A new beautiful world

Problem Statement:

Aristotle said,"Personal beauty is a greater recommendation than any letter of introduction".We all want to look good,to be more successful in career,sex life and personal life.But unfortunately most of the people in the world do not know have the aesthetic sense to work on their personal beauty. For a few quick makeovers they can look much more beautiful. But they are not aware of this. They also do not have enough resources(time,money,availibility of trained people etc.)to take help of professionals.

Opportunity Statement:

1. We should work on making the people of the world more beautiful. It is frustrating for eyes to see so many ugly looking people around us.We can not make all of them Brad Pitt or Angelina Jolie with these changes. But surely they can look much better with few small changes.

2. This will revolutionize the Healhcare/beautycare/cosmetic industry by democratizing opportunities and making resources available to all of them. Considering the size of this industry market potential is huge.

Product/Solution Details with Implementation Ideas:

1.Two part:Hardware and Software Implementation. Whenever a customer wants to consume this service he will be first scanned using some Camera and scanning machines for their present body structure,Face Details,shape,Hairstyle etc. In short first activity is to scan the body with preplanned views to get a detailed data of his/her present body status. We may also add few standard questionare to understand his/her food habit,lifestyle data,ethenic background etc.

2. Next we need to analyze the data, check with an existing database and recommend solution to the customer.Let me detail down the concept of this history database. This will be a huge database with the physical data of people having a higher beauty quotent than a trigger point. The database can be started with the data from celebrity beauty data(famous actors/models/dancers etc. from different ethenic class)and then more data can be added to that database.Whenever a consumer uses this service his/her after makeover data will be stored in the database. Any new consumer can refer to those data and rank them in a scale of 1 to 10. Any person having an average score(say after 20 rating is done) of say 8.5(higher beauty quotent than a trigger point) should be set as a standard beauty and will be referenced for suggesting makeover solution to the new customers. To create the history database we can also take help of creative people like artists,makeup artists,fashion designers etc. They can suggest their dream beauties for different ethenic classess.

3.Once the scan and data reference from the history database is done the customer will be shown the result in the increasing order of difficulty of attaining those states(considering time,money,ease of changes etc.).For example it is easier to change your hairstyle or remove your mustach than to reduce your bodyweight by 30lbs. The customer will also have tools to simulate their own looks by customizing the suggested looks obtained from the software(we should not have typecasted profiles in the world,beauty lies in the variety). Once the customer finalizes his/her dream look he/she will be given action item recomendations to achive that look(example, dietary changes,cosmetic procedures,lifestyle changes,increasing exercises etc.).

3. This service can be sold using a franchise model or web service model. In franchise model you sell the product/solution to francises who will have their own beauty centers all over the world. Also it may be easier to make this a web based service where the customer reach will be more than franchise model. An Web camera can be used to do the scanning and the rest of the computation process can be done from the centralized servers.Revenue generation should be subscription based and to attarct largest amount of customers this fee should be set as low as possible(if I can not save on the price and time why should I use this service,I can take help of beauty professionals).Another USP of this offerred service is to create simulated looks which can not be done in a standard parlour.

Ensuring Data Quality: Negative Feedback Control System

Good quality data is essential for Intelligent Decision making. We can build top-class Data Analytics system but if the raw data is distorted the Decision made based on those data will also be wrong (Garbage in-Garbage out).
We have over invested in the Development of Decision making systems but underinvested in the effort/process/systems to ensure quality data entry. Unfortunately we have huge amount of junk data in the system and hence although we are using smart analytics methods we are making biased/wrong decisions.

The junk data is entered into the system for the following reason:

1. Users are careless of entering true data. For example in a web-survey, people can answer the questions without even reading the questions (just to save time).
2. Users can purposefully enter wrong data to make their case and meet their short term needs. For example companies can overstate profits to ensure better year-end bonus for the executives.
3. Users are aware that most of the times they will not be caught for entering wrong data. They can manipulate data in different systems as and when needed. There is no integration, verification or reconciliation of the data in most of the systems.

The proposed idea is a generic framework which can be used to ensure that good quality data is fed into the system.

Basic Principle

Design an intelligent IT system which will have controls in place to persuade users to enter right/True data. This can be done by integrating IT systems across the Enterprise and putting logic in place to validate the entered data based on available data in the system.

Case for Better Technology Investment Process
For example, consider the Investment Decision making process. Many of the times these are not objective and depend on the face-value of the champion of the project. To make the case of a Project the champion can show very high Cost Benefit Analysis (CBA) numbers and get Finance/Top management approval. The Decision making body do not have enough tools to analyze the case based on historical data. Also the champion never fears to be questioned for artificially inflating CBA/ROI numbers.

If we can create a system where the Project cost (including the maintenance cost/operational cost) and the business benefits (revenue growth, cost save etc.) can be tracked and then matched against the actual CBA/ROI we can improve this gap. The Finance department/Investment decision making body will have better information to make the Investment decision. The Project owner/champion will also make sure the CBA/ROI numbers are realistic as this will be tracked against his/her performance (if Proposed CBA does not match against the Actual CBA). This way we can make sure right/realistic data is fed into the system and the decision making process is improved. Just as a data point, Gartner research shows 80% of the IT Investment money is ‘dead-money’  - simple waste of resources. If we can improve the situation even by 50% that will be a huge benefit.

How we can do that?

We need to integrate different IT systems which work in silos and then make a decision making system which reconciles data from different systems to create Business insights. In the previous example we need to integrate Time Tracking/Project management systems (source of cost numbers) with Marketing and Finance system (Profit/revenue numbers).


What is the USP of this solution?


The Intelligent System which can ensure that Users can not manipulate data for their own need and thus enter correct data. This can be achieved by integrating different systems of record in the Enterprise (single view of Project Management system, Revenue Accounting system, HR Management system etc.) and creating intelligent Business logic for verification of entered data (query system, reports).

This follows the famous Negative Feedback Control Theory. In this process the users strive to enter correct data for their own need. Let’s take the same example of IT Decision making system.

In case the users enter an abnormally high CBA values for a Project to push the case of the Project (reason may be some emotional attachment with the Project/people or some other personal motif) and in future the Project could not deliver the promised benefits the Decision maker will be asked for explanation: to justify the case for providing high CBA numbers.

At the same time if someone puts very low CBA (just to be safe and conservative) the Project will not be rolled as there will be Projects with higher CBA numbers which will be considered as more attractive investments.

Hence the user will try to do their due diligence to provide honest numbers. This way he/she will ensure that he/she minimizes the risk of not making his/her initiative or being responsible in future for providing false data(-ve feedback).

The intelligent decision making system should be an ideal repository for analyzing past data and thus improvising the estimation numbers for the future projects. This will also help in creating an enterprise wide Technology spending management system where unallocated/unused funds/resources will be tracked and then utilized in a timely fashion (early automatic adjustment of resources for maximum utilization).
Enterprise Wide operational data consolidation and intelligent analysis for improvement of Operational efficiencies: Following similar fashion we can create Intelligent Data Analysis systems for checking enterprise-wide Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) and Operational efficiency data (system availability, system-uptime, confidentiality, Data Integrity, Server/CPU and storage cost etc.). e.g. if we see a lot of problem tickets from a system, it indicates we need to reengineer the application and thus some improvement opportunity exists(Need Development/ReEngineering Projects).
This idea can be implemented in various systems as described below:

Case Studies:

1. Better Quality Compliance: Historically speaking, the existing compliance laws (SoX etc.) have miserably failed to stop corruption. At the same time these laws have huge cost implications for the corporations. We create huge number of compliance related documents and this needs huge amount of cost and effort. Many of the times those documents are dead data – Data not updated properly and not verifiable. Worse: As we increase the quantity we decrease the quality of the people who creates these documents and have limited audit opportunity(lack of manpower) to check if the data entered are correct. This is not a smart system and huge amount of productivity gain is possible by freeing resources doing compliance related documentation. The FED, SEC and other compliance bodies can think of standardizing the whole audit process making it smarter. What I suggest is to create a generic data system framework where the data will be fed by the companies in the specific format (web based forms/questionnaires). There will be guidelines to generate theses data from the raw granular level data and the companies need to align their internal Information system to support these numbers. The compliance and the regulatory bodies will have access to the data and intelligent tools to automatically verify the truthfulness of the data. The data points need to be designed in a fashion so that data manipulation is not possible (this need to be improvised on a continuous basis). The regulatory bodies can benefit by efficient (verifiable), low cost (automated) audit system and thus improving better compliance. The companies can benefit by reducing stuff in the compliance and documentation related work (reduce cost) and engaging them in revenue generating activities (sales, innovation etc.). Overall the economy will be benefited by increasing the efficiency of audit and compliance process through 100% automation of validation and verification, better resource utilization and lower compliance related costs.
2. Better Cost Transparency of Customer Servicing and Intelligent Customer segmentation Even with smart CRM systems in place most of the companies still have very inefficient Customer Servicing and Segmentation processes. We spend huge amount of money in wrongly targeted Promotional activities. For example a big US bank provides customers to customize their Debit card with personalized photographs. Whenever such an activity is initiated the Business rule creates a Promotional mailer for a Travel related service. This Service is Free for a month and you get a Risk free Prize for enrolling into it (iPod/ Portable DVD Player etc.). If you cancel within a month you keep the Prize and you are not charged. This looks to be a pretty standard promotion and should help the Bank to generate charges for the Travelers program. But the part is even if someone has cancelled the program and again requested for a Customized card similar promotional offer is sent to him, although he has cancelled before and received the Prize. A better approach could be to integrate the Prize fulfillment system with the Marketing department and not to send the Promotional offer again (high chance that he will repeat the same activity). We need to have a system where we can see the Total cost of ownership of a customer (Servicing cost etc.) and the Potential revenue that he can generate over time. We need this kind of CBA transparency at the most granular level (customer level) to make right segmentation decisions.
3. Better People management: We don’t have objective systems in place for Performance appraisal of the people, Business units etc.  Many of the cases the appraisal process is subjective and not based on true data. We have very inefficient compensation system where we don’t objectively measure the return on investment of a specific employee. Most of the times employees can manipulate the data and take undue advantage.

Let me provide some more details around the opportunity. In a typical IT organization we have different Employee Activity Tracking system (this is a typical case in India, in US we generally don’t track and micromanage employee activities and are more result oriented for performance appraisal etc.)  – We track Entry and Exit time of an employee (for attendance record), Computer Login and Logout times for making sure they are shutting down their systems before going home (green IT perspective + Tracking activities for security reason/audit etc.), Timesheet for measuring the effort data(which is the baseline for future estimation) and a Performance appraisal system for doing Employee appraisal( which ultimately decides salary, promotion etc.). Unfortunately all these systems are not integrated and do not have intelligence to verify if the employees are entering junk data. This creates a bad employee culture –either they work more or  just to show they are working more they stay late in the office (probably doing their personal work, surfing Internet etc.) and at the same time showing they are working only eight hours in the timesheet thus increasing their productivity numbers. This has multiple effects - underestimated effort data (in case a critical project demands an effort of 100 unit and even though they took 100 unit to complete the work they report 70 unit in the timesheet – thus base lining 70 unit for a Project which actually requires 100 unit – causing missed revenue opportunity, high employee stress, bad work-life balance, increased risk to the overall Project timeline), misrepresented employee productivity(although taking 100 hrs to complete the work they are reporting 80 hrs and thus improving their chance to get better performance rating), high Operational cost(even they have no work employees are staying late in office, causing more electricity cost for AC, Computers)etc. But if we can integrate the systems and place negative feedback control systems in place we can reduce this problem. Now if they are reporting 8 hrs of work in timesheet but their Computer login and logout data shows 16 hrs or office in and out data shows similar trend they will be asked questions. This will ensure they report honest data in the system and the management can get true picture of employee effort and productivity.

A smart HR system, integrated with different other systems, can ensure right data is put into the system and the decisions made are objective. This can be extended even to Outsourcing decisions and vendor management systems. We can create intelligent systems tracking their performance (against the contract) and make decisions for next contract (whether to renew or negotiate the contract etc.). Benchmarking against the industry standard for estimating the effort needed for Developing a System/solution will ensure vendors are not overcharging.

4. Create better Surveys: My gut feel is most of the Survey responses are junk data. People generally hate surveys and in general they are negligent in filling the data. Also they sometimes fill biased data. Executives make a mistake in taking those survey results as truth and acting on those decisions. We need to create intelligent surveys where contradictory responses will be questioned and a better quality data will be generated.

Biomimicry - new hope

Need Smart Chemists - I want to get rid of Flatulence in Public restrooms

Sourced from wikipedia:




The gas released during a flatus event frequently has an unpleasant odor. For many years, this was thought to be due to skatole and indole, which are byproducts of the digestion ofmeat. However, gas chromatography testing in 1984 revealed that sulfur-containing compounds, such as methanethiol, hydrogen sulfide (rotten egg smell) and dimethyl sulfide, were also^[2] responsible for the smell.^[3]


Can someone create some chemical which can absorb these unpleasant gases(I know there has been some patent around charcoal) or do reactions to create pleasant smells?

Smartphone Meeting App for Jetsetters

Remembering meeting pass codes and entering them one by one is so pain! Why can't smartphones be integrated  with email systems so that as soon as I tap the invite it connects me to the meeting(entering the pass code happens in the background automatically) as well as opens up the sharing window in the browser or in a app.

Specially useful for Microsoft Livemeeting, WebEx or GotoMeeting. Any smartphones iPhone, Android, RIM should offer this.

Want to avoid market manipulation

Track and Analyze Stock gurus/insiders advice and their action...unfortunately I could not find any good website tracking this..probably this will stop the Big Financial Services industry...hence huge pressure might be the reason!

One of the best(obvious) suggestion on US Healthcare(as well as Education system) Reform

Here is a wonderful link for US Healthcare reform. This solution sound obvious but nobody worked on this because US is full of different powerful lobbyist groups.

I have one followup suggestion. The supply of doctors can't be met by only US educated doctors. We need healthcare profesionals as well as Medical Education Services from outside. This will allow reduction of overall costs.

On the same Demand-Supply logic we should plan our University curriculum.We have many courses in our schools which do not provide jobs(simply because they are too academic and do not have practical value). At the same time we have few skills in very high demand and enjoys premium pricing. Why can't universities re-plan their course capacity as per society needs? Think about it :)

My thoughts on IT Investment Management

Information Technology (IT) spending and IT investment is increasingly becoming a major share of Operational cost and Capital investment in many large organizations. But this money is not always spent prudently and as Gartner research finds out eight out of ten dollars that enterprises spend on IT is “dead money”, which does not create any business value1 . This paper analyses different pain points and improvement opportunities of US Information Technology (IT) spending from an industry internal’s perspective.

Business should drive Technology, Cool Technology should not dominate Business

Over the years so called ‘Cool’ technology has been sold to business by different IT vendors creating redundancies (both data redundancy and systems redundancy) and huge operational and maintenance costs. Many of these IT investments did not create any long term Business value and business people understood this truth too late. Information Technology was a completely new Business story and the orthodox business leaders had no idea about this. They had very few information to ask meaningful business questions to the IT vendors and the vendors were able to easily sell the products with complex jargons and trendy packaging of their services. Also a competition was created among competitors to stay ahead with the latest technology available in the market. People never thought whether the new technology is really needed or whether it can be integrated with the existing IT infrastructure or how costly it will be to manage the new system. The result: Huge maintenance bills to support the ‘legacy’ systems and high reengineering costs to move to new technology.

We have not improved much on this front and still today many of the IT products and services are ‘sold’ which does not create any business value. Following are the improvement areas as experienced by the author:

We need to integrate Business and Technology groups in IT Project planning and execution.
Take serious effort in improving the efficiency and effectiveness of Business Requirement gathering process. Most of the times the Business and Technology groups are not clear of the actual requirements and these grey areas can have catastrophic impact on the successful implementation of any IT projects.
Recruit Tech people in Business groups and Business people in Tech teams. This way both the groups can have better perspectives from their end.
Understand the present IT infrastructure first and decide on new Technology adoption or adding new Services or Systems based on the scope of integration with the existing system and the future business needs. Also plan for production support and maintenance costs for any new developments(typically $1 spent on any new development creates $.60 per year maintenance cost for the life of the system).2
Reuse the existing data, services, systems and infrastructure as much as possible. Focus on system integration activity to reduce redundancy.
Proper Cost benefit analysis (CBA) and Project cost tracking with correct (honest) data is another improvement area for successful IT investment.

Bottom-line: Business should drive Technology investment and not the vice-versa.



Outsource effectively

Research has shown that outsourcing increases the competitiveness and profitability of US corporations. But still the outsourcing practice has not leveraged all the benefits possible from effective outsourcing. Outsourcing, still in many companies is handled in Body shopping mode. We have a client side Business Team (consist of Business Director, Project Managers, Business users and analysts etc.), Client side technology team(Typically consist of Technology Director, Client end Project Manager, Lead Business Systems Analyst and Portfolio Architect), a vendor side onsite team(consist of Vendor end Onsite Project Manager, Business System Analysts, Technical Leads, Test Coordinators, Test Managers etc.) and a offshore team(consist of Developers, Offshore Project Managers, Technical Lead, Independent Test Team etc.). This duplication of similar roles create huge amount of overhead costs and a lot of confusion in communication between different teams. This increases the Total cost of ownership, affects the target dates and the quality of deliverables. Following are the improvement areas as experienced by the author:

Outsource the whole portfolio to a single vendor at least for a year. Make sure your vendor selection process is stringent enough to select only the matured and capable vendors having significant outsourcing experience. Also do an annual appraisal for the vendor and if needed change the vendor by opening a new bidding process. If this sounds too risky choose two vendors(but not more than that)and distribute the Development and Production Support efforts(again don’t mix the efforts, let vendor A do the development and Vendor B do the Production support and not like both A and B doing some part of development and production support). This will ensure that you don’t have complete dependency on a single vendor but at the same time provide the vendors the chance to manage the portfolio in most cost efficient manner and create the needed synergy, technical and domain competence for a sufficient time.
Make sure to minimize the overlapping of similar roles. Most of the times this introduces a lot of communication gap, duplicated and unplanned effort in documentation and most importantly huge overhead and training cost.
Offshore effectively based on the Cost Benefit Analysis and after considering proper Risk-return payoff. US business thinkers have a tendency to think that off shoring reduces costs and thus should always be preferred. The off shoring companies also sell that idea to increase their profit margin. But offshoring is not always profitable. Many a times we add three offshore resources (approximately 3*$30=$90 per hour) for a work which can be easily done by a single onshore resource ($60 per hour). Think about it.



Explore all the business possibilities of IT

Organizations are still underinvested in IT and yet to explore all the epoch-making effects of Technology usage in different business processes. Wal-Mart and Dell has shown how proper technology usage in inventory management can dramatically improve their competitive advantage. Very few organizations are considering similar IT deployment in integrating similar business processes like Human resources management, Finance, Marketing and Operations etc. Following are some of the case studies in scope for future IT deployment:

IT application in HR: Dynamically Allocate tasks and resources across boundaries and time-zones, track employee activity and effort, measure employee performance more objectively from correct data, collect employee aspiration and satisfaction statistics and help employees in matching their work with their potential and thus maximize optimize employee talent management.
IT application in Marketing and Customer relationship management: Many value added services can be added to Internet Banking applications helping customers in planning their money better and at the same time tracking customer spending to promote financial services products to the customers.
Corporate planning and Integrated Return on Investment monitoring: Strategic planning needs integrated view of all the operations, investment data and resource utilization. Integrated Business Intelligence reporting has lot of scope for improvement.

There are lots of such possibilities which are low hanging fruits and should be explored for creating sustainable competitive advantage.


End note:

The observations, as the author feels, are not specific to any client and although this paper analyses only the Banking and Financial Services companies, these may be a general trend in most of the US Fortune 500 companies. We hope that from this TRIZ case study decision makers can find generic solutions on today’s IT investment challenges and can apply those to their specific industry verticals. We also believe that if implemented properly we have significant opportunity of creating business value through IT spending and investment.



Reference:

http://www.gartner.com/it/page.jsp?id=497088
http://www.gartner.com/4_decision_tools/measurement/measure_it_articles/july01/mit_spending_history1.html

Unique Strengths of USA:Why USA will continue to lead the world for a very long time

Four key reasons I think USA will continue to lead the world for a very long time:

Unique culture of Innovation and melting point of the best brains in the world

USA is the home for the best brains in the world. It's not that the average IQ of an american is by default higher than that of people from other countries, america has successfully created an environment where the best brains of the world come and collaborate. Best of the class talents from different countries come to america and call it their home for rest of their life. That's how America can invent the best practices, products or services long before other countries can do so. US universities and private entrepreneurs are the key to this innovation journey. US has undue competitive advantage in this front which is very tough to replicate for other countries.

Strength of US Dollar

Still US Dollar is the reserve currency of the world and although its long term value may depreciate the process will take a very long time. During the Economic crisis US FED could just print money(I would say Free money) and the whole world was ready to accept dollar loans without any value depreciation of the USD. I don't think the model where US consumers continue to consume without creating similar amount of value and the rest of the world supply money and services to them is sustainable in the long term. But till the time we see an alternate global currency US dollar and as a result of that US will continue to dominate world economy.

US Military Power and strength in Global political diplomacy

US has unmatched military power and because of that it enjoys unmatched political supremacy. The might is always right and hence it can push for laws and sanctions which give them an undue advantage.

Scale of Operations

'Bigger the better' or 'Big is Beautiful' is not always true. But it is true that this american philosophy has helped america to create unique scale of operational efficiency, infrastructure development and use of Technology.

The more I see america, the stronger is my conviction that we will see more americanized world. This is not a perfect system but probably one of the most successful experiment done in this world.

How to stop the wastage Slowly but surely

We waste a lot starting from food, energy, water and other resources. Why do we do that? Are we fundamentally bad and don't care about our earth and limited natural resources? I think it this is not always a good or bad problem, it is a problem of accountability.

Most of the wastages are done when we are not accountable for those. For example consider wasting food in a office party(company pays it) or wasting water in our bathroom(we pay a fixed price for water and utilities and don't care how much we spend the water or how much garbage we generate).

Now consider the scenarios where we care. We care to drive in the right way(because if we get a ticket, our insurance premiums will increase) or when we buy food for ourselves in restaurant we buy within our capacity or at least pack it for next day.

It may sound simplistic, but I think the best way to solve the wastage problem is to make user accountable. We need to eliminate any free lunch. Let me discuss my idea with few examples.

We need to introduce pay per use pricing and remove any fixed pricing(at least some mixed model where variable component is present with a minimum fixed price). Let me start with water, utilities and garbage collection. Instead of a fixed monthly price let's meter the usage and price per the usage. Similarly let's consider healthcare cost. Our insurance covered model allows us to waste money in unnecessary tests etc. We should reduce the insurance premium and increase the co-payment or co-insurance. That way we can ensure accountability. Also we should have a guarantee program where the providers will provide guarantee of any treatment done from their facility. That way they will also make sure unnecessary costs are not involved and proper care is taken during the treatment.

We have huge business wastage. This is simply because nobody cares when the money involved is not personal money. I propose to introduce personal responsibility in corporate resource usage. The accountability should be at the most granular level and any cost save will have direct connection to that person's remuneration. This is a delicate balance but this will work.

Ownership of any transaction and personal accountability are the key here...