How do I explain Business Process Management (BPM) using an elevator pitch...

Often people ask me, "what do you do at work?" These people are from different walks of life. Hence, finding a generic definition of my work area is often too difficult, as my area of expertise is niche. Not many people know about it, at least consciously.

I work in the field of Business Process Management, which is not a framework, not a methodology, but a management discipline to run your business more efficiently. However, the dilemma is always to choose the right words to answer the above mentioned question. Often you find yourself using too much jargon and explaining what BPM can do for the business. The correct approach (and not the only one) is perhaps to let the stakeholder understand why the business needs it.

Here is an excerpt from an article my boss sent to me recently which nips it in the bud...

Steve Ball, a small business process design & improvement expert, considers BPM “a satellite navigation system for your business.”

“Without it you probably will reach your destination,” he says. “But the journey will take you longer, you'll find out there are a lot of dead ends out there, you will feel lost sometimes or worst of all (for the men) we might have to stop and ask someone for directions.”

My favourite elevator pitch from the article was also the author's favourite. Here it goes...

"BPM will help you sleep at night. It gives you control when you can't be in all places at the same time. It makes sure that the right people are assigned to do the right things at the right time which means less operational hick-ups, better control, happier customers and it should all add up to better bottom line. Now go back to sleep." - Pieter van Schalkwyk, CEO at XMPro

Read full article here.

Gmail outage

Yes! It happened again and when I thought of blogging real time to inform many users of Google Apps and of course have some traffic on my site, found that blogger is down too :-(

It so happened because Google is now the parent company. I collected some screen shots and started tweeting to @Gmail @Blogger #Google to let them know.

This had been my conversation with the @Gmail in which of course I was sending messages, but I must say 20 minutes and the service was back. However, the main reason i was tweeting and asking Google for help was my my Blogger site and so I found that it is one of the products not covered under Google Apps SLA, so I continued to write this blog on a Notepad till the time #Blogger was up! And here I am posting it now, but I learnt a lesson on this 2 old days blog that hosting should be one's own - think of it!

Now things are back; @Blogger took a little more time (about 15 minutes, i guess) than @Gmail which is a product covered under SLA. Signing off now!

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Study with Work

Preparation is necessary, be it for a business presentation/normal office stuff/university quiz/assignment and even for gaining confidence.

These days my challenge in every 24 hours had been all of the above. Making sure you perform great and live up to your commitment in office and also do justice to your university course is difficult however not impossible. The catch is effective time management & commitment to that duration of time you reserved for whatever activity.

Reminds me of my grand father's quote "son, whatever you do at a moment, just ensure you are doing only that, then. Spending time on it out of interest and commitment won't do justice to that activity. As a result you would lose interest and waste your own time which you spared out of your schedule for that something."

Really, this is something which echoes around me always whenever I am in dilemma to spend time on study/work. So I do both with equal commitment and zeal. Work and study hours are different but they don't overlap - that's what helps me a lot.

This is an old one, it had been life between December 2011 to December 2013!!

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Strategy of new age marketers

You think there are different departments for different segments of tasks!!!

I got a different answer here:

I viewed this video and found how the Chief Designer, Ford - Ehab Kaoud explains different set of features of the product as he portraits the Brand and it's DNA. I am not saying that this is new way of reaching out to your audience - all I am saying is techies doing it these days, and that's because the sources of digital marketing at their disposal. You just need to publish your thoughts over web and that's it, you may get some thousands of views or more or less in a day! And the benefits are obvious too - for a person like me who had to wait for a technical review of this car from Autocar India after they prepare it, I can just view the video and get equipped with the stuff I wanted to know.

Not straying from the topic that I started today, I or people like me get the best from people who had actually developed the product and not from a set who are just selling it and when you ask a question you may come across an answer - "I'll have to check. I'll get back to you" and no body comes back to you or they just say "Well! That's a good question hahahaha!!!"

I like this strategy and want more techies to promote the products or modules or process they are developing as I believe that it would be a win win situation for both the sellers and the builders - sellers would get the much needed support from the builders and builders in turn would get the much needed visibility inside and outside of their organization.

Hope you like my first post, the page is waiting for your comments!

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Here, why?

In my effort to start my dream project, I should be promoting myself and my knowledge as a close observer of idea driven marketing campaigns/ads.

Yes, the emphasis is on idea driven marketing campaigns and brand promotion – what it is and what should be it in context to that idea. Finding if it was relevant or not and of course feedback is always appreciated!

Let’s see how it comes(I mean the idea) and how much it is followed!!!