Opportunity to create new T&M solution in ipV6

India has cashed on in FY2K the opportunity when the Computer industry needed an IT solution for getting over the date stamping challenge in the computing Machines at the turn of the last millennium.Our fledgling industry with army of coders available were handed this challenge and almost overnight lot of outsourcing work came to Indian Software coolies for porting and other rectification so.India found for herself a new identity as a new industry was getting borne to either serve from India or serve "on site" wherever the client was located.Surely and Silently,an youth from India saw the opportunity and big bucks in the IT industry then.Rest is history and today the industry
Majorly as a Service Industry boasts of 120Billion revenues for the country!

Whenever such like discontinuity occurs,there is always need for new solution to the problems.The solution in our industry can be in new development of hardware,or software/services or both a combination of the two plus some additions.The technology industry has become a breeding ground for new problems rand so new solution opportunities for everybody- the Designers,Manufacturers,the Venture Capitalists or the Governments wanting to create jobs in their local economies.Scaling of these is possible if the technology is robust,inexpensive,exclusive and suits the Economy.Recent Examples have been block buster disruptions created by Apple in iPhone and now on the Apple Watch.

ICANN is now running out of web addresses because of insufficiency of IPV4.The new standard will be IPV6 which will not run out of numbers needed.IP addresses will be always available in this domain,but there will be porting or some other modification is to be done in the existing hardware or a new hardware/ software combo needs to be created.New specifications have got almost unlimited possibilities of IP addresses.Many countries have moved over to new system and many are moving.

There is a possibility that the modification solution will involve hardware,software or both.And that will be at the intersection of IT,Telecom and T&M technologies and in fact can be a powerful scalable and big opportunities for industry,like the set top box for the domestic TV industry.Retrofitting the old existing hardware with new device can be a possible solution or creating a patch over the box can be yet another.

Whatever that may be,an opportunity for developing a technology and viable solution does exist here.
And the skills of IT and T&M will come handy for both conceiving and manufacturing the device for commercial exploitation. Will someone take the ball?

T&M Industry can learn and appreciate the Disruption from eCommerce

If we examine closely the way new economy companies are basing their business model on,we find most of them are tech driven,high on software and uniquely disruptive in nature and innovative.They don't necessarily need lot of physical assets or very expansive factory resources.They really fill the customers unmet need by choosing to operate in the so called "white spaces" left u utilized by traditional players.

For example most of the chip companies don't have their fab.Taxi aggregator like Uber with a 50B valuation on its map don't have a single vehicle.Facebook doesn't have any content.Airbnb doesn't have any real estate.Whatsapp doesn't have its servers even though they transmit 3B messages per day.We can go on like that . So everywhere we find Disruptions of all kind.

Hardware,factories,Large warehouses,Factories of yesteryear so and Big Telecom Networks are really
a thing of the past,as the original purpose for which they were needed are getting met by some other innovative model,thinking,process or plain redundancy!

So, the point is we don't have to be a T&M hardware company to supply those services or the boxes of goods meant for testing and measurement.Can the same job be done by a consulting approach,or removing the function,or creating a business model by outsourcing the process,and the manufacturing.What we need is IT capability of extra-ordinary nature and a supply chain which brokers information on Engineering or Management overall to achieve same intended objective much
inexpensively and scalable manner.A combination of Internet,Mobile Technology, Location Knowledge and Broadband Everywhere can do the trick.

How we will actually apply these to basically a box company? Watch this space in few writings ahead!

Clues for T&M business in Fy16 from eCommerce companies,

Currently India is going through a vibrant and often very bullish mood on the Internet based emailer
Or eCommerce companies.This mood has been built on the back of a strong and growing Smartphone
population,very young demographics,availability of venture investment and general hype on an aspirational society.The social,locational and mobility related Apps are getting triggered by the local
Developer Ecosystem and general startup(rather than just high managerial job) entrepreneurs.

We are seeing as a result of all this many techpreneurs in their 20s. and 30s putting up a proposal for investors from sort of non-traditional background and display equally unusual bent of risk taking and self pride in the "babies" they just plan to birth to.The valuation of Billions and the various role models in front of them- Snapdeal or a Myntra- become good motivators for this budding class.Most of these may not convert into "Unicorn" immediately or they might fail or stop short of  sufficient funding.Yet they have been able to contribute to the change happening in India today.

What we are observing also is that there is a conflict happening between online and offline businesses.The big ticket funding is initiated by the Japanese and Chinese Giants,as well as the PE investors from Asia.The offline brick and mortar companies have started gearing up for protection.
The scaling up and speed is visible around and there is visible intent to buy from the net rather than
drive up to the mall in the suburb and get caught up in traffic woes!

How and what learning can be taken from this to the T&M market? Can we straightaway take the taxi
Aggregator. Model,or can we replicate the aggregation of a Flipcart here?Can we create a new model
out of the learning and apply full fledged to both T&M boxes and services together.? How will the customer support to T& M be delivered electronically?Can we integrate Marketing,Sales and Support functions beautifully thru the Internet glue and virtual order taking/physical delivery from a distant warehouse?

I can say it is interesting and tempting to apply after learning,but we have to dip our feet first and test
the water.Do we have a ready model elsewhere for our industry or we have to generate India specific
business model of customer acquisition and products physical delivery chain? These are the questions
we will discuss and attempt to find answers for. Stay tuned!

T&M market growth can be on the pattern of eCommerce in FY 16!

As we were discussing the channel development of T&M industry on the patterns of eCommerce startups in previous blogs, lot of ideas came to mind.The problem of a matured industry can be seen from various angles: People,Product,Pricing strategy and Promotion and channel Productivity.Nowadays the fashion is to emulate business through Social Networking and make a bigger and bigger universe of prospects in various verticals.How such a concept can be deployed for box and systems T&M products is key to emulating Social Networking way?

Generally it is assumed that the test products-boxes and portables- are bought by engineers working in identified large verticals ,like Defense,Telecom,Railways and Telecom and Healthcare.These verticals are identified and spelt out by data driven from Government Budget Allocations to these verticals over the successive 5 year plans and the trade statistics.Now our social networking concepts can be applied to all these verticals to reach the Engineers working in these sectors and back target them through marketing and promotions.Some of the data like targeted prospects can be reached through Directories of all Personnels in the admin systems of these and other data through mobile and emails intersections.Mobile Apps or similar media tools can be used as the basic platform for reaching the audience.Internet ,Web and the OTT are available to reach maximum number of targets in these individual market verticals.

Design of various CRM systems and software is necessary for impact maximization of these marketing programs.Various small developers like Anvesha and Applicate are in the market for addressing the markets.Or we can go to a mega supplier of Software and services in the CRM space.
Whatever CRM may we deploy,the basics of reaching a prospect remain same.The Contact,Qualify,Investigate,Present,Close and Selling to Community remain as they are deployed in personal selling the product.So important thing is we reach all the buying influences within a sector,let all sense what we are selling and use our "go to market" strategies in such a way that our selling and the verticals buying processes match.Opportunities and our Preparation intersection will always lead to creation of market and Business Money!

I will be interested in knowing if any of you are ready to sell your products and services through these eCommerce techniques? Share the experience and let me know if these worked for you?

Explore T&M opportunities through ECommerce startups way in Fy16

There are various innovative ways we can look at selling T&M products and services in India.A particular situation prevailing is that a particular representative is usually tied to a foreign company or  a multinational export distributor,and he is made to follow a distribution or selling model suiting to that specific principals.The selling model can be pure play direct sales force,where you are distributing exclusively their boxes and building brand strength for that overseas company. The brand image gets built at the expense of distributor manpower quality and coverage.The IP and all the hard work is done by the specific employees of the distributor and the insularity gets built between the market and the overseas sales management based in the region.At certain point of time they decide to go direct and leave the good people high and dry in the Country.It doesn't lead to a strong channel network on the ground.

Charles Handy in his book -The age of unreason- has described various ways for a company to build overseas business based on earliest "outsourcing" way.Keep the direct costs limited to Top in resident country manager and employ natives to run after the business at highly sales percentage commission based compensation with very little,or zero fixed compensation.Generally in India such a model doesn't work,as the self motivation for a T&M product line-where the deals and customers are few and far between- is very thin and they prefer to look out for steady income.Professional grooming and sales training is rare and ultimately smart competitors steal away the good people,or these people pick up their own line and leave! It is not a great Win-Win ending either way.

With Indian Ecosystem for both the Hitech customers and pure play distributors  changed since 1991 Liberalisation and telecom mobile penetration ,the technology can help address this situation.Our ultimate objective is to create a robust well oile sales and support machinery on the ground and not loose smart people to the OEM regional Asia op team of Competitors.A stable sales force will lead to growing business,but needs sustained skills and people practices.This will be possible if our sales roles are flexible,dynamic,innovative and in tune with market conditions.That actually requires us to understand three to four crucial skills are critical in building sales team.Ability to get orders,from large and geographically spread small accounts,Supporting on pre and post sales basis and be able to collect our Accounts Recievables in time are those qualities .All leadership have to recognize,reward and retain these attributes for a buildup.

For a typical product boxes or hardware company channel sales models are fading very rapidly as role of personal selling is changing everyday.From Peddlers to Sales Engineering to Consultative Seller they are constantly on the run as the loner! Take care of them both as professionals and humans and they will be foundation for good leadership in the field.Ignore them and your organisation will be constantly fragile. Choice is yours to build a solid thing,or constantly firefight!