Good Governance[1] is the optimum state of the governance that maximises the social goods, whose characteristics include legitimacy, transparency, accountability, responsiveness, efficiency participation, integrity and justice etc. However, in corporate governance guidelines for companies, the term ‘Intellectual Property’ does not feature. But it is perhaps the single most important and valuable aspect of any technology company. The mismanagement of IP assets creates massive commercial risks for shareholders and directors alike. In instances where a company does not have the luxury of having an expert IP counsel on board, it is imperative that the directors are guided by the expert advice of outside IP counsel. Important IP considerations such as transfer pricing, exchange control regulations, appropriate valuations and IP due diligence are often not addressed properly before commercial transactions are entered into. IP laws differ from country to country. Corporate governance needs to respond to society’s rising expectations of directors and boards as the impact of the global intellectual property ecosystem is felt. The question is, how can a responsible corporate culture of IP transparency be stimulated to connect corporate communication with the desires of all stakeholders?

Today the lack of true and fair[2] information in companies annual reports about their IP assets makes it difficult for shareholders and other stakeholders to assess directors’ stewardship of those assets and this is an important corporate governance issue today. Hence, IP reporting in alignment with the key corporate governance principles of transparency and disclosure is a must.

IP rights are complex intangible legally recognised exclusive rights that play an integral role in modern corporate value creation. An important question that more and more stakeholders are asking is whether the accounting treatment of intangibles under current accounting standards provides a ‘true and fair view’ of a company’s financial position. The inter-relationship between corporate governance, IP assets and traditional financial accounts will be of interest to those in civil, common law and other international jurisdictions where IP rights are growing as an asset class. It is a fact that the traditional financial reporting system is ill-equipped to deal with IP. The balance sheet is often unable to adequately capture internally-generated IPs, which is regarded as an off-balance sheet and therefore invisible to stakeholders. Hence, accountants must comply with the International Accounting Standard (IAS) 38 for intangibles.

There are a few concerns about IP reporting. The first one is the key patents in early-stage are treated as an off-balance sheet asset that may later have to be disclosed in an annual report when they expire due to the detrimental impact on profitability. Secondly, depreciation of IP assets, which conversely often increase in value over time. The third one is the difficulty in re-valuing IP assets under the accounting standards. The IP information gap is problematic from a corporate governance point of view as shareholders’ needs for corporate IP asset information is not being met. As a result, corporate disclosure of more relevant, accurate and timely information regarding a company’s patents, trademarks, copyright and other IP rights is needed to separate intangible’s financial data through cross verification with corporate disclosure.

In good corporate governance, the company should include IP value story in connection with the company’s business strategy to provide the basis for a standard analysis. This is the first step in assessing whether the company’s directors are managing the IP assets in the interest of the company. Although companies required to do so publish annual reports that are richer in content wherein important IP information remains clearly distinguishable. The Association of Chartered Certified Accountants (ACCA), the global body for professional accountants, having surveyed 500 annual report users in three common law jurisdictions (the UK, USA and Canada) maintains that investors are the foremost audience of the annual report and that their needs must be placed at the heart of future developments in corporate reporting.

Good corporate governance requires additional narrative disclosure of ‘true and fair’ IP information to supplement the traditional financial accounts. The lack of IP asset transparency across companies, (small and large), negatively impacts lenders and financiers, who rely on accounts and annual reports to evaluate the creditworthiness of the company. As such the company valuation is heavily influenced by norms in the relevant business sector e.g. IT, fashion etc. because the balance sheet is only really useful for companies that have a trading history. In addition to narrative IP value story, increasing and improving the use of ‘notes’ to the accounts would assist to provide relevantly IP asset information and support innovation.

Hence, it makes sense that Finance Directors become better integrated into R&D, IP and business strategy. It is crucial for the Finance Director to identify and record IP assets, even if they are off-balance sheet items, as they will undoubtedly become more important and valuable to the enterprise as it matures. To ensure the integrity of the accounts, the financial value of IP assets should be traced back to the day the company came into existence to counteract the negative impact of off-balance sheet IP assets.

It known that traditional financial accounts on their own, struggle to provide a true and fair view of an IP-rich enterprise. In terms of future corporate governance and accounting policy, company directors should consider recording off-balance sheet early-stage IP asset financial information from the date of incorporation to ensure traceability and integrity of financial accounting information which is, currently not a requirement of IAS 38. These records support the contextual narrative IP asset information to provide a true and a fair view of the financial position of an enterprise.

Corporate governance also means protecting your technology and information[3]. Not a day passes without news of a data breach or cyber-attack on a company’s operations or a nation’s critical information infrastructure. Indeed, data security and operational risk are the top two concerns of public company directors according to the 2012 Law. Disaster recovery, e-discovery and company reputation also rank high among top issues keeping directors up at night. Directors’ duty of care includes protecting technology and information. In an effort to fulfil the duty of care to protect these vital assets, some boards have formed committees focusing on protection and strategic use of intellectual property and technology. Very few of these committees, however, specifically address the risks associated with data and the need to keep it secure.

The emergence of IP rich companies is the new corporate governance challenge[4]. This is because IP is largely invisible, not only in the financial accounts but also more generally in corporate law theory and the legal framework. In the modern era, all companies, large and small, have intellectual property (IP) rights, sometimes across multiple jurisdictions. They are corporate IP owners. At the same time, the shift to intangibles and IP assets as the major driver of value in business in today’s competitive business environment.

Key corporate governance principles of transparency and disclosure are being more rigorously applied to corporate ownership of monopolistic IP rights that protect innovation and creativity. In the US, SEC disclosure law Regulation S-K requires disclosure of the importance, duration and effect of all patents, trademarks, licences, franchises and concessions that a company holds. IP rich companies need to ensure they reflect on disclosure and transparency rules and take into account the growing magnitude of their corporate intangibles, IP assets and IP business models that potentially generate future wealth for their shareholders and potential investors.

In 2017 the UK implemented the EU Non-Financial Disclosure Directive, which requires large and listed companies to include additional disclosures of non-financial information (like IP) in their annual reports, similar to the disclosure requirements in the Strategic Report. These new company law requirements potentially increase the reporting of non-financial information, better business and IP strategy reporting through the mandatory requirement to report the company’s business model.

In conclusion, IP rights have evolved over the years to add significantly to corporate value and hence corporate governance needs to respond to society’s rising expectations of directors and boards. Companies need to tell us how their corporate investment in IP generation and exploitation contributes to the bottom line of the company. The regulators need to ensure boards of directors are accountable for IP management and strategy decisions, an important underside of the intangible economy.

(a)    Carolina Wozniaski

(b)    Jelena Jonkowich

(c)    Chris O’Neil

(d)    Victoria Azarenka

2.      Service Marketing is the same as:

(a)    Internet Marketing

(b)    Telemarketing

(c)    Transactional Marketing

(d)    Relationship Marketing

3.      Which one is TRUE about Scientific Research:

(a)    It should be Reliable but not Valid

(b)    It should be Valid but not Reliable

(c)    It should be Valid and Reliable

(d)    It should be independent of Valid and Reliable

4.      Find the odd one out:

(a)    Historical method – Past Events

(b)    Survey method – Illusion Events

(c)    Philosophical methods – Vision

(d)    Experimental methods- Future action

5.      Cooking oil is converted into vegetable ghee by the process of:

(a)    Crystallization

(b)    Condensation

(c)    Hydrogenation

(d)    Oxidation

6.      Glass is a:

(a)    Pure solid

(b)    Supercooled liquid

(c)    Gel

(d)    Polymer

7.      Uranium eventually decays into a stable isotope of:

(a)    Radium

(b)    Thorium

(c)    Lead

(d)    Polonium

8.      Who wrote the Nasik Prasasti (eulogy):

(a)    Queen Nayanika

(b)    Sarkarni

(c)    Simuka

(d)    Goutami

9.      The founder of WikiLeaks is:

(a)    Richard Heck

(b)    Robert Edwards

(c)    Julian Assange

(d)    Rick Perry

10.  Market Driven strategies include:

(a)    Identifying problems in the products of the company

(b)    Planning Marketing tactics of peers

(c)    Positioning the organization and its brands in the market place

(d)    Selling the same products in the market place

Answers to Quiz questions appeared in Corporate Notepad Volume 1 Issue 2, Dec 2017

Prof. Sanjay Sinha is HOD Finance Department, ITM Business School, Navi Mumbai

He is M Phil (Fin.), MBA (Fin), Adv Dip. In Finance, MSc (Statistics) and authored

two books and several research papers in international and national journals.

2.E-Week

ITM Business School - Entrepreneurship-Cell, Kharghar, Navi Mumbai being member of NEN (National Entrepreneurship Network) & Wadhwani Foundations conducted Entrepreneurship-week from 9th to 16th February 2018 on the theme "Live Your Entrepreneurial Dream. The various events during the E-Week include Entrepreneurship-Talk – Entrepreneurs from various sectors sharing their entrepreneurial journey, Innovation Competitions like Business Quiz, Business Plan to check their knowledge in starting their own business, Innovative Management Games to check their creativity, Design Thinking Workshop, Mentor Meet, Panel Discussion, Treasure Hunt, Network Marketing, Start-up Pitch, Problem Solving, & Ad Mads and fun activities. The invited guests and entrepreneurs from various industries include Aries Agro Limited, Head Start, LTA School of Beauty, M/S Global Logistics services Inc., Local Tours& Travels, Jumpstart Innovations, Amherst Logistics, KnightChef, Reliance Foundations, Vestige Marketing Pvt. Ltd. Eyedias Marketing Ltd, Heng Bok Korean, Ranmaks Hospitality Ltd, Appejay School of Hospitality, & Namastey India cafe & saloon

3.Self Defence Workshop

CSI cell of ITM Business School, during celebration of International Women’s day by Empowering Women, conduced Self-Defence workshop for women, which it is of utmost importance in the kind of the world we live in today, where many criminals target women because they seem fragile and cannot defend themselves and the cases of gender violence are on rise, out of which many go unreported and hence  the self-defence for women has become a necessity more than ever. And that is when the importance of learning self-defence techniques for women was felt by ITM. CSI cell of ITM Business school arranged a workshop on Self Defence for Faculty, Staff and Students of ITM College in lieu of celebrating International Women’s Day. Mr. Rtn. Subhash Gokul Patil from Raigad Taekwondo Association was the lead trainer for this workshop. He and his team not only taught the self-defensive techniques but also boosted moral of female members making them feel more confident about themselves.

4 Business Analytics Course

In a bid to offer contemporary courses to aspiring management graduates, ITM Business school Kharghar is starting a new course on “Business Intelligence & Analytics” along with University of Denver, USA. The aim of this ​Program​ is to deliver content related to analytics of different specializations like (marketing analytics, financial analytics, human resource analytics, operations analytics, econometric s, IT etc.  The Professor with content expert for these subjects from university of Denver will train all faculty teaching this course. This is the latest addition to curriculum basket at ITM B-School, Navi Mumbai.

Dr. H.G. Parsa, who is Senior Professor from Denver University, conducted Faculty Development Program was conducted on the Role of Research in Analytics Dr. Parsa holds a PhD from Virginia Tech, an MS in Food Science, and an MSc in Genetics. He is an associate editor of the Journal of Hospitality and Tourism Research and a Fulbright Visiting Scholar (2005). Dr. Parsa is the Barron Hilton Professor of Lodging Management. His research interests include corporate social responsibility, marketing and pricing strategies, and analysis of restaurant and food trends. Dr. Parsa gave an insight on the faculty members involved in Research in the University of Denver and also explained the importance of Collaboration of Faculty members with the industry and its benefit in conducting research.

5. ITM: Top amongst B-School Ranking List

In All India Times B School Ranking Survey 2018, ranks ITM b-School top amongst the best management institutes in India:

·         Overall 15th among Top 100 Business Schools in India,

·         8th among Top 75 Private Business Schools in India,

·         5th in Maharashtra

6. Management Development Program for SBI

ITM Institute of Financial Markets conducted 8 days Management Development Program in January 2018 for SBI Mutual Funds through structured ‘learning and development’ intervention which was inaugurated by Ms. Anuradha Rao, MD & CEO, SBI Mutual Fund and Mr. D. P. Singh, ED & CMO (Domestic Business) - SBI Mutual Fund.  The program covered modules on Overview of Financial Market & Analysis of Economic Indicators, Overview of Mutual Fund Industry and Operations & Regulations, Equity Mutual Fund Products, Mutual Fund - Other Products: Balanced, Hybrid, etc., Debt Mutual Fund Products, Soft Skills and Communication Skills, Analysis of Mutual Funds, Mutual Fund Taxation vs Other Financial Products Taxation, Financial Planning Calculations, Sales Pitch Techniques.

7. Twinkling Stars - a special initiative for Children's Smile, Health & Education

ITM Vocational University student took a special initiative under ‘Twinkling Stars’ which is an active student community dedicated towards social causes. Since inception, i.e. March 2017, Twinkling Stars undertook numerous challenges confidently to help society for a cause. Activities/ Drives conducted till date are as follows; organizing awareness Camp to imbibe importance of Higher Education and opportunities to school kids. Under the banner of Swachh Bharat Abhiyan and in collaboration with Vadodara Municipal Corporation (VMC), an awareness drive was conducted to spread a message of Green India, Clean India, Flood have affected Banaskantha and its nearby Villages and leaving over many people homeless. People have lost their homes, as well agricultural produce, personal valuables and livestock, all of which they depended on for their livelihood.

8.  International Women Day Celebration in ITM Vocational University

Worldwide, women continue to contribute to social, economic, cultural and political achievements. Same time the progress towards the gender parity has slowed down in many places. ITM Vocational University have step forward to showcase the inner talent of House Makers by organizing the Cake Presenting Competition and a lot of Fun Games for womens. Vatsala Patil(Assistant Commissioner GST & Renowned Folk Singer) who was the Chief Guest of the event advised women to scale new heights in all the aspects of life. She also said that women should fight against the gender discrimination and help rural women to make them literate.  Laxmi Tomar, Nidhi Dhebar and Heena Patel (National Cricketers), Gujarat were the Guest of Honour of the event.

9. Kerala Theme Lunch “KETUVALLAM”

The students of second year BSC Hospitality Studies had organized a Kerala theme lunch “KETUVALLAM" which means House boats on 25th January 2018. The land of green and the serene Kerala offer an amazing array of backwaters in Kerala. The Rich cultural heritage of Kerala comes out in its best form & spirit during the ten-days long festival called “Onam”. It is indeed a treat to be a part of the grand carnival. It is a harvest festival and is celebrated with joy & enthusiasm. The most impressive part of Onam celebration is the grand feast called ‘Onasadya’ prepared on ‘Thiruonam’, which is served on banana leaves. Students of second years had converted the Basic Training Restaurant into a House boat and served the mouth-watering dishes which had the authentic taste.

Founder & CEO at Krima Solutions is ITM Alumni 1992-94 MBA batch. An entrepreneur with rich, invaluable experience in successfully running businesses of large and medium-sized corporations with hands on experience in managing offshore centers. He is helping ecommerce companies, publishing houses, event companies and corporations by building and maintaining their digital assets and generating maximum brand equity. He assists companies in online product development, content strategy and research using cutting edge technology. His Specific focus is on establishing good governance models with expertise in content development, software development, network operations, delivery management, customer support, quality control, human resources, accounting & finance, information technology, sales, marketing, and administration

He was Country Head and India Board Member for couple of years of Top Right Group India Knowledge Services, which is a professional services company providing research, analysis, data management, software development and content management on a global scale.

He was Country Head of MEED India/ 4C Group for two years in Mumba. He was responsible for building & managing its center of excellence in India for knowledge, research and analytics services. He demonstrated ability to make sound decisions and be creative in developing alternative solutions in some fast-paced, budget-challenged environments analytics, content production, information and knowledge services. He is known as Domain expertise in the sectors of ecommerce, FMCG, Retail, healthcare, publishing, events & exhibitions, media, entertainment, real estate, construction, infrastructure, energy, telecom, FMCG, Information technology, media, healthcare services, automotive and engineering, banking & finance and insurance. In addition, he possesses P&L management experience and ability to manage program as per budgets and risk management.

Abodh Aras

He had career journey from Sales Management to Stray Management. Young, good-looking and dynamic, he is the picture of accomplishment. He is an MBA in Marketing from ITM business School, Mumbai (batch 1994-96) and a graduate in Hotel Management. This 32 years corporate head is the Phil Collins fan, who can speak French and Spanish and is on the fast track.

After completing catering and master’s in business management, Abodh Aras did went to the dogs!

As CEO of Welfare of Stray Dogs (WSD) he has impacted the lives of more than 70,000 stray dogs in Mumbai through its first aid, sterilisation and immunisation programs. This animal lover is clear in his focus. WSD loves dogs and ensure the best possible care for stray dogs by taking a pragmatic, effective and solution-oriented approach. WSD’s vision is to better the relations between strays and humans.

So, it''s not just about looking after the interests and rights of the canine stray population, but also to ensure that the human element is taken care of. He looks after Welfare of Stray Dogs as a Chief Executive Officer of The Welfare Of Stray Dogs (WSD). Abodh has worked in the corporate sector with companies like DHL Worldwide Express, managing customer services and sales. His passion for animals led him to quit the corporate sector and join WSD in 2000 where he volunteered since 1995. He is also a co-opted member of The Animal Welfare Board of India.

—Albert Einstein

Work life balance...

Before searching for a technical and theoretical definition of work life balance (WLB) let us have a quick look at the story of Sage Walmiki, who later wrote great Indian epic Ramayana. He was born to to sage Prachetasa and his name was Ratnakara. When he was a small boy he went to forest and got lost. A hunter took him under his care. Ratnakara got married to a hunter girl and to support his wife and children took to robbery and started looting people to feed his family. One day he met sage Narada. He was asked by Narada whether Ratnakara’s family will partake in his sins also. His family refused to partake his sins and he was shocked. He was disheartened. Later he did vigorous Tapasya (penance) and got the name Walmiki. Subsequently he wrote the epic Ramayana and became famous. Perhaps his case is the earliest case of WLB  issue which lead to a more fruitful life later!

Not everyone be so lucky as Ratnakara to get a guru like sage Narada and to become famous sage Walmiki in later part of life. The WLB issue could be very serious and could potentially destroy one’s life if proper corrective and timely steps are not taken.

According to the British Field Marshal Bernard Montogomery, Bajirao Peshwa was possibly the finest cavalry general ever produced by India. He fought 42 battles in a short life span of 39 years. He neglected his personal health & his family. The ill effects if stressful personal life could be seen in his biography. Its an example of glaring example of imbalance in work and life. Similarly, Chatrapati Shivaji, a famous Maratha king was busy in attacking Moghuls throughout his life so much so that his own son did not receive love either from father or from mother.

Simple definition of work-life balance means that an individual needs time for professional work and other aspects of personal life. The personal life can either be personal interests or family related issues.

Why Work Life imbalance occurs?

There are four moderates that are correlated with the issue.

·         Gender – The perceived role of men differs from that of women. Men prioritize their work duties over family duties.

·         Working Hours – Spending long hours of work due to inflexibility, shifting in work requirements, overtime or evening work duties lead to imbalance between work and family life. Long work hours though increase work-life imbalance, is associated with financial benefits.

·         Family Characteristics – It determines the degree of work-life imbalance. Working parents experience reduced family dissatisfaction due to their family duties which remain incomplete in most of the cases. For single working parent the dissatisfaction is on higher side.

·         Single working parents - the dissatisfaction is on higher scale.

Technology – Is it boon or bane?

Bowswell and Olson-Buchanan say, “Increasingly sophisticated and affordable technologies have made it more feasible for the employees to keep contact with work”.

Companies use e-mails and distribute smartphones to their employees so that they remain connected to the business even when they are not in office. The boundaries between the workplace, workday and off day are blurred. Employees are made to attend the technology driven office processes even when they are on vacation or off duties. In fact, the word “off duty” has lost its old meaning.

This situation got momentum post globalization. Employees feel that their jobs and the allotted work hours excessive because of globalization.

The side effect of advanced technology, one would dare to say, is causing more work-life balance imbalance.

Causes - Work Life Imbalance

The technological advancement has blurred the boundary of work and life. The ‘work from home’ concept evolved during the past two decades make the employees stay connected to business even when they are not in the office.by working from home the employees can attend to their family jobs without any hassles. It has provided win-win situation, but it has its own limitations. The long and extended working hours, slowly and gradually, adversely affect mental health.

Stress related disorders

•       Cardiovascular disease

•       Sexual health

•       Weaker immune system

•       Frequent headaches

•       Stiff muscles

•       Backache

•       Poop coping skills

•       Insecurity

•       Exhaustion

•       Lack of concentration

•       Binge eating, smking, alcohol

According to the survey conducted by the National Life Insurance company, four out of ten U. S. Employees state that their jobs are extremely stressful.

In the same study work family spill over was investigated. It was found that with an increased amount of negative spill over from work to family, the likelihood of reporting stress within the family increased by 74%, and with an increased amount of negative spill over from family to work the reported stress increased by 47%.

Burn-out feeling comes from the more expectations kept the job from the partner, from the children and from oneself. The Hardworking, the loner, the perfectionist, the grim are more prone to burnout syndrome. Great ambition, then the suppression of failure, isolation and finally cynical attitude towards the employer. Such feeling spoils family life and leads to anxiety disorders and then finally to depression and in worst cases to suicide.

The very stressful and time-consuming employment culture, like Japan, leads to low birth-rates of the nation. The “aging of Japan” is believed to have been caused by work-life imbalance.

Corporate Executives on WLB

Dinaz Madhukar Exe. VP.DLF Luxury Retail & Hospitability (Ref: ET., 08/03/2018)

She is a celebrity lady entrepreneur having over two decades of experience; was on Women’s Day asked by E.T. (8th March 2018) as to how she manages to strike work-life balance? She said, “Both of us are in hotel industry and have lived a nomadic life moving from city to city and state to state. My life gets consumed by my work as this is my passion and I truly enjoy it. My family supports me. I do, however, take out time for all things that are important for me including special days & holidays where we spend quality time.” Infact, she said ‘Love what you do and Do what you love’.

Bhagwad Geeta on WLB

The whole of Geeta repeatedly speaks about ‘Samatva’ means equality or balance. The whole struggle is to maintain a balance or equilibrium. The laws of various types, like, the government law, the social law, the communal law, the family law, the social trust law, etc. aimed at one thing namely, the maintenance of harmony, in every walk of life, in every section of society. If any section of society feels imbalance, there is an anxiety creeping in the social life. A little thorn pricking the sole of our foot makes us totally uneasy until we remove it and establish balance. This situation often arises because we live in a sense perception-world i.e. wholly relying upon the feedback received from the senses. We do not counter-check the feedback reports. We thus gain mental imbalanced and the fruits of imbalance; which lead to emotional outbursts and unwanted frictions in our relationship. Many a times people pick-up a wrong shloka of Geeta without referring to its context and get ready to fight.

योगस्थ: कुरु कर्माणि सङ्गं त्यक्त्वा धनञ्जय | सिद्ध्यसिद्ध्यो: समो भूत्वा समत्वं योग उच्यते ||2:48||

Meaning: Perform your duty equiprised, O Arjuna, abandoning all attachment to success or failure. Such equanimity is Yoga.

Purport: Success or failure be accepted as it is without losing balance. This essence of maintaining Yoga is all our actions is the essence of happiness.

हतो वा प्राप्स्यसि स्वर्गं जित्वा वा भोक्ष्यसे महीम् | तस्मादुत्तिष्ठ कौन्तेय युद्धाय कृतनिश्चय: ||2:37||

Meaning: O son of Kunti, either you will be killed on the battlefield and attain the heavenly kingdom, or you will conquer and enjoy the earthly kingdom. Therefore, get up and fight.

Purport: There is no certainty in one’s life. There is not much of choice but to fight. Hence get up to fight.

If a stranger reads the second verse without getting the context laid in the first verse the actions will be wrong, and the result will be unwanted.

One must have clear perspective of any WLB issue first before trying to solve it.

Drivers: WLB

·         Family Support

One must make family members feel that they are looked after well and are oved sufficiently so that they, in return, provide necessary support to keep WLB in healthy state.

·         Superior Support

The role of bosses at work place plays very important role by providing small conveniences to the employees to make the employees stress-free and cheerful. It could lead to improving HR interventions. Work place stress works adversely even after the work hours. It further leads to many serious issues.

·         Social Media

It helps greatly in interpersonal relationship building and maintenance; but it has its own limitations. Over dependence could lead to imbalance and more serious issues. It should be avoided for better WLB.

·         Family Time Vs Me Time

There is always a tight rope walk between the time dedicated to one’s family and the time spent on one’s profession/occupation, passion, hobbies etc. Both the segments demand quality time. One must be righteous while spending time on both the segments of one’s life.

Organic Method for WLB:  Reflection Exercise

REFLECTION EXERCISE

There are quite a few mental exercises which are highly effective and potent.  They are all subtle exercises i.e. not much is to be done at gross body level.

Contra–indications: Nil

·         Steps:

1.       Sit on floor with your back resting on wall or sit comfortably on a chair with palms kept on thighs and both legs kept parallel to each other.  It can also be done by sitting on chair with back resting on the backrest of the chair.

2.       Close your eyes.

3.       Take full, slow and deep breath and slowly release. Go for similar 5 rounds in order to streamline breathing.  Subsequently continue breathing at the same speed during the entire exercise.

4.       Start visualising all the activities done by you during yesterday from start to end i.e. from the time you got up till you retire at the bed-time.  Any work done by you, any talk done by you, and any place visited by you etc.  everything in detail be watched as per the time of the day.

5.       In case you miss any incidence, watch that incidence in detail as per the time slot and watch it once again.

6.       You watch the events without passing any judgement and without any comment on the event.

7.       You simply watch these events like you would watch a documentary movie in which you are the main doer.

8.       There are some good actions, some moderate actions and some wrong actions.  You are neither getting perturbed by wrong actions nor getting unduly excited by good actions.  You are simply watching the events.

9.       This exercise can be termed as observing your own actions with detached mind. This can also be called Mental Audit. As we remove the errors pointed in office audit, we will get a good opportunity to rectify our errors w.r.t. WLB.

This exercise is simple and very economical. It can be done at any time of the day but the most effective time is either morning when you start your day OR in the night when you sign-off for the day. It is equally effective in all the WLB situations- at work place, at home, in society, in colony, in relationships etc.

Wishing you all the readers Happy and Strong WLB!

Prof. Arjun Naik is HOD Life Style Management, ITM Business School, Kharghar, Navi Mumbai

Legal Families and Legal Rules

Comparative legal scholars agree that, even though no two nations' laws are exactly alike, some national legal systems are sufficiently similar in certain critical respects to permit classification of national legal systems into major families of law. Although there is no unanimity among legal scholars on how to define legal families,

"among the criteria often used for this purpose are the following:

* historical background and development of the legal system,

* theories and hierarchies of sources of law,

* the working methodology of jurists within the legal systems,

* the characteristics of legal concepts employed by the system,

* the legal institutions of the system, and

* the divisions of law employed within a system"[1]

Based on this approach, scholars identify two broad legal traditions: Civil law and Common law. According to the law and finance literature, the English and French legal traditions spread throughout the world through conquest, colonization, and imitation [2]. Apart from the French model, there are said to be two other civil law traditions: the German and the Scandinavian. The seminal moment for the German legal tradition is the adoption of the German Civil Code in 1900. Much like its French counterpart, the German legal tradition is based on Roman civil law and was subsequently exported to other countries [3]. By contrast, the Scandinavian legal tradition, which developed relatively independently in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, is less closely linked with Roman civil law [4] and has not spread throughout the world [5]. Finally, some studies refer to a socialist-transition legal family, which is based on the legal tradition that emerged from the breakup of the Soviet Union [6].

The genesis of the classed two broad legal traditions: Civil law and Common law may be stated as:

Civil Law

The Civil, or Romano-Germanic legal tradition is the most influential, and the most widely distributed legal tradition around the world. It originates in Roman law, uses statutes and comprehensive codes as a primary means of ordering legal material, and relies heavily on legal scholars to ascertain and formulate its rules. Legal scholars typically identify three currently common families of laws within the civil law tradition: French, German, and Scandinavian. The French Commercial Code was written under Napoleon in 1807, and brought by his armies to Belgium, the Netherlands, part of Poland, Italy, and Western regions of Germany. In the colonial era, France extended her legal influence to the Near East and Northern and Sub-Saharan Africa, Indochina, Oceania, and French Caribbean islands. French legal influence has been significant as well in Luxembourg, Portugal, Spain, some of the Swiss cantons, and Italy. When the Spanish and Portuguese empires in Latin America dissolved in the 19th century, it was mainly the French civil law that the lawmakers of the new nations looked to for inspiration.

The German Commercial Code was written in 1897 after Bismarck's unification of Germany, and perhaps because it was produced several decades later, was not as widely adopted as the French Code. It had an important influence on the legal theory and doctrine in Austria, Czechoslovakia, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Switzerland, Yugoslavia, Japan and Korea. Taiwan's laws came from China, which borrowed heavily from the German Code during its modernization.

The Scandinavian family is usually viewed as part of the civil law tradition, although its law is less derivative of Roman law than the French and German families [7]. Although Nordic countries had civil codes as far back as the 18th century, these codes are not used any more. Most writers describe the Scandinavian laws as similar to each other but "distinct" from others, so the 4 Nordic countries are treated generally as a separate family.

Common Law

The family referred to as the common law tradition includes the law of England and those laws modeled on English law. The common law historically is formed by judges who have to resolve specific disputes. Largely precedents from judicial decisions, as opposed to contributions by the scholars, shape common law. The roots of English law presently are from enactments by the legislature, wherein the incremental changes are from judicial decisions. Common law has spread to British colonies, including the United States, Canada, Australia, India, Singapore and many other countries.

The tradition of the English Common Law has been one of gradual development from decision to decision: historically speaking, it has been case law derived, not enacted law. On the Continent, the development since the reception of Roman law has been quite different, from the interpretation of the Justinian's Corpus Juris to the codification, nation by nation, of abstract rules. So common law comes from the court, Continental Law from study, the great jurists of England was judges, in the Continent professors. Base premise being, in the Continent, lawyers faced with a problem, even a new and unforeseen one, ask what solution the rule provides, in England and the United States they predict how the judge would deal with the problem, given existing decisions.

In most cases, such classification is uncontroversial. In some cases, however, while the basic origin of laws is clear, laws over time have been amended to incorporate the needs of the adopting country as well as influences from other families. For example, although Ecuador is a French civil law country, its company law was revised in 1977 in part to incorporate some common law rules. After World War II, the American occupying army changed some Japanese laws, although their basic German civil law structure remained. While Italian laws originate in the French tradition, over years they had some German influence. In all these and several other cases, they have classified a country based on the original structure of the laws it adopted, rather than on the revisions.

Yet these and similar classifications are not at all self-evident. Rather, for about eighty per cent of the 129 countries that Djankov, McLiesh & Shleifer [8] examined, the categorization according to legal origin is far from clear. The difficulty arises mainly with respect to legal systems in Eastern Europe, Asia, Africa, and Latin America. Further these can be amplified as: if the Company Law of the Peoples Republic of China [9] of 1993 was primarily based upon the company laws of Taiwan, France, Germany, and Japan. For language reasons, legislators paid particularly close attention to the Taiwanese law. Yet, Taiwan's company law is itself a hybrid, since it was originally based on both German and Japanese law and, Japan after World War II, came under U.S. influence [10]. As a result, codified Chinese company law is to a large extent a mixture of various legal influences and not simply of German legal origin. This can also be seen in other areas of Chinese law because, in contrast to Germany (or France), there is no comprehensive civil code [11], and Chinese securities law as the securities law panning the world is in principle based on the U.S. model [12]. It is more difficult to criticize the classification of Japan as being of German legal origin. Between 1890 and 1900 Japan did indeed copy large parts of the five major German codes [13].

In Japan however, these legal transplants have not necessarily retained their importance to Japanese law. For example, the Commercial Code of Japan has been substantially changed since World War II, in particular because of American influence [14]. The same is true for other areas of trade and business law [15]. Indian law other than family law has followed the path of common law due to colonization as in many parts of the world, though many laws are written codes as opposed to principles evolved from judicial pronouncements; primordial being the law for contracts which as then was the principles of contract law as laid down by pronouncements in England.

The religious traditions, such as Jewish law, Canon Law, Hindu law, and Muslim law, appear to be less relevant in matters of investor protections. Thus, the Arabian countries unquestionably belong to Islamic law as far as family and inheritance law is concerned, just as in India personal law belongs to the religion professed by its citizen. In India family and inheritance law derives its origin on 'religious precepts' of its citizen, as for Hindus the applicable family and inheritance law has its genesis in ancient Hindu law, for Muslims Islamic laws, albeit largely codified accepting customs and traditions where uncodified. Economic law of these countries (including commercial law and the law of contract and tort) is heavily impressed by the legal thinking of the colonial and mandatory powers - the Common Law in the case of India, French law in the case of most of the Arab States.

France adopted a civil law system characterized by fact-finding by state-employed judges, automatic review of decisions, and, later, a reliance on codes rather than judicial discretion. In contrast, England developed a common law system that relied on fact-finding by juries, independent judges, infrequent appeals, and judge-made law rather than strict codes. It may be probably said that pure legal systems no longer exists, In India with the large number of tribunals being formed under countries classed as common law system as in India, to address the need of specialized domain knowledge, address the delays in judicial system, but with a conflicting mandate without its attendant jurisprudence, subject to appeals thereto to judicial system, tribunals largely mandated to be a bench of ex judges man along with technical members, thus reflecting distinct partial move towards the civil law system. Similarly, civil law systems have adopted nuanced approaches of the common law system.

Analysis of legal families has becomes relevant in finance where legal system plays a crucial back of the mind role in capital investments and capital flows, notwithstanding that securities laws are harmonized to US securities laws, primodial research being 'The Economic Consequences of Legal Origins'[19] for the last dozen years, Raphael La Porta, Florencio Lopez-de-Silanes, Andrei Shleifer, Robert Vishny (LLSV), and an array of co-authors and independent scholars have put together an impressive collection of papers which argue that legal origin helps explain investor protection, labor regulation, government ownership of banks, unemployment, the size of capital markets, and numerous other aspects of modern economies. To classify countries into legal families, LLSV relied principally on a publication of the American Association of Law Libraries called "Foreign Law: Current Sources of Codes and Basic Legislation in Jurisdictions around the World" by Reynolds and Flores [20].

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[1] Glendon, M., Gordon M., Osakwe C., Comparative Legal Cambridge. Cambridge University Press. 1992 Ed., UK; Since 1970x[2] See Beck & Levine, ibid. at 258-60

[3] See ibid. at 256, 258-59.

[4] Some studies regard the Scandinavian countries as part of the civil law tradition. See e.g. Rafael La Porta et al., “Law and Finance” (1998) 106 Journal of Political Economy 1113 at 1115 [La Porta et al., “Law and Finance”]. Others treat it as a separate legal family. See e.g. La Porta, Lopez-de-Silanes & Shleifer, “Securities Law”, supra note 9 at 14.

[5] See Beck & Levine, supra note 10 at 257.

[6] See Simeon Djankov, Caralee McLiesh & Andrei Shleifer, “Private Credit in 129 Countries” Journal of Financial Economics 84 (2007) 299–329.

[7] Zweigert, Konrad, Kotz H., Introduction to Comparative Law, Oxford: Clarendon Press.

[8] ibid @38

[9] Adopted at the 5th Sess. of the Standing Comm. 8th Nat’l People’s Cong., 29 December 1993, promulgated as Order No. 16 of the President of the P.R.C., 29 December 1993, effective 1 July 1994, trans. in The Company Law of the People’s Republic of China (Beijing: Foreign Language Press, 2001) (P.R.C.).

[10] See Mathias M. Siems, Convergence in Shareholder Law(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press)

[14] There are “only” two legislative sources. See General Principles of the Civil Law of the People’s Republic of China (adopted at the 4th Sess. of the 6th Nat’l People’s Cong., 12 April 1986, promulgated as Order No. 37 of the President of the P.R.C., 12 April 1986, effective 1 January 1987) (P.R.C.), trans. by Chinacourt, online: Chinacourt <http://en.chinacourt.org/public/detail.php?id=2696>; The Contract Law of the People’s Republic of China (adopted at the 2d Sess. of the 9th Nat’l People’s Cong., 15 March 1999, effective 1 October 1999)(P.R.C.), trans. online: Judicial Protection of IPR in China <http://www.chinaiprlaw.com/english/laws/laws2.htm>.

[11] See Lawrence S. Liu, “Chinese Characteristics Compared: A Legal and Policy Perspective of Corporate Finance and Governance in Taiwan and China” (2001) at 2, online: Social Sciences Research Network <http://ssrn.com/abstract=273174>.

[12] See e.g. Zweigert & Kötz; supra note 16 at 298-301. But see Masao Ishimoto, “L’influence du Code civil français sur le droit civil japonais” [1954] R.I.D.C. 744.

[17] See generally Curtis Milhaupt, “Creative Norm Destruction: The Evolution of Nonlegal Rules in Japanese Corporate Governance” (2001) 149 U.Pa. L. Rev. 2083. Milhaupt writes: [T]he validity of the classification scheme used [by certain authors] to create the legal origin variable is highly suspect. For example, these studies list Japan as belonging to the German civil law family. This is partially, but only partially, true of Japan’s five major codes ... But many subsequent Commercial Code revisions and [several] important economic regulatory statutes [bearing on investor protections] are of U.S. origin. German law has had only a minor influence on postwar Japanese legal developments. Thus, the classification for Japan is only about partially accurate and no theory is offered to explain why legal origin, as opposed to subsequent legal developments, would be determinative of corporate governance patterns. It would not be surprising if the classifications of legal origin for other countries in the study were subject to similar defects (ibid. at 2123, n. 131).

[13] See R. Daniel Kelemen & Eric C. Sibbitt, “The Americanization of Japanese Law” (2002) 23 U. Pa. J. Int’l Econ. L. 269.

[14] Raphael La Porta, Florencio Lopez-de-Silanes, Andrei Shleifer, Robert Vishny (LLSV): Journal of Economic Literature 2008, 46:2, 285–332: http:www.aeaweb.org/articles.php?doi 10.1257/jel.46.2.285

[15] Reynolds, Flores., Foreign Law: Current Sources of Codes and Basic Legislation in Jurisdictions Around the World; 1989 Compare Thorsten Beck & Ross Levine, “Legal Institutions and Financial Development” in Claude Ménard & Mary M. Shirley, eds., Handbook of New Institutional Economics (Dordrecht, Neth.: Springer, 2005) 251 at 254-58 (tracing origins to the fifteenth century for France and to the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries for England).

Uttam Hathi, B.Sc., P.G.D.M.M.T., LL.M., is practicing lawyer since 1992. Currently he is associated with BRUS Chambers-Advocates & Solicitors as Managing Partner handling the Corporate Commercial & Contracts matters. He is enrolled with Bar Council of Maharashtra and Goa,

Patenting

For Big Data patents the companies will have to submit algorithm, which are, in fact, not technical inventions. They are theoretical structures or methods and could therefore easily fall into the area of non-patentable matter. The second is that algorithmic patents are particularly vulnerable to the ability by others to “innovate” around them. It is quite unlikely that a data analysis algorithm would be unique from a technical point of view. Most data analysis algorithms are a way of doing similar things in sequence; such as search, clever search, and pattern recognition. We can call it, a commoditization process starting from search and ending with pattern recognition.

Indian Patent Act Section 3(k) specifies that the following cannot be considered as inventions within the meaning of the act.

"A mathematical or business method or a computer program or algorithms"

But many companies have managed to secure patents by presenting them as "more” than just a computer program. Examples of patents granted are, Patent 252220 awarded to Google for "Generating user data for use in targeted advertising", Patent 252448 awarded to Oracle for "In place evolution of xml scheme as in databases"

Hence, the key for successful patent grant for software innovation lies in applicant’s ability to present innovation in such a way that it is not merely a computer program. Hence, subject matter that is “not just a computer program” should be intelligently made out as an essential part of the invention, without compromising on the scope of protection. Hence, for getting patent on algorithms must be quite specific and focused on the its application and usage. The broader they are described, the higher the likelihood of rejection because of the existence of prior art. However, this reduces their usage to block others access to market. In practice, it means that a patent around data analysis can almost always be circumvented with relative ease. In case of Big Data, algorithms have continued business value, they must be adapted continuously with the changes as volume, sources and behaviour of big data changes continuously.

The example is core search algorithms of Google which are continuously modified and updated to stay relevant. If Google don’t do so, they would get behind the competition very quickly and their algorithm will be irrelevant in a short time. The consequence is that, even if a business manages to successfully patent Big Data analytical algorithms, and avoids the pitfalls described above, such patent will lose its value very quickly. The reason is because the algorithms used in the product or service will quickly evolve away from the ones described in the patent due to continuous changes in volume, variety and velocity of data.

Hence, in IP Strategy point of view, the businesses will have to become much more selective in applying for and using patents and further re-assess the value that patents add to a business on the continuous basis.

Data Exclusivity

Data Exclusivity is nothing but ownership of Data one has generated using money, labour and time. In most countries, it is possible to “own” data under the law. The legal principle is based on protection of the effort to create or gather the data and will allow to block or charge for access or use (data in drug development in particular). In India there is no separate legislation for protection of general database (for pharmaceutical product/drug development) as it is in European Union (EU Data Protection Directives 1995).  The limited protection in India for databases are;

“Article 21 of the Constitution protects individual’s data not to be available on public domain. The right extents to data in electronic form and IT Act 2000 vide Section 66 E is dealing with the punishment for violation of privacy facilitates the protection such data. However, there are number of challenges related to ownership of data.

Copyrights

The applicability of copyright on machine or user generated content is a question mark. Copyright is granted for the expression of creative activity: writing a book or a blog, creating or playing music, making a film, etc.  However, copyright also applies to software code, based on the observation that code is like language, and therefore subject to copyright. As such, copyright covers the code, but not the software functionality expressed through the code. Big Data is information and hence, Copyright does not apply to the semantic content or meaning of text written by human authors. The big data generated by machines or sensors will not be covered by copyright. In general, any statistical or mathematical data is, as such, not covered by copyright. Claiming copyright is easy as there is no registration system, and there is no sanction attached to wrongfully claiming copyright or claiming copyright on something that cannot be covered by copyright law (e.g. machine-generated data).

Hence, in practice, the copyright approach to big data does not work. Most business value in using Big Data will be in open breach of copyright, typically by ignoring it (as e.g. Facebook or other large social media do) or will be dealing with data that are not under copyright but have not necessarily been recognized yet as such by the court system.

Therefore, one has to make the analysis of a) whether copyright applies, and b) whether it adds any business value before applying for the copyrights protection. Today, due to technology advances, it has become easier for persons/organisations to copy and distribute data in electronic form any source for commercial gain. Hence in absence of any data protection law the companies have to rely on interpretation of Copyrights Act by the courts. The original work with considerable skills and labour put can be protected under Copyrights Act. But as per courts interpretation the mere assimilation of data does not constitutes original work and cannot be protected. In Big Data, most data are generated by someone else, and the value of data increases by their use as there is no the restriction on their use. Most of the business value in Big Data lies in combining data from multiple sources. Moreover, the actual source of data is often unknown which is derives from various levels of communication. For example, data from customers will be combined with data from suppliers. Data from government agencies will be combined with data from machines. Internal data need to be compared with external data.

The value of data is in its flow, not its sources. Big Data can be compared to river systems springing up everywhere. And the value of a river is in having access to the flow, not control over the sources. Of course, the sources have some relevance, and control over specific forms or aspects of data which may be valuable for certain applications. But gaining and providing access to data will be much more valuable than preventing access to data. As a result, the question of “ownership” of data is probably not the right question to ask. It does not matter so much who “owns” the data, but who can use them, and for what purpose.

The conclusion on ownership (copyrights) is again best illustrated by our river analogy: we should not focus on who owns the land that is alongside the river; we should focus on being able to use the flow, and extract value from that

.

Trade Secrets

Secrecy and know-how protection can be a very valuable asset of businesses as we all know about the secret formula of ‘Coca-Cola’ a soft drink or ‘Heineken’ beer, wherein the owners have not protected the products by any IP rights, but it has significant business value, and it is protected by other legal instruments. Typically, contract law, with confidentiality agreements, which will play a major role in protecting business secrets and know-how. The most legal systems allow businesses to bring legal claims against competitors, business partners or employees, who disclose or use secret information in unauthorized ways.

By and large, this approach is used by many businesses. Often, the strategy around protecting Intellectual Capital will consist of understanding what the business secrets are and building appropriate procedures of protection or disclosure.

Here, a key consideration for Big Data, IP business strategy is the word “secret”. This is where Big Data presents an important shift: not only does it become much harder to know, who owns or generates which data, or what is in those data, it also becomes much riskier not to grant relatively free access to data. This is because there is a lot of value in using the data. A lot of value in Big Data comes from recombining data from diverse sources or approaching data in a unique way.

Therefore, as a conclusion, IP Strategies around Big Data should be focused on the instruments to access and use the flow of data, rather than patenting, data ownership and copyrighting, as either of them do not consider the ‘continuous growth’ aspect of Big Data in

Contributed by Research Team- ITM Business School, Navi Mumbai

Data Analytics is defined as deriving the actionable insights from the given data by churning the data through various Statistical, Graphical or Pictorial Techniques. The data so given if pertains to a business entity, the term Business analytics is used similarly the data if relates with Marketing, it would be termed as Marketing Analytics and so on. The term data analytics differs from data analysis in the fashion that the later relates with just the tabulation and representation of the raw collected data, while analytics deals with the clean data set to derive insights for business related problems. Here is the case discussing, how the use of consumer analytics helped mharidukaan.com to precisely figure out the reasons for mharidukaan.com not becoming the first-choice online business house in Vidarbha region over conventional stores despite making huge promotional expenses. In fact, this case study can stand as an eye opener for all the online e-commerce sites for not becoming the preferred sites for shopping and not getting an upper edge over traditional mom & pop shops

Company Profile

Mharidukaan.com, a venture started by two young female friends Ms. Sheetal Agrawal and Ms.Shital Surana (names changed), after having done their MBA from a reputed B-School in India. The venture was of online shopping complex, head quartered at Nagpur, which used to virtually market everything in fashion clothes, footwear, grocery items and personal care products, in the year June - 2014 with an initial investment of 30.60 Lacs. Their business model was to reach out to every individual in central India initially for their every requirement. They duo hired summer interns from various MBA institute from central India and gave them a task of bringing in the associations from the dealers/manufacturers for their shop. The dealers were offered a good mark up and guaranteed business. But the only condition was put in front of the dealers/manufacturers, the goods which were manufactured/sold to mharidukaan.com will not be sold through open market with the same price and same brand name so as to maintain the exclusivity for mharidukaan.com. The charges for inward & outward freight and packaging were to be borned by the mharidukaan.com. The shop was operating on three days inventory back up. For inward & outward freight services, they had tied up with a local courier service provider who can deliver the goods to any destination in central India maximum within 2 hours to 12 hours depending on the geographical destination of the buyer. Everything started off well. The concept was initially new in the year 2013-14.

Promotional budget/sales for last three years.

The duo expected a monthly lift of Rs. About 10 Lacs initially from the seventh month of inception of their business. They planned for a promotion budget of Rs. 3.00 Lacs per annum for next three years, with no expectation of any sizable return for first three years. From 2018 onwards, they expected a net return on investment of 30%. The actual sales figures of mharidukaan.com for first three years are given here.

Problem analysis

The duo observed that despite a good & quality product range, timely service delivery and sizeable promotional budget, the sales were not picking up. The average monthly sales were 1.46 Lacs, 1.53 Lacs and 1.56 Lacs for the years 2015, 2016 and 2017 respectively. The actual growth rate declined from 5.26 % in 2015-16 to 2.56 % in 2016-17. This was an alarming signal for the management.

Buyers were still attracted towards the conventional mom & pop stores for shopping. The online shopping has not yet taken shape. To understand the real reason behind why online shopping has not become popular rather first choice shopping destination for Indian consumers compared to conventional stores, they assigned this project to some of the interns. The project was titled as “Study of factors responsible for online shopping not being the preferred mode of shopping in non-metro cities in India.” The study was conducted in February-March 2018 in Nagpur. The respondents were from all around the central India.

Data Collection

The interns along with the promoters decided to conduct an exploratory survey and the data so obtained was to be analyzed to arrive at actionable insights, which can help the promoters to improve the performance of the firm. The level of accuracy was decided to be 95% i.e. level of error was 5%. At 95% accuracy level, the number of samples were selected, which were done on all age groups, all areas and of both the genders.

For collecting and tabulating the responses five-point Likert’s scale was designed. The Data was collected on eight attributes such as trustworthiness, easy exchange, latest & multiple varieties, ease in operations, rural consumers, leisure experience and payment safety were identified which can make or break the e-commerce business.

Analytics

The following table shows the summary of responses from all the responses and its interpretation.

Amongst all ‘t’ values of attributes_ Trust Worthiness (0.09291 ), Easy Exchange (0.23561) , Smart Phone Proficiency of Rural and age old consumers (-9.985845) and Safety of Payment Gateways (1.1416912) are < 1.645 which is the standard t value. And which was acting as negative attributes which probably prohibited the success of e-commerce sites, so is true for mharidukaan.com.

Conclusions

Hence, it can be concluded from the analytics that mharidukaan.com should develop the strategies to improve trust worthiness of the site. They should simplify the exchange/replacement procedure, they should educate the old age/rural buyers about using such sites through smart phones and should adopt the reliable payment gateways.

Arvind Bodhankar is Corporate Head- Health Safety Environment & Sustainability at Tata Motors Ltd. He is a certified Independent director with core skills on Sustainability & HSE. He is having 28 years of proven track record and wealth of diverse experience in the area of Petrochemicals, Fertilizers, Steel, Cement, Shipping, Glass, Food/FMCG/Pharma and Automobile industry. He is a lead Assessor for ISO 14001, OHSAS 18001 & internal auditor for ISO 9001 & TS16949 and a certified Green belt for Six sigma. Certified TQM trainer, TPM champion, Energy Auditor....

As we all are aware, disruptive technological developments that are taking place are consistently blurring the lines separating the physical world from the virtual world. Similarly, traditional HR function, representing an industrial enterprise model, has transformed overtime and become a strategic partner, with present emphasis being on Talent Management. Further, technology, robotics, and analytics are fast gaining importance. The use of data for decision making was there in practice for quite some time. But with big data and analytics, people in HR are also forced to use the data and analytics (Human Resource Analytics-HRA) to gain much-needed insights into the human behavior for accomplishing organizational objectives. Because in a competitive world of today given the equal accessibility, availability, and affordability of all other resources, it’s the talented Human Resource alone that provides the much-needed cutting edge.

How Technology and Data Helps

The automation of employees’ life cycle will enable management to get human capital insights through data. And one of the biggest areas, where one could utilize and work towards expanding footprint on human capital analytics is

sales force effectiveness. This can be done by using all of the data points to ensure that the last mile sales force is productive and efficient in their jobs.

Data also helps in taking predictive views on trends in retention. In VUCA (volatile, uncertain, complex & ambiguous) environment of today, one can’t afford to take a diagnostic view and take a back end view of attrition. Today, various early warning signals have to be identified and decisions have to be taken to retain the key talent. Engagement is another field, where one needs to crack the code & data insight can help to get the pulse of what needs to be measured, monitored and needs to be improved in the organization.  And that’s how Human Resource Analytics(HRA)came into being.

What is HRA?

HRA means applying analytics to human resource processes of an organization for improving employee performance (with equal accessibility, availability and affordability of all other resources) and a better return on investment for the organization. It’s not simply gathering data on employee efficiency. Instead what we do in HRA is gather data & use the same to get insights into each process for making effective decisions and improving the processes. So HRA relates business data with that of people data and helps in establishing important connections. Hence, an important function of HRA is to provide data on the impact of HR processes on the organization. Further, it helps in establishing a relationship between HR processes and the business outcomes. And that’s what HRA is all about.

A survey by MIT and IBM reported that companies with a high level of HR analytics had 8% higher sales growth,24% higher net operating income &58% higher sales per employee. Important functions of HR such as talent acquisition, training & development etc., can be improved & effectivity enhanced by applying analytics in their processes. In other words, HRA can help to go deep into problems and issues & guides the managers to gain insights from information at hand. And this can help in making relevant decisions and take appropriate actions.

How to Use HRA?

So the question that may arise as to, how companies can use HRA to improve their processes and thereby the operational performance?

First, companies need software, which is available in the market. Secondly, company requires people in HR who knows how to mine and interpret the data. Otherwise simply procuring software doesn’t serve the purpose. Analytics is an important tool/technique for all types of business and HR too needs this. With severe competition around, organizations need to do well. And, as we all know, what can’t be measured can’t be managed. So, companies are looking for metrics or analytics in HR. And these are not just related to people but processes as well such as recruitment, retention, compensation, training & development, performance appraisal etc.,

Further, few might think that HRA is only gathering data on the employee. But that’s not true. The main function of HRA is to provide insights into each process by using data. And these insights help in making relevant decisions so that processes and operational performance could be improved. As we all know, HR collects lot of data on employee’s personal information, compensation, benefits, retirements, attrition, and performance from time to time. And if we use these huge masses of data properly to analyze/interpret the outcomes that will definitely facilitate making effective decisions. Thus, HRS helps in:

-         Improving organizational performance through talent-related decisions

-         Forecasting workforce requirements/utilization for improved business performance.

-         Knowing the reasons for employee attrition especially of high performing employees.

-         Knowing the factors that cause employee satisfaction and productivity.

-         Determining individual KPIs in Business

-         HR impact in realizing organizational goals.

Having looked at the concept, meaning and benefits of HRA, let’s see how few innovative organizations have already begun their journey in this regard:

At Walt Disney, First, HR department tried to understand the sales performance and attrition. They were using Salesforce platform and hence there was lot of data to work with. And they merged that data with people data into their core platforms. This was done so that data being captured in sales platform can be used to drive/ push people’s Strategy.

At Facebook, for optimizing insights into their workforce they formed three names: First one was Data Engineers, whose job was to do sophisticated data structuring and manipulation to create dashboards. And this was fed to other two teams to analyze and inform decisions. Second team focused on answering questions about daily happenings like why did attrition increase by 7%? Third team was to answer questions about what’s going to happen tomorrow.

At Google, as the company was growing, and headcount was doubling every year, they felt the need for a different approach to talent. Accordingly, they have launched a tiger approach, i.e. Diverse group of specialists, such as a recruiting leader, an HR analytics expert, an HR Business partner, an engineering client coming together to pool up their expertise for solving business related problems.

The future of HR analytics

As of now, not many in HR are using predictive analytics. For industry leaders, the next challenge in this regard would be implementing sophisticated machine learning models. And if a company is able to use platform data, it could get accurate in our predictions. Manu Narang Waxhaw, Head HR, Coca-Cola India & South West Asia in a webcast organized by People Matters and moderated by Ester Martinez, CEO & Chief Editor, People Matters said that data on human capital insights to drive business decisions has been another game changer.

Conclusion

Data was at the back of most of the decisions in the past as well. But given the VUCA (volatile, uncertain, complex & ambiguous) environment in which they are operating, most of the companies started capturing and analyzing big data for better understanding of their business, targeting customers more accurately and most importantly cutting costs through improved business processes. Similarly, HR can process/analyze huge mass of structured & unstructured data to answer important questions regarding workforce productivity, the impact of training programs on enterprise performance, predictors of workforce attrition etc., It’s time HR professionals figure out how to use analytics to enable better decision making for accomplishing organizational objectives. Organizations using HRA benefitted from it with data bringing much needed precision to their decisions and the value that these decisions bring to the organization. But one should keep in mind that analytics is not measured based on size but on the basis of impact of such data driven decisions and their impact. So merely creating only reports with data will not add value to decision making and optimization. Instead it will increase cost for the companies.

Lastly, let me conclude with Charles Darwin’s quote

“It’s not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change “. So, change is a must but, in this regard, let’s keep one thing in mind that analytics is a journey, not a goal...

Dr. A. Jagan Mohan Reddy, is Professor of Human Resource Management and Ethics at Symbiosis Institute of Business Management, Hyderabad. He has more than two decades of Industry experience and for the last 16 years he is in the teaching-cum-research field. He is a Life Member of National Institute of Personnel Management and NHRD

GDPL has been actively engaged in delivering solutions for the manufacturing, auto, telecom, defence, pharma, chemical, finance, healthcare, sea navigation and CRM domains, to name a few. The company’s motto is to reach out to industry, specifically the Indian industry, with cost effective solutions that are easy to deploy, self sustaining and easy to manage. The portfolio of clients and solutions outlines the vision of the company, which is to make state-of-the-art solutions accessible to companies in India. GDPL practices the use of open source platforms and cloud-based solutions widely as part of its deliverables. The suite of algorithms available with the company offers domain agnosticity and can be deployed across industry verticals. This capability allows a high degree of leveragability across projects that GDPL exploits to deliver richer and more cost-effective solutions.

The landscape to provide solutions is rather vast and industry is in the throes of change from digital / technology and market-driven forces. It is therefore necessary to build the ability to clearly educate and help the client articulate their needs and expectations to deliver solutions that bring value. Customization, instead of off-the-shelf solutions is therefore a necessary aspect of all projects that the company has engaged with. GDPL also takes into consideration organization readiness (digitization, database integration / architecture and management expectations) and recommends the appropriate solutions that bring value to the clients. Calculation of ROI, critical for businesses to understand level of investments required to achieve desired results, allows GDPL to work with clients and critically evaluate the benefits achieved through the solution.

The company has demonstrated success in the areas of predictive and prescriptive analytics, process modeling, real time optimization, preventive maintenance, smart manufacturing, IoT, supply chain, NLP, CRM, financial analytics and image processing.

GDPL has worked on both continuous and discrete manufacturing industry problems. The manufacturing domain solutions typically require a blend of domain-specific expertise as well as data science. Often the problem statement is arrived at through initial rounds of discussion with the client and the solutions so delivered, are integrated with client systems.  The typical nature of manufacturing data, which is ‘dirty’, is handled using the company’s expertise in data reconciliation / assessment followed by trend analysis and other techniques required for data pre-processing.

For the process industry, GDPL has algorithms for preventive maintenance and diagnostic studies for sensors, control valves, process systems and enterprise level data reconciliation. Real time optimization and optimum maintenance scheduling for the oil industry required development of innovative tools that predict the characteristics of crude oil entering the plant. Also, soft sensing for fouling factors of the multitude of exchangers in the preheat train allow to identify those that need to be taken off for maintenance cleaning.

For the minerals and metals industry, GDPL has developed solutions for blast furnace material / energy balance reconciliation and digital twins for smelters. The solutions for the auto / discrete manufacturing sectors focus on early warning of faults, reliability prediction, preventive maintenance, accelerated ramp up of new designs and production planning. The current portfolio of projects has a large number of clients from this sector.

In its solutions for the defence sector both in India and the US, the company has offered edge analytics algorithms that can maximize battery life that further help in extend the duration of submarine sorties. They have also worked on developing light-weight battery packs that have better portability for use by soldiers.

The Indian foundry industry, which is beleaguered with lack of standards and operational procedures witnesses defect rates for products that are orders of magnitude higher than industry benchmarks. GDPL worked with one of the clients to develop solutions from scratch, offer optimized measurement standards and operating procedures to predict the final defect rate anytime during the process. This was further enhanced to offer recommendations that the end client could use to correct the course of the project and steer it towards benchmarked values.

The company has also worked with the financial sector and offered strategies to maximize growth/ profits, minimize risks and provide balanced portfolios. It has also worked in text processing, NLP space to address sentiment analysis and scrub data for adverse drug reactions for the Pharma industry.

The Pharma domain projects include development of a proof of concept for 3D printing of tablets and another one wherein a data driven model was developed for condition monitoring of a Pharma process that has portability, modularized construction and smaller batch sizes as its differentiated attributes.

An interesting project for the healthcare sector analysed predictive analytics based on cattle iris data. The objective here was to obtain health information about cattle from data that was easier to generate and could be shared remotely thereby enabling solutions to reach the end client faster.

One of the earliest offerings in the IoT space was the development of the Intellimeter, a smart city solution in collaboration with IIT-Madras. The project involved development of software as well as compact hardware that could house the R-Pi platform. The algorithms developed could do dynamic route planning, assess costs of trips and could use the specially developed sensors to collect variety of information such as noise, temperature, traffic density, weather data etc. that could be stored in the cloud-based platform.

GDPL has provided the IoT driven technique for determining the optimum concrete required for piling work. As part of this work, 2D images from underground cameras were used to develop 3D profile of the soil. Specialized, custom-made sensors along with acoustic technologies used to were determine the spatial characteristics and volume available for concrete works. The product so developed was cost competitive and is being marketed abroad by our client (Aver Systems).

Recently, the company has been engaged in some projects that required sophisticated, IoT based solutions. GDPL worked for a textile unit and automated multiple stages of the operation to develop a compact machine. This product is capable of precise dosing of chemicals, maintains pH more accurately and requires significantly less footprint.

The resources at the company are hired from premier institutes in India and are largely from the IITs. There is a panel of advisors drawn from pool of experts from academia and industry who additionally offer their expertise as and when required on projects. With access to research and academic experts available across IITs, GDPL has no dearth of talent to leverage in order to deliver high quality solution to clients. The skills of the work force are kept updated through training initiatives that are also offered by the company. GDPL is the preferred training provider in Data Analytics for some corporates and also offers customized and regular courses to students and practitioners of data science.

The company has seen an organic growth through its services and customized, cloud-based products and has not gone for external funding. The future prospects face tail winds from Industry 4.0 initiatives and the desire for companies to fully exploit their digital capital.

GDPL is located at the IIT Madras Research Park, a buzzing ecosystem of start ups working together with large industries. The location adjoining the IIT Madras premises fosters partnership between academia and industry, the latter brought closer to the various start ups through an incubation cell located in the research park.

Among the list of clients GDPL has worked for are BHEL, BPCL, DRDO, US Defence, Honeywell, Tata Steel, Dr.Reddy’s Lab, Mitsubishi Electric, Hinduja Tech, Murugappa, MPM Infosoft, Art of Living, Simulstar.

A Contribution form ITM Business School Research Team

Big Data is today considered as an end-all solution to supply chain problems but using data to solve the business issues has proven more elusive than collecting, as some body said that “Big data has arrived, but big insights have not”.

In retail industry volumes of data in variety is produced every second in all areas of operations. The big data today is creating both opportunities are challenges in retail industry to use it in a meaningful way to gain competitive advantage and business sustainability. The big data analytics solutions have been playing a critical role in helping retailers bring about the said changes. The adoption of analytics solutions is, therefore, growing steadily with more retailers working incessantly toward enhancing supply chain operations, improving marketing campaigns, and increasing customer satisfaction and retention to achieve success in retail business. The retailers are using data analytics for increasing sales per visit of customer after understanding his/her purchase pattern, know the sales opportunity after analysing unexpected changes from social media and improve upon inventory management (availability and leanness) in the system. Hence, channelizing and managing data with the aim of working in favour of the customer as well as generating profits in retail business is very significant for survival.

Data analytics is applied these days at all stages of the retail process – taking track of popular products that are emerging, doing forecasts of sales and future demand via predictive simulation, optimizing placements of products and offers through mapping of customers and many others. With this, identifying customers, who would likely be interested in certain products depending on their past purchases, finding the most suitable way to handle them via targeted marketing strategies and then coming up with what to sell next is what data analytics deals with. The area wherein data analytics is playing crucial role in retail sector are:

Pricing - Algorithms perform several functions like tracking demand, inventory levels and activities of competitors, and respond automatically to market challenges in real time, which make actions to be taken depending on insights safe manner helping to price optimization to determine when prices are to be dropped.

Performance prediction - This is carried out by marketers who compare the performance of the test group to performance of a well-matched control group. Thus, businesses can take the advantage of data analytics retail without spending too much to avoid hurting their finances.

Demand Forecasting: It involves gathering seasonal, demographical, occasions led data and economic indicators to create a good image of purchase behaviour across target market. This is very good for inventory management.

Identify ROI Opportunities: Retailers use data-driven intelligence and predictive risk filters after having a good understanding of their potential and existing customer base, for designing expected responses for marketing campaigns, depending on how they are measured by a probability to buy or likely buy.

Forecasting trends: Algorithms that forecast trends go via the data on past buying pattern to analyse what needs to be promoted by marketing departments and what is not needed to be promoted.

Identifying customers: This is also important in data analytics retail because choosing which customers would likely desire a certain product, data analytics is the best way to go about it.

Effectiveness of ‘discount’ schemes: Retailers can run analysis on historical data and utilize it in predicting the impact discounts offers would have on actual sales and plan for the offers in future discounting the less profitable deals.

Product Sales: Many company’s business model depends on big analytics for customer identification and selling particular product category to him. With customers’ personal data, the marketers can match them with the most suitable product depending on the location and rating of their customers. Customers, therefore because of such personalized experience, would prefer to take advantage of personalized offers against offers by competitors.

Big Data Analytics can create multiple opportunities in marketing, customer experience, merchandising, campaign and loyalty program designs:

•Online behavioural analysis and web analytics that create tailored offers.

•Personalized and location-based offers on mobile devices.

•Target campaigns on segmented consumers and supply through right channels to achieve ROI.

·  Real-time pricing.

•Run multi-level reward programs based on personalized recommendations

•For market insights perform sentiment analysis of social media, product reviews, call centre record.

•Predictive analytics for customer experience enhancement on all devices and channels.

•Detailed market basket analysis that yields more rapid growth in revenue.

•Identifying shopping trends and cross-selling opportunities with the aid of video data analysis.

•Predict profits using data on seasonal trends, economic forecasts, traffic and weather reports.

The main aim of Big Data Analytics is a streamlined and seamless experience for everyone involved from when the product leaves the manufacturer, to the store floor or warehouse, to product being purchased. Here, the retailer wants maximum efficiency in all departments.

The retail industry has gone through a lot of operational changes over the years due to data analytics. Therefore, the adoption of big data analytics solutions is growing rapidly making more retailers work tirelessly to enhance supply chain operations, improve on marketing campaigns and raise the satisfaction of customer as well as achieves a high success rate in retailing.

However, on safer side, factors such as security, privacy, liability policies and intellectual property must be stringent when talking about analytics. Analytics and big data are inter-related and therefore professionals who are specially trained would need to be included in the team so as to functionalize and utilize big data analytics. Also, companies would find it pertinent to incorporate information from various sources of data, mainly from third parties, and aid such environment by deploying efficient data. Finally, companies often make the mistake of falling in short-sightedness, making them fail in implementing the insights gotten from analytics.

With the lucrative returns. the data analytics delivers in the retail industry, most retailers will continue to utilize solutions so as to increase customer loyalty and boost the perception of their brand. Data analytics in retail space allows organizations gather information on their customers, how to reach them and how they can use their needs to impact sales. As technology continues to dominate retail industry, one thing is certain – data analytics is here to stay! Some examples of Big Data Analytics success are:

Walmart: Walmart has a broad big data ecosystem. The big data ecosystem at Walmart processes multiple Terabytes of new data and petabytes of historical data every day. The analysis covers millions of products and 100’s millions of customers from various sources. The analytics systems at Walmart analyse close to 100 million keywords on daily basis to optimize the bidding of each keyword. The main objective of leveraging big data at Walmart is to optimize the shopping experience for customers when they are in a Walmart store, or browsing the Walmart website or browsing through mobile devices when they are in motion. Big data solutions at Walmart are developed with the intent of redesigning global websites.

TESCO:  Tesco is the UK’s largest food retailer and has long been a pioneer, when it comes to technology and data. It was one of the first supermarket chains to begin tracking customer activity through its loyalty card system and has successfully managed the transition to online retailing. Tesco is in the process of moving to a data lake model, based around the Hadoop framework. This centralized, cloud-based repository for all its data, codified in a way to make it accessible and useable by any arm of the operation, as and when it is needed. They are focusing on Teradata and Hadoop in their ecosystem to get both of those working together and doing the right thing. Tesco has to deal with key challenges in the future which include, to gain a better understanding of the changing nature of consumer behaviour, creating efficiencies in their logistics and distribution chains, to keep down costs and minimize environmental impact, facing up to the challenge of emerging business models which compete with their own and reducing the amount of food which goes to waste at their stores.

Finally, one can conclusively say that retailing has reached to the platform for more disruption that is data-driven because data quality got from several sources such as social network conversations, internet purchases, location-specific interactions from smartphones have transformed into a new entity for transactions that are digital based. The benefits that organizations would reap from utilizing data analytics are mitigating business risks, improving performance and able to discover insights that may have been hidden.

Dr Vinod Sople is Dean-Research at ITM Group of Institution. He was associated with industry for twenty-two years and for last seventeen years he is in academics. His areas of research are Supply Chain and Logistics Management, Intellectual Property Rights, and Marketing Management. He authored seven books. He is Chief Editor of three international journals

The demand for getting an Engineering degree might continue, but aspiring students would now carefully choose institutions with a good brand value and a good faculty -- here is where the pressure will be on faculty to strive continuously to unlearn, learn, and relearn in order to remain relevant and contemporary. However, the trend of engineering students migrating to do an MBA is likely to continue.

WHAT NEEDS TO CHANGE FOR THE MBA FACULTY

All institutions need to relook at the MBA curriculum and revisit the same and make it more industry relevant. The faculty of management schools need to develop newer skills of classroom delivery as they are no more the single source of conceptual inputs thanks to Google. Hence, they now need to redefine their role as a facilitator and enabler of learning, and not the disseminator. This will also mean that the management teacher has now to play the role of expert interpreter, analyst, and evaluator of various approaches to management

Thus, the pressure will be more on the teacher to learn more and more to keep abreast of the latest trends, practises and such and be able to guide the student

Read: Skill development in school education: Importance of evolving skill training from a young age

QUALITY EDUCATION NOT POSSIBLE WITHOUT TEACHING BEING AN "ATTRACTIVE" JOB

Excellence in higher education and high quality is only possible if we have the best of teachers. The most important step that needs to be taken at the macro level in our country is to position teaching as an attractive option. It should be given its place of pride as an employment option.

In India however, the teaching profession is often seen as a last choice career option or one that executives can pursue after their retirement. We need to position teaching as a premium career option and provide best facilities similar to those we see at the corporate sectors.

WHAT A TEACHING JOB REQUIRES NOW

A career in academics would necessitate sound knowledge of e-learning platforms and also the ability to use various online resources to make learning more effective in the classroom. The use of online learning portals and interactive learning platforms such as Khan Academy, Coursera, edX, MIT, which host open courseware, can make the learning experience more enriching and meaningful for both the student and the teacher.

Thus, the faculty now has to move away from over-dependence on PowerPoint towards the use of such interactive learning platforms.

MANY EDUCATIONAL INSTITUTIONS TO CLOSE IN 2018: FULL-TIME TEACHING JOBS IN DANGER

An unfortunate reality that we need to soon realise and accept is that many educational institutions will see closure in 2018; thus, the faculty may find themselves without a stable job. There will be more jobs on a part-time basis or retainer or assignment basis, but full-time jobs may be on the decline.

Thus, I would recommend everyone to focus on reskilling oneself and also acquire additional competencies in emerging areas to remain relevant. Areas like business analytics, data sciences, digital marketing and such are the high thrust areas currently and It would be ideal to look at related areas to one’s specialisation.

TEACHERS ARE NO MORE THE ONLY SOURCE OF KNOWLEDGE

Let us understand and accept that the approach to education and academics has changed to a great extent. The earlier model centred around the teacher as the main source of knowledge who would then share it to all the students in the classrooms and then test their understanding via the exam system.

However, the current scenario has changed the role of the teacher to be an enabler and clarifier; he/she is NOT the source of the knowledge anymore. Thus, the students now learn at home, and understand and seek clarifications in the classroom.

Thus, the new age teacher has to be better equipped and smart enough to satisfy the queries and doubts of the students to gain their confidence and establish credibility.

To summarise, a career in education would be more challenging and demanding and hence, is strongly recommended to only those who have a serious bent of mind towards academics. It cannot be seen as a comfortable and cushy career with limited working hours and minimal stress. Further, a career in this area would necessarily need a PhD qualification for growth and stability.

Prof. RSS Mani is currently Vice President -Institutional Development for ITM Group of Institutions & has been a founding faculty member of ITM too. He leads several initiatives for institutional development including industry academia interface, faculty development, collaborations, new initiatives & CSR projects.  He is highly regarded in HR circles as a guru, mentor & an out of the box thinker. Besides, he is a career counsellor par excellence and has helped thousands groom their careers

On one hand, is the vast untapped potential of a nascent technology and how it can become a potential game changer. IT executives are deluged with white papers about how a technology can unlock business value for organizations. A visit to a hackathon at a technical institute would reinforce that idea by taking it to a prototype level. And conferences by market research companies that target business leaders and IT executives are usually the last straw.

What happens next is either a CEO asking the question to IT, “What are we doing on Big Data?”, or a CIO telling its team that a vendor wants to do a POC (Proof of Concept) of a big data tool. If none of these happen, an IT executive is anyway left wondering if they are being left behind in the latest game.

One possible outcome at this point is a technically successful pilot. Most of the things went on as expected and there were some new insights. Unfortunately, it was not clear how these insights would translate into revenue for the company. In other words, the insights were interesting but not actionable.

Another possible outcome is going down the path of a big bang implementation approach. For example, trying to replace the traditional data warehouse with Hadoop. Two years down the line, data for only a handful systems has been acquired and even those business teams are complaining. And there is simmering tension within the organization about the return on sizeable investments in Big Data.

While both outcomes seem to be different on the surface, they both leave the business users disillusioned with the promise of Big Data. Even if one looks beyond the shiny sales pitches and use case specific success stories, there is no denying the potential of this technology. So, what went wrong?

The answer could be in analyzing the problem to be solved. Not all data problems within the organization are a good candidate for big data application. Taking example from a financial services industry, here is the mapping of their most common data analysis use cases - were these really a big data problem a few years back?

Most of the executives would have agreed that they need reliable data for every use case. But for regulatory reporting purposes, the existing Data warehouse was serving well, and no problem was foreseen in next 2-3 years at least. It takes multiple years to build a robust data warehouse and it would not make any sense to dismantle it and replace with big data platform. For millions of dollars investment in technology and resources, where is the business value?

At the same time, cross selling of products to customers seemed to be a good candidate for big data application. It made sense to have single view of all the products used by customer using Master Data Management. Integrating variety of data from social media could potentially reveal behavioral information and all these pieces can be put together to provide customized product offers or advice in real time.

If we want a person or an organization to change their respective behavior, the incentive always has to outweigh the resistance to change. For organizations, technology can drive changes only there is sufficient business value creation. The crucial point here is that this analysis should not stop at a CIO or an enterprise architect level. It really has to be done in coordination with each business owner, by figuring out the problems they are trying to solve and how factors of a new technology can help towards that goal.

The mantra in financial services often is not to fix anything which is not broken. So, instead of a orchestrating a big bang change and declaring that all data will be hosted in Hadoop, the wiser option is to say that this is not a big data problem or it may become one in next 3-5 years. And therefore, the current robust data warehouse should continue to co-exist with experimental Hadoop and let us plan to relook at this problem at a defined point in future.

Now that we have looked at what the organization does today, the other vital analysis is to map the future business focus against the Big Data capabilities and analyze whether it would help. For example, intelligent assistant can be lifelike with real time analytics. And to integrate social media data for behavioral analysis, unstructured data must be factored in.

Essentially, the question to be asked is - whether Big Data is crucial in meeting our future objectives? And again, the analysis must be done in consultation with each Business line by IT leaders. The answers could vary, and some business lines may not have any use case or sufficient justification for Big Data implementation. This should be a perfectly acceptable outcome of an analysis exercise to IT leaders. Instead, if Business lines are forced to adopt Big Data as an organizational policy or an architecture standard, it starts be perceived as liability rather than an asset. Prioritization of initiatives based on business value creation, is the only happy path to Big Data adoption

Kumar Abhinav is a Technical Program Manager and has experience of working with financial services organizations of different sizes across geographies. He holds a Master of Science degree from MIT. He is B.Tech, Computer Science & Engineering, MNNIT, Allahabad, India, MBA, Finance & Marketing, NMIMS, Mumbai

Entrepreneur with Disruptive Product Start

Meeta is an individual with more than fifteen years of work experience building strong brands and products for India's companies, Meeta knows how to get into the minds of the consumers coupled with the passion for catching the right pulse of the market, which has led to interesting market discoveries and product innovations, that have carved out a niche and been disruptive to large extent.

Meeta advocates and practice, Organic Food making. She says “Organic is a way, a habit and a practice all rolled into one”. Soul Bakers delivers the healthy bread to your doorstep. From milk to tea, pastas, or pizzas, bread goes with everything. There are hundreds of options available in the market: the bigger challenge is to choose the right type of bread for your family.

Meets did this from her basement at home for 2 years (2011-13) but the product demand far outgrew what she could produce. A small unit set up in December 2013, today meets the demand, and she is firmly in business! Meeta is the owner, chief baker, accountant, marketing executive, purchase manager, and part-time delivery person all bundled up in one. Her staff members help her bake, clean, and deliver. Meeta – a baker with soul - says “She is proud of social initiative to hire local unskilled women who knew nothing about baking and taught them a life skill. In the future, even if they do not want to continue with me, they do not have to go back to cleaning utensils. They can stand on their own two feet,”

Going beyond just ingredients, Soul Bakers is making an effort to turn the entire chain green; they use reusable paper bags for packaging, thereby reducing the plastic usage and further they are also in the process of installing renewable energy source for their bakery. They are the only bakery in town that makes breads with organic ingredients with an FSSAI certification, based on food safety standards at a national level. They also make special breads for oncology (cancer) patients. She says “This is very close to our heart and we make it with all the love and hope that people consuming our breads will get better soon and pray for the good health of our consumers”. Currently, ‘Soul Bakers’ products are available at various organic stores across Bangalore.

Meeta wants her products to be affordable and take away the notion that organic food is expensive. Therefore, the products are not very highly priced. With innovative business strategies ‘Soul Bakers’ brand is having consumer base of over 100 thousand, it is the most popular organic bakery brand in Bangalure and Chennai.

As Swami Vivekananda said: “Always walk the middle path.” That’s exactly Meeta is doing.

Keyur Shah, CEO,

Steering the Precious Metal Business in Muthoot Group

Prior to this assignment, he was director (investment) at world gold council where he was instrumental in development and implementation world gold council’s investment strategy in India that included the gold retail programs via banks @amps, post offices, gold link micro finance program, gold accumulation plan etc.

Keyur has more than 20 years of experience in strategic business planning and amp implementation, product development, brand management and communication and business activities. His career has spanned various geographies like USA, Middle East and India in organisations like World Gold Council, Motorola, Saatchi, Leo Burnet

Over eighteen years of strategic planning & implementation, market development (consumer segmentation), new business development, product development, communication (brand management, event management, product management, advertising) and sales experience in gold, automotive, energy, telecom, and information technology industries in India, USA and UAE. See less

·         CEO - Precious Metals Business at Muthoot Pappachan Group for 5 years

·         Director at World Gold Council for 7 years

·         Group Account Director at Leo Burnett for 1 year

·         Marketing Managers at Motorola - Chicago, USA for 3 years

·         Account Manager at M & C Saatchi - Dubai, UAE for 1 year

·         Senior Account Executive at Leoburnett for 2 years

·         Marketing Manager at Motorola

Keyur’s expertise is in strategic planning & implementation, market development (consumer segmentation), new business development, product development, communication (brand management, product management, advertising, events) and sales. Keyur with his innovative thinking and hard work is continuously taking the company to greater and greater heights.