The Indian Institute of Management Calcutta signed an MOU with the University of Melbourne, Australia, on September 14, 2009. The MOU was signed by Professor Saibal Chattopadhyay, Dean, Program Initiatives, IIM Calcutta, and Professor Nasser A Spear, GD Wood Chair of Accounting and Associate Dean (International), University of Melbourne. On the occasion Professor Saibal Chattopadhyay said, “IIM-C enjoys a very good reputation amongst the affiliate universities primarily due to the high quality of students. With this MoU, IIMC’s total number of partner institute goes up to 43”. Professor Nasser A emphasized the fact that student exchanges would help students from both institutions acquire the cross-cultural skills that are critical for modern business. Faculty exchanges and joint research projects and conferences are also envisaged as part of the MOU.
The STEP program at IIM Calcutta, which started as early as 2000, has been a very successful program. Currently, 54 students from abroad are spending a term at IIM Calcutta while the 67 IIMC students are studying at partner institutes located around the world.
The affiliate universities and business schools that participate in the STEP program with IIM Calcutta are located in Europe, US and South East Asia. With an increasing number of students being placed abroad, IIM Calcutta plans to send more students to partner institutions under the STEP program.
IIM Indore hosts Michael Newbill
Michael Newbill, Chief of Political and Economic Section of the American Consulate, Mumbai delivered a guest lecture on ‘US and India Foreign Policy in the 21st Century’ on September 14. The lecture was attended by students as well as members of the staff.
Drawing an analogy between strategizing a business venture and developing a nation’s foreign policy, Newbill discussed the changes that have been seen in India’s foreign policy as the nation has grown. He mentioned that a country’s foreign policy includes realistic aspects based on the current scenario as well as aspiration-based aspects that look into the future. According to him, any foreign policy can be sub-divided into four components:National Interests, Tactical Objectives or Goals, Motivational elements and Domestic compulsions.
Newbill also discussed India’s foreign policy with respect to China at length, drawing comparisons from the US in between. While speaking about the reasons for China being a threat to India, the forum came up with points such as competition for the same limited resources and markets, garnering regional influence etc. The major complication with China being the fact that it was a close second, after the US, in terms of trade partners of India.
On the Kashmir issue, Newbill felt that a change in mindset would be required on both ends to arrive at a solution. He was not very sure whether, re-acquisition of Pakistan occupied Kashmir would be in the best interests of the nation.
LIBA holds seminar on Mobility in Supply Chain Management
Loyola Institute of Business Administration, a premier management institute in India hosted a unique seminar on Mobility in Supply Chain Management on Saturday, September 12. The seminar was organised by LIBA Centre of Excellence in Logistics and Supply Chain Management and TAKE Solutions.
In a world where customer demands are growing dramatically and profit margins shrinking rapidly, mobile and wireless technologies have found crucial roles to play and are becoming one of the most powerful enablers of business efficiencies and supply-chain security across several functions. However, the degree of adopting mobility solutions varies across the supply chain functions and is faced with many challenges. To provide a better understanding, thought leaders who have experience in handling these devices were invited to speak about the growing transition to mobile and wireless technologies.
Speaking on the event Royston Rodrigues, Country Manager, TAKE Solutions Ltd said, “One of the biggest challenges faced today in Supply Chain is a chance of break-down with the chain itself. This may merely be a late drop off, delays due to inclement weather or any others reason. Due to the tumultuous nature of JIT shipping, it is essential that current status data is available instantly and constantly. Mobility allows customers the ability to stay connected to their supply chain wherever and whenever they need it most. The supply chains of the future will depend upon technology that is as mobile as the inventory. In business today, if you are not moving forward, you are moving backwards.
Addressing the gathering Karthikeyan Solutions Architect, TAKE Solutions Ltd said, “Today, the organization who are matured ERP users, would like to have real time visibility of material movement. But due to the time gap between physical activity and transaction execution, there is a latency in getting this visibility. Organizations are moving towards mobility solutions to overcome this challenge.
LIBA Centre of Excellence in Logistics and Supply Chain Management and TAKE Solutions is a coming together of the collective intelligence of Industry thought leaders, academicians, domain experts and technology partners to create a global knowledge pool on supply chain management. The COE is a platform to encourage dialogue enhances collaboration and enables people to share ideas, best practices in the SCM arena.
IBM and ISB establish a research ‘collaboratory’
IBM (NYSE: IBM) and the Indian School of Business (ISB) announced today that they have established a research ‘Collaboratory’ at the ISB campus for furthering research in service science. IBM and ISB have been working closely on service science research for the last few years. This ‘Collaboratory’ marks the beginning of a new phase of an expanded relationship between the two organizations.
Speaking on the setting up of the ‘Collaboratory’, Ajit Rangnekar, Dean, ISB, said, “We expect Services Management to be a huge area of focus for leading companies, and we are delighted to collaborate with IBM on this initiative. In keeping with the ISB’s emphasis on research, we believe our association will develop innovative solutions to enhance the way services are rendered.”
An IBM ‘Collaboratory’ is a laboratory where IBM researchers co-locate with a university, government, or commercial partner to share skills, assets, and resources to achieve a common research goal.
Speaking on the need for this ‘Collaboratory’, Dr Guruduth Banavar, Director, IBM Research, India, said, “Innovation is needed to address the world’s greatest challenges and opportunities; and the responsibility must be shared among industry, government and academia. Meeting market demands for higher service quality and innovation while increasing the efficiency of service delivery requires deep insight into advances in information technology and management sciences. This ‘Collaboratory’ will expand our expertise in these areas to further differentiate IBM’s services offerings in the global marketplace.
The newly established ‘Collaboratory’ for service science will initially have a team of 10 full-time researchers, five each from ISB and IBM Researcha India. The team will focus on developing foundational techniques in service science, including the modeling, measurement, and optimization of service systems.
Service research is multi-disciplinary and many variations exist today within the domains of management, operations research, and economics to name a few. While most of the existing work has focused on business-to-consumer services, the focus of this research is on business-to-business services.
FINANZA ’09 at FMS New Delhi
Faculty of Management Studies MBA (Management of Services) organized their Annual Finance Conclave, Finanza’09 on September 13, 2009. Experts from the industry and the academia came together on a common stage to dwell upon the extremely significant topic ‘Managing Economic Recovery’. Experts from the financial domain shed light on the various aspects of the global financial turmoil and provided insights on the internal reasons behind the downfall of the mighty financial institutions.
Prof Madhu Vij, Faculty at FMS, was the keynote speaker and she laid the foundation well by stressing on the fact that we have to introspect ourselves thoroughly during these troubled times and emerge with better fundamentals.
The first guest speaker was Dr Subhomoy Bhattacharjee, Editor, Financial Express and he made it clear to the audience that India had not escaped the effect of the crisis as was the popular opinion. He elucidated how the Indian Banking System also had severe flaws which needed a look into.
Naveen Gupta, Head of Consumer Bank Market Sales, Standard Chartered Bank and an alumnus of FMS emphasized on the point that a crisis should not be wasted and recommended building upon these moments of opportunities. Next, Gyan Mohan, Exec VP, Head IB, IDBI Capital said that the infrastructure segment needed reforms, and he also questioned the role of credit rating agencies in the whole situation. Varun Gupta, MD, American Appraisal introduced the concept of Fair Value to the audience and dwelled on the subject of “Mark-to-Market” valuing of assets and its merits and demerits.
The session was concluded in style by Rajesh Parthasarthy who started off by projecting the heavy commercial vehicle segment as a clear representative case of the state of the economy. He also dwelled on whether the economic downfall has really hit rock bottom or do we expect further escalation of problems.
Conclave’ 09
The Marketing Society of Faculty of Management Studies, University of Delhi organized its Annual Marketing Conclave on September 13 in association with MediaVest Worldwide.
Holiday partners, Polo Towers, gave away prizes worth Rs 3.5 lakh at the event in the form of travel vouchers. The event attracted many visitors, including media members and representatives from different colleges.
The conclave was divided in two sessions. Session one was on Marketing Tools in Recessionary Times. The eminent panel consisted of Mr Ravi Kiran, CEO (South Asia), Starcom Mediavest Group, Sai Nagesh from Dentsu Communication, Vivek Bali, Group President Global Brand and Marketing, Spice and Vikram Khosla, National Sales Head of Foods and Personal care businesses, ITC.
The session started with a keynote lecture by Dr H.V.Verma, Professor of Marketing, Faculty of Management Studies., who questioned the very existence of downturn and suspected it to be a hype created by media. And if a reality, he questioned the need for innovation. He laid emphasis on protecting revenue rather than expand the revenue and also the need to weed out the cost inefficiencies both at supply side and the demand side as well.
Nagesh suggested the need to use common sense resulting in uncommon action, and to measure the market on consumer behavior.
Ravi Kiran was of the opinion that we are currently going through a downturn but since Indians are known for their resilience, they will come out of it. He emphasized that in times like these the need is to focus on the customer, and that we need to keep in mind that marketing does not start with ‘brand’ but rather starts with ‘people’ (consumers). He insisted that we should stick to the old fundamentals, which would be essential in these times. He very well highlighted the point that tough periods have created the greatest companies in the past (for e.g. GE in the panic of 1873, Microsoft in downturn of 1975, Walt Disney in 1923).
Vivek Bali explained strategies employed by Spice group to beat the downturn. The suggestions included the fact that there is a need to invest wisely and innovate continuously.
Vikram talked about the need to read beyond the obvious. He suggested that juggling with the marketing mix could be a good idea. He suggested creating a catcher brand and introducing a larger range of products to capture consumer at all different price levels
The second session was on “If advertising is the answer, what is the question? Panellists included Vivek Sharma, CMO, Philips Electronics India Ltd., Manasvi Rasgotra, Marketing Manager, Nestle Professional, Kishore Chakraborti, Vice President, Consumer Insight, McCann Erickson India, Mohit Gupta, CMO, MakeMyTrip and Anurag Batra, MD, Editor in chief, Exchange4media group
The session started with an emphasis on ideas such as overall economic sentiments are weak and management is more risk averse, the marketers have become wiser, owing to the current conditions there are cheaper solutions in the market to go for. Questions like the minimal use of digital and social media, selection of the media by companies, reaction of media agencies to the shift from the focus on building brands to focus on generating sales were also raised.
Chakraborti emphasized on the changes in times, aspirations and touch points. He mentioned company changing logos, international companies changing their brand proposition and how brands are getting liberated from the confines of the product and trying ( successfully in some cases) to enter into the lives of the consumers and become a part of it.
Sharma stressed on the ways of winning in a downturn -putting the weaker competitor out of the market.
Gupta stressed upon the benefit of using online world for marketing.
Rasgotra started with the role of a manger as a custodian of the brand of the company and the profits related to them. According to him, recession is the right time to grow the market share since all companies have tendencies to cut marketing expenditure.