Consumer Packaged Goods Data & Analytic Solutions Digital Business Infrastructure Management Knowledge Management Marketing & Strategy People Policies & Practices Product Engineering Service Excellence & Methodologies Technology Trends Testing Travel, Hospitality & Leisure

A number of factors are shaping CPG organizations worldwide. A few key trends worth mentioning are - mobile technology adoption, increased demand for brand engagement, real-time consumer advocacy, strong competition from private labels, striving for retail excellence, collaboration with customers, insourcing core and outsourcing non-core ...

Sales Baseline – The million dollar question in Trade Promotion Management

Posted by Praveen Srivatsa in

Consumer Packaged Goods

Feb 23, 2012 | Total views: 257

Over the past few years, I’ve been attending workshops with business teams on aligning business processes with Trade Promotion Management Optimization (TPM & TPO) systems. These sessions would typically lead to broad level agreements on processes across different functional areas touching finance, sales, marketing and ...

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The 2011 New Jersey HR Leadership Summit

Posted by Robert Finnis in

Data & Analytic Solutions

Aug 2, 2011 | Total views: 324

On 2nd June, I attended the ‘2011 New Jersey HR Leadership Summit’ organized by Evanta, at the New Brunswick Hyatt. The event was well attended, drawing HR leaders from Connecticut, New Jersey, New York and Pennsylvania. The governing body and event planners did a great ...

HR Data Management - Your Key to a Successful HCM Program and Analytics Strategy

Posted by Robert Finnis in

Data & Analytic Solutions

May 24, 2011 | Total views: 497

Having an employee data plan relieves the pain many HR organizations are experiencing today around consistent reporting, regulatory compliance, implementing Service Oriented Architecture (SOA), and Software as a Service (SaaS). It’s also a prerequisite for implementing a successful HR Data Analytics program. Traditionally one might think “data” ...

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The Smart Machine – A Win-Win Proposition

Posted by Manish Grover in

Digital Business

May 14, 2012 | Total views: 118

Gone are the days when payments were made by card. Now, it is that time when a consumer at a ball game waves her hand in front of a vending machine, and it dispenses her favorite drink along with a mobile coupon to share with ...

Can Gamification help achieve better adoption?

Posted by Vinay Dixit in

Digital Business

Apr 30, 2012 | Total views: 188

You can lead a horse to water but you can't make him drink. This proverb holds a lot of meaning in almost everything we do in our life, especially when we implement technology to do 'stuff'. Technology can enable enterprises to become operationally more efficient ...

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Approval Systems – Public and Private Clouds

Posted by Giridhar LV in

Infrastructure Management

Apr 18, 2012 | Total views: 124

In any organization, you know that there is a defined process to raise a request for all your needs. This request then goes to your manager for approval. If approved, your wish is granted and you are happy. At MindTree too, we have a request/approval ...

IaaS – Past, Present and Future

Posted by Giridhar LV in

Infrastructure Management

Apr 11, 2012 | Total views: 137

IaaS or Infrastructure as a Service has been prominent since the time Amazon launched the EC2 or Elastic Compute offering. But, was there no IaaS before EC2? Infrastructure in the computing world has defined everything starting from server hosting Data Centers to servers, storage, networking, cabling, ...

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What’s in it for me? (WIIFM)

Posted by Sagar Paul in

Knowledge Management

Nov 14, 2011 | Total views: 409

How do we increase participation in communities? A good number of people join us from college campuses and a bigger number are lateral hires. This is a challenge, but also a great opportunity for us. I like to picture ourselves running up an escalator that ...

When you are an expert on something, where do you learn from?

Posted by Sagar Paul in

Knowledge Management

Oct 28, 2011 | Total views: 285

What do we do to learn? what is there to learn? - Conversations and questions. In this era of hyperspecialization, each one of us is an expert in something. Good use of the knowledge we have is dependent on adjacent knowledge and knowledge of things ...

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Micro-marketing – the three Key Principles

Posted by Manish Grover in

Marketing & Strategy

Jan 20, 2012 | Total views: 217

Micro-marketing, which is about understanding, segmenting and targeting markets at a local level and also at an individual level is an important business analysis and planning tool. It helps to establish stronger relationships with customers and partners, boosts revenue realization and also improves operational efficiencies. ...

Digital Channels can help Marketing Entry Barriers

Posted by Manish Grover in

Marketing & Strategy

Jan 9, 2012 | Total views: 130

In this post, we look at an interesting question: How can emerging digital channels reduce marketing entry barriers? While physical barriers such as access and communication across geographic locations are often the easiest to tackle using digital channels, there are other significant challenges that product ...

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Feedback: A Breakfast for Champions

Posted by Naganagouda S Jakkanagoudar in

People Policies & Practices

Dec 19, 2011 | Total views: 391

Every soul is potentially divine and all of us are born genius, but some people fail to recognize the genius in them and lead a mediocre life. We live in a competitive world where collective performances drive success, happiness and emotional engagement with organizations. As ...

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The Perplexed Scrum Master

Posted by Raja Bavani in

Product Engineering

Apr 17, 2012 | Total views: 287

This situation is based on a real life experience, about a project that started four months ago with a team of eight in India and five in the United States. Alan is the onsite manager and Naresh’s customer. Naresh works for an Offshore Service Provider. ...

The Rule of Two Feet

Posted by Raja Bavani in

Product Engineering

Mar 27, 2012 | Total views: 317

Popularly known as ‘Agile India Conference 2012’, the International Conference on Agile and Lean Methods organized in Bangalore last month had an overwhelming response. It was a three-day conference with seven parallel tracks comprising of sessions based on a collection of topics. These topics were ...

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Customer Management Vs Customer Expectation Management

Posted by Amit Kumar in

Service Excellence & Methodologies

Apr 20, 2012 | Total views: 202

Indian IT services companies take pride in themselves in building a service oriented mentality over the years, and perfecting the art of customer management. Countless people have highlighted the term “Customer Handling” in their resumes and public profiles. Many people rightfully claim to have perfected ...

Governance - Present and Future

Posted by Manish Grover in

Service Excellence & Methodologies

Jan 13, 2012 | Total views: 136

The concept of governance has taken on new forms and broader definitions over the past decades. As a result of continuous changes in the business and operational landscape, there are several definitions in use - corporate governance, program governance, IT governance, marketing governance, financial governance ...

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Can we truly ensure Smart Grid security?

Posted by Girish Deshpande in

Technology Trends

Mar 5, 2012 | Total views: 299

Smart Grid is an interconnected network of smart devices and IT systems where electricity and information flow freely. This makes an electric grid more reliable. But when systems are connected to a wider network, substantial security risks are incurred. There are three main security concerns ...

Smart Grid Applications go on Cloud

Posted by Girish Deshpande in

Technology Trends

Jan 30, 2012 | Total views: 210

As Smart Grid proliferates across the world, one emerging technology trend is the adoption of technologies like SaaS and Cloud for Smart Grid applications. Many Smart Grid applications are natural candidates for these new business models and many major vendors in this sector have already ...

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My Interactions with Customers – Key issues with partners in outsourcing Testing

Posted by Ananda Rao Ladi in

Testing

May 16, 2012 | Total views: 122

For issues with partners in outsourcing testing, it is always important to go back to basics periodically to check the direction of the issue, and also understand if you are addressing the right problem. During customer engagements, sometimes we get too carried away and miss ...

My Interactions with Customers – Is a separate UAT phase necessary?

Posted by Ananda Rao Ladi in

Testing

Feb 29, 2012 | Total views: 282

Thank you very much for your feedback and encouragement on my blog post series titled “My Interactions with Customers”. The customer is one of the best sources to learn from. I am just sharing that learning with you all. In many IT organizations, it is a ...

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Airline Customer Journey

Posted by Ajay Paul in

Travel, Hospitality & Leisure

Mar 1, 2012 | Total views: 260

“When the moments of truth go unmanaged, the quality of service regresses to mediocrity.” - Karl Albrecht / Ron Zemke Apart from American Airlines, most of the other airlines here in the US have reported profits for this past quarter. The race is on for airlines ...

For a Complete Online Booking Experience

Posted by Ajay Paul in

Travel, Hospitality & Leisure

Dec 16, 2011 | Total views: 283

Vacations and holiday seasons are just around the corner, and families are clamoring for a dream vacation. Most of us have a busy schedule and don’t have time to find the perfect vacation spot. Unfortunately, most travel decisions are made unconsciously. We simply decide without ...

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What is Consulting?

Posted by Amit Varma in

Technology Trends

Jun 19, 2011 | Total views: 1517

Link

Amit Varma
Vice President and Global Head, MindTree Enterprise Solutions and Consulting
More articles by the author

There’s this saying that we should be able to boil any concept down to a level that even a five-year old can understand what’s being spoken of. Easier said than done, right? I don’t know about a five-year old but I must confess that I suffer from the much dreaded mother-in-law syndrome when she asks me to explain what I do for a living. I’ve tried many different ways to explain consulting and software to her, but I must say that I’ve drawn nothing but disparaging looks from her almost saying “what a wasted soul”! In contrast, my wife has it easy as all she does is pick up a Mac or an iPhone and tell her that she works in the company that makes these products and my mother-in-law gets it immediately – the fact that my wife works in the company that manufactures a product that my mother-in-law can touch, feel and see makes all the difference!

Ok, I did digress, but the point I wanted to touch upon is: how do you define consulting? Or, for that matter, how do you define software in simple terms that your grandma (or, the MIL in my case) can understand and hug you for doing such a great job! Honestly, I could do with some help here because I’ve tried everything in my arsenal and drawn a complete blank in all these years of being married.

In my last post Different Views on Consulting, I’d promised to share some views of students of Kellogg but I’ll defer that to another post – I want to get some thoughts from you before I start polluting your views. I’d also like to thank those of you who spent time reading my post – while I truly appreciate the same, I’d really like this to be an interactive dialog between us. I’m pretty sure that most of you know more than me and have perspectives that are more profound. We are now in an age where collective knowledge is viewed as wisdom – so, let’s all get wise and start sharing.

Looking forward to a more lively discussion…

Tags : Business Technology Consulting, Collective Knowledge, Consulting and Software, Consulting Definition., IT Consulting Services, IT Consulting Software, IT Management Consulting, What is Consulting

Comment

Daniel Pacheco says:

July 28, 2011 at 11:50 pm

Consulting is the advice that creates the hardware. Tell your mother – in – law that the Mac or iPhone your wife shows her has been built on the advice you gave. If you had not given the advice there would be no Mac or iPhone for her to see.

Reply
- Amit Varma says:
  
  November 2, 2011 at 1:20 am
  
  Thanks Daniel. On a lighter note, Steve will haunt me for the rest of my life for having said that!
  
  Reply
Kailash says:

October 31, 2011 at 6:14 pm

Well, I work in the consulting business too and I faced the same problem explaining what I do for a living to my prospective in-laws (see in my case it was much tougher because I’d to explain the same unconvincing thing twice). But I picked something from my fiancee’s profession (she is a doctor) which I then applied to my answer – like a doctor analyzes the human body and asks probing questions, analyzes the answers and recommends solutions to overcome the challenge it is facing, I do the same for enterprises. And bingo, they did seem to get it, or atleast havent looked at me with the ‘what a wasted soul’ look since:)

Reply
- Amit Varma says:
  
  November 2, 2011 at 1:14 am
  
  good for you, Kailash! Personalization always works, doesn’t it?
  
  Reply

What is Consulting?

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Amit Varma says:

Kailash says:

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