm and persuade required attendees who have confirmed their participation for a conference or a workshop. Personalized WhatsApp can help event organizers plan the activities better and reduce wastage.

However, these aps have few limitations on community reach and expansion. In order for a company to communicate with its prospects on WhatsApp, phone numbers of these people must be stored in the company’s phone address book. The catch is that prospects must also have the company’s contact number stored in their respective address books. WhatsApp is a non-starter of the company’s phone number is not actively promoted and is available on the website and other media. Second challenge in the limitation on size of the group limited to 256. Companies with national foot print face the challenge of managing several local groups within a region. Simply the cost of coordination and control of common messaging and effective response is prohibitive. Like many other social platforms, WhatsApp groups also have lurkers, passive guineas and active bulls. Challenge for B2B companies is ensuring their content engine is robust and creative enough to keep the community active. Pedantry messaging of good morning, happy holidays can only flies for some time. Form a marketing perspective, measuring the ROI from WhatsApp is difficult. You can only measure the numbers of people who have seen or sharing buttons or UTM tagging of the post links.

WhatsApp and other aps are powerful and low cost communication tools. Their biggest advantage is their simplicity and quick roll out.  In an internet world that is algorithmic and controlled by Google’s of the world, app messaging services support organic reach without having to pay to play the community game.  The app message alerts are instantaneous and have a high probability of engagement. Importantly though limited to 256 people, these apps provide scalable yet private platform.  

Sai Vinoth

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Companies of all sizes (SMB to large ones) are finding the current economic environment challenging. Business growth is slow or almost stagnated, new customer …

Every Business has its' Highs and lows. Tough times are when management should concentrate more on the growth of the company. Here is our paper published in the Indian Management Journal, May 2014 issue on How to manage your Business during lean times!

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Rename & Rebrand for Success!

A good book always needs a catchy title to get the attention of roaming eyes of onlooker and induce him to buy and convert him to a reader. At the same time the name should also be relevant to the plot. Not all books can have “no branding” strategy as successfully exploited by author Naomi Klein. No name strategy is unlikely to fly if you are a company or product. Legal and differentiation require one to embrace a name.  Like books, the name of a company should also be easy to recall and must create an interest in the minds of the people. Even in the ancient era, Kings named and also created symbols for their Kingdoms by which people recognized them and identified them for generations.

In this Start-Up era companies have come up with the most creative names which are easily recognizable. The etymology of names for a business makes the impact in the minds of the customers. Most common and famous etymologies used in names recently are the removal of vowels (Flickr, Quikr, Scribd etc.), use of most common words with unique suffixes (Spotify, Mashable etc.).  There are many famous companies which have become extremely popular only when they renamed themselves. Few examples would be, Andersen Consulting which is now popularly known as Accenture, Lucky and Goldstar which is now known worldwide as LG, Tokyo Telecommunications Engineering Corporation is now the famous SONY, Blue Ribbon Sports which later became the one of leaders in the sports wear industry – Adidas.

The most common reasons why most companies opt for a name change are

Renaming dictated by merger

Name associated with failures

Name not appropriate for NEW world markets when it comes to GLOBALIZATION.

Difficult to remember

Name changes according to Vaastu and Feng Shui

Name is outdated in terminology  : Name has to appeal to a NEW & more affluent market

Name has negative connotations in the new markets they are serving

Name need to reposition & new the corporate brand

Name is against cultural norms in different states

Name is geographically restrictive

Name is limiting in range of operations

Name no longer fits in the businesses they are in

Name is in trademark conflict

Name is misleading to customers

Difficult to pronounce

Name is Too long

The various steps to be followed in renaming a company is 1)Define the purpose for renaming 2)List out various names according to the purpose 3) Shortlisting of the names 4)Select a winner 5) Validate the name with existing companies and domains 6) Repeat from Step 3 if validation fails.

Think both creatively and strategically when naming/renaming a company. Cool sounding names don’t always become a winner. While selecting the name, firstly the company should measure the emotional value or sensitiveness of the existing name in the minds of the customer. Secondly, check for compatibility with the product or service provided by the company and whether a customer will be able to relate the company to a product or service when he/she hears the name. Thirdly follow the basic naming rules like keep it short, unique, easily recallable and easy to pronounce. Renaming a company can open up new opportunities in the market for the company. It’s like coming in for a second innings but only to play it better with the proper strategy.

Kaarthik Shakthi R

Junior Consultant – Marketing

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OEMs/Dealers; Get Your Basics Right!

While aftermarket revenues could contribute an upward 30-50% of existing revenues, many OEMs are not prepared to gain from it. Most OEMs fail to meet their service level agreement which subsequently leads to decrease in customer loyalty and negative word of mouth. Why does this happen? It is simply because they do not manage their weakest link in the chain, dealers.

The major reasons why dealers fail to deliver an effective after-market service. One is the lack of agency and incentive alignment. Dealers find managing post-sale operations cumbersome and are just happy to skim the revenue from fresh sales only. Many dealers lack the necessary skilled resources, inventory but just gloss over service commitment. Secondly, Lack of comprehensive supply chain management, and ineffective SOPs from OEMs compound the matter further. So it is quite common to see customers waiting for a free vehicle pick up promised by OEM and also an unreachable dealer service desk. Customers planning to drop their vehicles at dealer showrooms and catch their Monday morning work schedule, beware! You may end up waiting in the lobby for hours. Dealers of many world class OEMs are woefully short of qualified human resources. Spare parts unavailability or delay in shipping spare parts is a common problem. Lo, that is not the end of agony, even after getting the vehicle well past the promised delivery date; customer must be prepared to see recurrence of earlier complaints or some new larger issue surfacing after the service.

What is the way out for OEMs? Incentivize service and parts business for your dealer. Invest in basic training and evaluation of dealer staff across after-cycle process. Invest in your own resources not just at sales cycle but at after-service cycle also. Manage parts availability and protect grey market penetration.

If you are a dealer, bring down the walls within your organization. Too many departments working at loggerhead with each other does not help you. Ensure information flow & communication happens seamlessly and data visibility is high. Adopt SOPs as they help you to know the productivity and revenue generation opportunities you may be currently missing. Training and employee engagement is very crucial to effectively gain cost advantage. Drivers, technicians, bay engineers must be incentivized for ownership, initiative and quality of outcome.

Banu Priya P

Junior Consultant – Marketing

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GOCO PILL FOR EFFICIENT RUNNING OF GOVERNMENT HOSPITALS

With over 12,760 hospitals and over 24,000 primary health care centers, public health care forms the backbone of India’s health care services. However, many studies on utilization of health care facilities indicate that citizens prefer private health care over state run public hospitals for the cost and quality of services provided. Research studies indicate that over 80% of citizens prefer to use private sector facilities for minor ailments, even when higher quality doctors are available at public hospitals. Studies also highlight 78% of household prefers to go to private sector to private sector for their cleanliness and professional handling of patients. Several studies indicate while many state run hospitals are staffed with better quality and more experienced doctors, it is the infrastructure and service issues that turn many patients away. Dismal sanitary conditions, long waiting times, lack of basic HMIS, high infection rates, and substantial clinical care are some key issues that force the public health care facilities out of choice set. The other significant factor is rude behavior of staff and functioning of the hospitals. While cost of treatment in government hospitals may be free, bribery, insensitive behavior, limited working hours dissuade the use of public health care systems. CAG audit reports also point out to inefficient use of public funds. Many hospitals had Digital X-Ray, Pet scan machines lying for years in open and rusted, as they could not hire competent staff to man the job.  One eminent government administrator mulled about 40% of funds go unutilized and about 30% of the instruments including OT end up as scrap as preventive maintenance is given a go by. Political interventions, inbreeding and bureaucracy precipitate inefficiency and apathy.

Several state governments in India have recognized the need to bring in efficiency, affordability and higher reach of state health care system. States of Karnataka, Gujarat, Kerala have introduced novel PPP mechanisms, including insurance schemes to cover the economically weaker sections. While exceptions like Jayadeva Hospital, Bangalore and Rajiv Gandhi Cancer Research Institute, New Delhi may exist, many suffer from poor infrastructure, lack of motivated staff, poor sanitation and hygiene issues. State governments have brought in concrete steps to address service quality and implement continuous quality improvements. While insurance and other related PPP interventions have certainly improved the access to better quality health care to underprivileged population. However, the fundamental issue with improving the hygiene and service quality of government run hospitals has not been addressed. Governance, management of efficiency and effective utilization of resources has been given a go by.

Should state governments adopt a proven PPP approach used in military complexes to efficiently run the hospitals. Government Owned Contractor Operated (GOCO) model is a proven model where industrial, academic and non-profit organizations manage government national labs.  A GOCO model enables each partner to perform relevant duties. The government subsidizes the healthcare mission, increases reach and use of affordable healthcare, while private sector implements the mission and manages using best business practices.  Several state governments, Karnataka, TN, J&K, Maharashtra have tried limited GOCO approach by letting 3rd party private players run and manage the diagnostic facilities. Private firms (install) or manage the machinery, maintain and offer the services at prescribed government rates to reach out across various segments. Below poverty line (BPL) families benefit from affordable diagnostic services and public funds are effectively used to primarily serve the healthcare mission and generate revenues.

While this limited outsourcing has brought in technical efficiency in only one department, overall management and effectiveness need further exploration. State governments must explore complete GOCO approach to allow private partner to run the hospital efficiently. Many challenges like insufficient doctors, inability to attract specialists, lack of appropriate rewards and recognition systems to motivate employees, that currently affect state run hospitals to achieve greater heights can be rightly addressed by GOCO partner. The GOCO partner a trust or an academic institution or an industry partner can bring managerial efficiency and high quality delivery focus, while state governments can successfully pursue appropriate investment and high impact mission goals.

However, switching over to the GOCO model is not going to be easy. State governments need strong political will, transparent and efficient process to identify the right partners and importantly the right structure and process to manage the GOCO contract. Creation of an independent board under the chairmanship of district administration with members consisting of prominent citizens, elected representatives, members of Medical council, GOCO partner is a must.  GOCO operations must also be aligned with the health mission using performance frameworks such as results based framework (RBM).

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PRIVATIZATION OF NATIONAL SCIENTIFIC ORGANIZATIONS

Scientific organizations are a crucial part of national innovation system (NIS). They create a pool of scientific resources who are employed in creating relevant scientific innovations for the nations. These research organizations help in technological advancement of the industry by transferring lab-proven technologies to commercialization. They may be engaged in development of civilian technologies such as agriculture, Food, or IT or defence and related technologies.  In developing countries context, these research labs help in accessing and developing trade restricted technologies. They also help increase the nation’s bargaining power at international technology negotiation tables. However, one fundamental flaw with these organizations is that they are designed to fail and falter in long term. Their structures are too bureaucratic, they have low flexibility to hire and disengage talent as the need be, have administrative challenges in matching salary and other benefits to attract the best minds, contribution and engagement with industry is arms-length and have very few sources of revenue generation. Most of the organizations, even those involved in applied science and technology areas, become too dependent on federal grants to survive.

In this background, governments across the world are trying various approaches including privatization to bring in competitiveness and sustainability into these organizations. Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) has reduced its total number of labs from 42 to 38. The federal government defence lab establishment, DRDO is leveraging the business expertise of the private sector by partnering with FICCI to market 40 of its most promising dual-use technologies. 26 of its 50 laboratories are participating in the venture, and the DRDO intends to consolidate and reduce its number of 50 laboratories to manageable less than 10 labs.  Governments have also pursued complete divestment of R&D labs, for example Centre for development of Telematics (C-DOT) has been acquired by Alcatel.

Privatization enables organizations stemmed in the “science and commercialization push” regime of the past to embrace and deliver the “demand pull” of business engagement with markets and customers today. Privatization can yield several benefits. The elimination of bureaucracy allows selective hiring and retaining of manpower, raising overall productivity.  PPPs also enable cost-sharing, while preserving the expertise of technology transfer processes and commercialization techniques. These are areas where the private sector is likely to possess a strategic advantage, both in experience and business acumen.

What are the necessary elements of privatization that set the tone for success? The experiences of other nations in R&D partnerships offer valuable insights. The United Kingdom has been especially successful in privatization of its government-owned R&D entities. Through a structured approach, identified labs are driven to satisfy a set of defined goals, typically consisting of cost recovery through sale of products or services, cost reductions and meeting task deadlines within allocated budgets.  Labs are exposed to participating in the market-based tendering process and are gradually moved away from their association with the government. Post privatization, labs continued to receive government orders and obtain funding through statutory government processes for a limited period.  The United States has approached privatization of public research labs through direct private participation in R&D consortiums, or by adopting a Government Owned Contractor Operated (GOCO) model. European nations such as Norway, Sweden and Finland have pursued some hybrid models of privatization, mostly preserving government ownership but with significant private sector policy adoptions.

Given this diversity in the approach to privatization, what model has works best for countries like India?. While there are no informed analysis on the approaches the outcomes yet, successes and failures of privatization is salient upon: (1) a clear objective to facilitate the building of necessary capital, after evaluating market potential (2) creation of a collaborative environment conducive to the sharing of technical know-how (3) attraction of the greatest minds with top class talent across the country (4) a smooth technology transfer process across establishments to enable successful commercialization of a product or proprietary knowledge. Certainly, there is no ‘cookie cutter’ approach to be applied to all R&D facilities owned by the government. Each entity should be evaluated for its contribution to the technology pool of the country, and more importantly, assessed on whether conversion to the private sector will possibly make the entity more productive and efficient.  An additional factor to consider is the uniqueness of the lab in terms of human resources, processes and infrastructure. A government R&D lab with unique research resources and facilities is likely to have a network of research relationships that extends beyond government agencies. Increasing the competitiveness of the R&D sector will determine whether India can sustain its S&T advantages over time, while catering to our national interests of security and economic development.

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ELEMENTARY, MR WATSON, “FOCUS”!!

Polaris announced separation of its products and service divisions. Infosys also announced separation of its products and platform division from the rest of services. So why are Indian software companies rushing to redefine SBU? What is the grand strategy in creating separate divisions?  Has this happened in other industries too?

More than a decade ago, World class manufacturing (WCM) companies, realized the value of focus and dedication. Companies like Toyota, Copeland corporation (part of Emerson group) and others have implemented simple 3 link WCM method to ensure their SBU’s are profitable. First, these companies separated the production lines that required high customization and low volume from those that were high volume and highly standardized ones. Second, the management process focused on efficiency and utilization in one group, while the other was aligned to capturing customer requirement and eliminating rework and waste.  Manpower resources with different skills are aligned for different SBU. High customization and low volume require resources with significant experience, often with ability to work independently. On the other hand, younger workforce may be better suited to high volume, standardized production set-ups. Finally, the incentive structures will be aligned differently for these two groups. More individual, piece-oriented incentives for high volume set-ups and group based for low volume customization set-up.

Service businesses, including hospitality, have adopted similar strategy. Hotel properties have been grouped into business, leisure and luxury with separate branding, customer experience and resources. Indian IT industry, which has enjoyed the benevolent market friendly years till now, is at cross roads. Companies understand product business with higher EBITAs, longer sales and implementation cycles and higher investments in terms of people and expertise is much different from service business. Unlike service business, the product business is sticky, monetization and protection of services is much higher and highly scalable. Product business require not just good software engineers, but also people who can bring years of domain experience to help you  build state-of-art products. Partner ecosystem can help in increasing the reach, entry barriers are high and complementary strategies can be effectively deployed to grow business. Service business, are high on “commoditization” axis, suffer from lower EBITA’s, have higher receivable cycles and associated working capital woes. If your company engages with government, additional Bank guarantees (BG) and approval cycles test the nerve of CFO.

Indian software companies have to quickly realize the intrinsic value of each business and see how they could be cut loose to grow independently. Indian companies have to quickly learn to move beyond “Business as usual (BAU)”, and adopt sensible strategies to defend and grow business. Expect more companies to streamline operations, bring dedicated focus in SBU, and align tighter organizational process and measurement systems.

[browneandmohan]

MAKE CUSTOMERS OWN STORIES AROUND YOUR PRODUCT/SERVICES.

Creating a memorable experience for customers is what makes a customer come back again. Unique products and experiences make a customer talk about the product and the company. Designing and creating this unique experience requires “sensemaking”. It is all about understanding how the customer would be consuming your product/service, what associations trigger when consuming it and what settings drive “stickiness” and loyalty. Both online and offline business are finding ways to involve the customer in creating their own stories of association and personalize the experience better.

The best examples are from street food stars. One such joint allows customers to customize the topping on dosa (Pancakes), in fact they claim to be a 100 dosa joint. Customers regale how they recommended the variety and some of them are named after their customers. Another unique joint, is Tom’s restaurant in Bangalore, which allows you to create a product, taste it and approve it for others to consume. Kapil 65 is a good old chicken recipe that has been created by a customer in the euphoria of Indian winning the world cup and it is still a crowd puller. Tom’s has a wall where the customer’s name is inscribed with the dish and experience. Consumers as co-creators and idea generators is well understood and Eric Von Hippel of MIT has done ground breaking work on user-led innovations.

Hotels & resorts design unique interfaces for customers to share their experiences and influence decision-making of others. Vintage hotels benefit largely by actively persuading their customers to share and post their experience. However, the major challenge in customer stories is the authenticity of user and their experience. Most website, only have text recommendations and many of the names may look suspect or sponsored. Creating a platform for authentic customer stories requires to understand what people may like to see in the content and how they can relate to the experience. One of the most unique examples for building customer stories is Fabfurnish.com. They have a separate section called “Customer Stories” on their social media page where a customer can upload a personalized photo of the product (furniture or décor) at their house and they also write their experience of shopping and how helpful was Fabfurnish.com with their purchase. This personalized form of review would not only help the business grow but also ensures the loyalty of the customer for their next purchase.

Kaarthik Shakthi R

Junior Consultant – Marketing & Social Media

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CSR AUDIT AND MANAGEMENT THROUGH RBM

Recently the Government of India has promulgated an order as per the Companies Act 2013 that stipulate companies with a turnover of Rs. 1,000 crore or more or net worth of Rs. 500 crore or more or net profit of Rs. 5 crore spend every year at least 2 per cent of their average net profit over the preceding three years as a part of CSR. According to the Indian Institute of Corporate Affairs, of the 1.3 million companies in India, about 6,000-7,000 companies are covered under the new CSR rule, expecting an annual CSR spending of Rs 15,000-20,000 crore by India.CSR is the commitment of businesses to contribute to sustainable economic development by working with employees, their families, the local community and society at large, to improve their lives in ways that are good for business and for development (World Bank). Companies realize CSR can be successfully used to 1) create brand awareness, 2) increase employee participation and bonding, 3) improve community relationships and 4) ensure corporate accountability. Many companies are pursuing CSR as an obligation rather than focussing it as a strategic program with long term benefits. Most common statement one hears in the corporate corridors is that they have engaged an NGO to distribute food or plant trees or blood donation camps. Managing CSR must start with what are your corporate objectives?. What social activities are consistent with your founding principles and business?. What values do your want your employee want to enshrine and be associated with?.  

We suggest companies first do a CSR audit and then use RBM to manage the CSR process incorporating the best of GRI G4 and ISO 26000:2010 guidelines. CSR audit can be done by internal resources or external consultants. The first step in CSR is to assess your current practices and any violations from your CSR charter. Start with your mission statement, and CSR mandate and check whether any of your vendors, employees have violated any of the principles. Do an RCA and identify approaches to stem the outlier. Evaluate how your customers and employees think about your company, competitors and how your business plans are consistent with the mission mandate. Assess positives and negatives, the trends and directions to chalk out the next steps. Once an CSR as-is evaluation is done, share it internally to get feedback on the status and what areas could be improved.

Next, do a benchmark analysis covering industry-wide ethical practices, corporate code of conduct best practices, what social cause programs have yielded the best results and why, what have not worked, what are the trends, etc. Forecast the next 5 years investments set-aside for CSR activities, what CSR activities can add value to the society and the organization in terms of impact and branding. Identify which NGO activities and plans align with your short-term and long-term goals. Use Result based management (RBM), a strategy management tool for planning and performance evaluation to align the investments across various projects of different NGOs. RBM helps to measure the result of the activities periodically and emphasize more on what is to be accomplished. RBM has various dimensions. Results are realistic, risks are identified and managed and appropriate indicators are used to monitor the progress of the expected results. These indicators help the organization in assessing whether or not the activities are yielding the desired results. RBM helps to bring clarity on the purpose of the programme and the desired results from the very beginning. RBM captures the progress of activities in short, medium and long term, thus helping your company know how CSR is working, what activities are yielding the most and what partner activities are most promising. CSR is an important element to just outsource, own and manage it to see better business impact.

Pratibha Sharma and Deepesh M 

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ALIGN REWARDS AND RECOGNITION (R&R) WITH EMPLOYEE LIFE-CYCLE FOR BETTER RESULTS.

Rewards and recognition (R&R) are important levers for an organization. They must help to motivate the employees, recognize and applaud their contributions and help improve bonding and association with the organization. Unfortunately, many organizations imitate industry norms and do not weigh how their R&R system is making a difference in recognizing the superior performance and bonding. Organizations also do not realize the R&R systems must be aligned with the life-cycle needs of the employee. While cash incentives may be highly appreciated at junior level, they alone may not be enough to sustain senior professionals. Crafting rewards transcending multiple generations requires systematic thinking. According to Laura Reeves (2010) worker’s stage of life typically has five stages namely (1) Pre-career stage, (2) Early career stage, (3) Mid career stage, (4) late career stage and (5) encore career stage. Also there exists four generations in today’s workforce. It is critical to sharpen our focus on attracting and retaining this diverse talent base.

Pre career workers are fresher out of college, with lots of hope and exuberance. Many join the worforce as interns, volunteers, or part time employees. Early career workers are those who embark on their careers with limited experience in a chosen field. For example a college graduate or a stay at home parent entering the work force for the first time. Mid career workers are those who make critical career decisions like shifting priority from career to family after two or three roles in an organization or sector, frequently before moving from one job to the next. These people have held four to six career roles and vary widely in organizational levels, from manager to VP. Late careerprofessionals are those who have moved among multiple organizations or have been employed long term with one organization. They are likely to remain with their current organizations. Generally, individuals in this stage are nearing optional retirements or traditional retirement age. Encore careerstage workers are those whose priority is to make a social impact, rather than build their credentials or maximize their income.

The question in red is that “what do employees need at various stages of their career and what must companies offer?”   Rewards such as spot recognition, post –it, certifications, awards from other organizations, volunteer tree (recognize volunteer by planting a sapling in their name) could be given to pre career stage workers.

Rewards such as Bonus, field visit to other countries, training and development, attending workshops/ conferences and public recognition for deserving workers, signature products(like bags or accessories non profit’s logo), participation in campaigns could be given to early career stage workers.  Rewards like educational opportunities, T&D, flexi time, attending workshops, allocation of special project /responsibilities, decision making participatory, public recognition, exposure to media, financial planning services, participatory decision making, providing long term career prospects could be given to mid career stage workers. Rewards such as pension, decision making, flexi time, education opportunities for their children could be given to late career stage workers.

Few rewards have low cost, high engagement and have appeal across multiple career stages, such as Coaching, Empowering culture, parking spaces, Incentive compensation, subsidized meals/clothing, housing allowance, flexi time, peer to peer reward and wellness. Companies must employ the complete set of R&R systems to attract and retain a diverse work force.

S Indu Priya and Dipna Ramdas

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10 posts!