The World Bank recognizes that despite the high growth that the region has seen in the past few years; a strategic investment

a. to tap private flow of funds

b.to increase interest in Shariah compliant projects

will maintain the growth trajectory that the region has experienced over the last few years.  The important aspect of this commitment is to recognize that though the Gulf region has used its Oil - fueled economies to grow its infrastructure liberally; it is the non- gulf countries which have lagged behind in infrastructure and flow of funds. Exploring funding administered by Shariah principles , will definitely increase the interest of  private players abundantly in the region. Its the time for Egypt, Morroco, Jordan and Tunisia to close in and cover the gap.

I’m being facetious, but not by much. India’s ability to do almost everything more cheaply than the West — Tata makes a car priced at $2,500, for instance — has already ground to dust large sections of U.S. marketing. Think telemarketing call centers. Or tech help. The Nielsen Co. outsourced much of its accounts payable functions to the East months ago. There’s no law that says venerable agency brands such as WPP (WPPGY)’s Ogilvy & Mather or Omnicom (OMC)’s BBDO must stay in business forever, in Manhattan, and be paid handsomely for doing so. Which is why developments in Indian advertising should be watched closely in the U.S. That’s where the future is.

Rahul Welde (pictured), Unilever’s vp of media for Asia, Africa, Middle East and Turkey, triggered a wave of rage among admen when he gave a speech in which he said he regarded agencies as little more than interchangeable vendors who should be chiselled on price or asked to take a hike.

The news came in a column by “Uncle” Les Margulis, an American media veteran who worked at BBDO back when it was still only Benton & Bowles:

I expect to be paid for my labor. If those points do not fit into your playbook, then I don’t want you as a client. And for sure I would not pay five lakhs (about $10,700) as a submission fee, as you had suggested, for the privilege of working my team to the bone for two weeks for a Lever pitch.

No, thank you, sir. You are definitely a pass.

This is unusual: agency bosses never criticize clients by name or by company, especially clients as large as Unilever, the global household goods giant that rivals Procter & Gamble (PG) outside the U.S.

If you read the comments section you can get a taste of the distaste that Welde has left. One person suggested Welde’s attitude is a product of India’s caste system; another claims “almost half” the big advertisers in India have the same attitude towards their agencies.

And Reckitt’s pay-me policy was coupled with the fascinating demand that “The winner [of any pitch between competing agency bidders] would also have to rebate to Reckitt volume discounts paid by media owners.” That suggests some agencies in India may not be currently returning volume discount rebates to their clients — a practice which is illegal for any agency owned by a company whose shares are traded in the U.S. The whole thing smacks of bribery, said one commenter:

creativeo: This is one of the most unethical things I’ve heard of. How about giving each one of the clients on the pitch board a brown envelope with $1000 dollars in as well. It’s the same as a bribe. You can’t pretend it’s anything else.

It couldn’t happen here, could it? In fact, it already has. Western agencies have given up considerable ground — and cash — to their clients as advertisers employ procurement professionals to go over contracts and bills, line by line. The U.S. ad business is probably still at the top of the slippery slope. It was back in November, for instance, when media buying shops complained that their clients were asking them to get the price of advertising to go down.

The same thing is happening on the creative side, as more clients use free crowdsourcing to generate marketing ideas. Yes, professional agency staff can produce higher quality product in the long run, but consumers will inevitably produce more ideas, at a lower cost, than any agency could hope to do. Agencies will have to start seeing themselves as the executors of other people’s ideas, rather than the sole font from which ideas spring.

So yes, Welde’s idea that he should be in the business of “screwing all costs down to zero, so if a supplier does not want to work for zero, he will find someone else who will,” is repugnant to those who have made a living selling their labor for a premium. But just because the messenger was undiplomatic does not mean his message should be ignored. If we’re not all Indians now, we may soon be in the future.

By Jim Edwards

A recent editorial by the political pundit David Frum made this point clear, by explaining how top political strategists like Karl Rove and David Axelrod work.  There’s some real wisdom here:

When the man on the next bar stool tells you about political “strategy,” he usually ends up discussing political tactics: the micro-maneuvers that fascinate the daily cable shows. But these maneuvers make little impression on a more general public that pays little attention to political details. Political strategy is slower and steadier.

Focusing Bill Clinton’s hyperactive attention on small-bore political initiatives that expressed his concern for middle-income families, and keeping at it year after year: That’s a political strategy.

Identifying George W. Bush as a down-home man of faith who would do whatever it took to keep America safe: Ditto.

Same with Barack Obama’s self-invention as a post-racial healer trying to overcome the divisions left behind by the Bush and Clinton years.

It’s not hard to devise such narratives. It is tremendously hard to stick to them, to resist the temptation to chase after every twist and turn of the polls. “Turn to the center! No, go bold! Health care is issue 1! No — it’s jobs!”

A good political strategist ignores these distractions, keeps focused on the original plan, and trusts to fate.

In my experience, the biggest problem that most companies have when trying to build a brand and leverage it into lead generation is a failure to execute on a perfectly good strategy.  Rather than staying on message (i.e. building a great product, making the customer experience positive, promoting success stories, etc.), companies start thinking that they need a new market strategy.

They then proceed to get all involved in the minutae of brand marketing, advertising, promotion, etc. when in fact if they’d stay on message and not monkey with the extraneous stuff, they’d end up more successful in the long run.  Most sales professionals know this intuitively and realize that their marketing groups are either useless or worse-than-useless unless they’re working on practical issues like lead generation.

Let’s face it.  Market strategy needs to be changed (i.e. adjusted) maybe once every five years; three years in very fast-moving industries.  Any more frequently than that, and you’re probably just spinning your wheels.

Author: By Geoffrey James
Bnet.com

In the globalized market scenario, the impact of recession at one place/ indusrty/ sector perculate down to all the linked indusrty and this can be truly interpreated from the current market situation which is faced by the world since approx 2 month and still the situation is not in control inspite of various measures taken to fight back the recession in the market.The badly hit setor at present being the financial sector, and major issue being the “LIQUIDITY Crises” in the market.

In-spite of the various measures to subsidise the impact of the recession and cut down the inflation present nothing really sound have been done.

Various steps taken by RBI to curb the present recession in the economy and counter act the prevailing situation.
The sudden drying-up of capital inflows from the FDI which were invested in Indian stock markets for greater returns vizualizing the Potential Higher Returns flying back is continuing to challenge liquidity management.At the heart of the current liquidity tightening is the balance of payments deficit, and this NRI deposit move should help in some small way.

To curb the liquidity crises the RBI will continue to initiate liquidity measures as long as the current unusually tight domestic liquidity environment prevails. The current step to curb these being lowering of interest rates and reduction of PLR.However, the big-picture story remains unchanged – all countries in the world with current account deficits and strong credit cycles are finding it difficult to bring cost of capital down in the current environment. India is no different. New measures do not change our view on the growth outlook. Indeed, we remain concerned about the banking sector and financial sector. The BOP- Balance of Payment deficit – at a time when domestic credit demand is very high – is resulting in a vicious loop of reduced access to liquidity, slowing growth, and increased risk-aversion in the financial system.

In total the recession have turned down the growth process and have set the minds of economists and others for finding out the real solution to sustain the economic growth and stability of the market which is desired for the smooth running of the economy.

Complete businesss/ industry is in dolledrum situation and this situation persist for a longer duration will create the small business to vanish as they have lower stability and to run smoothly require continous flow of liquidity which is drived from the market.

In present situation down fall in one sector one day leads to a negative impact on the other sector thus alltogether everyone feel the impact of the Financial crises with the result of the current recession which started in US and slowly and gradually due to linked global world have impacted everyone.

Solution for the problem still remain at the top of the mind of every one, still everyone facing the impact of recession but how long is the major question which is of great importance.

However, the act of identifying, gathering and turning data into useful insights can consume significant bandwidth—something in precious supply in many overstretched, understaffed insurance operations. This is something that concerns Stuart Rose, global insurance industry marketing manager at SAS, a company that lives, eats, sleeps and breathes analytics.

“Because most insurers spend so much time gathering and cleaning data and creating reports, there is little time left to explore data for insights that can have a positive impact on the bottom line,” he says.

The solution? Rose believes insurers need to take a closer look at their data management processes across the enterprise, from back-office to front-end.

Rose says there are three elements that should be part of any effective data management effort:

1. Data mapping: This is the most challenging part of data management, taking up to 70% of the data management effort, Rose says. But it’s the most essential step. “Often, data resides in multiple legacy systems, various formats and an assortment of different databases,” he explains.
2. Data quality: This is paramount for any system, as the value of information depends on it. “No insurance company can ever be sure that its premium calculations, loss reserving or statutory reports are accurate and reliable if the supporting data is not cleansed and validated according to defined business rules,” Rose says. He recommends techniques, such as plots and descriptive statistics, to identify issues with data. In addition, many insurers are using a “unified data model that not only helps with data quality but ensures consistency in the terminology of the data items,” Rose adds. “For example, a simple description or abbreviation can have multiple meanings. Just consider the wide variety of different types of policy coverage. Within auto insurance, the abbreviation BI stands for bodily injury, while for business owners policy insurance BI represents business interruption.”
3. Data governance: Make sure someone is in charge of the way data is handled and prioritized, either through a committee, or by a “data steward.” As Rose observes:  “to resolve many data issues, insurance companies are beginning to assign a designated data steward who is responsible for the reliability, availability and utilization of data throughout the organization.”

“Data management and data quality are no longer ‘nice-to-have’ options; they are essential,” Rose states.

by

Joe McKendrick

Etisalat’s disabled customers now have a special reason to stay seamlessly connected with Etisalat higher Al Shamil broadband speeds now introduced to its ‘Freedom’ Individual Discounts program for Disabled customers.

In Etisalat’s commitment towards the disabled community in the UAE, it has added faster Al Shamil Internet speeds of up to 4Mb, 8Mb, 16Mb and 30Mb at discounted prices, in order to provide these customers with necessary tools that help them take advantage of the Internet’s transformative powers.

Commenting on the initiative, Khalifa Al Shamsi, Senior Vice President of Marketing at Etisalat said, “As global leaders of telecom and broadband services, it is Etisalat’s enduring commitment and responsibility to bring these advanced technologies closer to the disabled community in the UAE. We strive to empower them as we strongly believe in their capabilities to contribute to the society. It is therefore part of our value system to always introduce innovative products in order to boost their development, help them integrate with society and to communicate more effectively at affordable prices.”

Disabled customers now have the choice of surfing and exploring the Internet on higher Al Shamil speed of 4MBps and those connected via Etisalat’s fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) network can avail of 8MBps, 16MBps and 30MBps Al Shamil speeds, all included under the Freedom Disabled individual program. These are in addition to previous Al Shamil subscription options of 256k, 512k, 1Mb and 2Mb Internet speeds. All connections include free installation and 50% discounts on monthly rentals as follows.

Here’s what happens: You have a killer idea. You do a ton of research — about the market, the competition, and your financial projections for, say, the next five years — that you organize into a work-of-genius plan that should make investors compete to throw money at you. That’s great. If you’re an unproven entrepreneur seeking funding, that formal plan is useful and even necessary.

Here’s the problem: To write your plan you made a lot of assumptions, and many of them may turn out to be flat-out wrong. “When you have a ‘brilliant vision,’ everything seems to confirm your theory,” says Eric Ries, who writes the blog StartupLessonsLearned.com and advises startups, big companies, and VC firms about the benefits of running a “lean startup.” “You’re looking for evidence that you’re right, not wrong.” Soon you start believing too firmly in your own numbers and assumptions, and before you know it, you’re treating the plan as if it were gospel.

This experience — the founder clinging to the plan — often turns into a make-or-break moment for an entrepreneur. Cling too long, and you’ll fail. Be willing, even eager, to part ways with your initial ideas and you’ll up your chances of success. In 2002, the magazine Inc. surveyed founders from its Inc. 500 list of fastest-growing private companies and found that only 40 percent had written formal business plans. Of those, nearly two-thirds said that they diverged significantly from their original plan. “Every pivot is important for a startup,” says Ries.

Caterina Fake knows this first hand. In 2002, she and her then-husband and co-founder Stewart Butterfield were toiling away with an online multiplayer social game called Game Neverending. It had a loyal fan base, but it lacked a solid revenue model and the company’s future prospects were bleak. Their small team was running out of cash and couldn’t attract VC funding. So Fake and Butterfield, both Web-design geeks, shelved the idea, raised $250,000 from family and friends, and started working on an instant messaging client that had game-like features and could handle photos. When that didn’t quite work, they dropped the instant messaging but kept working on the idea of a photo–sharing application. Flickr, which launched in 2004, “was a Hail Mary into the end zone,” says Fake.

Ultimately, Flickr didn’t take off until the concept of tagging, the product of another startup, came along later that year. Tagging gave Fickr an easy way to organize photos using keywords. Had Fake and Butterfied sat down to write a business plan, they never could have charted the path to Flickr. “We did no research because we weren’t planning on building a photo-sharing site,” Fake says. “If we had done our research, we would have said we shouldn’t bother because it’s all been sewn up” by competitors like ofoto, shutterfly, and snapfish. A year after Flickr’s launch, Yahoo bought it for $35 million, and today it’s one of the biggest photo sharing sites on the Web.

Now Fake is on to her next startup, an online recommendations engine called Hunch, and she’s practicing the same approach. “I think we picked a really good problem to solve” — that of helping people make decisions on everything from where to stay in Santa Fe to what kind of tennis racket to buy. “We could be a billion dollar company if we’re successful,” she says. “But we’re making it up as we go along. It’s not like we have this whole business plan and we’re going to execute on it.” This time, though, Fake took a big chunk of VC money ($12 million in the latest round of funding), which, admittedly, was easy to do because of her success with Flickr.

Her story might seem unique to the tech world, but it’s not. Plenty of successful companies have little resemblance to what the founder envisioned, whether that vision was spelled out in a formal business plan or on a cocktail napkin. The lesson: Be determined and confident, but not pigheaded. Understand that your plan, whether written in detail or not, is merely that — a plan — that you’ll have to tweak and adapt as the many factors beyond your control come into play. As Amar Bhide, a visiting scholar at Harvard University and author of 2000 book “The Origin and Evolution of New Businesses,” puts it: “The opportunity may be fleeting. That is why plans in many cases do more harm than good.”

by Lindsay Blakely

I wouldn’t be too sure. Partly I’m skeptical because I know that in the past I’ve overpaid for some people who went to expensive schools and had fantastic resumes but turned out to be quite ordinary. I’ll never forget a young Brown graduate complaining of working late “just because there’s a deadline.” Sure, he was pretty smart, but he felt terribly entitled.

More inspiring is the way that Carol Latham built her firm, Thermagon. Working as a chemist for BP, Latham believed that she could invent a material to keep computers cool.

Her employers didn’t agree, so she left, rented out her family home, and moved into a tiny Cleveland apartment, funding her start-up on the difference. For a few years she labored in the wilderness, but she was right: she did know how to keep computers cool. Using boron nitride, she made a material that looks rather like bright purple cookie dough, and she estimated it was ten times more effective at diffusing heat than anything else on the market. So  when Intel introduced its Pentium chip and it had major overheating problems, the entrepreneur’s dream had come true. It looked like her business could ride Intel’s wave to success.

Except that, while she had a golden opportunity, what Latham didn’t have was much money. She never took VC money, just small investments from friends and family. So she didn’t have the cash to recruit a Silicon Valley workforce when she ramped up.

Instead, she opened the back door of her inner-city office and, she says, dragged in almost anyone who walked past — mostly Latinos, many of whom hadn’t graduated high school. She persuaded the Cleveland school board to send her teachers, and she set up a classroom inside the offices where her new workforce studied during office hours. One such recruit — Mistelina Quinones, a single parent — ended up managing all of production. What Latham built was a workforce that was dedicated, loyal and hard working. They passionately wanted the business to succeed because they understood that if it did, they did.

When people ask me what is the biggest mistake I see executives make, it’s a hard question because there are so many answers to choose from. But top, or near the top, of the list is the failure to appreciate the potential of their employees. When we hire the perfect resume, we do so hoping we’ve found the holy grail: the employee who is so smart that no training, motivation, supervision or mentoring will be required. Problem is, the holy grail’s a myth.

Hiring raw talent and the right attitude has always worked better for me. Not because I get the ego trip of changing their lives (though when it happens, it’s highly rewarding). But because the energy, focus and determination that result from developing raw talent changes the company’s culture. The supreme alignment between personal growth and business growth can’t just be talked about; it has to be real and felt.

Hiring talent is easy; developing it is harder. Which do you do?

Author: Margaret Heffernan

Symantec Wednesday launched a SaaS-based security offering for Windows-based desktops, laptops and file servers, aimed at freeing IT from the tyranny of attack code, pushing emergency virus signatures or immediately reacting to yet another Microsoft patch Tuesday or vulnerability announcement.

Dubbed Symantec Hosted Endpoint Protection, the cloud-based offering, aimed at small and midsize businesses, provides antivirus, antispyware, firewall and a host intrusion prevention system (HIPS) for PCs, and antivirus and antispyware for file servers, all managed via the cloud by Symantec.

From an IT administration standpoint, the front end is a Web-based management console for adding new PCs, setting policies and reviewing real-time updates. Security alerts can also be sent via SMS or email. Using the console, IT managers can also force a PC to update its Hosted Endpoint Protection software, review the PC’s security history, and change local security policies.

Today, the most popular cloud-based applications are largely in the customer relationship management (CRM), marketing, collaboration and personal productivity realms. But experts have said it was just a matter of time before every type of enterprise application made its way to the cloud, including security. In fact, given the difficulty of correctly configuring and maintaining firewalls, or pushing security software upgrades to mobile workers, many organizations will likely welcome the opportunity to outsource such challenges.

Or at last that’s what Symantec, the world’s largest endpoint security software vendor, is counting on, especially for small and midsize businesses, which would rather focus their scarce IT talent on more pressing issues than antivirus updates.

“Customers often experience pain when increased IT resources are required to stay abreast of evolving endpoint threats,” said IDC analyst Christian Christiansen in a statement. “To reduce these difficulties, customers want turnkey endpoint solutions that provide the latest protection levels with easy setup, zero maintenance, and automatic upgrades.”

Cue cloud-based endpoint security applications.

Mathew Schwartz

The upgrades of Dynamics CRM Online, announced at the kickoff of this week’s 8,000-attendee-strong Microsoft Dynamics Conference in Atlanta, are aimed and extending customer- and partner-facing capabilities while also extending the global footprint of the service. New portal accelerators give customers a head start on developing eService, Partner Relationship Management (PRM) and Event Management capabilities. The eService accelerator provides an automated customer-service front end with case-submission and lookup capabilities. The PRM accelerator supports secure case management and lead sharing. Event-management capabilities include self-service capabilities for sponsors and exhibitors.

There are more than 22,000 customers and 1.1 million users Dynamics CRM, but the vast majority have on-premise deployments. CRM Online, which counts roughly 1,000 customers currently, has heretofore been focused exclusively on the North American market, but that’s about to change. As part of the upgrades announced yesterday, CRM Online gains support for French, Spanish and Portuguese, so North American firms with offices in Canada, Mexico or Brazil can extend their CRM footprint immediately. The move is a prelude to a much wider, global rollout expected by year end that will bring Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online into 32 global markets with support for 41 languages. By contrast, Salesforce.com, has roughly 75,000 customers in more than 70 countries, but Microsoft says it will press its advantage in offering a blend of on-premise and cloud-based services.

“We don’t have separate products for Online, on-premises or partner-hosted deployments,” said Brad Wilson, general manager, Microsoft Dynamics CRM, in an interview with InformationWeek. “If you’re running on-premise and later decide you want to move to the cloud, you can do that because it’s the same, multi-tenant code base.”

Microsoft’s hybrid approach is a key differentiator, according to analyst Ray Wang of Altimeter Group. “One of the reasons customers choose Microsoft Dynamics over Salesforce is the option to keep the software on premise,” Wang told InformationWeek. “Believe it or not, there are customers that are still uncomfortable with SaaS, and we actually see the biggest and broadest adoption coming from the largest enterprises, not the small- and midsize-businesses.”

Another advantage Microsoft plans to exploit is the big base of 41,000 customers using Dynamics GP ERP software. As part of an upgrade announced last week, a free adapter is now available to link Dynamics GP and Dynamics CRM Online. The majority of GP customers run their software on premises, but Microsoft partners also host the software in local markets around the globe. Whether GP is on-premise or hosted, the adapter integrates front-office CRM systems for sales, service and marketing with back-end systems for accounting, financials and other aspects of ERP.

“This will give our customers full lead-to-order-to-cash capabilities by linking these applications together,” Wilson said. “It’s another example of using a cloud-based service to what is often an on-premise solution.”

In the most overt sign that Microsoft is getting newly aggressive with its Dynamics business, the company yesterday announced a steep discount for customers using both applications. Dynamics CRM Online normally costs $44 per user, per month; existing GP customers can now add CRM Online for $19 per user, per month. It’s a naked grab for cloud marketshare against competitors including Salesforce.com, which offers its Professional Edition at $65 per user, per seat.

“The CRM adapter tie to GP is important because it gives customers the choice of taking CRM hosted or on-premise, and of course the $19 per user is very competitive,” Wang observed.

Microsoft also announced plans for a new Dynamics AX for Retail offering. Designed for misize specialty retailers, the new version of ERP software is set for release in 16 countries on August 1. Localized versions for additional countries are to follow next year.

Author: Doug Henschen