Venkat's Weblog

Service-Profit Chain

Going through the HBR or the Harvard Business Review, I found some articles which were quite interesting and informative. Some of the simple rules that all of us are aware are reiterated and makes us to take a fresh look at the same, one such heading was the ‘Service-Profit chain’. The write up on ‘Optimization of Profitability Chain” is quite self explanatory. I am reproducing the same as below

"1. Internal Service Quality affect employee satisfaction
2. Employee satisfaction affects employee loyalty
3. Employee loyalty affects employee productivity
4. Employee productivity affects external service value
5. External service value affects customer satisfaction
6. customer satisfaction affects customer loyalty
7. Customer loyalty affects growth and profitability."

Quite brief and quite apparent but refreshing the most basic of principles is quite essential.

Source:-Best of HBR By James L. Heskett, Thomas O.Jones, Gary W. Loveman, W. Earl Sasser, JR., and Leonard A. Schlesinger

Apple 3G iphone-a smart phone

The question remains if 3G iPhone has joined the bandwagon of smart phones or business phones. It remains to be seen. But according to a latest release and a blog by Mark Selfe of Red Herring, Apple has reported about 10 million application download from its iphone application store. It has definitely joined the 'must have' category and a brand yearned for!

On the other side Treo has unveiled its Treo smart phone of Treo 800 which is priced under $250 and its carrier being sprint. Both Treo and Blackberry are definitely the 'smart phones' and business phones. It is the applications and its usability that can secure 3G its poisition among the 'business' group.

Knol is in

News is that Google is coming up with its own Wikipedia version called the Knol. The difference between Wikipedia and Knol is that, Wikipedia does not give out the authors name and Knol does. "Knol will have one authors or group expressing their view or topic". In case of Knol authors or writers cannot edit others work and can only comment. It looks like Knol would include ad sense programs. Other effects like that of text and photos would be included
Source:-redherring

Energy Crisis

What is the immediate solution to the soaring fuel costs? Though the long term solution is to find alternative fuel with much expectation lying on solar and natural gas, the short term would be conservation of the existing fuel. In the United States some parts of the country are following the four day a week of schooling where the students need to attend school only for four days in a week and this has led to immense power saving in terms of transportation fuels and heating/cooling in schools. Though it had led to alarm initially parents managed to find alternative care for their children and it has become quite popular with attendance and performance improving. Source :-Reuters

Voice Application

Heather Clancey’s write up on Mobility in the ‘Entrepreneur’ magazine was an interesting one. The topic was on ‘Voice Application’ and its future. Many find it quite useful especially while on the go and when people just seem to hate spending time SMS ing. So who are the companies who have discovered the potential of Voice Applications Clancey identified them as Jott Networks, Nuance and Vlingo who seem to be the front runner of ‘Speech Recognition Technology’. Jott Application helps in sending email and Memo by recognizing Voice Technology, sending email through the ‘Voice Technology’ with the help of Microsoft Outlook. Customers of Sprints use ‘Nuance Application’ which helps in ‘Internet Searches’, ‘Message Checking’ etc.

Quite Interesting actually!

The fruit

The fruits of my run…..Emotional Satisfaction, a rave to do more and of course the certificate !

Finally The Run

Trust me this is the only sport I am in to now, so cant express how happy I am now after I could finish the ECR run (20 KMS Plus). Thanks to Hari my mentor, who pushed me and cheered me all the way and he saw to it that I finished the run with ease.

Started with we all meeting at the Dimensions Gym as usual at 3:45 in the morning and all of us headed to the ECR start point (Green Coconut resort). We were flagged off at 5:10, people who were to run the 30 KMS started a bit earlier.

The best part of my run was when I reached the point where we could see the see from the road and the sun was just raising. Nothing to beat this nature's beauty. Thanks to our volunteers we had water points every 5 KMS approx, they also had 100 Plus energy drink which helped quite a bit.

When I completed my run, stop watch said 2 hours 20 minutes nearly with all my stops in between for water and drink and also at a shop for a banana. Pretty good I suppose for a beginner.

There were two kids probably in their teens, they also did the run in same time but BOY they ran 30 KMS like a bullet. Cant stop getting amazed by this. Wish they get all the support needed for having running as their career.

Preparing for the ECR run

Bought my new running gears two days back from Nike+ (dry fit) and tried it out for the first time. Should say that from last night I was excited like a kid waiting to wear the new clothes ;). Did about 12 KMS today just with one member from the Chennairunners. Sunday is THE day and hoping to do about 20 KMS at least.

My Run

Good that I was able to keep this running going for a while now. Last week I did 12.5 KM with Hari of Chennairunners.org. Today was uphill training with his team again (up the flyover actually), 5 KMS but a little faster than my usual speed. In office with a frozen knee.

Gearing up for the July 20th ECR run. Planning to do about 20KMS.

Oil Crisis

Business Trips had taken my priority this week. Coming back to news it looks like oil crisis is once more the headlines in all the major Newspapers. The White House refusing to release the emergency oil reserve is a matter of concern for some. Some seems to tackle the entire crisis in a different manner and the result is more commuters on the public transport service. The oil prices seem to have spiraled up nearly 40% from the beginning of 2007. Guess with the oil prices raising a concern it is time that alternative fuel is taken seriously.