How IT Enabling a Business can make it better

In India, customer service is often overlooked, especially when the customer is a consumer (individual) rather than a corporate entity. This story is about a bank in India, which recently made me rejoice because of its IT systems.



Indian Bank is a public sector bank in India. A decade ago, almost all national banks in India looked like Government Offices. People living in India will not find it difficult to visualize the scene. The bank would typically operate in an old building, with long hanging fans; people crunching numbers between piles of paper; common man waiting for their service forever. However, it is all changed now and many banks are IT enabled, at least in cities. Indian Bank is no different.

My requirement: Send money to someone who got an account in the same bank but in another town. So, I visited a local branch in Bangalore.

The first appearance of the bank made me wonder if it was a private bank. The ambience was pretty good.

The moment I entered, there was a machine which gave me a token on pressing a button. It had a serial number. I had to simply wait for my turn whch would be announced by a voice and show up in a LED display along with the counter number. The way they have integrated this machine with their workload and the way they juggle the counter numbers based on the traffic is amazing for a national bank!

The story does not end here. Usually if we want to send cash to someone in another part of India, we typically get a Demand Draft (DD) from the bank in the recipient's name, seal it in an envelope and send it across using courier/mail. As such, getting a DD is not difficult, but you have to pay a hefty commission and also do some effort to send it yourself. But, now it is all easy, thanks to a Core Banking Solution deployed by these people. All I needed was the recipient's core banking number and the money was instantly credited to the recipient's account. No commission, no need to send it through (snail) mail and no delay.

Total time to send money: 20 mins. Life has been definitely made easier!

Do you have a story where you got good service or saved time because a business was IT enabled?

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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.

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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:

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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.

How to build audience for your Blog

Robert Scoble, a former Microsoft employee and a famous blogger writes on how to build audience for your blog or how to drive more traffic to your blog. Excellent post. Also links to more such help. Personally I've changed my blog title after reading this post and I have more to learn.

Get the most out of your e-mail, IM and blogs

Since I purchased a cute little mp3 player (not an iPod, just 2 GB, but serves my purpose), I have been actively seeking out podcasts. Especially the technical ones. The ones I have currently subscribed to include IT Conversations and IBM's Podcasts, but I'm sure many more are out there.

Talking about the information that is available over the Net, we have zillions of blogs and podcasts. Then tons of other web-sites, wikis, manuals, articles, videos etc. We are overwhelmed with the amount of information available and it is a daunting task to decide what to go through and what is useful. Though we have more gadgets to automate things and simplify life, there seems to be no end of things that we will keep us busy.


In such a situation, I recently encountered a series of podcasts called Shortcuts. This is actually a weekly podcast to help you make the most out of e-mail, Instant Messaging, blogs and other great tools.

The unique thing about these podcasts is that, they are small in duration so easy to go through (usually not more than 5 mins of talk). Transcript is available as pdf download (hardly 200 KB size) for each podcast too.

To sample, learn how to manage e-mail storage limit or read the transcript.

You can subscribe to Shortcuts by copying this link to your Blog Reader.

That is not all, looks like you can even contribute to this site. Check it out!

How can I improve my blog?

A reader of my earlier post commented that while the entry was readable, it is almost like a fact file. So, I went through it once again and felt the same too.

I think I gathered too many facts in an attempt to make the post look bigger and informative. What could I have done to make it really better?

I could have added more personal touch. More experiences which are fun to read, rather than the encyclopedic information which can be found anywhere else. Unless, I'm posting hard-core technical topics, which are arduously followed by geeks.

However, too much of personal touch will also be a problem. It will make the post a sort of opinion/editorial. Not sure how many people will be able to enjoy opinions or an individual's experiences all the time. Perhaps they also want get something out of it. Mostly fun and the pleasure of reading, but occasionally something useful as well.

So, I think the middle path is best. Having a fine balance of facts (neutrality) and experiences (personal touch). I just realized that I need to master this art.

Hello, fellow bloggers, what are your thoughts on this? How do you handle the situation, when you attempt to write about something and it ends up as one of these extremes?

Skytrain in Bangkok

During my Bangkok trip, I extensively used BTS Skytrain to commute. While there were options of using a taxi, car or bus, I chose Skytrain. Because the stations were nearer to both my starting and end points and I heard that Bangkok traffic can be awful in peak hours. I never regretted my choice because my commuting was fast and efficient.


There are 23 stations in total. Average waiting time for a train is 3 minutes; It is estimated that more than half a million people use Skytrain everyday for commuting.

Tickets for each trip are available from a machine near the station, but you have to remit the exact change. While there are people sitting at the station to give you change, you have to usually wait in a long queue to get change. I got a 30 days pass so I don't have to do this everyday.

(I heard that Skytrain will soon introduce a contactless ticketing system wherein the passengers can use their RFID powered smart cards to buy the tickets. This kind of contactless payment is emerging in a big way in Asian nations. An extension of the smart card technology is to use one's mobile phones to buy tickets and other things. Whereas smart cards require an intelligent card reader somewhere near the location, say train station, mobile phones will not require any extra infrastructure. And that makes things much more convenient)

This is an elevated train. The first level is a concourse (where tickets can be obtained and you use the tickets in one of the automatic access control gates to enter). Then you go to the second level to take the train. Some nice pictures are found here.

The trains are unusually small (only 3 cars) but look neat. (We in India, have trains that easily span about a kilometer. Our cargo trains are even longer). The design of the trains is in such a way that you can't easily see inside but one can see outside from inside the train. It has sliding doors which open only for a minute in a station.

Where the doors will actually arrive for each car is clearly marked on the floor. So when Thai people gather to get a train, they quickly form two queues at each door (This is something I wish that the people from my country learned). The people who get out of the train do so at the center.

Inside of the train is similar to the subway systems I found in the US. An extra thing was LCD TV Panels on the side walls, almost always playing Thai pop videos. (Pop music, that I happened to listen/watch in the Far East is surprisingly similar to the western ones. Often I can't make out if I'm listening to a Thai or English words, unless I observed carefully). Another unique thing that I found was, a security personnel on duty on each platform at all times.

As in the past, I initially got confused with the routes on the first day and once started to go in the opposite direction. But soon things were fine.

Saladaeng, the station where I board the Skytrain everyday, is also the interchange point for Bangkok Mass Rapid Transit System, which is a subway. There is a thoroughfare which connects the Skytrain station to MRTS. Now, you exit out of Skytrain station in the 1st Floor level. MRTS, being a subway system, is in the 1st Basement level. Note: If you are reading this from the US, 1st Floor in India = 2nd Floor in the US. There is Street level in between. There is an elevator connecting these three levels.

On the 1st floor, the elevator door opens from the station side. But when I get out in the street level and wait for the same door to open, another door at the opposite side opens unexpectedly! It was funny and I have never seen anything like this!!

Energize Windows

While Linux platforms are already making deep inroads into the Desktops, are you still unwilling to give up your Windows box despite its bloated applications?

Going to use Microsoft Windows Vista, but worried about the alleged extra resource requirements of its applications?

Stick to your Windows, but give Open Source a chance! Jason Parlow excellently describes the Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) available for Windows. (Free Registration Required)

Though not free or open source, Microsoft's Services for Unix is also mentioned for its usefulness.

In addition to getting to know what great software is available out there, you also get to read funny comments like:

GNU/Win32 is an absolute treasure trove of Unix and Linux-style command-line utilities for Windows, courtesy of our long-haired friends at the GNU project.

A different bug

Since I've started using Ubuntu, mostly at home and sometime at office, there is no going back. I haven't had success using Lotus Notes, but most other applications work.

I do almost everything on Ubuntu: chat, browse, use office suite, watch DVDs, organize, play games and even blog using the desktop client.

When I visited Ubuntu bugtracker, saw this amusing bug:

Bug #1:

Microsoft has a majority market share in the new desktop PC marketplace. This is a bug, which Ubuntu is designed to fix.

Importance: Critical

Status: Confirmed

Description:

Microsoft has a majority market share | Non-free software is holding back innovation in the IT industry, restricting access to IT to a small part of the world's population and limiting the ability of software developers to reach their full potential, globally. This bug is widely evident in the PC industry.

Steps to repeat:
1. Visit a local PC store.
What happens:
2. Observe that a majority of PC's for sale have non-free software pre-installed
....
....

It is funny, check it out...!

Application Delivery Infrastructure

Tony Waltham writes about a new concept Application Delivery Infrastructure in Bangkok Post (Paraphrased):

Web Applications often tend to replicate the features found in client-server applications, which make them consume more resources. This brings a need to optimize these applications. Web applications also demand high security.

A new intelligent Networking Layer called Application Delivery Infrastructure has emerged to address these needs.

This is a new concept and it aims to

• Understand the users


• Understand the application and content


• Apply creative approach to Bandwidth management, caching and compression while minimising the sluggishness of protocols that were originally designed for LAN

From a simple set of Web objects (like links, buttons), web applications have become complicated CRM or Inventory Management applications and people increasingly find it difficult to use them. The quest for more functionality has made these applications very slow.

Different approaches to address this problem:

• F5 Network's Intelligent Browser Referencing: Eliminates the need for the browser to download repetitive or duplicate data, by increasing the number of connections. For example, when you visit a website with 50 objects, browsers like IE or Firefox usually have to make 25 round trips to get the data. Whereas, F5's Technology allows applications to open up more than just two connections at the same time.


• Avoiding downloading unnecessary data. For instance, just downloading pages of a PDF rather than entire document.


• Instead of a Web Server saying to the browser, 'Hey! to get the more current data, check back to me in 10 seconds', it can say, 'I can tell you what you never have to check back with me on, and I can tell you what you have to check back with me on x seconds later.'

The story also references other players in this area: Juniper Networks and Citrix Systems.

Me Vs. Them

I often compare myself with others. I think most of us compare, for good or bad. Recently I caught myself doing this. I was silent for sometime then wondered what others must be thinking about this. Within a few minutes, I was reading this excellent post: why we should not compare ourselves with others. Especially these words:

A fourth reason to stop comparing ourselves is that the one who compares him/herself with others is judging........ Nobody knows the internal reality of the other; nobody knows his/her story and his/her most deep intentions.....

How true! The more we compare with someone, the less we know about the true internal reality of other person and his her/story.

The last but most important reason to avoid comparing ourselves with others is that when we do, we can be tempted to copy them, to do the same things, and to act and think like them. The problem with this is that if we copy someone, we will never know who we really are and what we really want, and then we will never grow spiritually.

Yes, I think we lose our originality/uniqueness when we compare. Each one of us have their own pace of development or improvement, no matter how slow that seems to be. If we realize this we can be happy.

What do you think? Do you have an antidote for comparison? Feel free to comment!

Information is free, but food is not

Instead of giving the same boring title like Travel to Bangkok, for a change I decided to strike it different (at least in the title!). The hotel where I stayed said they have a deal with my company and as per that the Internet access at the room is complimentary, but not the breakfast! But that is a blessing in disguise, because being one of those minority people in the world (vegetarian) and somewhat picky about other tastes, I doubt I would have enjoyed the breakfast anyway.

This is my first Bangkok visit and the flight landed in state-of-the-art Suvarnabhumi Airport. When I arrived, I had a feeling that I was entering a big shopping mall, not an airport. It was so posh and so efficient that I took only 10 mins to finish immigration, collect my baggage and clear my customs (In fact I did not even talk to the man at the immigration checkpoint). Now, it took me more time to take a free shuttle bus to Public Transportation Center (which is a couple of miles away from the airport and is really a bus-cum-metered taxi stand). Those people who can pay more can get a ticket and board a limousine at the airport itself. There were a few people at the airport pestering me to take their taxi service, but I politely refused them.

Contrary to what I expected there was no fight among the taxi drivers to get a passenger. Rather the taxis were neatly parked in a row and I got the first available one to the hotel.

Now, a few quick facts about the Suvarnabhumi. It is the most modern in the world, covering an area of about 200,000 square meters. It can handle around 9000 people and around 80 flights per hour, has the tallest control tower in the world (132 meters), has two parallel runways each running about 4 km. They are aiming to build two more runaways by 2020 and then it can handle 100 million people per year, amazing!

I enjoyed the Expressway to Bangkok and it all cost me 300 Baht at the end (actual meter + service charge of 50 Baht charged from airport + toll tax of 40 Baht).

(Next: Skytrain: The easy way to commute in Bangkok)

Bangalore to Jakarta - 3

Indonesia is a big country (there are thousands of Islands and three timezones. We have only one timezone in India). It can easily take months to tour the whole country. Jakarta itself has so many attractions and with my work commitments I could not play a tourist. So just sampled the city.

When I asked my local manager to take me to a single place which will embody the country's culture, I thought he would take me to some museum. I was very pleasantly surprised when he took me to not one museum, but a handful of them. "Taman Mini Indonesia Indah" (Literally, Park Mini Indonesia Beauty) is actually a theme park, a wonderful attempt to showcase everything from a single country. I have never seen anything like this. This place has got at least a dozen museums (each on various themes: culture, energy, post [mail], transportation etc.) and different kind of dwellings and structures replicating various regions of the country (Personally I liked the ones from Bali & Java). Some photos are available at my flickr page along with the captions.

We first visited "Museum of Indonesia". Two things interested me the most here. (1) Statues wearing variety of ethnic wedding attire (There were hundreds of them!) (2) Influence of Indian culture through the early Hindu Kingdoms. The most noted one is the shadow puppet theater called Wayang. Incidentally, we still have it in India, though restricted to our villages.

After wandering a bit, we took a cable car which offered us a bird's eye view of all museums and structures. From the cable car, we could see an exact replica of the Indonesian archipelago.

While this trip was only a glimpse of Jakarta, it only made me wish for more in the next trip! Till then, Terima kasih (Thank you), Indonesia!

Bangalore to Jakarta - 2

Indonesians are warm people, usually soft spoken. I'm not just getting this notion from the deluxe hotel where I was treated nicely, but in my opinion, everyone whom I met here was nice to me! My experience only strengthened this notion.

Even the newspaper that I read regularly (Jakarta Post) did not use very strong words. Criticisms, if any was also mild. (I could not avoid comparing our country's very aggressive media!)

Despite devoutly following their own religion(s), people do not show up their religion or spirituality. Not just that, they also show curiosity in other religions and cultures and that is a commendable behaviour. (The majority people are Muslims, but Christianity has good presence and so is Hinduism, though restricted to a few places like Bali).

Before coming, I read in many travel websites about the Taxi drivers at the Airport who would chase you to go with them. Of course, so many drivers/people asked me if I need there service. But what surprised me was, when I politely declined, they just gave in and went away.

There are many taxi companies, but the most reliable ones are Blue Bird and Silver Bird both operated by the Blue Bird Group. SilverBird is the executive taxi. BlueBird is the economical and good one. I'm not familiar about the other modes of transport, as I always took a BlueBird.

At the first sight, Jakarta is very attractive, big city and has good roads. But I heard from the locals that frequent traffic jams and pollution are major problem.

Cars and Motorcycles are the most common vehicles found on the street. I found that we can even hire a motorcycle (with a rider, as we would hire a taxi), but I never tried it. I did not see many trains. I heard that they have long distance trains too, but no sleeper coaches.

Food is the only problem I had in this country where vegetarianism is not very well understood. I am "lacto-vegetarian" (that is, can eat vegetables and dairy products). So every time I had to either literally plan my meal or starve (Thanks to my local colleagues/bosses, who took care of me as if I were one among them and made sure that I get good food when I was with them. But the side effect was that they also had to learn what it takes to be an Indian vegetarian).

Also there were some contrasts. In my opinion, the people dress in a conservative way, however they tend to be very modern in their outlook. Before arriving, I also heard that Jakarta and the surrounding regions are densely populated, which I mistook as very crowded. Yes, it is, but not as much as the Indian cities.

I found another thing that is different from India: only one language (Bahasa Indonesia) is used for commercial and official communication, at least in Jakarta. English is used to only with people from other countries. It is very difficult to find boards or even signs in English. While Indonesia also speaks hundreds of languages, I could find that the nation is somehow unified with Bahasa. I obviously had language problem, but most people seem to understand some English (And whenever I had tough time asking/explaining something, I would make some gestures to make them understand and the other person and I thoroughly enjoyed it!).

(To be continued)

Bangalore to Jakarta - 1

I haven't updated this blog for long. I recently visited Jakarta on business and I'm going to use that as an excuse (and opportunity) to update the blog!

(I originally wanted to make a dozen posts about my visit, then it occurred me that, it should not become an excuse for people to go away from my blog, so I'm going to do only three!)

While I have travelled to US a couple of times, I've never visited any Asian country. Not even Singapore which people from India often visit. So, with some pre-conceived notions about my destination, I was sitting in the flight to Thailand (The country of my transit).

After an easy flight, I landed in Bangkok. However, the big terminal confused me. While immediately heading for transfer, I was misled by a Monitor Display and went to a gate where I should not have reached before getting a boarding pass. So, I anxiously returned to my starting point but alas..I got lost and ended up in a different place! It was a Posh Business Class Lounge. With only short time before my next flight, I went here and there before somehow managing to locate a correct queue for "Transfers"!

I hope that Bangkok, while opening their state-of-the-art Suvarnabhumi Airport, also put up clearer signs (For instance, instead of just saying "Transfers" and opening multiple counters without any signboards, put signs like like, All Thai Airways Flights or All Flights to Jakarta etc.)

Jakarta Soekarno-Hatta International Airport is not as big as Bangkok, but it looked very different from any airport I have ever seen.

Getting an Indonesian Visa was a breeze. I didn't have a visa before my arrival. Indians are allowed to take a Visa on arrival (you pay $25 for a 30 days tourist visa, Business visa is not any different, except that it is safer to bring your documents - like invitation letter etc.). Once immigrated and clearing customs, I entered this fascinating country...!

(to be continued)

Knowledge is Power

I have a bad habit. I'm sure many of us have it too. Anything that I acquire, I'm very excited about it initially. It could be a DVD player or a dress. As Marshall Brain sums it up beautifully, we have the excitement for material things sometime and eventually it dies.

Often, the main reason for this initial excitement is that the object is "hot" in the market. Yes, we fall prey to ads and peer pressure to go on acquiring new things forgetting we already have a lot more with us (as well as *in* us, but that is altogether a different topic).

By the way, some people (including myself and an avid reader) acquire books like that.

It applies to software too. When I hear about something hot, I go out of the way to buy or freely download, install and use it. But after a short while, something else becomes hotter and I totally forget that I have this one available.

This is how I recently discovered Microsoft Reader which I had installed almost two years ago and forgot. I was exploring my desktop programs aimlessly and suddenly stumbled on Reader. So, I opened it and somehow started reading a short story which I had read when I first installed the software. Titled "Knowledge is Power" written by Freeman Tilden, it is a quick read, entertaining and the theme is as relevant today as it was in 1900s, when this story was written. Incidentally, the theme closely matches with that of this post. I recommend reading it, available as free download for MS Reader. For those who don't want to install MS Reader, a web version is also available.