Providing Services in the Domestic Market: Lessons Learnt

Very recently we concluded a project, working with a leading wireless telecom carrier in the Indian domestic market. It looked like an ideal project from the outside – big brand, centralized procurement procedure with open and transparent communication, till we received the purchase order. However, there are quite a few lessons I learned about how to (rather how not to) treat your service provider. Though most of the points mentioned in this blog are already been followed by my organization, this post shall be a ready reckoner for the readers and for myself while working with service providers anywhere. 

I Know You, You Know Me

The right hand shall have to know what the left hand is doing

In business, we call it organizational transparency. When initiating a project, be sure that all stakeholders are notified accordingly. When our technical team shortlists a service provider, the procurement team issues a work order, and the project starts rolling. We have an internal mechanism that sets specifications for the work and secures necessary approvals internally before a work order is issued. Hence if the procurement team issues a wok order for a map area of 400 sq. km, my technical team shall not ask the vendor to double the delivery area without securing the necessary internal approvals, and issuing a modified work order.

I am OK, you are OK

You shall receive according to the same measure that you measure for others

My organization is ISO 14001 certified. We take pride in flaunting our green practices – from eliminating administrative paperwork to providing free parking to cyclists. So, I would consider it a carnal sin if anyone in my organization force vendors to submit invoices in print, especially when they themselves issue work orders electronically. We always follow the same standards throughout the project framework, which also covers our service providers.

When in Rome

If the project involves transferring data files of large size, make sure your team has the infrastructure to send and receive them

When dealing with projects involving large chunks of data, be sure that you provide data transfer facilities (both sending and receiving) to your project team. This might mean different things to different people. There are organizations who formally engage providers of data transfer services such as DropBox, OneDrive, Hightail or We Transfer. Others prefer using the good old FTP as a safe and standard mechanism of data transfer. My organization is ISO 27001 certified, and we prefer sending and receiving large files using FTP. Whatever be the method, we ensure to provide a standard FTP account for a vendor, and ask them to deposit the data using that account, rather than forcing the vendor to dump everything by email (up to the extent possible) and panic when the vendor reports that the file size is too large to be sent by email.

Sounds simple enough? Well, unfortunately it is not so when you deal with some leading organizations in the domestic market. It is not always about how you advertise yourself in the media, but also about how to treat your vendors, that shows who you really are.

 Image courtesy: coinsaround.com

Donor or Subscriber?

VIRTUAL WORLD

It is commonplace to believe that most things we use online – services, applications, etc. – are free. They are free for a very good extent, and quite some people, like me, prefer using a free application which may have limited usage, and/or advertisements, than a paid application or service with unlimited usage or wider use options.

Best Example - the 'Zilla

I’m happy that my browser is an ecosystem in itself, which has millions of useful applications/widgets that can put Android smart-phones to shame. The most interesting aspect of this ecosystem is that all these applications are available free of cost, and it works quite in sync with my browser and keep getting updated periodically.

Developers of these applications request users to make a small donation (in US Dollar terms), to help them continue with their programming and update activities of the 'add-on' widget. I haven't met anyone who has made a donation for their add-ons, yet. Honestly.

My Story

Recently I decided to make such a donation for a particular application I have been using since the past few years. I wouldn't call this application a life-saver, but it has definitely made my office life a little easier. When calculated on US-Dollar terms my measly donation would only look like peanuts for the developer, but it is almost equivalent to what the 'pro' versions (unlimited usage, ad-free promises) charge.

The Million Dollar Question

If I need to pay for an application myself, then why not go ahead and buy one from the millions of paid and 'pro-' applications, instead of downloading a 'free' one and then paying donations to the developer? My answer is "time". In simple words, it gives me the freedom to use the app when I feel it necessary and make a payment of my choice when I think I can pay.

Applying Newton's Second Law of Thermodynamics to Economics, I think that there can't be a system that can generate ideas /applications/concepts for free and let it run forever without a fuel (reward/profit) to sustain it's working. Hence I sometimes make payments for free resources such as Wikipedia, and some of my favourite and most reliable applications because I want them there.

Given a choice what do you normally choose? Paid applications or freeware? Please comment.


Image courtesy: Aart van Bezooyen 
Copyrighted and licensed by owner under Creative Commons license.
Disclaimer: I intend to use this image for non-commercial purposes only. 

Between Commitments and Fulfillments

GREENOMICS

About 3 years ago representatives from a climate change activist organization visited our office and added to our knowledge and understanding of global warming, and what steps they take to prevent governments and corporations from making decisions that harm the environment. Having had an opportunity to interact with the representatives and the list of their green achievements, several people including myself registered with them and rendered our support. I have been receiving their newsletters and specific campaigning requests from them from time to time. Emotionally charged after watching films like "Battle in Seattle," I too felt good that I a supporting a good cause.

Recently one of their campaigns was directed towards a particular wireless telecom operator asking them to use alternate fuel to support the operation of their mobile towers. I have been working closely with wireless network firms in both domestic and international markets since quite some time, I personally felt (I still do) that asking only one operator to switch their mode of power supply while there are several others of similar size, reach, customer base and profitability. Instead of simply signing up the campaign I wrote a reply to my friend who forwarded the mail to me, asking for an opinion and details. Not being convinced (still) about the logical reason for that particular campaign, I did not make my contribution.

Before I promise my support for their future campaigns, I started searching for logic in the way they choose and target their campaigns. Sadly, I did not find any campaigns in this organization's website that is targeted towards me - the end user - to change the way I consume energy, or methods/ideas that can help me save my dependency on fossil fuels. From then on, I started ignoring their campaigns. The purpose of this story was not to point out the incompetency of a particular organization, but to highlight the power of the individual user/customer to choose products and services that reduce our carbon footprint.

Change needs to happen in the way we (individuals) look at products/services/habits. If I choose to buy/use a certain product over a conventional one, which would help me reduce my carbon footprint, any provider would be happy to stock that particular product/brand so long as I keep buying it from him.  Imagine how positive the impact would be if each one of us start choosing eco-friendly products! Doesn't it make sense to us if we start changing our own consumption patterns (and thereby driving the market to transition) instead of campaigning against some service provider to change their products? I found logic in changing myself for good and influencing my service providers to change because I have.

Therefore, instead of bullying organizations or governments to enforce/transform their products/services/policies, we the individual can change the way we buy/consume/operate products or services. In market driven economies this could change consumption patterns of people at large forcing organizations to expand/transform their offerings. Since the change is driven by the customer, organizations would be happy to adopt, no matter even if the Durban talks failed to develop a measurable framework for reducing emissions.

More on Greenomics to follow.

Image courtesy: healthyhug.com

The Problem With Yahoo

This is in continuum to my previous post on Yahoo and how it can enhance the customer experience.

Over a period of time, I have observed that most of my old contacts do not use their Yahoo IDs anymore. They are connected to me either through a social network or with a different email ID such as Gmail or Hotmail/Windows Live, etc. However, as a user who maintains the nostalgia of using Yahoo, and feeling that Yahoo is sitting on a goldmine of valuable services, which if implemented well, can improve the user experience much more and help the old users come back. On a personal note, I would like to see the following implemented.

Integration of Babelfish's capabilities into the Messenger 

Right from my earlier days of using Yahoo Messenger, I have been in constant interaction with people across the globe from all walks of life. Call it the initial curiosity to interact with people and involve in a cultural exchange, it was interesting for me as well as for several people of my generation. Most people with whom I had exchange of ideas spoke in different languages, belonged to different cultures and lived in different time zones, yet the experience I had was wonderful. 

Thus it was good news for many users like me when we came to know of Yahoo's acquisition of AltaVista's Babelfish. Little has changed since then except for the logo. Babelfish continues to be my choice for several translations, simply for the reason that it translates web pages in a better way than Google does. Multilingual communicators like me would have benefited lots if Yahoo! could integrate the services of Babelfish enabling users of multiple languages to interact via instant messages. None of the other instant messengers that I have used (including Google Talk) has this provision. 

Imply a customizable html version of email like Gmail has done
During the internet rush hours of the evening, opening emails at home is a time consuming task. However, Google's G-Mail identifies the speed of the internet and asks me if I would like to switch to the low-bandwidth version of the mail for quicker access. I went for it, and am quite happy doing so since I can access my mails without hassles. Even on the advanced version, G-mail gives users the option of switching to the low-bandwidth version, and even making the low-bandwidth version as a default view. I really wish Yahoo! could also do the same. 

Automate synchronization of contacts between email and Messenger 

The Yahoo messenger user name operates independent of the Yahoo! email. This makes the process of sending emails to my Messenger contacts, simply because their email addresses do not get updated to the list of contacts in my Yahoo mail.

To add to the complication, Yahoo provides a lot of localized emails to people in different countries. For example users in India can have emails with "yahoo.com" or "yahoo.co.in" or even simpler "yahoo.in" suffixes. Thus users in Philippines can have either a ".com" ID or a ".com.ph" ID. This is similar with users in Brazil (.com or .com.br) or Morocco (.com or .fr) and so on. Wouldn't it be really helpful if I just open my email and start writing to my friend in Brazil without worrying if the email address ends with a ".com" or a ".br"? Yahoo knows well. 

Yahoo's recent efforts make it possible for users to integrate their Yahoo accounts with Facebook accounts. Though this is a welcome move, I feel that if Yahoo could implement some simple but solid steps one at a time to improve user experience, and make it known to public using its Facebook page, a lot of users would be interested to come back.