iBlog (ISACGlobal)

ISACGlobal and Found Mojo partner to provide ‘Mobile Advertising’ and ‘Advanced Analytix’

2010-05-28T10:58:00.000-07:00

Bangalore, India and Chicago, USA – 27th May 2010: ISACGlobal and Found Mojo, Inc today announced their partnership to enable millions of Mobile Advertisers to have a firsthand experience of tracking visitor engagement on their sites.

With this partnership in place, Found Mojo offers brand advertisers the ability to not only reach the addressable mobile audiences but also track their engagement on their sites thus measuring conversion rates and ROI. ISACGlobal’s Site Analytix delivers the industry’s most accurate picture of what’s happening on the site in real time along with the data analysis and integration tools. The partnership is in line with the both the company’s motto of making advertising and analytics accessible to ‘Hoi Polloi’.

“We can't think of a more natural partnership than this between Found Mojo, a brand synonymous with Mobile Advertising and ISACGlobal, the Real Time Internet Analytics modernizer,” said Mr. Haricharan, CEO, ISACGlobal. “Found Mojo being able to provide analytics solutions as a value add to brand advertisers expands our reach globally thus benefitting the end users, driving them to an amazing experience of having visitor engagement levels at finger tips. This creates an opportunity for new revenue. The bottom line would be to move beyond just page views, visits, bounce rates to conversion rates and ROI”

“We are excited about our partnership with ISACGlobal, India’s top analytics company that joins forces with Found Mojo, Chicago’s fastest growing digital and mobile advertising company. Our advertisers no longer need to choose between getting robust data and analysis or an easy user experience;” said Shamsa Chaudhry, CEO, Found Mojo, Inc. “Robust visitor insights combined with online and offline consumer intelligence allow our advertisers to deliver the right message, to the right audience, at the right time. The insight interface of Site Analytix combines the industry’s most intuitive and least complicated analytics experience. Even casual analytics users can quickly uncover and explore changes in key metrics, compare performance across campaigns and channels thus easily sharing data and reports. With this partnership Found Mojo emerges as an end to end provider of Interactive Marketing that is also able to track and measure ROI on every penny spent”.

ISACGlobal’s SiteAnalytix in addition to the real-time data also gives alerts and notes that enables advertisers to spot and share emerging business opportunities or ailing campaigns faster and more efficiently than ever before.

Found Mojo delivers proven mobile solutions across the campaign lifecycle that begin and end with the advertisers’ goals. It also allows advertisers to reach their campaign goals by offering the richest set of tools that includes targeting based on reach, engagement, leads or actions. Found Mojo delivers a suite of both rich and fundamental solutions required to meet each advertiser’s unique needs.

About ISACGlobal:
ISACGlobal is into the business of Analytix with internet analytics as its core competency. Over the last three years, ISACGlobal has clearly been recognized as a Real Time Internet Analytics modernizer which has set a trend with its 80|20 promise where it provides 80% of features of the products of big players in the industry at 20% of their price. ISACGlobal understands the requirements of different verticals, domains and has thus ensures that products are configurable.

About Found Mojo:
Found Mojo is a 360 Degree Interactive Marketing Agency Specializing in Digital and Direct Marketing with core competencies in analyzing the market opportunity and competition, profile, segmentation, analyzing customer behavior. Other services include developing brand communication strategies, integrating mobile and social media tactics, website design, creative and media channel optimization, business measurement, analysis, and reporting. Our offerings include Interactive Technologies, Performance Measurement, and New Media Optimization, Integrated Channel Marketing, Interactive Media, Mobile Technology, Social Media and Loyalty Programs.

An evening with Thathachar

2010-03-24T05:06:00.000-07:00

Sri.Lakshmi Thathachar is a legendary figure in the field of Sanskrit shastras, linguistics and computation. ISAC is fortunate to have him as a consultant in its Sanskrit Business Unit. I recently had an opportunity to spend an evening with him, and it turned out to be a very enriching experience. Sharing bits of the evening with you all…

After more than six months of work, the end of Baalaamodini is almost in sight. So near, and yet, so far… The last major bit of work left is the audio part, and we got the words recorded by Sri. Thathachar last Friday. The recording had been planned for long, and postponed twice, so I was a bit apprehensive about whether it would work out that day.

I reached his house by 3.15 PM, slightly ahead of time. He let me in, and continued a conversation on his mobile. From what I heard, he was guiding somebody about a research project. He was quoting easily from some ancient text, focussing on how those principles remain true to this day. I looked around, and found a book dealing with the growth of philosophical reasoning in the West. Also on the table were some hand-written notes on education systems and ideas to improve them, and something on comparative study of scientific and traditional knowledge systems. I was just wondering on the range of his thinking, when he finished the conversation and turned to me.

“Let’s not waste time till the car arrives”, he said, and turned to a review of our product. As always, I was impressed with the clarity of his thoughts, and his attention to detail. It was like having sight of both the forest as a whole, and the trees individually. In ten minutes, I had a page full of suggestions, and I began to dread Anandan’s reaction to this  In between this, he kept throwing in ideas for further projects – speech generation, kosha project, mapping of sounds, language analysis…. My head was buzzing. True that I had doubts about some of them - I am one of those people in a trishanku-sthiti – neither here nor there. I can neither believe all our traditions without questioning, nor can I reject them wholly. I always get a wistful feeling when I am with people who have so much faith about what they do. Of course, I can always defend myself saying that I’m a very sensible person, and will think objectively.. But somehow, that fails to convince myself...

The car arrived by then, and took us to the recording studio in Hebbal. It went off very smoothly, thankfully. The people at the studio were very helpful. The recording went on for two hours, with just a 5-minute break in between. I was amazed. At his age, to talk for so long, without even having a glass of water in between… The contrast was apparent the very next day, when I was hoarse with less than an hour of chanting something..

We then went to the Le Meridian for a meeting with a guru from the Tibetian monastery at Bailukuppe, the principal of a school in Bangalore, and a wandering foreigner from Singapore. Most of the conversation revolved around natural farming, and holistic education. Such a strange setting for a conversation of that kind, I thought, and such a strange assortment of people... Sri Thathachar once again revealed his encyclopaedic knowledge of the traditions and systems going back as far as the Vedic period. Not just that, he also has vast knowledge of the people who are practising such things today. I enjoyed the discussion immensely. As we walked out into the night, I was thinking of his motto – Bridging the gulf between the past and the present for the future, he said… The evening had given me lots of food for thought – about the past, the present, and the future.

Sowmya K R

Project Intern, ISACGlobal

Sanskrit for Information Technology & Information Technology for Sanskrit

2010-03-24T04:46:00.000-07:00

Often we have seen articles and essays about ancient rishis and their contributions to Science, technology, etc. Research Scientists and Knowledge workers have come out with principles embedded in the Paninian grammar that are being used to solve day to day problems of impersonation, security, etc.

An overview of these knowledge systems suggest that there is lot to be unearthed and we understand that Sanskrit as a language stand at the core of these areas.

There are two scenarios that can exist here. We could have “IT Serving the need for Sanskrit & Lingusitics” and we can have “Sanskrit Serving the needs of Information Technology ”. Both these areas are important and needs to be nurtured and grown to its full potential.

IT Serving the need for Sanskrit and Lingusitics

E-learning, Academic tools, Tools for linguistic experts and learners ( search engine, sort facility, text to speech, speech to text, Optical Character Recognition , etc ) can take the experience of the users to the next level and definitely IT is a great enabler.

The current trend in India has been that most of the research institutions and universities have taken up the cause of addressing these, however there is a greater need for private organizations to work in these areas and give an impetus to these with the help of improved technology, faster delivery and processes.

Sanskrit Serving the needs of Information Technology

To work in this area demands a high level of multi disciplinary research, involvement of multi dimensioned and multi skilled people. The principles that are found in the ancient texts, shaastras need to be extracted and relevance to Information Technology & businesses be discovered. Some of the areas that could be focused include knowledge compression techniques, information security, impersonation, brain mapping etc. As we go deep into these we may be surprised probably, we could even invent systems, write programmes, implement & have an ecosystem that has tools and systems embedded with principles from our ancient texts that could replace our current way of working and make our life better.

Venkatasubramanian P

Co-Founder, CKO and VP-Functional Specialists

ISACGlobal

Embedded Analytics: a system engineering approach

2010-03-24T04:40:00.000-07:00

Embedded Analytics, is a buzz word which has been used extensively by everyone in the recent past. Lots of companies including SAP have written about it. Reading all these articles published by CTO’s of these organizations, I strongly feel that people have broadly limited the scope of Embedded Analytics in their definitions.

What is Embedded Analytics?

According to the community embedding analytics into a workflow which enables the business users to understand the trends with latest information on-demand is embedded analytics. To simplify, enterprise reporting, embedded into work flow with authentication is embedded analytics. Embedded analytics has been viewed as a real-time reporting tool. Organizations working on Embedded analytics have started building reporting IDES to embed into workflows. BI organizations also are taking the same approach to embed BI reporting into work flows.

Embedded Analytics re-defined

I would like to redefine the scope of embedded analytics before discussing the approach.Embedded analytics is a framework in which one can do real-time analytics combined with building automated decision support systems where ever possible, which would feed and change the business work-flows and decisions real-time and also do real-time reporting. This makes the embedded analytics framework as the heart of the business and all other subsystems to be built around this.

Requirement for a System Engineering Approach

Frameworks like these should be highly scalabe, availabe and robust. The Total Cost Of Ownership (TCO) of these frameworks must also be less. All these systems must be designed for web scale (hundreds of terabytes of data) with all the flexibility of doing multi-dimensional analysis. One of the easiest way to implement these would be to use a reliable RDBMS for persistency and multi-dimensional analysis. The TCO of these solutions are very high and also achieving web scale may not be possible.
Due to these requirements a framework for embedded analytics with requirements as defined above needs an engineering approach.

More about the approach in the next blog…..

Ramkishan B K, Co-Founder and VP - Analytix and Consulting, ISACGlobal

Best Practices on Sourcing

2010-03-24T04:25:00.000-07:00

Arriving at the best price for a defined quality of service or product is the objective of any sourcing mechanism. Organisations, big or small are faced with this constant challenge of improving the prices, enhance margins and buy better. They would want to improve relationships with suppliers / vendors and thereby create value for their customers. This involves adopting some of the best sourcing practices at the enterprise level.

Some of the suggestive best practices would be as below

1. Having an enterprise wide sourcing policy which would define the ethics, commercial and business limits of authority & the type of sourcing ( normal, RFP process, the screening density of vendors, dynamic bidding etc) to be adopted.

2. Embracing tools that would help you automate the sourcing process customized to the organization. This would include common modules such as vendor management, contract management, reverse auction tool and specific modules such as knowledge management, risk management, lessons learnt, strategic sourcing reports to enable complex sourcing decisions that help the organization to learn from its previous sourcing.

3. Implementation of these processes at the enterprise level and at business unit level (say project, department, etc)

4. Audit of these processes and monitor compliance

5. Use of Sourcing knowledge across domains, departments, business units.

6. Managing and tracking of the supply chain wherever applicable and enhancing the value of the supply chain.

Venkatasubramanian P
Co-Founder, CKO and VP-Functional Specialists

ISACGlobal

A Business Lesson learnt from Music

2010-03-24T03:53:00.000-07:00

I am thankful to my parents to have introduced me to the world of music. At the same time, I must admit that I have not made the progress to the extent I had to and wanted to. For a longtime in my learning I hadn’t appreciated the different connotations that are involved in our form of music (Carnatic Style) nor had I noticed the nuances in rendering flawless music to hear. But my outlook towards music changed predominantly due to the influence of my gurus Vidwan Belakavadi Rangaswamy Iyengar (Astan Vidwan of Govt of Karnataka) and Vidwan T S Krishnamurthy (popular as TSK). I must admit both of them are undoubtedly outliers.

From the very beginning, I have been inspired by Rangaswamy Iyengar’s astonishing memory and enduring enthusiasm at the age of 86 to deliver music lessons to students – two things crucial to any business leader. In reality, ability to keep the tempo high among the team members and recollect the stakeholder details at the right time is ‘The Key quality’ in a good leader.

Violin is not only most widely used as an accompanying instrument in the Carnatic classical concerts but also has good recognition when played solo. As an accompanying artist in the concert you have to focus on making the Concert successful by lending adequate support to the Lead performer (Vocalist, flutist etc..) and have to bear in mind a couple of things such as at no point during the concert you outshine the lead performer and you do not create an uncomfortable situation to the other artists. The business lesson that I am trying to drive home is that success is, at the end of day teamwork, an individual cannot put his ambitions or objectives ahead of the Team / Organization’s goals.

Another interesting piece of advice from my violin maestro is to play music according to audience. You have to pay attention to details what is the quality of audience, demographics of audience, situation of the concert and the overall mood of the audience. This is so true in business i.e to understand the pulse of the customer and pitch accordingly.

As is with good concerts you want to take away piece of music that you continue to hum for a long time, I would like to reiterate that Business is a Symphony to be played with the right partners to the right customers at the right time.

S M Haricharan, Co-Founder and CEO, ISACGlobal

Stay Connected

2010-03-23T23:27:00.000-07:00

Customer has always been and will continue to be the most important stakeholders of any business. Business owners and marketers invest most of their efforts, time and money to stay connected to the customers. In this effort Business Owners have evolved in their approach of using a variety of channels to communicate.Communication is a process by which meaning is assigned and conveyed in an attempt to create shared understanding…

I think we all are indebted to technology for well equipping us with variety of tools and conveniences to maintain the vital link between business and customer. Marketers have been equally innovative to adopt the revolutionary technology and build upon it some of the most effective strategies.

Smartness of the Marketer lies in using innovative methods to communicate by overcoming any barriers in a cost effective manner. For a mid sized organization like ours, which has one of the world class product in web analytics, it is a challenge to reach out to the CXO contacts to showcase and promote products. As mentioned, it’s the technology that is an answer to such challenges. Social Networking is a boon in such a scenario. My access to some of the most powerful Social Networking sites such as Linked-in, Zoom, Peer Power has helped me to connect to my prospects. Backed by credible references and introductions from known people, reaching the target is just a click away..

The success of Barack Obama in receiving maximum donations for his election campaign through on-line & effectively connecting to all his supporters is a great learning for our marketing community. Across the industries from Entertainment to Technology, business development teams are using Facebook, Twitter, Wayn .. to promote their leaders, organizations, products and services.

Podcasts and Blogs are being increasingly employed by companies to provide insights of CEO’s, showcase customer testimonials, new product orientation & provide tips, techniques, answers to FAQ’s.

Let me leave here with a word of caution for the marketers, when one has a variety of tools to communicate with his customer, there is no excuse for the sales team to be disconnected with the customer, but at the same time he has to learn how to create a judicious mix of these tools and employ the right tool to communicate to the right customer at the right time.

Haricharan SM, Co-Founder and CEO, ISACGlobal

2010 paves way to ISACGlobal...

2010-01-17T21:36:00.000-08:00

With so many things happening already in the new year, it is showing the promise of the most exciting year for us. We welcome you to be a part of our world...

We are excited to ring in 2010 and are looking forward to a great year. We come with several new announcements this year. First and foremost, considering our global reach, clientele and expertise it is time we communicated the right messages. We are now ISACGlobal! This only makes us more aggressive and quality conscious. Being a customer centric company we have gone a step ahead in ensuring that we implement your business strategy and operations with utmost care so as to ‘comply’ to the global IT standards. To know more log onto http://www.isacglobal.com our new website that gives you a brief description about our expertise and work.ISACGlobal's new logo, designed by our lead designer Pramod, is ‘athletic’, signifying the skill, strength and agility we have built into our capabilities. The new logo also stands for ISACGlobal's focus on ideation and innovation to bring ‘out of the world’ solutions to our customer's doorsteps. We know that every customer is unique and needs a solution that fits his/her problem. Our Functional Specialist Group will map the needs of the customer in any industry domain to our solutions and products to ensure customer delight.

Also check out for our new product launches this year, starting from SiteAnalytix to ISACGlobal’s Procurement Management System. This apart the new branding exercise is also because we are growing at an amazing speed of more than 40% year on year, which has resulted in a team re-structuring so as to build the required bandwidth. While Haricharan, the face of ISACGlobal is excited about taking the company to new heights as the CEO, the new associate who joins the team to lead the S&M division has stunning strategies to effectively market our whole new range of products and solutions. She has immense experience in working with companies of varied sizes and she is known to be a go getter.

We are very fortunate to be associated with stalwarts like Dr Sridhar and Sri Lakshmi Thathachar. Their association brings both pride and confidence in us. Kishan, who is leading our analytics and consulting practice has successfully designed and implemented Dr Sridhar's brainchild: ‘high speed distributed computing architecture’ for multiple business applications. We are very eager to take this to market this year under the name of ‘SiteAnalytix’. Kishan and I are planning to concentrate on Data Analytics including phonetics to explore new business opportunities in the the internet, media and mobile domains.

Other exciting areas in which ISACGlobal will be scaling up its involvement will be in the areas of Linguistics, Sanskrit and Knowledge Management. To say that Venkat is passionate in these areas is an understatement. He has concrete plans to make ISACGlobal as one of the leading private limited companies working in this area.

Our expertise in procurement management processes and experience in building procurement management systems for large organizations will be channeled to launch a new international procurement management software product this year. Our technical architects Seetharam and Umesh, who have immense experience in this domain are gearing up to add new modules into the product this year that will make ISACGlobal a one stop shop for all vendor, procurement, contract and asset management needs.

With so many things happening already in the new year, it is showing the promise of the most exciting year. We welcome you to be a part of our world. Take a look at www.isacglobal.com to know more..Wishing you a very Happy and a Fruitful New Year!

Sudhir R Patavardhan, Chairperson and Founder, VP – Technology

Innovative Concept and Technology can’t take you all along!

2010-01-01T03:37:00.000-08:00

Enterprises, at least most of them, seldom mistake the use of hackneyed differentiating factors to be marketing…

Recession is a period that brings about a vast change in the attitude and mindset of the working members. It is this period where people work AROUND things, a period that sees the birth of innovative concepts and ideas. Those that are evaluated and found worthy enough to be implemented go on to form new businesses in an economy. This is how enterprises are born. There is more to success than innovative ideas and just technology!

Enterprises are envisioned and built on the premise that all activities directly or indirectly generate revenue. However, challenges for smaller organizations / start-ups are more complex than people anticipate it to be. Most of the entrepreneurs attempt to build organizations purely on an innovative concept or /and technology. Enterprises seldom recognize the fact that it is the marketing and communication that provides the constant feedback to revitalize the company’s products/technologies and align to the market needs.

Time and again, enterprises are constantly challenged with responses such as ‘not a familiar player in the market, do not have the required references, not handled similar business situations and also suffer from - no guarantee of customer organization of business continuity’. Working in a start-up or smaller organizations this has been an evident situation that is confronted. The solution to this is not universal, that it can be prescribed to most of the start-ups/smaller organizations. Entrepreneurs/Organizations that have been prudent enough to invest in Sales and Marcom, early in their Life Cycle have shared higher probability of success and achieved significant growth rate.

Enterprises have tried to look at building partnerships that can put them in front of some large accounts, create some lighthouse accounts to be showcased to other customers in similar industry, allow customer to bite the quality of service at low costs, provide proof of concept in solving their pain area. These situations constantly remind the enterprises of its visibility and positioning in the market. It is at this time that Sales and Marcom as a function assumes the lifeline of the enterprise and helps to provide the necessary nourishment for the organization’s growth.

Enterprises, at least most of them, seldom mistake the use of hackneyed differentiating factors to be marketing. Factors such as flexibility, customer centric approach, competitive prices et al are definitely the USP’s but are far from being marketable factors!

Every entrepreneur and Sales and Marcom function has to refrain from using the standard selling techniques and innovate their approach to the customer.

Haricharan SM, Co-Founder and CEO, ISACGlobal

Attitude is everything…

2010-01-01T03:32:00.000-08:00

Generally success of an organization is dependent on the profitability of every individual. In small organizations the profitability requirement per individual is generally higher compared to a larger organization. To achieve this high profitability individuals and team must innovate, which is possible only when individuals have the right attitude. Individuals who have positive attitudes generally also are good innovators. Innovation is one of the key elements on which small companies survive...

Achieving success in your career isn’t just about brains, talents and networking. It is also about attitude. Attitude is a person's perspective towards a specified target. Attitude is "a way of looking at life". What then is your way of looking at work? Your attitude at work determines your career, its quality and path. Is it positive…

Attitude towards work can be analyzed in two ways. Work Attitude Behavior and Work Behavior Attitude. While most people use these phrases quite interchangeably pointing to the same thing, its important to note that they are two different things in reality. To state the difference in a simple manner:

1. Work Attitude Behavior describes how an individual feels about his work and his approach towards work which is not measurable but felt by others.

2. Work Behavior attitude describes the way you do the work and the way you get the work done which is measurable.

To summarize, work attitude is the way you feel your work. It is how you feel about your work in the subconscious. Ex. Passion about work, happiness and joy about work etc. If your work attitude is positive, it shows in your expressions, body language while the enthusiasm spills out.

On the other hand, work behavior attitude refers to the implementation part or the physical part of your work. It could simply be called ‘your action at work place’. It refers to your acquired skills, the energy levels you show at work that gives you tangible results. If your work behavior attitude is positive, its obvious that the energy levels are always high and thus the work gets done faster. Obstacles in such a case seem far too minute to distract a person from the goal.

Though each of the attitude mentionedabove compliments the other, it does not necessarily mean that work attitude behavior leads to work behavior attitude. Well, most of the time it might not!

When you choose to be pleasant and positive in the way you treat others, you have also chosen, in most cases, how you are going to be treated others. Individuals with good Work Attitude behavior and good work behavior attitude generally perform better and contribute to the growth of the organization. Individuals who have positive attitudes generally also are good innovators. Innovation is one of the key elements on which small companies survive. Let’s take a quick look at what are the other types of attitudes that leads to work related positive attitudes.

1. Disciplinary attitude - People who value time and do right things at the right time and who do things on time.

2. Learning attitude - People who like to learn, keep an open mind, are willing to lend a listening ear to learn new things.

3. Polite attitude - People who respect others, who are polite, who treat everybody else just as they treat themselves.

4. Planning attitude - People who plan well, strategize and ensure that they have everything under control so that work gets done on time.

Group of individuals working together with these attitudes generally contribute to the growth of the organization. These groups are very important for small organizations. Its my observation that companies large or small which do not have groups of individuals with good work attitude generally fail. So it attitude of individuals becomes all the more important for the success of a small organization. After all, some of the world's greatest feats were accomplished by people not smart enough to know they were impossible….

Ramkishan B K, Co-Founder and VP - Analytix and Consulting, ISACGlobal

Knowledge Management at ISACGlobal

2010-01-01T03:23:00.000-08:00

Knowledge Management at ISACGlobal is an effort to generate wealth from its intellectual or knowledge based assets. At ISACGlobal we encourage the employees to consider themselves to be knowledge assets. Knowledge Asset refers to anything that is valued without physical dimensions, that is embedded in people or derived from processes, systems and the culture associated within the organization.

As an organization the key drivers of knowledge management initiatives are

• to get the knowledge based assets i.e. the people to acquire knowledge,

• use the knowledge,

• learn and improve (innovate) and finally

• contribute & disseminate knowledge.

If this processes is accomplished with all stakeholders (internal and external) involved with any company, we can create wealth through knowledge.

How does this work at ISACGlobal?

1. Assess the current level of the organization in terms of knowledge management. The management has used a knowledge management self assessment tool which focuses on knowledge management initiatives both internal & external to the organization.

2. Envision and Strategize – A Knowledge Management Strategy is in place in the organization that attempts to make the Knowledge Assets acquire, use, learn, innovate, share, contribute and disseminate knowledge through formal and informal forums.

3. Measure and Incentivize Knowledge Assets – We are currently looking at incentives and rewards as motivating factors for enhancing a knowledge-sharing culture, communicating these measures and implementing these mechanisms. We slowly want to create a paradigmn shift in the minds of the Knowledge Assets so that knowledge sharing becomes a habit.

4. We are trying to achieve this at the individual level, project level & business levels. Creation of subject matter experts in line with the personal development plan at an individual level makes an individual focus on improving self knowledge. At a project level, strategies such as case studies, lessons learnt sessions with internal teams and with external stakeholders & clients are few examples that are being implemented.

5. Taxonomy of Knowledge Sharing & Creation of Knowledge Managers – At the company level, we are trying to create a system of categorization of knowledge so that the same could be easily managed. We are aspiring for the Knowledge Assests in our organization to become Knowledge Managers who learn different methods of knowledge creation and transfer, including skills building, training, modeling and methodology development, analyzing and repackaging information, and learning by doing.

6. We would like to come up with a Web Based Knowledge Management System – an intranet tool that would operate and sustain the process.

7. Finally we would like to measure how wealth is created in the organization through the knowledge management initiatives and re-strategize and re-innovate wherever required.

8. Support functions at ISACGlobal – Support functions like HR & finance are also tuned to this approach. One of the key parameters that is considered in recruiting new people at ISACGlobal, is their learnability & knowledge sharing attitude.

Knowledge Centric Organization

Creation and sustenance of knowledge centric organization is now becoming a proven way of differentiating organizational culture and the organization itself from its competitors. We, at ISACGlobal are traversing this path and would continue on this path and are confident that this would be yield success. When two organizations are transacting, what we have to realize is, it is ultimately the people who are transacting and it is the knowledge that exists in individuals that gets transacted; if this knowledge is constantly enhanced through an internal process within individuals and organizations and not allowed to rust under the dust, these individuals would be more powerful to innovate and create value to clients and stakeholders.

Venkatasubramanian P
Co-Founder, CKO and VP-Functional Specialists
ISACGlobal

Building a knowledge centric company

2009-10-12T07:56:00.000-07:00

Why knowledge?

All individuals and organizations need and seek power to achieve their goals. The 3 M’s i.e. Muscle, Money and Mind are the sources of all power. Muscle represents raw power that one possesses by virtue of size or violence (actual or threatened). Money can easily buy muscle power and hence is considered a better source of power than the muscle. But mind can create, accumulate and judiciously use both muscle and money to get things done. Unlike the other two the mind does not get depleted with usage. Knowledge is the key component of mind and as Benjamin Franklin said “Knowledge is Power”. The same concept is found in the Bhagavad Gita. Shree Krishna says “Nahi Gyaanena Sadrusham Pavitram”. Hence Ideas family should always use Knowledge, the inexhaustible and best source of power to achieve its goals.

How to use knowledge?

ISAC as a company already has a considerable amount of knowledge power through individual members. We hope this will get enhanced through both individual and organic growth. We need to use knowledge to be innovative in everything we do. Knowledge can be ‘industry best practices’, ‘technical know-how’ or ‘market information’. All these are inputs to our innovation process and not the end products of innovation itself. We need to put our minds to work, to ideate and to create new best practices, products and marketing strategies. ISAC’s work atmosphere should encourage ideation and an unhindered thought process. This is what the first part of our company’s motto “ Nurturing Thoughts” represents.

What will Ideas achieve from knowledge?

We can be innovative in everything we do - from creating a friendly leave policy for members, to finding solutions to customer’s problems. This will create something new, something unique and Ideas will have thus created value for all its stakeholders i.e. Clients, Members and Shareholders. This is what the second part of our motto “Delivering Value” stands for.

How to make Ideas a knowledge centric organization?

Creation of knowledge centric organization is a challenging task, but not impossible. Let us all give a thought to what is knowledge management? Is it another document that one has to fill? Is it another cumbersome procedure? Or is it a jargon? No, definitely not. Knowledge Management at Ideas is an effort to generate wealth from its intellectual or knowledge based assets. All the staff members of Ideas must consider themselves to be knowledge assets; because, anything valued without physical dimensions that is embedded in people or derived from processes, systems and the culture associated within the organization is termed as a knowledge asset. The key drivers of knowledge management initiatives are to get the knowledge based assets i.e. the people to acquire knowledge, use the knowledge, learn and improve (innovate) and finally contribute & disseminate knowledge. If this processes is accomplished with all stakeholders (internal and external) involved with Ideas i.e. , we can create wealth through knowledge and transition ourselves into a knowledge centric organization.

In short, we should invoke knowledge as the source of power to innovate and create value to all stakeholders.

“Nurturing Thoughts, Delivering Value.”

Sudhir Patavardhan, Founder and VP Technology, ISACGlobal

Business Ethics

2009-10-12T07:47:00.000-07:00

This article was written for the first issue of "ISACtimes".

Hello everyone. Welcome to the first issue of “Isactimes”, our new monthly news letter that will keep everyone up-to-date on the happenings in Ideas. This is the fore-word.

Several years ago I came across a book whose title was so catchy that I bought the book without even looking between the covers. The book was tittled “There is no such thing as ‘Business’ Ethics” by John Maxwell. I was a different person then and instinctively felt that the author would be arguing for the principle that ‘everything is fair in business’ in these times of cutthroat competition. Maximum profit should the only goal of any business. The means did not matter as long as one did not do anything stupid enough to get caught in a legal tangle. Well, I was surprised to find myself wrong. What John Maxwell means is that there is one universal principle that applies to everything in life –personal or professional. There is no need to make several rules. That golden rule according the author is “treat others like how you want yourself to be treated”. There is isn’t separate entity as business ethics.

All of us take several decisions everyday that directly or indirectly affect the way we as a company do business. The decisions can be as complex as figuring out who is assigned to a particular project, to something as simple as how punctual one needs to be for client meetings. I believe all business decisions can be based on that golden rule as long as we are aware of ALL the stakeholders (affected parties) and then apply the rule.

Take for example the decision on who works in what project. Stakeholders here are the the customer, employee and Ideas as a company. A customer centric approach would be to use the best performing resource of our company. A member centric approach would be to assign the resource to the project of her expertise or where she has the most to gain or learn. Company centric approach would be to strike the best financial deal. The RIGHT decision is one where you strike the right balance between the customer, member and company interests. That would mean ensuring that your best employee is not punished for his efficiency with more work, the client company that trusted you is not standed with an inexperienced team and neither Ideas nor you are shortchanged financially.

Taking decisions in the best interest of all stakeholders, i.e. clients, members and vendors is the best way to retain customers, motivate members and maximize profits.

Sudhir Patavardhan, Founder and VP Technology, ISACGlobal

Leadership

2009-10-12T07:43:00.000-07:00

Most people aspire to be great leaders. At their work people usually get leadership oppurtunities because of good performance as individuals. Performing well at an individual capacity doesn't neccessarily translate into good leadership. Leadership involves performing well as a team, delivering the goods as a team. The development of an individual performer into a good leader involves a not so intuitive change. This change is actually a movement, a movement in ones thinking and actions, a movement from identifying oneself as an individual to identifying oneself as a part of a larger unit, a movement from managing oneself to orchestrating a bunch of individuals.
I have recognized two roads that need to be traversed for this movement. First road that needs to be traversed goes from control towards empowerment. This involves making sure your team members have the right tools and techniques to perform and not trying to just control their time or what resources they use. This involves concentrating on unleashing the potential power of each team member and not concentrating on imposing ones own views.
The second road is towards integration from specialization. A good leader should be able to integrate the output of many team members rather than produce a particular delvirable unit.
Interestingly, both the roads can be travelled in either direction, I.e. If one chooses to excel as an individual performer, she can move towards controlling/managing the resources one consumes and also concentrate on specialising in a particular domain.
More interestingly, it is the same movement an organization needs to undergo to move from a good firm to a great company. The authors of the book "how to be competitive in a flat world" discuss this movement for organizations in detail.

Sudhir Patavardhan, Founder and VP Technology, ISACGlobal