TUHUND - ERP tailor made for you.

After more than one year of hard work by a team of twenty and a number of freelance consultants from time to time, TUHUND is getting ready for limited release and in a month we will be ready for demos. In another couple of months we will also start aggressive marketing. From tomorrow we will start the process of recruiting a dedicated graphic designer and a dedicated technical writer for TUHUND marketing team to work on collaterals to start with.

What is TUHUND?

TUHUND is one of the most comprehensive ERP systems and yet one of the simplest to use and manage. The system comes as a core backend with security, user management, CRM, employee management, payroll, accounting and task management modules inbuilt. Numerous other modules are deployed on top of the core backend exactly matching the unique business requirements of the customers. Thus TUHUND combines the advantages of traditional ERP system and the specially tailored systems which cannot be met with other ERP systems even after customization.

The system can be deployed on Internet or on Intranet with access on internal network or through VPN. The system can also be deployed in mixed mode where access over Internet can be controlled and given to pre-specified IP addresses. The IP addresses can be added or removed any time by administrator.

TUHUND is truly an Enterprise solution. Normally, ERP systems are built to support a business entity and its branches but with

TUHUND Groups of Companies with their branches and departments are served by a single system. While, with other ERP systems, at least one deployment of ERP is required for each business entity or company, TUHUND needs only one deployment.

TUHUND is probably the only ERP System that allows you to delegate the administrative tasks too. A super admin can add, remove or manage administrators any time. Any administrator can be given access rights to administer any functions or groups of functions. These access rights can also be managed across business entities and branches.

Some ERP Systems allow access to outside persons for a limited functionality. The typical examples would be suppliers to a mall being able to check the inventory position online and being able to supply just in time without the mall having to place a purchase order everytime. TUHUND goes much beyond this and the access can be given to any stakeholder with foolproof user access control. The board of directors can have their high level reports as charts and presentations available online or delivered to them through email. Vendors check new requirements, submit quotations, raise invoices, update their account details, check their statements and request payments.

With TUHUND you can be sure of multiplying your productivity and cutting down the costs. Go for TUHUND and it will pay back for itself within a year.

Out of every hundred bucks worth effort that we put in, 75 bucks go to government.

Out of every hundred bucks worth effort that we put in, 75 bucks go to government. Even before we get our salaries, they deduct 35%. When we spend the remaining 65% we have to pay for the sales tax, education cess, higher education cess, import duty, service tax on import duty, tax on transportation, tax on the fuel for transportation, toll tax, tax on water, electricity and consumables used all along the production line and supply chain, professional tax and income tax of the persons involved and other taxes attached with various products like road tax on vehicles and so on.
I am glad that 5% of my 75% is spent on development and on "comman man" in some way or the other and it pains to see where the rest goes.

Change Control Board or Change Management Board

When I heard the term "Change Control Board" for the first time, the immediate impression that it made on my mind was of a group of few old and head strong people standing with a stick, ready to beat anybody who tried to change or bring about any change. In my imagination, at least one of them would look like George Bush in his bad mood.

It has been almost twenty years. I have not just learnt a bit of change management but also taught change management besides leading few considerably big change efforts. However, I still have the same feeling about the name, "Change Control Board."

Control is a process group within the perimeter of management. Whatever methodology you consider, three groups are invariably there, though with different names. The groups are: Planning, Execution and Control. The name change control board either suggests that the board has no say in planning and execution or that planning and execution are subsets of control. Though in very rare cases former could be true, by and large both are wrong. The why not name it "Change Management Board?"

Do you need a website?

Over past two decades world has changed in a lot of ways and one of the most significant changes is how we think which in turn influences each and every aspect of our lives.

Our buying methodology has changed. We do more research, compare a number of attributes, seek advice from friends and family, accept advice and prefer to buy our trusted brands and products from our trusted place. Interestingly there is no gauge or bench mark for this trust. Neither do we have a well defined list of people, products, brands or companies that we trust. Instead it has got embedded in our subconscious mind and it comes out instantaneously and influences our behavior.

These days, people spend more time online than they do offline. They use internet for communication, collaboration, information, publication, recreation and so many other things. They spend a lot of time on Facebook, Orkut, LinkedIn and a number of similar sites. Your competitors are reaching out to them right where they are and pulling them to their websites. They trust your competitors … Hey! hold on.. you might be wondering why I am presuming you don't have a web presence.. that is because this post is specifically for people who ask, "Do I need a web site?" Sorry for the interruption.. let us continue. Shoppers trust your competitors because they feel that they know them. They have heard about them and they have seen them somewhere on the internet. When they Google for them, they find them. And Google is the biggest advisor that anybody has ever had in the history. (By the way, just try and Google "e-centric" and see what it returns.) Customers trust internet more than they trust themselves. If you don't have an online presence, you do not exist for them. (If you have no passport in Bangkok, you are officially dead!)

People do lot of shopping online and people who make their products available online are either minting money or they are in the incubation phase that precedes the phase where your ecommerce portal becomes your cash cow. Those who say, "Our product is different, it won't sell online," are badly mistaken. The fact is that even those things that could never sell offline find customers online. Right from an aero plane to a safety pin everything is available and everything sells.

Eventually nearly half of the retail market will shift online and rest half will shift to megamalls and retail chains. Half of the commodities and services will sell online and for the rest there will be a fierce competition. By the way do you have any idea how many colleges are offering MBA in Bangalore city alone? Though, every MBA is not going to be a great business man, we have an army of entrepreneurs in the making. At least the retail industry is going to turn into one hell.

Now the bottom line is:

1. Offline you are just not going to have a lot of customers partly because most of them are going to turn online and partly because there are thousands of vendors who are selling exactly what you are. Many of them, very likely, much cheaper than that you are.

2. Online might be too late to start if you do not make a start now. Suppose I can make a website like Facebook and even better than Facebook. Suppose I even have a few million for marketing. Does that guarantee I will even come any close to Facebook. Most likely not, because Facebook has captured the market already and in addition to Facebook there are at least a dozen of sites that are somewhat similar. I am simply too late. I am warning you, "Don't be late." One of my "not so close" friends had the idea of matrimonial sites when there was no Shaadi.com and SimplyMarry.com. But she wasted time thinking "God knows what" and when she finally discovered that the idea was great, she also discovered that the time had gone.

Coming back to the trust part, those who have a strong web presence and online shops are going to see increase in offline sales as well. One of our customers got a lot of wholesale orders from the retail site. Being convinced with their retail site people concluded that they would be equally good in wholesale and bulk orders too. Though they were into distribution too, they had no where mentioned that on the site. It turned out that they did not even need to mention that as they had instead built the trust. Besides wholesale enquiries lot of customers who walked into their retail outlets made it a point to mention that they had found out about then from their website. So, online presence does have a big impact on the offline sales as well.

Today a lot of customers are highly cost conscious. Sometimes they end up wasting dollars attempting to save a penny, but generally they do save money. Though the cost of raw material, labour and everything that goes into manufacturing goods is ever increasing, the retail price of the end products is coming down or at least not increasing proportionally. On one hand we have more efficient and effective processes that save cost an on the other, without any doubts, the margin is shrinking. If a retailer has to make money from his thin margin, he too has to find ways to cut cost. One of the easiest and fastest way is to sell online as the overhead cost goes down, warehouse cost goes down and the human cost goes down.

Your website makes it easier and convenient for you to network. You can link to your principals, suppliers and even customers and get paid for the trust people have in them. If you are selling some leading brand, linking to their site, having their name and logos in your site will go a long way in building your own image. If you can get them to link back to you, nothing like that.

People like to get involved, they like the feeling of being part of something, they like being heard and they love when they see they matter. Your website gives you more chances to make them do that. Besides you can provide a better customer support at much lower cost.

One of the most attractive things about online business is that it a shop that is open 24 hours. 24/7 you are doing sales.

In the end I would warn you against three sets of people:

Set one, the pessimist generalizes, who would give you twenty examples of people who tired online business and failed. Of course if you think you will succeed in the first attempt in everything you do, then online business might be a bit risky. If you are not willing to make another attempt if you fail once, then every business is risky. If you think the only cost is the cost of development and you leave no money for marketing, then too online business is not for you. If you are serious about online business, hire the people who know in and out about the domain.

Set two, the eternal lingers, who would ask you to wait and watch. But.. If you wait, you will never realize when you overstep that threshold that separates those who make it from those who miss it.

Set three, super pessimists. I won't define them, but I will explain with an example. It is a school reunion and Ravi is excited to meet his classmates after a gap of fifteen years. They are discussing what they have achieved or not achieved in their lives. A black Mercedes stops and a gentleman steps out. He is wearing an expensive suit, best known glasses and everything to suggest that he is a very rich man. It takes them more than just a glimpse to realize that it is Sham, their close pal. Later that night Ravi finds an opportunity to ask Sham, "You seem to be doing very well. What is it that you do?" Sham replies, "Are you joking? I am rich because of your brilliant idea. Remember we met three years back on a local train and you told me there was lot of money in Milk business. You told me if I bought one Buffalo and with the money that I earned from selling milk in just one month I could get another. So at the end of one month I would have two, at the end of two months I would have four and so on. That is what I did, I sold my scooter and bought two Buffaloes and after that there was no stopping." Ravi is astonished; he does not utter a word. Sham goes on and asks, "What about you, how many buffaloes did you buy?" Now Ravi was caught between the devil and deep sea, he had to reply. So he said, "I did not but even one. We figured out that the business was too risky and we did not do it." Sham again asked, "But why did you think it was too risky." Ravi replied, "Because my wife asked me a single question. She asked me, what if the first buffalo we buy dies. I had no answer so we concluded it was too risky." Now, online your buffalo won't die, but the super pessimists will find a way to discourage you.

My advice is, make a start ASAP. Hire a consultant and together with him make a roadmap for your online portfolio. Do not expect to win a long drawn war in a single battle. It will take a sustained effort to establish yourself and elevate yourself to a level where the money just keeps gushing in from every side. It is the best choice and there is no second best.

Why did we take a cake?

Sometimes what we say is immediately contradicted. Probably the reason is that often what we say is completely out of the box. It takes people more than just a second to understand us.

A decade back I wrote an article supporting child labor in Kashmir and, as one would have expected, I was ridiculed. However, those who read through saw sense in what I was talking about and I soon found hundreds of supporters. This topic might be similar and it would be nice to try and understand my point of view.

Last month we went to greet a friend on starting new business. When we left home, we intended to pick a bouquet of flowers on the way. Though we passed a few florists, I did not stop. Rather I could not stop because somewhere in my subconscious mind I dislike the idea of taking flowers. Finally we ended up buying a cake that easily cost three times more than what flowers would have, but I did get my satisfaction for not having done something that I would consider unethical.

I considered taking flowers unethical because I found it very similar to buying stolen goods. If one is aware that the goods that one is buying are stolen, then one becomes party to the theft. As I am convinced that commercialization of floriculture at a magnitude it is in India is very bad particularly for the poor, I consider consumption unethical.

Who cares for the government statistics and the bench marks? On one hand we have 30,000 top executives in India drawing more than 10 million a year and on the other I think 90% of the population is still poor. Starvation deaths and suicides triggered by problems due to poverty have become so common that such news no more make headlines. They don’t even get a place in the cover page, do they? I doubt if these people are even acknowledged to be below poverty line as per the Indian standards. I would say every such family whose net worth drops to zero any time in a month few times in a row should be considered poor.

In India more than 90% of the population is affected by the rising prices. Even people with decent salaries have to spend rather too wisely. Average monthly household income in India is less than 1500 Rupees. When we look at the cost of commodities, 1500 Rupees can fetch you 6 kg of mutton or 50 kg of rice or 93 liter of milk. If a family of 4 dines at a small average hotel, probably 1500 Rupees will buy 2 meals. You could buy one leg of jeans if that were an option so at the most you can buy an average quality branded shirt. In Bangalore city you can probably find a six feet by six feet room in a slum for that kind of rent. Let us not talk about other stuff but try and stick to Roti, Kapda aur Makan (Food, Clothing and Shelter). Let us assume people never fall sick and never meet with an accident.
Coming back to the food, if one third of household income is spent on food, that would leave us with a small amount of 500 Rupees for an average family size of 4 persons who are not considered to be below poverty line by the government of India. One packet of dog biscuits costs more than 1000.

What has all this got to do with flowers? I am sure you are still wondering that are you might be thinking what is wrong with this guy. Commercial floriculture is definitely not responsible for the poverty of this nation but it is one of factors that make the matter worse. There might be dozens of issues, if we remove one or two we can definitely expect a reduction in the number of suicides and poverty deaths. How?

The agricultural as well as the forest land is shrinking at an alarming rate. It is already a bit smaller than what the mankind needs to survive and conserve flora and fauna. Being a human being a farmer, rather the land owner, wants to derive the maximum out of his land. Some sell their land at exorbitant rates. Such land is mostly converted to non-productive land. Some opt for higher paying crops like flowers and palm for palm oil. This results is drop in the supply of food items thus increasing the price. The high demand in the commercial land for buildings and roads, flowers and oil for fuel have made the food so scarce that people are willing to pay whatever they have just to survive another day.

Nobody is going to even care for such a small issue. After all who cares for human lives? We actually did not need to care if the governments did.

I believe there is a single root cause for problems like inflation, food shortage, depletion of fuel, global warming and disappearing forests. Nature has the power to heal everything up to a certain limit. If we exceed the velocity with which the nature can mend, we will see destruction. We have precisely been doing that for past hundred years or so. The development has been so fast that nature has not been able to keep up the pace. All we need to do is to allow it to catch up. We cannot stop development and neither should we. The only and sufficient thing to do would be to utilize the resources very wisely till the balance returns.

PMPC 2009 was a waste of time.

It has been a week since I attended this PMPC (Project Management Practitioners Conference) 2009 organized by PMI, Bangalore chapter. I would say it needs lot of improvement. Actually it needs much more. It needs a life first. There were several good things that were planned and managed very well. But overall, the event was ……… dead!

Many of the presenters were brilliant. Their knowledge and maturity level was sky high and yet they were so down to earth, humble and sincere. I plan to meet and be in touch with each one of them.

However, calling PMPC 2009 a conference would be something like calling the isolated half a dozen coconut trees on the beach a forest. It was a collection of a few very good presentations and a few bad presentations. Between the presentations, there was a vacuum.
Interaction was probably not welcome. Any questions had to be written down on the chits of paper and passed to the presenter through a moderator. Out of dozens of questions, one or two were answered. Probably the organizers were under an impression that people attend the conferences so that they do not have to read books. They probably saw the relation between the presenters and the audience as that of teachers and students. How badly mistaken they were.

The food was horrible. Some vegetarian stuff was served in a way that looked very similar to high school hostel mess. The worst part was that people had to stand in long queues under the hot sun for that terrible stuff that was served in an undignified way. Oh did I mention that there was a separate arrangement for the organizers and a chosen few. Probably something that is acceptable in Indian culture. After all it is very similar to caste system that still prevails.

There was absolutely no representation from PMI. There were no international figures. In fact for a while I thought the organizer was Prime Minister of India (PMI) and not the Project Management Institute (PMI).

I was looking forward to attend the conference at Hyderabad in November. I saw it an opportunity to meet Fredrick Harren once again. However after the experience from PMPC 2009, I suppose I should not take that risk.

And for PMPC 2010; Thanks but no thanks!

Bangalore Metro - A project management disaster.

As a child, I used to accompany my father to market, holding his finger. Few hundred meters from my house there used to be a river known as "Nallah Mar." Nallah Mar was full of silt and the water moved at a snail's pace. As it passed through the heart of the city, there were bridges after every few hundred meters. The nearest bridge to my house was Saraf Kadal and we always used to cross Saraf Kadal on foot and buy bread and cakes from a bakery on the other side.


I must have been four or five, but I clearly remember the day when while walking across the bridge we saw people all along the side watching something with excitement. Though, we did not stop, I did have a glimpse. I saw cranes and dozers at a distance rolling loads of soil into the river, filling it up. For several months we did not pass that way. I was told that the bridge was gone and there was no way to cross over, besides the area had been sealed off. Then one day we went again and not over the bridge called "Saraf Kadal" on the river known as "Nallah Mar" but over the road known as "Nallah Mar Road" at a place known as "Saraf Kadal." The road was still not asphalted and was not open to traffic.


Because of my insistence out of my curiosity, my father walked me almost a kilometer up to the place where they had reached filling up and I could see the giant machines again. It was a painful sight because as a kid I did not give a damn to the roads. Rivers and houseboats in them were much preferred sight. It took many years after that for the full length of the road to complete and get ready for traffic. Entire length of the river from its origin in Dal Lake up to the point where it merged with River Jhelum was filled up and turned into this magnificent road.


Since the topic of filling up of the river was most happening topic of discussion those days, I must have heard dozens of times from my elders the stories of Nallah Mar. I learnt that just a decade before it was filled, that would be a few years before I was born, Nallah Mar used have to have crystal clear water flowing considerably fast. There used to be houseboats on both sides and boats all over. The main mode of transportation, particularly goods, used to be the rivers and Nallah Mar was the second most important after Jhelum. There used to be several varieties of fish in the river and in summer one could see children swimming and playing on the banks. Though all this made it an important river that should have been preserved, the most important is yet to come.


After Nallah Mar was turned into a road, the city had to face something new. Jhelum started flooding every year in rainy season and few areas including some uptown posh localities stayed submerged in water for several weeks, if not months, after floods. The floods were mainly because something that our great grandfathers had created to prevent them was removed. Let me rephrase it, "Some unnecessary and unwanted nonsense that our idiotic grandfathers had created, these geniuses got rid of that."


Jhelum originates almost a hundred kilometers from the city and by the time it enters city, in rainy season, it is swollen after it has collected rain water from thousands of square kilometers. Dal Lake, with its total area of 24 square kilometer and with a mountain range, Zabarwan Range, on one side also has a cashment area of several thousand square kilometers. When the waters of Dal Lake flow into Jhelum, floods are imminent. Nallah Mar was similar to the outer ring road. It used to drain the waters of Dal Lake and pour it into Jhelum after it had left the city. The point where the rivers merged was a big basin that could contain the water, thus saving the city from floods.


When we analyze what was achieved and compare it with the cost, the project seems to be a disaster. It was one of those projects which are designed to fail and due to the magnitude the failure could be catastrophic. The purpose of Nallah Mar Road was to gear the city up to accommodate the traffic growth of then and future. It miserably failed to do that. Since all the bridges on the river, which were there after every few hundred meter, were all main roads, the new road looked like millipede with hundreds of legs. There were intersections after every few hundred meters and there were countless unmanaged and unmanageable traffic signals. It did not ease the traffic, if at all it did not worsen it.


As project managers we learn that projects do not exist in isolation but are parts of larger systems. Just like a project is affected by a number of factors, it affects a number of things in addition to the main purpose of the project. The project has results, secondary results and tertiary results. While for small projects we only consider primary and probably secondary results, for large projects we have to consider several levels. Just as we consider political, economic, geographic, environmental, human, social, cultural and a number of other factors to influence our large projects, we have to consider the effects of the project on all the mentioned factors plus many more. The most challenging but most important aspect of large projects is to foresee the future and be able to figure out how the project would influence the future given that the entire environment too would have changed. A project manager needs to have a clear point of view on how the world is going to change without and with the project. To put it in simple words, let us consider the example of building a flyover that would take five years to build. To consider today's traffic conditions is only important to plan how to build, but whether the flyover is going to serve the purpose is not dependent on today's traffic. What if after five years couple of super highways are also going to come up in parallel and there is no need for this fly over. On the other hand, what if the situation was something like the Richmond road flyover, which looks more like a joke now. Probably it is the only flyover in the world that has a traffic signal on the top. It does not even serve half the purpose that it was intended for.


Richmond road flyover was quite fine when it was commissioned but just within a couple of years Richmond road as well as the Residency road were made one way for traffic. The authorities then overlooked the fact that sooner or later these two roads would have to be made one way. In fact making of the flyover was one of the reasons it had to be done so soon.


Bangalore metro is being built with the intention of providing faster and cheaper public transport that would ease traffic on the roads of Bangalore city. In next few years it will be ready and put to use. The traffic growth on the roads will not slowdown but would continue to grow at the same pace. Traffic jams would be so bad that many people would run away from the city. Even after that traffic would continue to grow. Building of flyovers and tunnels will be impossible on most of the high traffic routes because of the metro. Widening of roads will be difficult and building new roads will be too costly.


Long back I happened to watch an ad spot of "IBM - On Demand Business," which I must have mentioned at least in ten conferences, seminars or workshops. The ad starts with the outside view of an airplane and immediately the next shot is inside view. An old man, depicted as owner of the aircraft is shown in bed and there is chaos in the plane. A person comes to the old man and informs him that the plane was going down. Their subsequent conversation is as follows:
Old man: But why is the plane going down?
Person: Because an engine has failed.
Old man: Is there only one engine?
Person: No there are two.
Old man: Why don't they start another engine?
Person: The other engine is running but the plane is still going down. The plane is too heavy for a single engine.
Old man: Then why don't they make the plane lighter?
Person: How do they do that?
Old man: Perhaps they can throw out things like furniture.
Person: But the furniture is fixed.
Old man: Then throw out what is not fixed.
Person: Everything is fixed.


Similarly ten years from now they will say that nothing new can be built because everything is fixed. Bangalore metro will make Bangalore so rigid that Bangalore will go down.


I am not suggesting that the persons, particularly the project managers working on the project are not competent. Some people at the top of the hierarchy who have the power to override always mess up and that is not going to change.


Bangalore Metro might one day prove to be an engineering marvel but it is a project management disaster.