As it is, the retail market for books is big and getting bigger – addressing this itself would mean a number of challenges like procurement, vendor relationships, logistics and payments. Add to this mix, the other products and we are multiplying the challenges by at least another 3-5x times. Looks like, they are bent on addressing all these challenges and coming out trumps. This in the short run will certainly increase their cash flow and would sound a great strategy, however in the long run they are bound to lose focus. This is only my assumption at this point and it can be disproved but the chances I foresee are slim.

In the last few weeks, I have been having issues with flipkart where one of the books that I ordered after seeing the availability did not get delivered. Initially, I received a mail stating that they would need 3 more days to process it. After 3 days, I was told that they are sorry about having not delivered and they don’t seem to find the book in any of their procurement channels and they cancelled the order. Today, one of the deliveries got messed up – the invoice details are right but the wrong book has been delivered. Cracks have started to show now in the efficiency and what appeared a winner through ‘word of mouth’ publicity is becoming messy with expensive advertisements and whole load of products.

Maybe, I am over-reacting here but could it be a classic case of lost focus? I keep my fingers crossed on the verdict and my take would be – the earlier they hive off other products and manage just books, the better it would be.

This high percentage of Sales & Marketing expense adds another dimension to ISVs possibly not wanting to move the SaaS way. For them to be successful, it becomes extremely important for ISVs to ensure that their sales and marketing is cost-effective, for which they need to have extremely good visibility on their sales funnel and ability to predict and forecast accurately. Additionally, they need to identify metrics that would be able to measure the returns on every program that they do in the mix. Keep what brings revenue and throw what doesn’t in your marketing mix.

This also makes it necessary for the ISVs to have access to quality funding that will allow them to do increased sales and marketing spending towards achieving breakeven and eventually profitability. As more and more customers seek SaaS, this may not result in a level playing field as big platform players would be better positioned to offer them as opposed to non-funded setups. Else, you need to have substantial legacy revenue for you to easily move the SaaS way.

Primarily, these business applications have helped organizations convert ‘unstructured information’ into a ‘structured format’ that allows for easier management of business critical information. But, organizations have realized that this alone is not enough and there is a lot of knowledge that is available in different forms and buried in different processes across the organization. It becomes imperative for them to manage such content and capture knowledge to be efficient in their business.

This has prompted many enterprises to look at text mining tools that would allow them to do in-depth mining of ‘unstructured text’, both online and offline information, and convert them into actionable inputs for enterprises. This will include customer complaints, call center transactions, email communication etc. Though, this certainly is a few years away for this to become an enterprise priority.

Enterprises definitely have a taken a step in that direction where information-centricity will be sought, with other business applications and data mining application.

• Integration with third party software and IT systems
• Transaction types from different data sources and support for disparate client types
• High-volume transaction capability

If a software is architected keeping in mind these three challenges, most issues related to the enterprise software will cease to exist.

1. My writings will be based on the work that I did – with more focus on what one shouldn’t do rather than what one should do

2. I strongly believe in the fact that there is no such thing called the ‘right way to market’ – it would speak about the experimentation that is required and how to keep it low-cost

3. New age marketing tools like Social Media Marketing, buzz marketing etc.

4. Why is it so important not to lose focus on traditional marketing principles; for instance, value proposition and positioning statements remain sacrosanct irrespective of the medium that you choose

4. It would also have templates that would allow one to do their marketing plan

5. It would have practical examples with which one can de-risk their marketing intiatives

6. Series of interviews with marketing practitioners from different settings. These would also be covered in the book

7. Lead generation techniques, lead nurturing techniques and  its effectiveness

8. Thought leadership – it certainly is about thoughts?

9. Marketing ideas that you can take and implement immediately; ideas that wouldn’t take you more than 2 minutes to start implementing 

10. Taking it out of social marketing, specific focus is going to be on twitter – I am going tweet about this book as well effectively

I’d appreciate your comments and also appreciate inputs on what you would like to see in this book.

What has happened now with the growth of social media is, internal recruiters of corporations have started using sites like facebook and linkedin, over and above the job portals and are able to scout for talents very extensively. This has put the brakes on these specialists whose ability was in identifying talents and qualifying them before the hiring manager gets to see them. Now this is getting compromised and for the recruitment consultants to survive, they need to re-invent themselves and start focusing on verticals, level of hire, headhunting etc. and you cannot survive by being just another recruitment consultant.

Social media is here to stay,  and for good enough reasons, it is helping individuals and companies in their pursuit. At the same time, it is pushing the limits on traditional means of doing business.

It is your chance to know the building of companies like rediff.com, naukri.com and tejas networks as their founders come and share their journey with us. Additionally there will be 100 most promising technology startups showcasing their products. You can meet these entrepreneurs and also over 40 investors. To attend this event, register free at http://www.siliconindia.com/startupcity_09/index.html

Adding a few more:

• Watch live product demonstrations
• Get a peek into cutting edge technologies
• Lay hands on the best-of-breed solutions
• Meet young, energetic and passionate geeks
• Experience the culture of innovation in small companies
• Visionary keynotes
• In-depth panel discussions

Time: 8.45 am to 5 pm; Date: June 6, 2009, saturday; Place: Nimhans convention center, bangalore (near dairy circle)

I have written a post on this in my company blog and you can view it by clicking here.

I have written a post on this in my company blog and you can view it by clicking here

I also see a number of projects displayed in sites like rent-a-coder, getafreelancer etc. where the requirements are integration of Moodle and Dimdim, Moodle+Dimdim+Joomla etc. There definitely seems to be a active community that has been positioning Dimdim pretty well. I would love to hear and write about the initiatives that dimdim has been taking with respect to their positioning.

Essentially, at this rate dimdim would become a necessary backbone of any unified communication strategy of enterprises.