Category: Software

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Software

Digital transformation don’t get confused

Digital economy

So every organization and their sales guy is pitching you about the wave of digital transformation that is essential to your organization and to be ready for the future. It is a must a do for cxo and their architects, if their business has to stay agile and thus, relevant.

Quite true, isn’t it? There is indeed a great sense is taking all your process online, enhancing your digital presence, offer deeper engagement to your end users and grow your business, except that under the noise of these right sentences, lies a misuse, overuse and confusion of the underlying terms which, if true, can lead to different path than intended.

Earlier attempts

The fact that businesses need to go online, i.e. be present on the same electronic plane that their customers exist and then offer interactions on the electronic plane is something that we all came to realize with the dot com era. A business should rightfully move in sync with their customers likings. This used to be called, for a long time , e-everything. E as in electronic. We had e-commerce-payments, e-medicine and so on, overlapping with its twin buzz words, web as in website and online as in online store. What this wave started was indeed a digital view of the world except that for the most part, it was a conversion of existing paper based on a human-facilitated way of doing business. Of course it had resulted in gains by sheer virtue of the expansion of reach it produced.

Digital transformation wave on the contrast is about expansion of the depth . The depth to which end-user can interact with a business and everything around it. Along with this, businesses must also look into essential services like the top Internal audit services if they truly want their brands to be efficient.

Genesis of digital transformation

Human mind is a double edged sword. At one end it can offer rich contextual insights about everything that ,computers are still struggling to match. At other end it can create huge roadblocks due to the linearity with which it sees the world. Imagine a loan application, while you are filling up the forms, can one parallelly start estimating your loan worth?, can it eliminate your need to sign at multiple places or your need to photo copy and attach supporting documents. We need to also consider that the process of application is designed with average human being in mind, on both sides of the interaction, mind you; so we introduced, a sequentially to the process.

It is this human intervention both apparent as well as embedded that the digital transformation wave intends to eliminate. Eliminate so that ,the depth to which the end-user can interact with business is enhanced by order of magnitude. It is apt to call this process as digitization. Digitization of all human intervention, obvious as well as implicit so that the interaction process is as below

Charetiristics of useful digital transformation

1.Instant :Instant as in immediate .Because we eliminate the human aspect of service ,we also eliminate queue nature of our business interaction.This is not same as number of simultaneous users but the ability of the system to react immediately and lead the user to the next logical step or even fulfilment of the process itself.

2.Always on:Always on is not the traditional availability,which is a service indicator that is essential to digital business .But if say ,your payment is waiting for payment network to be on or your application is waiting for an approver and appraiser to process it is not Always on.

3.Resumable : Tought we enable to business process to always on and instant , the same constraint does not apply to the end user .This calls for a resumability of the business process at a later point . Resumability is not a mere memory of users unfinished actions but also updating those actions for the business context that might have changed in the (larger) time lapse that might have occurred .

4. Simplified :As we digitize the actors and process in our system ,it also allows us to eliminate many constrains thus allowing us to simplify the whole user experience in our process . However simplification is not a call for giving up prudence ,but to shift it to a later phase or in background so that the regular flow in the system is far more short, easy and clear. This might even call for coordination between diff systems for this . A case in point is use of precomputed credit score to allow on demand consumer loan. Stay competitive by offering affordable processing credit card fees to your customers.

5.Parallelized : Removal of human view of the business opens up many opportunities to parallelize the tasks in the process so as to shorten as well as smoothen the overall journey .

6.Inferential: As we digitize diff aspects of our business , we also enable addresability of all these entities .This allows us to infer lots of data points,decision making,exception in our system to everyones benifit .An easy example is use of QR code or face recognition or even user segment to accelerate overall process .

Whereas,simplified is often misquoted as frictionless and Inferential is often mis-understood as big data analytics.

It is also important to stress that the earlier attempt of e-fication has sometime resulted in partial achievement of above goals.But due to generational nature of transformation waves,it often merely converted existing process in electronic forms.Case in point,tough e-payments was established early on,it took long time to allow e-cheques inside the system. Where as the main aim of digitization should have been ti eliminate the need of cheques as means of payment as well as legal record.

What then becomes obvious is that digital transformation will need lots of effort to question the business practices , to re imagine the world in digitized manner, and then do it ie digitally transform.For which,most often, that CMS platform,MbaaS suite,service gateway and so on,is not a pre condition.It might ,at max be, an eventual fitment.

Good luck

Categories
Software

Future of channel banking apps post amazon go

Amazon go store
Amazon go store

In consumer space.. is bleak.Amazon just launched an Amazon go service  .


The idea is to walk around the store picking items and let the amazon magic wand do the billing and payment for you. Something like how magic bands worked in amusement part.What is important here is not how amazon will identify the chosen products but how it will bill the customer.The experience amazon wishes to give via go service is that of on tap shopping.This mandates that the act of billing your account will be on tap.We can draw an anology with how oauth made user authentication ontap for content providers.This is huge.

The idea of some sort of token of your payment power was well established by cheques and later via plastic cards. The point of sale handled the other part of giving identity of the billing party. The same was replicated by e-commerce sites. However whats was missing here is a marriage of discoverability of both the parties as well as payment completion on the same tap.And all withing the realm of regular banking. We can alternatively say that the ease propagated by maverick fintech of dot com era as well as current breed of startup is going mainstream. All via the power of amazon to shape and coerce new behavior.

The problem that consumer banking apps went on to solve were that of products, payment’s and problems. Its is at the payment level most of the problems and innovations in this area happened. What amazon go will propagate is the paradigm of account as a service ,on which payments can be made. Its kind of stretching the event horizon. Because once the cognitive habits of tap and pay becomes normal,all the problems of discovery and identification become part of a universal,standardized infrastructure that most bank will end up supporting. The shift is so fundamental that the current attempts of standardization of bill payment,QR cheques,universal account identifiers and the payment networks will be forced to coverage and fall in line with account ad service model due to sheer power of end user convenience.

What then is left with banks is products and problems. The products being the universal facility that banks offer and where information technology has little to offer apart from some trivial suggestion based on consumer profile.And the problem part which the support executive can’t get rid of, so much the banks would love to eliminate and are nowadays looking towards bots as hope.

We must also factor in the usual suspects of value chain arguments. In a world where bank account and transfers are available as standardized commodity,there will be an inclination to move up the value chain,but we must remember the very reason of the channel banking app was to outsource clerical load onto consumer and let them do it.What more can then be more up the chain than liberalize payments and accounts further and let the bank focus where their strength lies ie better banking products. So skip the temptations to bring some workflow,fund sharing- social features to your banking apps.The consumers might not,all,need it ;and in the light of account as services the app ecosystem will take care of the latest , mostly transient tides of consumer behavior.

Categories
Software

Teacher and Guru

Got this  in an email ..dunno the author … read the last line its awesome ..

==============================

TEACHER & GURU

A teacher takes responsibility of your growth
A Guru makes you responsible for your growth

A teacher gives you things you do not have and require
A Guru takes away things you have and do not require

A teacher answers your questions
A Guru questions your answers

A teacher helps you get out of the maze
A Guru destroys the maze

A teacher requires obedience and discipline from the pupil
A Guru requires trust and humility from the pupil

A teacher clothes you and prepares you for the outer journey
A Guru strips you naked and prepares you for the inner journey

A teacher is a guide on the path
A Guru is a pointer to the way

A teacher sends you on the road to success
A Guru sends you on the road to freedom

A teacher explains the world and its nature to you
A Guru explains yourself and your nature to you

A teacher makes you understand how to move about in the world
A Guru shows you where you stand in relation to the world

A teacher gives you knowledge and boosts your ego
A Guru takes away your knowledge and punctures your ego

A teacher instructs you
A Guru constructs you

A teacher sharpens your mind
A Guru opens your mind

A teacher shows you the way to prosperity
A Guru shows the way to serenity

A teacher reaches your mind
A Guru touches your soul

A teacher gives you knowledge
A Guru makes you wise

A teacher gives you maturity
A Guru returns you to innocence

A teacher instructs you on how to solve problems
A Guru shows you how to resolve issues

A teacher is a systematic thinker
A Guru is a lateral thinker

A teacher will punish you with a stick
A Guru will punish you with compassion

A teacher is to pupil what a father is to son
A Guru is to pupil what mother is to her child

One can always find a teacher
But a Guru has to find and accept you

A teacher leads you by the hand
A Guru leads you by example

When a teacher finishes with you,
you graduate
When a Guru finishes with you,
you celebrate

When the course is over you are thankful to the teacher
When the discourse is over you are grateful to the Guru
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Good Luck

Categories
Software

National Skill Registry : Profiling IT professionals

Lets get it straight guyz .

Would you like keep an account of your romantic encounters online ?
The one which contains list of people you had relations with . The one which can be tomorrow be upgraded so that it contains details of exactly what kind of relations you had with them .The one with which people can ask you questions like “did u have sex and how many times?” . The one which you may be forced to reveal when you plan to get married ?

IF you are a girl you will immediately get my point .

National Skills Registry [ https://nationalskillsregistry.com/ ] is an initiative by nasscom running for quite a long time .It aims at keeping a database of all the IT professionals .Its a permanent account maintained by an IT professional. These details will be upgraded as the employee moves across companies . The same data will be used for background verification and routine stuff you would see about profile maintenance on orkut or facebook . They even claim of 4 lakh successful registration !Gosh what happened to IT professional .

I find this quite suspicious and dangerous plan which aims at tightening controls over personal rights of IT professional .The fact that this is a permanent account sounds too dangerous to me , like the romances example I gave at the outset .

Lets c how , The first and foremost reason that Nasscom gives is that of security .
It says that since Indian IT industry is booming and since India doesn’t have an electronic registeiry of its citizen ,so its a concern with our clients when it comes to background check .

Question is which Background ?

Now there can be no doubts on IT clients seeking assurances about the people that they outsource to . If in case Nasscom is getting inspiration from US social secutiry system then its a fair thing to pursue . Nobody , including me , will want criminals at workplace .We should have a way to handle this .But that’s about it .
The rest that is said in support of this registry sounds like some smart marketing to me .

First and foremost ,security assurances to its clients is about the social record of the person .There is no reason to include his employments details and so on in this .

Secondly If at all such assurances is needed then Nasscom , with its technical and monetary strength should convince Govt of India to establish a social net than do it herself . Infcat such a registry should be maintained for everyone in India . Being a criminal be it CEO of a company or the office peon is euqally harmful to IT ecosystem .

And this is where Nasscom fails to establish its intigriyt .We can say that an association of IT companies so its targeting only IT professional .

No my friends this is too short and too sweet of a justification for this . Nassmcom first of all is association of IT companies . It is not organization of IT professional .Its the masters club ,however much we pretend .I leave rest to your thinking here 🙂 .

The next point is , by definition this is Skills registry . It aims to cover all historical data of an employee . Which all companies he worked for ? which all skills he worked on . The duration .
The salaries … wel I personally haven’t registered for this .But lets use common sense.

Even if intimate details like salary aren’t captured in this registry How much time do you think it will take . The day this registry becomes a hit , it will become a norm .And that day my frined it will not take much time for companies to force one to update his salary there .

Nassmcom does say that the data in this registry is controlled by the professional .Wel it must be but there is a good word that we use in IT industry .. “As of Now ” . Yes as of now it is .Tomorrow there can be a regulations 2.0 where in it will be mandated to keep one appraisal details in it . It can be extended to gather details to any minutes details like the years spend onsite foreign countries and so on .

Do you think companies will be hesitant to put salary and such details of their employees in such a database ?
Go and ask if you have any friend in recruitment process . Or if you have faced a job interview and bargained for things you would get sense of where I am coming from 🙂

you have no Idea , If I were an employer , how delighted I would be to have such a minute data about people i hired or will hire . Its would be a dream situation of having complete control over IT employees who any way aren’t allowed to form Support Groups .

And in essence this registry by its design can be very dangerous to IT folks . This or any attempt of profiling common people is to be suspected for its intention . The last such experience that history tells us is soviet russia and the KGB net that is said to have noted down minutest details .Again i leave rest to your own thinking .

Now lets look at the fundamental point that arise out of this issue .
That of Individuals freedom and Job Background verification .

Job background verification seems to be the prime intention that evident from NSR .
Now this is a real issue and this has nothing to do with security :).
This is quite an individual matter of what honesty an individual chooses to practice .Compare this to tax filing and you would be clear on the risk and honesty aspects of it .

As much keeping false claims in ones resume is a real concern, so is this being a pure business scenario . Its about how companies can and should verify Job Background and the business rather monetary aspects related to this . I for once and all I like such business issues be handled by market itself than NSR like profiling .

IT and most of the service Industries are about brands . A company and its trustworthiness as well as that of people working in it is purely determined by its brand . This is real market differentiators . We should be using the same as a base fro Job profiling . Rather this is how Indian IT industry seems to be working now . And again this is the final and real determinant factor .

NSR or no NSR ……
such brand establishment by an company by its corporate and Skills related practices . Or say by the employees by getting professional certifications or working in such companies should be the direction which Nasscom is working in .

NASSMCOM should have created industry wide system of skill certifications on diff Job profiles . It could have mandated , like we do in stock markets , Annual Job certificates by IT companies to employees .There could be more such open and fair ideas that could be cited .

Any falsification after that would be an individual risk .And so long people can pull such lies off or they get caught he has right to do so. For once such events strengthen the system than weaken it.It puts the strength of the system under scanner and makes them responsible for it .This is how nature and civil society works . Sadly this philosophical clarity is missing in NSR .

The point is in the onus of establishing ones rightful credential should be on the entity who wishes to benefit from it and they way they wish to benefit from it . Any overseeing body if at all regulatory should see that there are enough credential establishment events available so that such brands can be built and people benefit from the brand . After all there is a market for unbranded stuff too and thats a market reality too !

Beyond that NSR by its name and design it an attempt ar profiling people , having complete control over it . Its like treating IT professions like suspects, the only difference is this time its worded differently …and its web enabled..and its on name of security …and its from NASSCOM !

PS : Being an IT professional I am not making any conclusion on what an individual should do with NSR lest it goes against the conduct expected by my employer . I have taken care to keep this strictly as a critique and at a though argument level . I wish no political or monitory benefit from this blog entry.
EveryOne is expected to make his own decisions and the thinking needed for it . I wish not to dictate it 🙂 _Sachin .