T Sowmyan's Blog

Hate

tsowmyan — Sat, 27 Dec 2008 06:15:48 +0000

After the recent terrorist attack in Mumbai, I was disturbed to think that another society carries so much hatred towards this country and society that they want to go to such lengths to show their hatred. How and where does so much of hatred get generated? How do we reverse this?

Gross domestic product

tsowmyan — Sat, 27 Dec 2008 06:09:16 +0000

Some years ago I read an interesting bit about how gross domestic product as a measure of value added by society is computed. It said, if we had a disaster such as an oil spill, and spent a lot of money in cleaning up the mess, this would boost the GDP. Ironic. May be when we spend money on war, fighting crime, drugs, etc also the GDP goes up. Is there any error in this? Are there any metrics where we measure true developmental value addition and avoidable / wasteful value addition?

Outsourcing for overflow of work

tsowmyan — Thu, 25 Dec 2008 18:09:36 +0000

I often find people looking at an outsourcing agency when their in house capacity is run over by short time demand. This is not the time to start trying out a new agency. In order to evaluate and empanel a new agency, you should choose a time when you have the ability to recover, and give ample time to the new source to understand your requirements and align with your standards.

Some customers camouflage their outsourcing urgency by suggesting they are trying to evaluate the ability of the new source to rise to the occasion. Often suppliers eager to get a new customer fall for this. This is a bad way to start exploring mutual business interest and potential.

Meeting service level requirements requires careful planning of resources and loading levels. This can happen only when long term business interests are recognized and acknowledged by both parties.