The Hindu Business Line : <I>The Net has its own secret language </I>

Information may come to you in many forms. Such as an odd picture, a stray conversation, or a frame of spreadsheet. Don't prejudge these; nor dismiss them out of hand, without `a reason, a logical argument, a structure, a discipline,' because `intelligence is an art form.' Thus writes Leonard M. Fuld in The Secrete Language of Competitive Intelligence, from Crown Business (www.crownbusiness.com) .

Another `reality' he speaks of is that the Net has its own secret language. Without knowledge of that, you can't extract `the precious leads and strategic gems'. Fuld declares, "With the Net it is insight, not access, that's the key."

The book is about seeing thought and staying ahead of `business disruptions, distortions, rumours, and smoke screens'. It is `the unspoken, hidden key to success'. The first chapter titled `the art of smart' narrates the story of Kodak, which in 1986 announced "a 1.4 megapixel CCD chip, a breakthrough years ahead of its competition, and nearly fifteen years before anyone could buy a consumer digital camera with such a resolution."

The company had "more than a thousand patents in digital imaging alone," by the late 1980s. Yet Kodak missed the bus. Why? `Digital technology just languished in Kodak's labs,' because `the managers of the chemical-based film business considered digital a threat to traditional film.'

Chapter 2 insists, `Reality bites', and exhorts, `remove the blinders.' The first case study is about Guinness, which was `the leading brewer throughout most of the African continent since the early nineteenth century'. But it did the blunder of looking into the wrong mirror. Fuld notes that the company failed to ask the real question: "Mirror, mirror, on the wall, what other product could offer the same sex appeal, the same thrill as a glass of Guinness?" What they didn't notice was the disquieting evidence all around them, in the form of growth in the mobile phone market.

`Will Google beat Microsoft?' asks chapter 3. "When a rival broadsides you with a price cut, a new technology disrupts your plans, all your traditional tactics appear to be failing, or your market is about to undergo a major change, just play," advises Fuld. "Play a war game, the tool of choice to help you gain strategic transparency of your marketplace and your competition."

War game is not a win-lose situation. It yanks you out of your comfort zone, points out the author. "It allows you to test the true tensile strength of your own strategy and peer inside that of your rival's." After Google first sold its shares to the public in 2004, "the threat it poses to Microsoft is even greater than the one Microsoft faced a decade ago from Netscape for control of the desktop market," opines Fuld. Will Google face the same fate of Netscape, losing out to a giant? "Google is still young and moving very quickly across a competitive landscape that is largely unknown. The stakes are high for Google, and it needs to see its rival's strategy very clearly." Google Desktop is one of the salvos in the ongoing war game between the two companies. What's next? "The Google crew is generally a secretive bunch with lots of good ideas. Everyone knows that, including Microsoft... Unlike Netscape, Google has real revenue, over $3.2 billion in 2004, and real profits."

The must-read chapter has many insights, such as, `Expect to win at the margins, not vanquish your rivals.' The goal is not the decimation of competitors but reaching the finish line first `with the most inventive or consistently thought-out strategy'. Another insight reads, `Learn the implication of your decisions - that's the real prize.' To explain, Fuld recounts how Larry Ellison, CEO of Oracle, ran a series of war game scenarios in 2003, `to anticipate changes in his market'. What did Ellison learn from his game? "That he wanted to be first among his rivals to select the best possible acquisition candidates."

Compulsory addition to your reading list, unless you wish to be looking into the wrong mirrors.

On how ITES all started

Read up on how `a few intrepid entrepreneurs brought the world to India.'

India's ITES revolution first took root in 1994-95, says Seetha in The Backroom Brigade, from Penguin Portfolio (www.penguinbooksindia.com) . The reference is to the decision by American Express to locate its finance functions for the Asia-Pacific region in Delhi.

How did it happen? "In 1993, American Express had launched its rupee cards in the country. The operations were very similar to those in other countries. However, the Amex management in the US was puzzled by the fact that monthly reports from the India office showed that productivity and quality were better while costs were lower than elsewhere."

To double-check the mysterious numbers, it seems John MacDonald, the company's comptroller visited India in the early 1990s. He found that costs were low owing to lower wages and low employee turnover. "Costs were almost half of that in other countries and the efficiency gains greater because of the more qualified staff. That knowledge got filed away somewhere in the Amex corporate memory."

The book, which is about how `a few intrepid entrepreneurs brought the world to India,' tells the story of `ground breakers' such as British Airways which chose Mumbai for WNS (World Network Services), in preference to the Philippines, China, and Latin America.

"The first services to be moved out were the passenger revenue accounting business - over 30 million coupons had to be handled in a year - and customer relations work, which involved simplified letter answering, gathering information, and updating of statistics." What started of with just 30 people in June 1996 grew to "70 departments covering the whole gamut of the airline - from reservations to flight operations."

Another case study is of GECSI (GE Capital Services India), which chose Gurgaon. GE was asking for 2 mbps pipe for itself at a time when VSNL had one mbps line shared by 10 customers! The company was planning voice work, and according to the then regime, `data circuit links could not terminate at a public switched telephone network (PSTN) through which telephone calls were routed,' explains the author.

"As a result, it was not possible to carry a call through from India to the US - the essence of the call centre business - without special permission. Anyone caught doing that would be fined Rs 2 crore a day." There were no end to issues, be it permission to work on holidays or allow women to work night shifts.

The first piece of GE work that moved to India had competition from Mexico. By 2004, the Indian centre was handling "800 processes, from ten centres of excellence, covering actuarial support, data modelling, portfolio risk management, loans processing, underwriting and claims processing." According to a BusinessWorld report GECIS saved GE $1 billion in costs.

Highly informative account.

Tailpiece

"I'm tired of being a backroom boy."

"Ask for a change, to the front office."

"Instead, I'm thinking of a gender change."

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