Who needs Business Intelligence and Shared Services anyways?

Picture this, You are a high profile Entreprenuer heading a midsized organization or a VP working for a Fortune 500 company.

You are strategist, visionary and talented honcho,who is looking for newer opportunities to expand your companies horizon.

You also know that improving operational efficiency and doing "kaizan" will give enough needed cushion for your team to execute business operations much better,than otherwise.

• How do I improve operational efficiency?
• With Budgets shrinking,no net new customers getting added,how do i increase my profitability?
• In what departments I need to increase budgets, how is the budget increase justified?
• Can I do an M & A to increase my new customer base? But that also squeezes my current cashflow and does not improve my balance sheet.
  I have to improve my sales efficiency, Sales operation effectiveness without affecting the existing setup
• I have to decrease my IT spend,increase operative effectiveness
  
• In order to improve my marketing effectiveness ,do i have enough resources who can do the execution and still not worry about the mundanes of updating the systems and operations
• How do i increase my process effeciencies?
• Do I need to buy new softwares to achieve where I need to be?

These are some of many questions that any Mid size to large size organizations would be facing.

If you have more of these questions ,and if you answered "Yes" to most of these questions above , you will need help from a Shared Services who will help you in getting where you want to go,and leverage best practices ,to attain good operational effiencies.

These questions time and again haunt every other entreprenuer,but one of the approaches to make it happen is set a low cost shared services organization, this will not only free up your valuable resources but also to concentrate and focus on important organization/business priorities.

Another thing that always pops up is :

My marketing spend is too much ,I have not got good quality leads so far, many of the opportunities are getting lost due to competition. What should I do?

I am spening my marketing budget on the third party leads , All the leads that my marketing
folks do the cold calls, most of them are bad leads ,how do i prevent eroding precious dollars?

Some Camapigns do extremely well in bring opportunities and getting coverted to order, but others do not why ?

Do i know my customer pretty well? What is he buying ? What is his consuming patterns?
What are his preferences?

Can i do an upsell or a cross sell to him ?

If you answered a "may be" or a "no" then you would defienitely want to have Business Intelligence solution in place. This not only leverages the existing businesses , but also pin points
on the basis of data ,of what you need to do, what decisions you need to take etc.


If you have more questions on Shared Services and Business Intelligence ,please do write to me @ rajeev.raghunath@gmail.com ,I will be happy to answer them.

Need for Shared Services?

Many of the big MNC 's have already established their captives in India,There are many Business process outsourcing organizations running operations based on clients who have outsourced to these organizations.

One may wonder,in this recession should we start investing in shared services ? or should we outsource to keep businesses running.

Both are ok ,as long as businesses prosper.But investing in shared services provides a lots of intrinsic value
1) the internal processes gets streamlined
2) increased productivity,
3)increased efficiency and effectiveness

Instead of investing a lot of money by having all the regions run their own marketing , duplicating efforts ,the shared services gives a lot of flexibility in allowing a centralized setup to take over the regular operations .

The strategy and planning in the initial setup days will be very heavy ,once the processes are streamlined ,the flexibility to move up in the strategic chain moving from Business process oriented organization to Knowledge process oriented organization (KPO) will allow not only to leverage on process ,but also give the flexibility to innovate .

The people who know nuts and bolts of the process get involved + the people who are strategically involved in creation of shared services across the world ,this synergy will create a way to make decisions at a higher level easier.

My Shared Services Experience as a Director

Many of you may be wondering ,what it takes to set up a shared services center, I am attempting to put forth the challenges in creating a shared services center:


My journey into shared services ,and setting up the entire Global Marketing Shared Services center in India was an amazing feat to live through , It all happened when I was in GDS(NAIO) inside Oracle, I was presented an opportunity to work for Oracle Marketing @ Oracle.
First I was leading a Data Management solution ,to automate cleansing of contact and account data ,presenting reports to the upper management within marketing. I worked on a large Datawarehouse , building small datamarts for data to be cleansed and loaded back to the system

There were plenty of instances of data lying with various people, inside their computers,with various systems , now there was no strategy developed so far how these data inside various systems were combined as one single system. We had a real difficult situation ,for not only pulling up the data but also of a different nature , to inculcate a Governance model for automating data.

This was also political in nature, as there were Data owners were IT owned and not marketing owned

We did plan a strategy to have an entire Data Management Group to make Database Marketing
robust .

After starting the shared services,

The most important challenge ,was to show that POC shared services work, It not only takes ones skill in convincing others ,but convincing oneself that you are going in the right direction.

There were also fears that one may loose their jobs ,as it was a mandate from top management to plan and develop a shared service center in India.

More in my next blog post

Best Management Books

Books that you want to read
1 Adler: How to Read a Book
2 Boyatzis & McKee: Resonant Leadership: Renewing Yourself and Connecting with Others through Mindfulness, Hope and Compassion
3 Kotter: Heart of Change
4 Bridges: Managing Transitions
5 Buckingham: First Break all the Rules
6 Dotlich, Noel and Walker: Leadership Passages
7 Conger: Winning 'Em Over
8 DePree: Leadership is an Art
9 Frankl: Man's Search for Meaning
10 Friedman: The World is Flat
11 George: Authentic Leadership
12 Ghandi: the video
13 Goleman: Working with Emotional Intelligence
14 Hammerschlag: The Theft of the Spirit
15 Jamison: Nibble Theory
16 Katzenbach: The Wisdom of Teams
17 Lencioni: Death by Meeting: A Leadership Problem about Solving the most Painful Problem in Business
18 Machiavelli: The Prince
19 Mackenzie: Orbiting the Giant Hairball
20 Marquardt: Leading with Questions: How Leaders Find the Right Solutions by Knowing What to Ask
21 O'Toole: Creating the Good Life
22 Patterson: Crucial Conversations
23 Rousseau & Cranston: The Social Contract
24 Shafir: The Zen of Listening
25 Jaworski: Synchronicity
26 Useem: Leadership Moment
27 Wallis: Two Old Women
28 Whyte: The Heart Aroused
29 Ishiguro: Never Let Me Go
30 Michalko: Thinkertoys

Good Restaurants in Bangalore

Want to know about good restaurants in Bangalore?

Pure Vegetarian
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Gramin - Koramangala (Next to Raheja Arcade)/North Indian
MTR - Mavalli Tiffin Room ( Ph Number:2222-0022)/Good South Indian Restaurant
Vasudev Adiga - ( 4th block,Jayanagar next to Tanishq Showroom) South Indian/North Indian
Vidyarthi Bhavan ( Gandhi bazaar Main Road) - Good for Masala Dosa- I love it (More than 60 years old restaurant)

Non Vegetarian/Vegetarian
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SSS - Sahib Sindh Sultan (The Forum ,Koramangala)
Kandahar ( Kabul - Persian Restaurant) - Near Shivajinagar

Salad Bar Restaurants
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Pure and Naturals ( Opp to National College,Jayanagar)
The Pineapple Chat is very good and the milkshake - OASIS is what I love.

Let me know if u like my favorite restaurants, i can add more.