Monday, April 30, 2007

Forming a CLIENT CONSULTANT Relationship

In consultancy, understanding the Client- Consultant relationship is very important. It forms the basis of the Consulting process. Generally, there are three major form of relationship exists between a Client and a Consultant
1)Contractual Relationship: It’s a kind of social agreement where rules of engagement and firm boundaries are defined and formed.
2)Idealized Relationship: It’s a kind of abstract or imaginary level of engagement where each person transfers in prior learning and desires and proceeds to act these out.
3)Authentic Relationship: It’s a level ahead of Contractual Relationship where you witness yourself, very clear about your stance and share your stance with others where appropriate.

The focus is more on Management Consulting as it involves a lot of aspects to it like economical, financial, marketing, IT, People Management and the list goes on. The expertise of the consultants depends on either the task or the process. Task centered Consultants focus more on the problem and minimize the people aspect whereas the Process centered consultant tend to focus more on people and relationship and the leave the problem to the client to solve.

Well, we will discuss the phases of Consulting in the next post. Keep watching the space.

Tuesday, April 24, 2007

Working on your MIND

Mind is the driver of your persona. It allows you to visualize, think, analyze and take decisions. An individual’s level of success or failures depends on his mind. How to make your mind work to your benefits? Yogis and Sadhus have shown us the path of meditation to control the mind and make your mind work in sync with the body. Even science asserts the benefits of meditation. Here are some ways which you can help you to condition your mind and achieve success.

The first and foremost thing is to NURTURE your mind. Fill your mind with things, which influences you a lot. It could be a motivating book, a dance form or a mere jogging. Relaxing body sometimes relaxes your mind. Make a habit of doing something everyday that you feel can relax your body and mind.

Stay away from NEGATIVE. Negativities can make your mind work in a way, which can be harmful to you. Do not think negatives. Be positive and Stay positive is the ultimate mantra. Make a practice of saying to yourself something, which you want to do infront of the mirror. If you want to achieve something, make sure you repeat it as many times as you can so that it makes your mind think accordingly and you take appropriate actions to achieve that.

MEDITATION is always the key to increase your concentration.

Stay ALONE with yourself everyday and make a note of the things, which you did in that day which you feel relevant and whether it was good or bad. Again, there is nothing good or bad in this world. It’s all in your perception. So, it’s always better to justify why the things done by you is good or bad. That will help your mind take decisions in an appropriate way.

Watch CARTOONS. It seems funny but it helps your mind to relax and also to be imaginative and creative. It could be a reason why children like cartoons to watch. Its because its at this stage they start to be creative and desire to do things which might seem impossible to others.

Thursday, April 12, 2007

MERGERS and ACQUISITIONS

Mergers and Acquisitions are the most strategic decisions taken by the organizations and it requires a lot of understanding and expertise before a firm decided to acquire another firm. There are some crucial points that a firm needs to focus before going for the deal as a single wrong decision may make or mar the M&A.

1)Be clear about the transaction structure. Whether a firm is interested in Asset purchase, Stocks purchase or Merger. And, if it’s a merger, whether it’s a Direct, forward or triangular. Direct merger is one where the acquirer acquires the firm and the asset id transferred to the acquirer by the operation of law. Forward is one where the subsidiary of acquirer acquires the firm and Triangular is one where the firm, which is acquired by the subsidiary of the acquirer, gets wholly merged in the subsidiary.
2)Clear understanding of the mechanisms of value creation process in Mergers and Acquisitions. Over-valuation of costs and under-valuation of costs and risks should be avoided. The similarities and the differences of the two firms should be analyzed properly so that it would help in clearly understanding the aftereffects of M&A.
3)Employee Stock Options and Valuation is one area which the acquirer and the firm getting acquired should look at before going for a M&A deal.
4)Paying premium if the synergies not realized can turn to be a major turn off for the acquirer.
5)Two companies should properly get integrated with high level planning and design, which will help in successful implementation.
6)Due diligence is the most important factor or rather defined as the watchdog of a successful M&A.

Tuesday, April 3, 2007

The Crux of Marketing: PRICING

Wondering how to price a product or service? How much to charge from your customers? It’s easy to price a product by analyzing the existing similar products in the market but what about a new product or a service. Though there are some industry accepted figures but still it’s your business and pricing plays an important role in your business. Not everytime RFPs will help you in deciding the pricing. Sometimes we literally get a big idea written down on a small pice of paper. While other times we may get 30-page RFPs that provide excruciating detail.
Regardless of how the client writes down what they need, they often only know the rough strokes of the how to reach their goal, not the specific nitty-gritty details, which are often where the majority of costs lie. But why should they? That should be what they are hiring us for, to help them find what they want, and more importantly, what their users want.
Budgeting plays a major role in deciding the price. Vendors always want them, clients never want to reveal them. We ask every client if they have a budget that they need us to work within, every agency I’ve ever worked on the other side of the fence with has asked the same. Very very few clients ever reveal this crucial detail. The budget reveals a lot about the client and the project. We use it as a barometer of how serious the client is, if they have given their project serious consideration, how much they understand about the project, to evaluate possible return on investment scenarios, to help define scope, whether it is cost-efficient for us to pursue, and to see if we can even do the project within their budget. When we price out a project we not only price out what we know about the project, but also detail what we don’t know. We come up with worst-case scenarios, address risks, point out all the things we think could impact meeting the goals of the project. There are two major methods of billing for projects, Per Project, Hourly. Traditionally most projects are charged on a Per Project rate. The idea here is that the vendor can accurately guess the scope and attach a fixed price at the beginning of the project. This in invariably never the case, so scope and price is often padded and margin added to protect the vendor from additional scope.The problem is one way or another somebody loses, either the client pays too much, meaning paying more than it’s market value, or the vendor eats into their profit. One benefits to hourly billing is the client is responsible for increases of scope, protecting the vendor and the customer. If the project is completed early the client pays less, protecting the client. This puts the onus on both parties to communicate regularly and work more effectively. Rather, budgets and requirements should be defined, watched and met. If the hours start to go over, this should be called as soon as possible, ideally before the hours are committed. Regardless of billing per project or per hour, we believe that any project is a partnership between client and vendor. That in order to mutually achieve a goal we must work together every step of the way. Communicating expectations of scope and cost is always crucial.

Courtesy: BlueFlavour

Monday, April 2, 2007

Know your Market: Conduct Research

To know your market, research is essential. And, there is a lot to talk about research. The research methodology generally adopted by the organizations is qualitative or quantitative. Generally, for a quantitative research, sample size is determined based on the segmentation done and for qualitative research; group or one-to-one interview is conducted and the interview guide is developed. For both the research, it is important to set the overall objectives of the research. Conducting group interviews can create problems if the participants selected are not homogeneous and the moderator is inexperienced and lack the objectives of the research. And during, quantitative research, its always advisable to avoid jargons, biased questions etc.

It’s always good to use free or low cost online survey packages like Surveymonkey.com, Zoomerang.com and Perseus.com/express. The survey length should not be more than 10mins. If the survey is more than the time frame mentioned, then the participant might lose interest. The open-ended questions should be limited.