New look

Friends, I agree, the layout and colors of a blog matter.

Changed the look and feel of my blog as per the request of few of my readers.

Pizza Corner's IT story

Pizza Corner is a Pizza restaurant chain in India. Started as a single branch in 1996, now it has around 50 locations all over India and can compete with MNCs such as Pizza Hut.



Benefit, a magazine which focusses about the IT side of businesses, runs a story on Pizza Corner's business, IT enablement and directions. (free pdf download)

The unique thing here is, unlike other magazines, which hardly cover anything more than the current IT scenario of such a business and their future IT plans, Benefit goes one step ahead and suggests a few best practices to the business too.

I have summarized what the magazine suggests to Pizza Corner:

1. Have options like mobile telephone exchange and off-site data repository for Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery.

2. Utilize Supply Chain Management, as a Pizza requires specialised ingredients.

3. Let customers pay using SMS (A popular restaurant in Mumbai has already started this service).

4. Secure your premises using IP based CCTV and security systems.

5. Leverage Google Earth in your website, so people can easily locate your outlets.

My two cents addition:

6. Use a good CRM system, value customer feedback and use it for service improvement.

Lessons from a performance appraisal

If you are working for any organization, whether big or small, you have to go through the ritual of performance appraisal at the year end or start of next year.

This can be both good and bad. Good because, you get an opportunity to know your strengths and weaknesses as perceived by the management.

But it can be bad as well, especially if your boss only talks about the areas of improvement and can't see any good things that you have done. It shatters your morality and confidence level.

I recently got a similar feedback, which was more crucifying rather than pampering. Initially I attempted to prove my side, pointing out a few exceptional things that I had actually done. But I'm not sure if he saw them, as the argument never seemed to end. The discussion ended coldly.

After the usual emotional reaction of "it should not have happened this way", I slowly began to accept the situation. Accepting the situation immediately set me free and I started thinking forward.

Then I was randomly browsing tips on how to win in business and in life from an entrepreneur and he linked to some advice on how to handle failure and learn from it. It was a timely advice! Here is how I used this article to get good insight into my problem.

What is the problem?

Performance rating is not great.

Problem Divided into chunks

(Note: I'm in a customer service organization)

I...

1. did not liaise with the sales people very well.

2. did very few high value assignments.

3. (Surprisingly, in the process, I figured out a few exceptional things I had achieved, but unfortunately) did not market them very well, so my manager failed to see them.

4. did not attend a lot of conferences where I can get good sales leads.

Solutions (Things in my control)

1. After each assignment, follow up with the sales team and get a holistic picture of the deal.

2. Network with the sales team to figure out new opportunities and to know more about our important customers.

3. Keep track of customers' wish-list in our products and constantly communicate the same to developers. This can be an excuse to develop good rapport with the development team.

4. Actively seek key conferences/events in my domain and showcase good solutions there.

5. Engage in continued learning and education.

Things beyond my control

1. The opinion of my boss about me. No matter how much I try to prove myself, he is going to be himself. No point in trying to change him.

What to do immediately?

Try #2 and #5 in solutions.

So, the ritual has indeed taught me a good lesson.

A lighter editorial

Editorials in newspapers are typically perceived to be serious and typically (atleast stereotypically!) read by nobody except those with grey hair who don't have a better job to do or political leaders who have got so much to do. For example one may start like.

The ongoing war on terrorism in pursuit of the fundamentalist ethnic groups is a commendable behaviour in the light of continuous attacks on civilians and high valued soft-targets instead of judicial scrutiny on the mushrooming militant movements....

I think such a heavy text and serious tone is what is driving away people. For a change, Vijay Times, a newspaper from Bangalore reports this in their Op-Ed page:



Title: Giants Refreshed

The Bangkok municipal office is reported to have "sanctioned" siesta time for its staff in order that they may wake up invigorated and work harder in the second half. But wait, they won't be sitting in their chairs for a quick nap but in a separate room with the fragrance of freshly-cut flowers and soft music...

Our babus (pet name for Government or Administrative staff in India) will be pleased if such a step is introduced here too. To sleep and to .... snore! However, for them this may not make a difference, as they have enjoyed this facility quietly for years....

A better way of conveying the message, in my opinion.

powered by performancing firefox

A (Pseudo) Desktop Blogging Tool on Windows

Availability of a desktop blogging tool is the reason for me to edit my blogs on Ubuntu. Without such a tool, I would not have the freedom to jot down my thoughts whenever I like and post them later. Somehow I have a feeling that my mind works less when I'm on the net and constantly looks out for something, rather than thinking creatively.

I had been looking for a good and free (free as in free beer) desktop blogging tool on Windows, but did not have much success. There were a few results by googling, but none of them were freeware, nor did they have a clear description of what functionality they have or what sites they support. I was frustrated on why MS (or other companies) haven't come up with some good blogging tools for the most popular OS on earth.

Today I was delighted to learn about a Firefox add-on called Performancing which is more or less what I was looking for. It is a full featured blog editor that sits right in your browser and lets you post to your blog easily. It's very easy to drag and drop text from the browser to your post or format text. I'm using this editor to write this post.

As a bonus, I have also found another Firefox add-on called Sage which is a lightweight RSS and Atom feed reader. The best thing I like about this is its Newspaper like format. Here is a screenshot:

powered by performancing firefox

Online photo print site from India

I'm not an ardent fan of non-technical blogs, however there are a few I follow quite regularly. Kiruba's blog is one of my favourites. He is one of the most popular bloggers in India, operates from Chennai and runs his own site.

I have been recently hunting for podcasts and I tried his interview with an emerging business in India. This is about a website that will print and deliver digital photos posted on it to anywhere in India. While listening to Indians talking online for the first time made me feel good, I felt better to learn the new business models emerging in the country.

One cool thing that I noted with this interview was that the voices of the interviewer and interviewee(s) appeared to come from different tracks (say from different sides of a headphone) and that gave a feel of a real interview.

Check out the interview or read the transcript.