Tag: Business

Out with the self check-out!

Albertson is your store. No wonder you just walked in, took the items, and walked out (after paying the machines).

http://www.spokesman.com/blogs/officehours/2011/jul/12/albertsons-will-take-self-checkout-lanes-out-stores-doesnt-affect-area-albertsons-stores/

I still remember having lunch at Woolworth, or stopping at full-serve  stations back East.

“coffee refill?” ” oil check?” We are heading toward a self-serve nation (or as in a recent feature in the WSJ, a Retail applicant outsourced his job search to an online resume service in India. The service uses automated software that sent his resumes to, among other things, adult entertainment companies.)

Back to customer service.

Not only customers bring friends, they are also an important part in the feedback loop (for future product development and marketing).

Face time is important. And productive face time is expensive.

Even in our hyper-connected world, people are still isolated and lonely.

The neighborhoods have changed. Old friends have moved on.

So we bowl and golf alone.

We time shift, LinkedIn with people who start their days when we end ours.

The last thing a tired worker needs is to argue with or be harassed by a machine “put your item in the bin”? I thought I did (I found out there was a scale underneath, so leave your bag there, not on the floor).

Meanwhile, I-phones, cosmetic items and travel kits are sold via vending machines.

I can understand the necessity of acquiring these in a hurry, let’s say in an airport.

But neighborhood groceries should foster a sense of community, where we look someone in the eyes, or start a quick conversation (weather, news event, or just venting).

On Charlie Rose, Stephanopoulos said when he interviewed people, he observed their silence, their non-verbal communication.

We still walk around inside our bodies. And we will send our signals via facial muscles and body gestures.

This means we still need a person on the receiving end to decode.

Yes, it’s expensive. But, it’s worth it.

Nordstrom and Four Seasons know this.

Giving people what they want, how they want it. While technology enhances efficiency, a customer-centric organization always wins and keep its customers. Maybe, I should skip the automated resume-blasting company.

Why relying on poor salesmanship to sell me, when I can do it better and save money. Out with the mechanistic transaction (we already got Amazon), and in with “Hi, how is your day?”.

Mom’s Poinsettia

It’s that time of the year again, when Poinsettia are everywhere, from Walgreen to Walmart.

I saw it in my Mom’s assisted living back when she was still alive.

That pair-association stuck with me: Mama-Poinsettia.

We have buried in our CPUs millions of those pairings: white-blue/school uniform, fruit-cake/Christmas,  peanut butter/GI ration …( in Vietnam, it’s li-xi or lucky money/Tet).

Later in life, we kept Graduation and Wedding pics in albums (soon will be digitized for keepsakes).

Key events that shaped our lives.

Yesterday, I read about the “what if” (they shot JR and not JFK).

And today, N Korea fired a few shots.

For he who holds the hammer, everything looks like a nail.

For me, I did not particularly look for sentimentality. I just need to shop for food.

Then the store displays Poinsettia. Bam! I miss Mom.

BTW, Justin somebody won three American Music Awards. He looks so young.

Is it time to go?

What would be my “poinsettia“? the pairing part of me as commemorated by my kids?

Too early for legacy. But we are a mashed-up of millions of “Pagelinks”, postings and proud moments (the lineage, the literature and the lines we spoke). Call it social graphs.

I am proud to mention that I want to be viewed by what I did not do as much as what I have done. It’s hard to stir clear of harm’s ways and evil ways growing up during war time (President G.W. Bush was on Larry King, via a special video insert, during his parent’s interview, where he confessed to two counts of car wrecking in his youth).

I know I need the sun, because each time it shines and particularly shines on me, I am like sunflowers, soaking and bathing in its heat and light, then in turn, reflect and radiate back the stored energy back to others. It’s my trademark. Ain’t Poinsettia or orchid, and don’t pretend to be. Just sunflowers.

 

Against the tide of commoditization

In Selling Professional Services to the Fortune 500, Gary Luefschuetz warns against mix and match people and rates of various service tiers, which will compromise the rate structure. In short, swim against the tide. IBM got it. Cisco follows suit. And HP is moving in that direction.

The Economist takes an in-depth look at IT future. One dominant theme is ” smart” infra-structure e.g. buildings,water, electricity, appliances… even cows). First, we were glad to get our white bread sandwich neatly cut and refrigerated. Then we want it toasted. Finally, we want the toaster to beep like our microwave oven.

The key to all this is inter-connectedness. From blue-tooth to Blu-ray, RF to RFID, we are moving up the value chain.

Years ago I remember watching a demonstration of hologram at Penn State. Professor Roy Rustum was there among the observers. He later was quoted as saying “I felt the chill in my spine” when his crew at Material Sciences Lab discovered electricity conductivity in water. Now we got 3-D hologram to watch the re-release of Star Wars.

At the high-end of the OSI model is the application layer. This is where our imagination pays dividend.

The physical layer move their facilities off-shored to accommodate better rate structure.

Samsung is slated to be a strong contender in the tablet space against the I-pad with huge facility in North of Vietnam.

I also remember watching the young CNN news gathering crew (in black T-shirts) back in the early 80’s. CNN manages to stay above the fold in the cable news business. That business gets commoditized as well since we can now access hundreds of them.

For CNN, the secret sauce has been their first move advantage, and continuing risk-taking (Gulf war). David Brook of the NYT puts it simply “branding is an effort to decommoditize commodities”.

While companies are in a race to produce “smart” applications, schools and companies should retrain people. Smart people created smart appliances. And smart people take calculated risks. Leaders of India and Ireland saw the hand writing on the wall. They moved swiftly to retrofit their nations for the  21st century, not only in IT, but with new ways to solve existing problems e.g. micro lending, mobile banking, cheap automobiles etc…(see The Miracle).  I read the review of Chevy’s latest small car, the Cruz. It took GM, once the largest corporation under Alfred Sloan, 40 years to reduce its automobile size. May the best car win.

The temptation to compromise and mix the different tiers of services led to the downfall of many sectors, especially telecom.

(South Asian agents and resellers first question was normally, “what’s the rate”).

So I wasn’t surprised to read in Fortune magazine about Verizon’s soon-to-be-rolled out Android perfect phone. Can you hear me now.The old GTE has swam hard against the tide, to become the premier wireless company.

Choose your battle, pick your turf, and retrench at the highest service level.  Who wants to stand next to those robots who don’t get sweat or take smoking break.  And I am sure, after the next round of cost cutting, they still stay until robot 2.0 version displaces them.  At Twitter, those guys didn’t even use up the allotted 140 characters. They tweet simply “Be helpful”. I take that to mean swim against the tide, to offer relevant and helpful service to a market gluttered with commoditized services.

Here’s my card

You have heard that line in movies, at the bar, or convention hall.

The Post had an article about the survival of the card in our digital age.

Maybe because it’s so small, so humble, and so obvious.

Google was thinking big i.e. “organize the world’s information”, thus, overlooked the tiny card in our wallet.

I received a business card which says “name, looking for employment in such and such field”.

I thought that was quite a sign of our time.

I got tired of printing my position (will work for food). So I printed my social network URL instead.

Our identity has slowly evolved, from off-line to online,  national passport to digital passport.

Virtual identity. We update photos and other data on our social graph.

We used to have coaches in sports, music, career. And now, there are  new breed of  online business coach.

Larger play place. More global. Higher benchmark.

It used to be “on the web, nobody knows you are a dog”.

Now, you need to approach multiple platforms from Twitter to YouTube, from Facebook to LinkedIn.

New rules of engagement.

New rules of PR.

Yet the business card stays the same.

Hi touch, low tech.

Easily exchanged at mixer.

Strong hand grip. Name tag on your right chest. Card on your left hand.

Impressive impression.

Twitter speech replaces elevator speech.

Let’s go.

Your name? Mine is .

Here’s my card.

 

Human ingenuity

When you see population growth which doesn’t equate with starvation, it’s a testimony to our human ingenuity.

The US has less than 2 percent of its labor force in agriculture, yet no one is without a hamburger (even when it’s thrown out by McDonald).

From Malthus to Moore, we have moved up the value chain.

The race to dominate mobile application is driving companies and start-ups to faster deploying wireless devices and software application.

No more excuses, such as  “let me get back to the office”, since office is now mobile (computer and car cultures converged).

Tablets used to be carried around by UPS men.

Then car rental companies used wireless receipt printers in their return parking lot.

And now, I Pad for everyone, everywhere.

Bio tech century ushers in longer life expectancy (hint, longer customer lifetime value).

Clever marketers would think like a customer, visualize not just today, but tomorrow as well.

Engineering has made its mark. The next century belongs to international marketers who can trade without borders.

Not just Multi -National Companies (MNC), but localized product and market development for domestic consumption (BRIC and CIVETS).

(AIG spins off its Japan branch, or Macy in Atlanta has more hat selections).

We learn more about each other, strength and weakness (Kissinger said, ” we did it to ourselves” in retrospect about the war in Vietnam).

So we learn our lessons and move on. Human ingenuity is not without pain. In fact, pain is a prerequisite.

As long as we learn from our mistakes, and factor them into future plan. The sub – prime experience for instance. It should have been limited  to a lesser share of the pie (but loan pushers wouldn’t settle for those otherwise suffice non-sub prime packages. Up-sell til we melt).

Or as President Carter kept saying, ” I should have factored in one more helicopter” – when referring to the debacle of hostage rescue attempt during his last year in office.

We made mistakes. But great men admit them, learn from them, and work them into the equation. In sales, we call it the funnel. We anticipated the many NO’s coming our way. This, we did it unto ourselves i.e. rejection and objection. Part of the job. Part of growing pain. Part of tapping into the well of human ingenuity.

As of this edit, David Brook of the NYT has a piece on “the Humanist Vocation”. Huffington Post has a piece about the anniversary of the Pentagon Papers. All learned lessons. Work that into future Syria strategy. Work that into the next app. Stop not learning and growing.

Wash away

Rain pours so hard here in Saigon. It feels like a city wash. Yet bike traffic never ceases.

Wet city streets didn’t stop weekend spontaneous racing.

Hard-earned money got washed away just as quickly as it is earned, mostly at beer stalls. People press RESET and go on. It’s not too different elsewhere.

Just differs in intensity and speed. Beer consumption is now ranked in the top 3 countries.

BBC News ranked Vietnam as number 7 most-risked nation in internet security.

In life, I also noticed an army of private security at every establishment.

It is not unusual to walk into a night club, just to find yourself surrounded by people: server, waitress, security and manager.

This spontaneous entourage would empty your wallet as quickly as a New York minute.

Meanwhile, everyone else is asleep, occasionally disrupted by the sound of street racing.

And when it rains again the next day, everything seems to take second place to the one and only priority: stay dry and stay alive (with bikers in front and next to you splashing water into your face). Pedestrian lights are now installed, with visible count-down to allow enough time for an amputated man to crawl across the street.

I admire his drive to survive here. And to everyone, it seems like a daily walk in Central Park.

I too press RESET a lot while here. A splash in the States will only be a free windshield wash. But everyone here seems to take nature’s disruption in stride. I have seen bikers talking on the phone, smoking while zig zagging through an alley. Or in the back seat, not just a lady with a cone hat. But the lady with a cone hat and her two baskets of donuts, balancing on her shoulders with a cane. Anything and everything is transported on wheels . Rain or tears couldn’t stop people in motion. Storm only serves as city-wash. It will take a few more decades to clear away the legacy of war, making way for peace and true prosperity. By the time you finish reading this, our amputated man has already crossed the street on his hands, asking you to buy a lottery ticket. He has already emerged a winner in my book.

 

On self-repackaging

The age of frozen self has finally arrived i.e. you either update your web presence, or remain “frozen” in cyber space.

Years from now, people remotely connected to you will Google you  and mine all the intimate data about you or written by you. Personal digital archive.

At the turn of our century, Command-and-Control model dominated management practices. Now, with better algorithm, faster broadband and only a few degrees of separation, suddenly we all “footloose” like Kevin Bacon (who is purportedly connected to everyone in Hollywood by one film or another).

Mass media gave ways to niche media. And we start hearing voices from the fringe. It only takes a camera and an upload.

News personalities are not making nearly enough money as once thought. It’s an age of “do-it-yourself journalism” or Pro-Am.

People point, shoot, upload and save. Gone are the photographers, photo shops, post office and stationery stores.

With Wal-Mart moving in, we are just about to see a complete overhaul of small town America. The Age of Nextville.

No wonder the trend now is to move to North Dakota and the likes. As long as there is broadband connection, a heater and a Wal-Mart.

Online, it doesn’t matter where you live. Or that you are a dog, as they say.

As long as you can repackage yourself, brush up your web presence and leave behind well-orchestrated digital footprint.

It’s a new world. It’s a beautiful world i.e. a hybrid world of on and off-line, virtual and organic relationships. Charlie Chaplin was only partially correct. We are not just an extension of the Machine. It’s the Machine that has become us, shaped and repackaged according to our narcissistic image. I am beautiful. So are you. As long as there is still Photoshop. .

 

Reflections on connections

The medium (social network) resembles Amazon software source code (we recommend to you these people, read their profiles).

You have to open a personal account like you would at Harmony.com, and boom, you start the handshakes : “Hello, my name is…”.

Personal branding 2.0. Except, when it comes to cross-cultural connection, the First and Last names in Vietnamese are in reverse.

With one or two middle names in the mix, good luck at finding your high school friends. I couldn’t. We met again in the late 80’s.

But I can’t find him on LinkedIn.

Anyhow, LinkedIn has made it as a serious site for professionals to keep in contact, keep each other updated . It is like an elevator that takes

you up to the roof top to join an exclusive party in progress.

There are a variety of personality in life, and online.

Some just show up for the event. Others want to get the most out of it.

For me, I enjoy being exposed to links that I otherwise would miss.

It’s as if through my old and new acquaintances, I have a window to a whole new world (without leaving my desktop).

And not to mention Connections of connections.

The network effect.

At some point, we will be “connection-overloaded”. Like an old teacher at a reunion, who can recognize an old student’s face but cannot recall his name.

But one thing is for sure: we will never be alone again, professionally. There will always be someone out there who needs to hire and fire, to explore an opportunity or recruit a candidate. Or stumble upon an aha moment. And most beautiful of all, when there is a shared event (9/11 or Haiti), we grieve together, as human family should.

No matter how you want to stratify this, at the core, we all want the same thing: building an enduring personal brand, in an increasingly globalized world. Competition gave way to collaboration. And the industrial mind-set is so passe in this Post-industrial age (cloud computing and mobile computing) that if we refused to change, it would be like riding a horse carriage, reading under a lantern. Ford and Edison have done well with or without the buy-in of the Amish.

For my 300 Linked- in friends, you are my Amish family. Interacting locally (on LinkedIn), while living globally. That way, I won’t be like a sales colleague who was caught staring at the office phone and said, “it doesn’t ring”. Well, pick it up and call someone. Anyone. You are in sales. And not at an in-bound call center.

And in this Web 2.0 environment, Google them first before making that call. And be sure to first Google yourself, to see it in the eyes of the beholder.

 

Machine and Me

Sir Chaplin showed it best in “Modern Times”.

Jacques Ellul took a step further to analyze all things “technique”. The 70’s OPEC oil embargo triggered  cost-cutting craze, starting with the elimination of gas station full-service to Smart cars and EVs.

I took a trip this past Thanksgiving. At rest area, the vending machine took my money and spit out my choice 1A6 (translation: dark coffee with cream, no sugar). With SunPass I did not have to stop and pay at the toll booth.

Of course, at rest area, the air dryer helped dry my hands. At the outlet mall, I had a massage by a chair

(only after I fed the machine my 5-dollar bill.)

I picked up something at Home Depot whose self-checkout allows me to scan my merchandise (while the cashier played loss prevention). On Halloween, they even put up a mean looking monster to stare down at home-builders.

When I got home, tired from the trip, I rented a video at Red Box. And while at it, I might as well filled my water at the machine next to the  prepaid calling card and blood-pressure machines.

I could have taken some pictures in one of those kiosks. But I saved money by using my digital camera, and print out Thanksgiving pictures ( no longer a trip to the Kodak store).

Pretty soon, they will have machine that can give you a flu shot. I already got my stamps from the post office machine.

Coffee, gas, photo, DVD , pre-paid calling card, stamps, water, highway toll, photo , car wash, water, air pump, laundry, kitchen appliances, I-pod, shaving kit. Car alarm (You stand too close to the vehicle, step back), GPS, remote control, alarm clock, unmanned aircraft, Stair Master, and IRobot to clean your house.  I am too tired to clean house, so I drop my clothes in the wash, pop in the DVD, and set my alarm. That was after I managed to check my email on the computer and warm my food in the microwave.

No wonder we don’t need people. Where have they all gone, long time passing? No wonder in Buffalo, NY, the last of the station attendants startled me when he asked if I needed to fill up. I thought that was a panhandler trying to hustle me.

The Machine Age is here. And someday, machine will make more advanced machines as they interact and evolve. Did I mention the ATM’s? My bank closes at 4PM, sending me to the machine today. I can hardly get face-time with any teller. Cherish the chat, “organic relationship” (this makes off-shored call centers heavens on Earth: “I understand what you mean” really?) . When we have a face-to-face with someone, we can read  non-verbal cues: facial expression, body language.  Tommy was left playing the pinball machine, and he moaned “See me, feel me, touch me, heal me”. Machine will stay behind in Goodwill long after we are gone. It’s those human who are close to us (and even not so close ) that matter. Family, and larger human family (social networking?), united against the machine – Trust not that which doesn’t brush its teeth, gives you poor service, yet takes your money. Try to get a refund by kicking it.

In Michael Moore’s words, “downsizing this!”.

P.S. I kept forgetting to click the ABC icon for the machine to spell check. Can’t live with or without “it” any longer.

 

Nano in the wind

Kansas didn’t expect its slow number to be a hit, but there it was: Dust in the Wind.

I am privy to have met three gentlemen, all Vietnamese nano technology scientists.

Through them, I learn about our next frontier, not out there, but right here e.g. coconut shells from which carbon nano tubes can be extracted with the right equipment and technique.

It will be a while before these findings found themselves into your Wal-mart stores.

But for now, nano tech has defense, health care, pharmaceutical and solar applications.

I am sure the ethicist and novelist have debated the implications of nano toxicity and runaway technology (Prey).

We need those debates just as we had when the atomic bomb was first invented.

As a nation, I don’t think we have responded well to Secretary of Energy Chu’s call to action (that if all our roofs get a new coat of white paint, we would reduce carbon emission substantially). The upcoming Kyoto summit should divide up carbon ration per nation.

Nano is the new plastic. Dustin Hoffman‘s counselor would have to redub his line  in “the Graduate“. Every 40 years or so, we see a new game changer e.g. from dirty coal to clean room. I’d rather see creative destruction than self-destruction.

Next Gen has grown up digitally e.g. Kindle, Reader and whatever else. Broadcast your line, your script and your ads to our hand-held device.

24/7 streaming. “We are mad like hell, and we won’t take it anymore”, yelled a generation of Network audience.

This time, they seem more in control, and participate in reallocating “power, to the people”. Nobody is leading this time.

Just the Net which is neutral. Emanuel, White House Counsel, or Emanuel, Fox News White House correspondent, both are treated the same, as far as the Net is concerned. Just 1 and 0, at whatever broadband speed you buy.

All that remains…nano in the wind. Years from now, Kansas’ Dust in the Wind is stilled listened to, more than all their other rock numbers combined. Quite unintended. Just like our many scientific discoveries, among them, nano technology.

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