The League of Extraordinary Men and Women....

The biggest privilege that I have had is the exceptional people I have met, been friends with, been taught by and have worked with.  There are some who I met briefly in a fleeting situation and some who I know and continue to know. There are millions on this planet that are more than mundane and accomplished, people who have enriched the world and others' lives.

 

These people come in different shapes and sizes, from different nationalities, different areas of profession, different economic strata, different cultural and religious background, different approach to life and things around and in all kinds of varieties. At times it is the situations that bring out their luster

 

Not all are demonstrably humble but broadly all are reasonable, some are sarcastic but laced with experience, intelligence and accomplishment, all are great communicators not in the verbal sense but in actions - in fact some of these don't even have a strong academic background not a strong vocabulary in the conventional sense. Their choice of words are always earthly and appropriate. They are kind to others in their own unique way, they many not be submissive but not abrasive and they are independent - their lives are not dependent on others doing things to them. There are others that look up to them. They are generous in giving what they have. Every one of these is a source of knowledge. They can set a right perspective to a situation. Without them one bulb in a gamut is without fuse. The world is dark by one such individual if lost.

 

What is it that they are not - they are not frivolous, they don't accept mediocrity, they neither see, hear or do things at a superficial level. They are not obstructive, they do not crave for unnecessary attention. Yes, the one fallacy that I see is that they expect recognition - not always in the form of that elaborate ceremonial decoration but something on the lines of a subtle nod or so.

 

Why such a long story today. To thank the many who I haven't thanked before, to acknowledge and express my gratitude. Some situations make people exceptional, some are inborn - not all will be published in news papers. Many don't even know what influence they have on others.

 

I wish I am always with these exceptional people and God showers with me with many such privileges.

 

 

In the Oasis of Desert......

In Miles of your walking, Worshiping the Sun

Speeding with Camels and Stopping for none

Now in the Oasis in the middle of the Desert

Count all your pellets and all you call mine

Take out the grains and Sieve it through time

Chaff out of Wheat and the real out of lie

The real is the one that glows more with time

Keep close to heart for the comfort at night

Mixed in the Melee, Wrapped deep inside

Find out that Lotus in the marshy twilight

For all the circles you’ve covered through the dunes

There’ll be that One Jewel, that fruit of your chores

Forget the Marsh and forget the Chaff

In the Oasis of Desert where you rest and relax

Learn to pick next the diamond that glows

The light of the Diamond that comfort the roads 

The real hero of Gujarat.................Amitabh Bachan :)

You bet....we know that Gujarat is a great place to be because Amitabh Bachchan said that on TV and Radio..How many knew that Gir, Somnath and other places that he spoke about was in Gujarat until Mr. Bachchan said that in his Baritone voice.

Okay...let us count now, how many people think that living in Ahmedabad is better than living in Bengaluru, Mumbai, Hyderabad or Delhi. Would a UP laborer rather work in Mumbai or in Surat. Even the Ambanis (who are Gujarati if you didn't know) live in Mumbai. But we all know that that the place to emulate is Gujarat, because Mr. Bachchan says so.

...And the Chief Minister of Gujarat is Shri. Narendra Modi....

Let me be upfront, this is not meant to be a pro or anti Modi note but an appreciation of the marketing strategy and an indication on how to create association and ensure that you grow as the associated entity grows.

Of course Nitish Kumar has to wait for sometime before he can do this, Bihar has to be fixed but Gujarat is okay. One cannot say that Gujarat is bad, one cannot say Gujarat is not developed and one cannot say that Gujaratis are communal ---- these cannot be done in politics. There may be some negative association but it is good for the proponents if the other side live in a glass house too.

It is not illegitimate to take credit at all. If Mr. Modi has developed Gujarat then he can take enough and more credit for it. It is for the voter to decide the extent of Mr. Modi's contribution. But who will tell the voter - Ta Dan .... enter Mr. Bachchan.

Is this any different from corporate world advertising.......

...Another thousand miles over the last week end.

This was on road over the last week end to the north of Bangalore with an interesting set of people.

A few things that I noticed.

a) The road condition has improved considerably, lot of people on the way told me when asked that this Vajpayee effect. I did also see boards that said Prime Minister's funds for rural roads that was initiated by Manmohan Singh. I saw nice and powerful cars in small towns and the economies flourishing every where - if not for IT these small towns are big commercial centers.

b) People's familiarity with IT, Media and Politics is very high in rural Karnataka. In my opinion more than in Urban Areas. I feel it is easy to win in Urban centers with a wave. Rural people are more discerning - except for the very poor whose priorities are basic and sometimes not something that the so called activist population may not relate to. This is a direct outcome of education and access to information. Everybody I spoke to have access to 24X7 news and news papers. I spoke to one person who wanted to get publicity on the internet. He wanted to have a membership of 25000 people (let me not use this blog to do his job yet) and said let as many people know about it. Marketing is not just sitting in glamorous places and checking graphs alone, there has to be an acumen to it.

c) I was surprised with the sophistication of people, of their language and the food. While we urbanites give preference to speaking softly they are concerned about speaking to get the job done, while we use cautious words they are sensitive of road manners and giving way, while we are concerned about diet they have a balanced diet. While we learn to earn a living they learn the way of living. I think it was education that was missing and the last mile is infrastructure, with these done  I can see cities emptying. Also I did 700 kms in 9 hours with a couple of breaks and some bad road in between. Not bad at all. Travelling a few hundred kms will no longer be a big deal even if you  have to work in a nearby city.

d) I did see the impact of mining. Between  for about 50 kms the road has gone to dogs with trucks moving and I did see trucks waiting to get into mines and causing traffic jams. I hope the benefit of these activities accrues to the infrastructure and people there.

There is always something to learn, cities in India have always been the centers for learning and earning. I am beginning to enjoy these long drives. Going abroad is good but there is no salvation if you do not know your back yard.

...Collaborative Software Platform between Enterprises....

This is a reality in corporate banking space. There are enough "connections" between corporate and banks for payments and now a real time instruction transfer is a reality. I have myself  delivered two such connections for payments and bank statement reconciliations and have been part of various other discussions.

The discussions have now gone beyond with banks wanting to manage the treasury desk at the corporate. When we started broaching this three years ago the interest was mainly in the form of a factory and a shared service centers driven by payments and to some extent cash management. In the last three months after discussing with about half a dozen banks in Asia Pacific, I am convinced of the direction that corporate banking relationship will be taking - that the internal processes of the corporate whether on ERP or otherwise will be integrated to bank's operations.

It could be approval of credits, guarantees, hedging or even providing tax and working capital advisory or for that matter help creating a financial supply chain linking business through a network that they own or work on. The last is an even interesting proposition that will enable collaboration between Business, big, small or mix match for collaboration even without banks involvement - to check stock needs upstream, downstream or so. 

For a starter, the nuts and bolts are already there. The payment connection that is now getting stabilized - either host to host that we did between SAP ERP and bank's network or using networks like SAP FSN and SWIFT SCORE exist - which can be used as the back bone for any further collaboration. SAP ARIBA is another network that allows collaboration between parties. In addition, a big bottleneck to harmonize the language of communication has been addressed in the form of ISO20022 XML messages. The huge body of work that has been incorporated in this standard provides a comprehensive list of data dictionary that can help integration.

What is left to do in the larger scheme of things is actually small. To prioritize offerings and get the data elements for transfer on both ends. I give five years before when the integration will become seamless and also a hygiene requirement for banks. I see this easier to do on the corporate side - all they have to agree to part with the data. The challenge with banks will be to move their large mainframe monsters or even their complex infrastructure to address this new world. An approach they may take could be to separate these services from the core like they did when they moved CRM outside the core till such a time a product or a service is created in the core. Till that time an application would cycle through the stages in a customer relationship module that is accessed across channels. Perhaps these services are best way to get into the cloud world, offering a desk on the cloud for their corporate, out-sourcing infrastructure entirely. 

Banking unlike the ERP world continues to be niche - despite harmonization of process globally. Large Banks continue to have abysmally large IT departments and continue to avoid getting into packaged software - particularly for core operations. Perhaps an experiment into the cloud world offered by many large scale providers can help banks rationalize the cost and get access to the latest technologies.

Which ever way, I can see a new exciting phase for IT. 

My interest has always been for retail customers of the bank. While we speak of banks offering to man treasury desks for corporates, definitely for SME the same can be extended to retail customers. This will spawn a wide variety of software that can be downloaded on various online stores we have - Appstore, playstore or whatever and club it with India's ADHAAR experiment.

We are up for exciting phase, just look at the number of retailers in your town that are not connected but need to. 

...The Light that Shows and the Light that Covers

The scorching sun the pleasant moon

The chilling cold and the soothing warmth

The long days and the cozy nights

A single day in so many ways

That dirty race and here the divine grace

Unknown face that paves the ways

Clear titles knotted in riddles

Unseen lands with hearts clear

Muddy waters where lotus grace

Clear streams with whirlpool maze

The light that shows and the light that covers

Same source but perspectives differs

...The real Banking....Balanced Books Fair and Square

Scales of accounts

Tilted by schemes

Many many views

To write off the dues

New songs abound

The unfinished dropped 

Abandoned words

All time wrapped

Hold up the Sand Grains

but time flows free

Transfer the books 

to the master referee

The elements of time

Recorded in air

In master's books

It is all fair and square