My Last Post

Here's wishing everyone 'A Very Happy, Healthy & Prosperous New Year 2009' !
This is going to be my last post in this blog. I had started this blog to provide my readers an insight of life in a fast paced MBA program. I am not sure how successful I have been in my attempt. I do admit that given the time constraint I have not been able to share a lot during the one year at XLRI.
I have a regret. I wished to share details about the placement process et al but due to certain obligations I had to abandon that idea.
After graduating from XLRI I had continued this blog so that I am able to provide my readers an idea of life post-MBA. However, I realize that I have not been regular in providing information about my work life. In fact, lately I have been wavering from the central theme of this blog. I realize that there may be many future MBAs who may stumble upon my blog with the hope of getting an insight into the life of an MBA but my recent posts may confuse them with irrelevant information.
Hence, I am calling it a day. For anyone who would still occasionally like to hear from me I will start posting in my personal blog. You can access it over here!
Asta La Vista !

Current IT Scenerio

Worldwide spending on information technology will slow significantly in 2009 as a direct result of the global financial crisis that began in September 2008.
However, I feel that IT is in a better position than ever to resist the downward pull of a slowing economy. Technology is already deeply embedded in many mission-critical operations and remains critical to achieving further efficiency and productivity gains. As a result, worldwide IT spending will continue to grow in 2009, albeit at a slower pace.
Although the revised forecast and the downside scenario both reflect a grim outlook for global economic growth over the next several years, IT spending actually fares well when compared to the previous downturn after the events of September 11, 2001.
Companies currently don't have the asset and spending 'overhang' that enabled them to put off purchases after Y2K and the dot-com bubble. As a result, there will be greater pressure for them to continue making IT investments in order to stay competitive.

Pune Trip

I was in Pune last week to attend a business meeting. The trip brought back some old memories. Last time I visited Pune was around 7 years earlier while I was still a fresher. I had come down once to attend a GD & PI at Symbiosis and later to deposit my first trimester fees. Its another story that I didn't pursue my MBA over here and jumped into the software bandwagon.
This time around I was able to catch up with a few close friends. Its always nice to get in touch with people who are close to your heart. The Cognizant campus at Pune is awesome. I remember having lunch at a place called 'Lemon Tree'. The city though has changed since my last visit here.

My baby

I am a dad now ! My son was born on 3rd Nov. I cannot express the high I experienced when I saw him for the first time.
I find myself gazing at my son and seeing my own reflection in him. I think I have found my life's mission - Ensuring that all his dreams are fulfilled..

My new address - An aerial view

I have bought a swanky new apartment recently. We plan to move in sometime early next year. Although it cost me a fortune, I am kinda convinced that the investment decision is justified. With the addition of new members in the family its necessary to have a lot of space for everyone. Here's what my new address looks like when viewed from above :-)

Business Consulting

Quite a few of you have mailed me / called me and enquired about my work and about business consulting. So let me give some gyan about business consulting.
Let us ponder a little on the recent history of consulting. During the earlier 1990s, consulting engagements could be won w/o a lot of effort. Clients used to tolerate mediocre, even poor performance from the consultants. However, post the dotcom bubble bust, there has been a sea change in client behaviour. There are so many clients who harbour bitter memories of the time & money they spent on a succession of management initiatives - from business process re-engineering and ERP, through e-business to CRM - which yielded little quantifiable benefits.
This has led to the need for the current crop of consultants to bridge the credibility gap. The consulting industry's challenge is to be more pragmatic and to focus more on delivering tangible and sustainable benefits. Demand for general strategy consulting seems almost dead. My personal experience is that today, clients continue to be very demanding. Clients make substantial investments in the work that we do and have increasingly high expectations in terms of the relevance of the work we undertake and the quality of the service that we deliver. Consulting is a serious business which addresses serious things.
BTW, I believe I still haven't answered the primary question 'What is business consulting?'. Well, business consultants are supposed to improve businesses: they are not hired to maintain the status quo but to change it. This might be changing a company's strategy or taking over a process in order to transform it but it does not include managing an existing process in order to deliver the same levels of service at a lower cost.

Work Update

I'm back again to update you guys about what's been happening at my end. I will try to post at least once a month since anything beyond that will probably be a bit ambitious.
I joined Cognizant on 20th May. Its been a good 2 months here and I can safely say that the transition from the academic world to the professional world has been smooth.
As I have probably mentioned earlier that I have joined the Life Sciences vertical at Kolkata. Now, the LS vertical was earlier based out of Chennai & Pune (also B'lore). So, everything is practically very new. Its an extremely small community here at Kolkata. One apsect is that everything is still quite fluid at the moment. However, on the positive side there is a very bright scope to establish this competency over here and of course, a lot of initiatives are in the pipeline. We have ambitious delivery targets over the next few months and coupled with that an aggressive ramp up plan.
As far as I am concerned, I am trying to acquire the LS domain knowledge necessary for consulting assignments. Apart from that I'm getting a taste of responding to RFPs. That's all from my end as of now. Take care. Ciao.