India has ranked number one in its outlook to adopt automated processes revealed the Grant Thornton International Business Report. A whopping 83 per cent of Indian companies surveyed said that they are either already automating business practices or may do over the next 12 months. These companies are switching to automation to lower costs and have greater accuracy and increased flexibility to increase or decrease production.The survey also revealed that Indian companies are willing to try a combination of buying and renting the machines or technologies for automating processes. As per the report, 43% Indian companies would like to buy the machine while 49 per cent would like to try a combination of rent and buy. Further research conducted by Grant Thornton uncovered increasing business spend on research and development – underpinning the growth in automation. In 2011, 23 per cent of businesses globally said they were planning to boost R&D spend; that increased to 26 per cent in 2014 and so far in 2015 it stands at a five-year high of 29 per cent.A survey of 2,571 executives in 36 economies, unveiled the scale of technology’s influence on business with the majority of firms now planning to automate operations and practices. The findings suggest that some jobs will go as a result, with the manufacturing, cleantech and food & beverage sectors in particular reporting upheaval. With capital costs low as labour costs rise, the findings pose fundamental questions about the extent to which machines will eventually replace humans.Mexico and Ireland ranked No. 2 and No. 3 respectively, showing great signs of approving automation for day to day operations. China has also shown eagerness in embracing the new trend with 59 per cent of firms planning to utilise automated processes to perform tasks previously done by people.Globally, over half (56 per cent) of firms surveyed are planning to switch to automation. By industry, 43 per cent of manufacturing firms said they expect this to eventually replace at least 5 per cent of their workforce. Cleantech was in second place on 39 per cent, followed by the technology and food & beverage sectors on 35 per cent. At the other end of the spectrum, just 9 per cent of hospitality, education and healthcare firms expect 5 per cent or more of workers to be replaced.Grant Thornton’s findings also suggest that opportunities will arise for workers to assume new roles and responsibilities created by an increased use of technology. Globally over half of automating firms (54 per cent) expect to redeploy workers in other areas, with 28 per cent saying that workers will be trained to operate new machinery. Even in manufacturing, 44 per cent of firms plan to redeploy rather than remove staff. In India, 26 per cent of the firms said 5% of their workforce would eventually be replaced by automation.
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Lafarge has appointed Ujjwal Batria as the India CEO effective from 22 June 2015. He will take over the responsibility from Martin Kriegner, earlier the country CEO of Lafarge India who has been appointed future Area Manager Central Europe of LafargeHolcim.Batria has been with Lafarge for the past 16 years. He joined Lafarge in 1999 and since and has held different positions across functions. Prior to his appointment as the Country CEO, Lafarge India, he was the Managing Director of Lafarge India Private Limited and was managing the cement business of the company.Batria brings with him rich and diverse experience in the construction material industry.
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The strategy of the businesses is to keep the customer engaged beyond the first transaction, says Ravi KumarThe increasing traffic on your way to office every morning is adirect indicator of rising pollution & an indirect indicator of the increasing competition within the automotive industry. There are newer players entering every year and with opening up of global economy new cars continues to emerge in the market every year. Car sales increased by 2 per cent year over year in April this years, lead by 6 per cent hike in European markets. In India, car sales increased by 16 per cent, becoming one the largest automobile market of the world. In 2013 to 2014, Indian Auto Industry produced 21.48 million vehicles. The industry accounts for 22 per cent of Manufacturing GDP of the country.Records from Society of Automobile Manufacturers (SIAM) indicated that India is going through a hike in sale of commercial vehicles. In January 2015, there was an increase of 5.3 per cent in commercial vehicle sales. In the same way, car sales grew by 3.14 per cent this year from the previous. All of this is eventually resulting in cutthroat competition in the automotive sector. The margins have dried up and at the same time, the cost of production is going all time high. In these circumstances, for an OEM (Original Equipment Manufacturer) to make business sense with a customer in one transaction is generally not feasible. Thus as an increasing trend the automobile OEMs are now focusing on a long terms relationship with the customer.The strategy of the businesses is to keep the customer engaged beyond the first transaction. For instance, companies will have to pitch a customer to select the same car while buying for the second car. To achieve this objective, dealers and car vendors will have to move beyond the traditional methods of customer relationships. As to choose an automobile for self is an important decision that involves considerable capital; people go for advice from friends and family. Social media is one of the most common platforms that people turns into, while looking for opinions and advice. The tables have turned and the OEM’s are now on-toes when it comes to customer relationship.Car vendors, to stand ahead in the competition, will have to leverage a 360 view of the customer. This is possible through integration of comprehensive set of customer information in a single window for easy accessibility. A CRM is the only system that can offer this integration. Choosing the correct CRM solution for their enterprise contributes to almost 80 per cent of the success and the balance 20 per cent is the execution of the various modules within the solution.The objective of a CRM, in most cases is getting a single view of all customer data, right from the first contact history, vehicle and service history, communication and marketing contact history by dealer or OEM. Managing this massive amount of information and integrating the aspects of 360 view of a customer all in one system, which makes CRM the eventual truth, which is customer facing and supersedes all other internal applications. It becomes the interface between the customer and the organization.Thus,these applications should be with enhanced capability, which has facilitates covering the vast aspects operational possibilities in Automobile OEM landscape.Scaling up traditional CRMs is not easy due to their rigid structure. However, the setbacksand complexities of traditional CRMs can be addressed via innovative use of technology platform such as Siebel. Out of many options available in the market, Siebel CRM solution for automotive industry is one of the most comprehensive solutions available until date. Siebel CRMs Improves demand forecasting, planning, logistics management, and inventory management. It reducesquality-related costs due to faster product performance feedback. Improved workflow and escalation of customer grievances for faster resolutionis ensured through Siebel based CRMs. Reportedly; Siebel CRM has resulted in increased revenue growth from both higher vehicle sales and a rise in the company’s after-sales parts business.In context of Automobile industry, Siebel undoubtedlyis the most complete customer relationship management (CRM). Right fromfield force automation to socially enabled business intelligence;it offers the broadest and deepest portfolio of CRM solutions. These platforms address all customer touch-points and provide rich functionality to support the specific business needs for organisations of every size. These CRMs enable to deliver a superior customer experience. It is an end-to-end integrated application, which comes with embedded real time business intelligence. This seems to be a fair reason why as high as 9 OEM’s in India are already managing their customer service requirements using Siebel.The automobile sector can grow with better use of CRMs connecting with customers. Enabling CRMs with social capability will integrate the business venture customer and help to build a trust factor. Automobiles involvea series of services that are related and, in fact, they start with the buying of the vehicle. Servicing of Cars, repairs, replacing any machinery and other such requirements of buyers can be brought under the ambit of a single service provider through more pervasive use of CRM technologies.The author is director Customer relationship management (CRM) at Cubastion Consulting
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India is largely disappointed with its performance at the largest festival of creativity - Cannes Lions 2015. But advertising honcho, KV Sridhar a.k.a Pops, Chief Creative Officer (India) of Sapient Nitro shares his insights into India being self critical and how we need to catch with the new media. Here is Pops giving you the Cannes flavour, as told to Hita Gupta India has always done well in the traditional categories of the advertising which is Print, Outdoor, Film Craft and Media. In Print, India is only the second nation to have three Silvers in Print category. We had good contenders in the Outdoor category too. India also has one shortlist in design also. There are two advertising worlds which exist now - traditional media and new media. But we are missing out on the new media which is Cyber, Media, Mobile, Promo & Activation, Product Design, Titanium and Creative Effectiveness etc. So, these are things which we are missing out on because the entire category is also expanding at Cannes, year after year. India might be lagging behind by three years. If you were to see it in comparison, we are at the same stage we were at 10 years back in Print. People say that India has very good ideas but is not able to execute it very well. For the last seven-eight years India has dominated in Print, but to dominate in new media we are still lagging behind in terms of use of new technology and the new mediums. It will work the way the Indian market does. The Indian market is not mature enough currently and that is the reason for the small number and the scale of entries. Digital in India means that people just do longer commercials and put them on YouTube which is not digital at all. You cannot use YouTube as a television channel. Outside India, all work that is done on mobile is very interactive and internet allows you to make things interactive and India hasn’t done much about using that medium in a different way. Both the market and the advertising agencies have to catch with the people and create better campaigns. But I think that nobody doubts the capability of India, it is held at high levels in terms of our creativity and craftsmanship. Brazil and Argentina are two nations which have braced the new technology and communication and they have been doing fabulous in new media and as well as print. India’s print and television craft have also been universally acknowledged. The results are not as disappointing as it seems, it is just that we are very self critical in nature as we always want to overdo what we did last year. There will be some years which were good and there will be some years where we don’t perform that well but we just need to move on. This might be a wake-up call to think of new ways. The festival is becoming bigger and bigger every year. There were close to 40,000 entries and 15,000 delegates over seven days. The categories are also increasing year after year. It celebrates creativity to enhance business. Gone are the days when people could work in a silo, this is an integrated world. The blurring of one discipline to another is also very high as one campaign can go into seven or eight different categories. This year, the mindless party is giving way to a lot of big agencies which have come here to have small groups for workshops and seminars, this is a big change compared to the last year’s festival. This time there are several private seminars and workshops which are happening at other conference rooms of the hotel. So depending on the niche there are events at Cannes and that is the major change this year.
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A supply-chain company with focus on e-commerce solution, Gojavas, has appointed Sobhit Jain in the senior leadership team as general manager to strenthen its leadership skills. He comes with about 12 years of experience in supply chain spread across management consulting and industry.Prior to join Gojavas, Sobhit worked with Accenture strategy where he was a principal in the supply chain consulting practice. In Accenture, he worked for clients across FMCG, telecom, metals and others advising them on supply chain strategy, future ready operating model, logistics cost reduction and network optimisation.“We have expanded our network in the last quarter. Currently we are strengthening our leadership team to consolidate our recent growth and Sobhit’s addition in the team is in line with that objective. We will be hiring more key resources for senior leadership roles in the coming months," said, senior official from Javas.He worked with Glaxo Smith Kline Consumer Healthcare and Ranbaxy Pharmaceuticals in various supply chain roles. He has done an MBA in operations and supply chain from National Institute of Industrial Engineering, Mumbai.
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Gold Lions drought continues for Indian entries at Cannes, writes Hita Gupta BBDO India bagged the Grand Prix in the Glass Lions category for its ‘Touch the Pickle’ campaign for P&G’s Whisper brand. This is India’s first Grand Prix in six years at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity. Glass Lions is a new category that was introduced this year, in partnership with Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg’s LeanIn.Org. It recognises work that implicitly or explicitly addresses issues of gender inequality or prejudice. BBDO India also won a Glass Lion for its ‘Share the Load’ campaign for P&G’s Ariel brand. But the drought for Gold trophies continued for India on the second day of Cannes Lions 2015. Indian agencies secured one Bronze at Media Lions, and two Silvers and three Bronze at Outdoor Lions at the 62ndedition of the world’s largest festival of creativity. There were no winners in PR Lions despite its three shortlists. At Media Lions, India had eight shortlists but only the Glass Lions Grand Prix winner BBDO India’s ‘Touch The Pickle’ campaign secured a Bronze. BBDO India was the lone winner from the country across 80 awards that were given for the category. In the Outdoor Lions category, six awards from a total of 131 were given to five agencies from India. McCann Worldgroup India was leading with two Silver Lions. McCann received one Silver Lion each for its Dish TV campaign for Essel Group titled ‘Basement’ and also its three-ad campaign series - Basement, Sofa and Puddle. Creativeland Asia joined the Silver league for its client Reckitt Benckiser's Durex RealFeel condoms campaign - Heart, Gut and Brain. Grey Worldwide India, DDB Mudra and Ogilvy & Mather secured one Bronze each taking the awards tally under Outdoor Lions to six. Grey Worldwide’s Bronze was for its campaign for DHL while Ogilvy & Mather’s was for its Soundwave campaign for Puffin. DDB Mudra closed the awards for the day with two of its winning entries - Automatic Distance Control and Bi-Xenon Headlamps for Volkswagen. Among India’s most celebrated campaigns, Unilever India's Kan Khajura Tesan was also awarded a Bronze Lion under Creative Effectiveness. The entry was submitted by Lowe and Partners Worldwide London but was conceptualised by its team in India - Lowe Lintas and Partners India. From the total of 17 Lions given in the category, the Kan Khajura Tesan campaign was the lone winner from India.
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All it took was an open letter and a few Tweets for American singer Taylor Swift to bring Apple Music to its knees. The company, which will soon be starting a new service AppleMusic, has decided to pay the artists during the three-month free trial period and even beyond. Can the same happen in India? We will come to that in just a bit. Apple Music launches on June 30. In the US, it is priced at $9.99 per month for one person or $14.99 for families. In India, though the pricing is not official, or whether Apple Music will be launched simultaneously on June 30, some reports suggest it will and it will be priced at Rs 120 per month for one person or Rs 180 per month for family or six users. Apple Music includes a radio station with personalized playlists and a choice from millions of songs on demand. The service includes a live radio station called Beats 1, tools to find curated playlists or individual songs, offline listening and a social music network on which users can comment on music and share it. In addition to iOS devices, the service will also be available on Macs and even on Android, later this year. Now let’s turn to India. There are over 230 FM stations, 800-plus television channels and crore of Internet buffs who access music online. While royalties are getting paid to the film’s producers or the music companies, are the singers getting their due? Let me ask you about ISRA or Indian Singers' Rights Association? I bet many of us don’t even know what it is. But some of us do. It is around two year old society of Indian singers, as the name suggests. According to its website, ISRA aims to administer and control the exploitation/ utilisation of singer performances and collects Royalties as per Section 38A of the Copyright Act, 1957 and then distribute the Royalties to its member singers. Ashish SinhaISRA has also listed an elaborate rate plan across mediums. For example: If a singer’s songs are used by a broadcaster of Music-based TV Show/Programme, the Royalty shall be Rs 25,000 per song performance (even if it is part of a song). Similar rate is applicable for a non-music based TV show or serial. And for Broadcast to the public of the performance of a singer on a Music Channel, the Royalty is pegged at Rs 5,000 per hour or 5 per cent of the gross revenue of the Channel for that TV, whichever is higher. Royalty is similarly fixed for mediums like radio, internet, hotels, commercial establishments, commercial vehicle, and Public events among others. So far so good. But privately, singers say that getting a broadcaster or a commercial establishment to pay the royalty on playing their songs is an extremely difficult proposition. In fact, only last month a delegation of singers including Sonu Nigam, Kavita Krishnamurthy and Pankaj Udhas, among others, had met Union information and broadcasting Minister Arun Jaitley seeking his intervention. They wanted to ministry to direct certain broadcasters to "stop violations of the Performer's Right", in line with the provisions of the Copyright Act. As per the provisions, which have been introduced retrospectively, lyricists and singers should get 50 per cent royalty on any commercial use of their songs. In fact, according to Sanjay Tandon, the MD of ISRA, not even one TV channel or radio station is paying any royalty to any singer. As per the amended Copyright laws, royalty can be collected on original songs played commercially by any media, including ring tones by telephone companies, call waiting music, any songs used in any manner by any commercial establishment etc. And the law covers songs going back in time almost half a decade. So when Taylor Swift said the Apple Music plan was "unfair", arguing Apple had the money to cover the cost, the company obliged by announcing to the world it will pay for the trial period too. We wonder when that will be the case for our own singers? May be very soon! ashish.sinha@businessworld.in
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Besides the benefits to customers, e-commerce as a business model has several advantages over traditional retail models, says Vipul Parekh The world was a different place when we started our first e-commerce venture Fabmart in 1999. Internet connections were few and far between, and ran mostly on flaky dial-up lines. People distrusted an “invisible retailer” and were unwilling to use their credit cards online.Today, with more than 30 crore people connected to the Internet (thanks in large part to smartphones), secure payment systems, and increased willingness to transact online (thanks to IRCTC and other websites), the e-commerce industry has truly taken off. In addition, people are increasingly strapped for time, and value the convenience offered by e-commerce companies much more than they perhaps did a decade ago.Besides the benefits to customers, e-commerce as a business model has several advantages over traditional retail models. First, rentals constitute a significant chunk of the cost base for a traditional retailer given their need to be present in locations with high footfalls; e-commerce companies, on the other hand, can have their warehouses in relatively faraway locations with cheaper rentals. Second, for people in smaller cities and towns (home to more than 50 per cent of the retail market) with the same aspirations as those in large cities, e-commerce offers access to a much greater range than traditional retail.Third, e-commerce companies can have centralised control over inventory, which allows superior operational efficiency and also curtails shrinkage (loss of inventory due to inefficiencies and theft). Fourth, e-commerce companies have the ability to use data and analytics to help customers make better purchase decisions. Fifth, many e-commerce companies operate as marketplace models, which significantly reduces the need for inventory and associated capex. While e-commerce companies have structural pluses over traditional retail, there are some key success factors for them that are worth keeping in mind:=Merchandising skills to enable them to buy the right products at the right time from the right place, and the ability to set and control quality standards. BigBasket.com carries more than 15,000 SKUs today and ensures that each is delivered at the right price and quality requires strong processes and capabilities in the team.=Supply chain management skills to manage a fragmented and varied supply chain for procurement and same day/next day delivery for customers across the length and breadth of the country.=People management skills to manage, recruit, train and motivate blue-collar workforce that works in the warehousing and delivery of the orders.=Technology skills to ensure that they are able to consistently offer customers a great experience while buying online and to keep them current with rapid technology changes, and also to lay the foundation for processes within the company.With all the news of funding in the sector, there is some concern whether seemingly sky-high valuations are justified. While it is hard to answer this definitively one way or another, a few facts keep me optimistic. In the US, after all these years, e-commerce constitutes only 4-5 per cent of the retail market; on the other hand, in China, the e-commerce industry constitutes nearly 10 per cent of the overall retail market. I think India may follow the trend of China rather than the US.We still have a lot of runway left. Internet penetration is still at less than 20 per cent in India versus over 50 per cent in China, and only 10 per cent of Indian Internet users are online shoppers versus close to 50 per cent in China. It is also no coincidence, in my view, that for Amazon, India was the fastest international market to clock $1 billion in revenues. Overall, I am confident that the best days of Indian e-commerce are yet to come. The author is co-founder of online grocery store BigBasket.com(This story was published in BW | Businessworld Issue Dated 13-07-2015)
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