Kudos Series - 8: Performancing for Firefox… ah the peace of mind

Side Note: I know, the coffee pot’s been empty for a while, as I keep writing simple software posts. Give me some time and soon we can get back to deeper things inshaAllah.

In one of my earliest Kudos posts I had written about MS Blog Writer and how it was a nice blog writer.

Today, I am reverting that. Honestly I am reaching the limits of my patience with how bulky MS software is becoming.

I installed IE7 recently and its slowed down my internet experience so much with its bulk and memory leaks that I’ve almost completely shifted to Firefox (which I never felt like doing for IE6).

Every morning I’ve read and replied to all of my emails over Zimbra i the time it takes to load Outlook which I load for another account.

I dont even want to think of installing Office 2007 or Vista. The graphical tweaks dont matter to me as much as performance on my laptop and work is becoming busy enough that I cant afford the ‘4 seconds here’, ‘10 seconds there’ in waiting for MS software.

In all of this frustration, there is a ray of hope.

Enter the “Performancing” add-on for firefox, which is a beautiful blog writer, and a recommended must-have for fellow bloggers.

It’s fast, and always-in-your-browser so you can quickly copy paste or blog about posts. Best of all is the “split-screen” view in the browser so you can look at the page you are writing about.

Go check it out. Uninstall Blog Writer and the MS .NET framework from your PCs and switch to firefox.

powered by performancing firefox

Kudos Series-5: Scrybe’s marketing and rollout plan

I have written before that today you can save big on marketing costs, and I will say it again: Edge-centric business plans can give you massive economies on your marketing and production costs.

Scrybe — the calendar programI covered earlierr — is doing just the right things with their outreach. They are living proof that you can be sitting in Islamabad and still be able to top silicon valley!

So why is Scrybe’s marketing costs so low? Because they very accurately understand how the world has changed, and the advantages of this post-networking Flat World

They realized that YouTube is is a great way of getting attention, and they knew that their product can raise eyebrows.

Their total marketing cost has been the time taken to develop a simple product demo video. They put it in YouTube; it was voted upon until it rose up within its ranks.

Then, they tipped some blogs about it. Realizing that blogs is fast becoming the news source of choice — especially for people in the tech business (their primary target market it seems) this was a great way of spreading the news.

Suddenly bloggers all over the world — that they never paid to endorse the product — wrote the good and bad about the product (like I am doing) and within just a month or two many of silicon valley top people are aware about the potential of the product that a small company in Islamabad is building.

The other good thing they are doing is with their rollout plan — it is systematic.

So Scrybe guys: kudos.

With that out of the way, what are they not doing right?

They can cut down on their production costs if they follow the firefox model of openinig up their product to extensions.

Mainly though, they are not positioning their product right. Despite a great ‘context’ concept to introduce into calendars, I dont think they are targetting Joes — or even normal business users.

Maybe catchign all the nerdy hardcore users first is part of their plan of capturign lead customers, but I feel that the product might just be too focused only for silicon valley to really gain traction in consumer markets.

We will have to wait and see how it goes.

Kudos Series - 4: Mobilink PCO — Excellent business and market strategy by telecom operator

Now here is something that I can happily extend kudos to. This is a small lesson in good strategy.

Telecom companies are running commoditized businesses these days. So locking in the most volumes in the shortest amount of time is the key to success.

So, what do you do if you are a telecom operator and you find that some upcoming competitors have technology that can help them roll out networks faster and cheaper than you?

If your target market for rollout is the vast rural landscape of the country, what do you do if you know that the total cost of implementing your technology for network rollout is higher than the competition, and will probably take longer to actually do so with a traditional approach? What do you do considering also that in your target markets, the comparative value of your brand is only nominal

Answer : You focus on the edge (well atleast to a basic extent)

1. Take out all traditional costs from your rollout plan, by engaging the people at the very edge of the network. Considering the market is rural people, give them a direct financial incentive to consider your products.

In case of Mobilink, convince the people at the edges of the network to operate their own self-serving calling facility.

Results: Your total spend on marketing and sales for the edge would be next to nothing compared to returns. You could get a free slew of micro-franchises with people constantly promoting the usage of your services within communities of trust

2. Adopt a “minimum deterrance” strategy for technology roadmap to make the rollout costs comparable with competitors.

Rather than marketing micro-service plans (i.e. individual cell-phones), offer single products for communities themselves. If a village of 15 houses can share a single connection, so be it.

In case of Mobilink, positioning the product as a PCO rather than an individual connection.

Results: They only need to support one-to-two channels per 15 or so houses. This requires a lot less infrastructure to cover large areas, and the network can be rolled out very rapidly

3. Open up the revenue model based on the value of the money at the edge

Rs.1000-2000 may not mean much at all in cities, but it is significant money elsewhere.

People within the rural target market will be willing to pay premium for phone facilities, but their premium will still be insignificant perhaps to the telecom operator itself.

However, it will still be significant to the people at the edge.

So, you open up your revenue model and make the people part of your risks / rewards structure. They promote and sell your services, and operate your products responsibly. They are able to keep the small premium that the other people in those micro-communities are wiling to pay.

Sharing revenue with these people could perhaps be the best marketing tool for the target customers.

4. Take the right message to customers

Take time and care to understand exactly what would actually peak the interest of your customers from an advertisement.

It is not a jingle, not some silly demonstration of heroics or dominance — it is a human-to-human message about a better life.

The story should clearly describe the business case to the edge. The story should touch on the emotional undertones of a better life. The store should be clear and straight — in fact, it would be more of a sales call than a marketing one.

In short, you would do what Mobilink did. Its a great ad for the product and strategy.

Kudos Series - 3: A requiem for Cressoft, and tipped hats to PSEB

The Pakistan Software Export Board grew into a mature professional organization under the leadership of Dr. Aamir Matin. A quick thank you from the nation to the former MD (who is now heading up Cisco Pakistan).

Recently, however, Mr Yusuf Hussain took helm of the organization, and I couldn’t feel more comfortable in the choice.

Mr. Hussain is the former head of Cressoft, one of the highlights of the Glory Days of the Pakistani IT Industry 1.0.

 

Although I was not in Pakistan at that time, everything I have heard about Cressoft tells me that it was perhaps the one company in the history of IT companies in Pakistan that was getting it right. Unfortunately, it collapsed in the dot bust.

As an example of the quality of the leadership from Cressoft: When Cressoft collapsed, the leadership all created their own companies which are now Streaming Networks, Care, (and perhaps also LMKR and Netsol? Someone correct me here) — all of which are strong companies in their own merits.

As another example, every average engineer that got out of the Cressoft experience is still considered one of the most valuable managers at any company they are working for. The most important value seen in those engineers is that ‘they understand business operations’.

 

Cressoft is still the only company that I have heard of in PK (not counting CDF) that actually had the following (these are just the basics, but you’d be surprised how many companies do not do these):

• Constant recruitment of fresh graduates regardless of demand — and the placement of the recruits into a training boot camp to shape them into final professionals by the time demand ramps up
• 6 months extensive training on well-planned training tracks within the company — with intensive training on culture, ethics and professionalism
• An appraisal process that was fair and considered employee ambition and potential in addition to achievements.
• Project Lifecycles that were created as gated pipelines — strictly disallowing the project to move into another stage until all “advancement criteria” were met
• High-level research, and design work on Computer Architecture (processor design), Embedded Systems, Video Alogirthms etc. outsourced to a team of about 600 engineers.

I have been evangelising similar internal environments for a good while now. So, why can’t the rest of the firms just learn from Cressoft? Is it a case of ‘ lack of vision in management’ ? Tell me your thoughts.

 

I can already see some positive changes on PSEB — the most useful one being the bulletin. It is always great to see good corporate social responsibility, and most appreciated when seeing it from the facilitator to the IT industry.

 

Welcome, Mr. Hussain. Good luck, and looking forward to another good leadership term at PSEB

Kudos Series - 2 : On ROZEE

Rozee underwent a silent facelift some …

Update 2:  You can view some updated posts on Rozee on the blog. The company has recoverd maturely and is getting better time. Their business model is still too traditional for rapid growth, and I keep pointing this out to them.

Update: Scratch all I said about Rozee. It is one of the worst companies I have had to deal with.

To be honest, Rozee support makes PTCL look like Micronet.

From:

• Delayed posting jobs by 5 Days which essentially killed our hiring deadlines ;
• to absurd approval processes ;
• randomly disappearing job posts, where only one post appears at a time;
• to even putting an invalid address for our company without asking,

Rozee now tops my list of impulsive non-professional companies. Believe me, I had a long list before Rozee.

They have an elaborate system of control built around their job posting process, which they claim they are doing to “protect applicants”. From what? Applying to companies? Well they succeed in that. In everything else, their control system makes the USA Patriot Act look like a blood test in comparison.

So in short — bad product ; bad business strategy (see below) ; terrible customer support == silicon valley hotshot starts company

months ago along with their promotions of their professional networking services.

I found myself recently wading through their complex, unintuitive and somewhat intrusive registration process (Rozee — please fix it), but I happened to land in their “virtual contact card” area.

That is actually nice — they have used a nice CMS because the interface is intuitive and supports professional networking.

It is good to see that they have made an honest good-quality attempt at creating a conducive professional community.
It certainly empowers the little guy in a country like Pakistan the network is such an essential asset to business.

So kudos for the effort.

The good thing is, that there is one particular way of making this much more successful, if Rozee focuses on creating values on the edge based on local market insight. The trouble is, Rozee hasn’t found that model yet.

In pure strategy terms, they picked a terrible business model. A traditional online professional network is least aligned with the benefit of edge competencies. It is one of the reasons LinkedIn is struggling with returns or ROI.

A professional network in Pakistan can only be monetized by focusing on the edge considering our specific local dynamics.

So, lets see how Rozee plans to monetize the data — and lets hope they dont repeat classic mistakes like charging for the right to get business contact information.

Kudos Series - Part 1 : iTrango Helios Engine

The “Kudos Series” of posts will highlight and showcase the work of a local company creating some innovating products that we can all be proud of.

If you’re a small company/entreprenuer but think you have a great product / achievement that you want us to be proud of, I want to give it kudos! Email me and tell me all about it.

We start this series with a product that has been seeing quite a bit of praise, and it deserves nothing less. It is the Trango Interactive’s Helios Game Engine!

I met with Trivor Software people (who is the parent company) almost two years ago when they were just planning this game division.

Game Engines are hard — real-time per-pixel shading while keeping your system requirements in check is a challenge. But it is great to see that in just two years, they have led a team of 30-40 to not only roll out two major releases of the engine, but have also been recognized by Red Herring magazine among Asia’s top 100 companies.

Great Job Trango.