Gaining wide knowledge is a must for students in B-Schools

Today, as a part of the Induction programme, Mr Sathasivam addressed us as the Industry speaker

Mr.N.Sathasivam is a chartered Accountant with over 25 years of experience at senior levels in larger corporate. He had also held the position of CFO for over 10 years and currently, he is the co-promoter of ThinksynQ Solutions. The interactive session with Mr Sathasivam began with a topic “Employability”. In which, he gave us valuable information about how we should present ourselves in an interview, that includes

§  Having a thorough knowledge about the company’s history

§  Understanding their  competitors

§  Having In-depth knowledge in our area of expertise

He emphasized about the importance of reading books, to make the optimum use of the resources we have in the library and to develop a habbit of reading news papers.

In addition, he introduced us to concepts like Balance of trade, Current account deficit, fiscal deficit and GDP which made us to think about the threat that our Economy is facing in these hard times. He shared his findings and opinions about the problems that could arise due to certain schemes of the Central Govt of India like NREGS, Freebies etc.,

To sum it up, his speech was very informative, thought provoking and made us realize the need to stay up to date with current issues happening globally.

-Murali V, 2013-14 batch

ABCD- Redefined

ABCD, to a first grade student could mean ‘apple, ball, cat & dog’. To an avid cinemagoer, it could mean ‘AnyBody Can Dance’, but according to Mr.Ramakrishnan, CEO of MARG properties, it expands to “AnyBody Can Do”. This was the essence of his lecture at Chennai Business School on the 19^th of July, 2013.

Addressing the 2013-14 batch students of CBS, Mr.Ramakrishnan emphasized the need to think positively and believe in oneself to achieve any goal in life.

Terming happiness as a state of mind, he drove home the point that at the end of the day being happy or otherwise is a choice that every individual makes. He advised the students not to constantly compare themselves with others, but instead follow their goals confidently with single mindedness and optimism. This, he assured will make success a mere eventuality.

He also encouraged the students to be happily dissatisfied. He explained that this will not only keep a person in a happy state of mind, but will help him/her strive to set and attain new goals.

Talking about the secret behind his success, Mr.Ramakrishanan, once again made effective use of the initial letters of the English alphabet. This time ABCD was Attitude, (self) Belief, Communication and Drive (to win). By sharing numerous anecdotes from his career, he convinced the audience that these traits were essential for a manager to possess, in today’s business environment.

To the students who hurriedly gathered at CBS as early as 8 AM, half expecting a lecture on Finance, real estate markets and management, Mr.Ramakrishnan’s kick-off lecture was not just a pleasant surprise, but also a 2 hour crash course on personality development and life management – One that could shape their careers and lives in the years to come.

- Hari Subramanian, 2013-14 batch

Rural Marketing Trip 2013

The Marcom varsity students of CBS visited places in and around Madurai to understand the Rural Markets. Our first stop was the Microsate (Special Microfinance branch) Branch of Indian Bank at Tallakulam. The students had so far only heard about Microfinance inside the classroom and the field experience was an eye opener. The Business Correspondent Anandhi addressed them in the conference room of the branch explaining about the role that the bank plays in empowering the lives of Rural Women.

We visited a few Self Help Group women in their villages and understood how Microfinance had helped them to live a better life. 

SHG owns a snack shop

This group has bought a power tiller to rent it to local farmers

This group has bought sewing machines and bagged orders to stitch school uniforms

A woman in the group smiles as we ask her about her group and her earnings

"Life is so easy these days" says Pandiammal

Tiruppuvanam Sandhai
 

Vegetable beings sold at the markets. people from the nearby villages visit this market every Tuesday to buy and sell

Dry Fish

Fancy goods!!!

Aavin Processing Unit

B-School Ranking

Announcement:-
CBS has been ranked top 50 B-Schools by a Independent survey by Times B school supplement published on the 28th of February 2013. 

Write up by CBS professors

Companies’ big hunt for social media marketers

Today, Social media is creating the entire buzz in the marketing world. Social media marketing evolved with the evolution of the Web 2.0 interface. Social media has gained itself a predominant place in people’s lives these days which is evident through the number of social media users. A study says that if face book was a country, it would be the third largest with respect to population after China and India.  Many firms are investing in Social media channels to propagate their brand by creating content and engaging consumers online.  Through this, marketer’s are trying to pull customers towards them through their face book pages, YouTube channels and blogs rather than reaching the customers through the traditional channels. Given the rapid progression of this medium amongst the customers, companies are looking for hiring individuals who can manage this new digital medium of communication and CBS has included Social Media Marketing as a subject in its course curriculum.

Write up by Prof. Sangeetha. S ( Faculty- Marketing varsity – Chennai Business School)

Customer Experience by K. Rajeshwari


"A customer experience is an interaction between an organization and a customer as perceived by a customer. It is a blend of the company's business performance, the senses stimulated and the emotions evoked and intuitively measured against customer expectations across all moments of contact."

As is evident from the above definition, customer experience goes much beyond the rational aspect of a company's output. Emotions play an important part in customer experience but unfortunately most customer experience initiatives are focused on the basics and the rational experience of 4 Ps of marketing; price, place,product, promotion, and fixing what is wrong, etc. In reality, however, over half of Customer Experience is about emotions. Today services as an industry comprises a major portion of our GDP. Hence the key to achieving sustained economic growth is to be able to arrive at systems and measurement mechanisms that provide clarity on customer service aspects. And an important component of this is 'customer experience.

There are many benefits to the company - tangible and intangible that can be accrued through this. On a tangible scale, when addressed effectively, customer experience eases customer base addition, enhances customer loyalty, and improves customer retention. On the intangible front, customer experience enhances company image, spreads positive word of mouth, and increases potential share market value. Apart from these, the other reason why customer experience is important to work on is that the companies have realized that this economic downturn is not a normal, short-lived recession. Normal life will not resume tomorrow. When you don't know what the future holds, the one thing that you have to hold onto is your customer. Thus the need to focus on your customer experience is all the more important. Loyalty begins to take a new meaning in times such as these, where companies realize that the cost of holding on to customers is far less than acquiring new ones. In this scenario, the concept of customer life time value, or CLV, becomes paramount. CLV takes into account the life time revenues from a customer and the costs involved in acquiring that customer, thus representing the net value of holding onto a customer. If this is positive, then that particular customer is worth holding onto. Else, from a financial perspective, it is better to let him go.

Industries that have witnessed a tremendous growth in recent times have had to practice this. For example, if a telecom customer wants to exit, it is important for the company to understand the costs involved in retaining  him versus letting him go and then take a right decision. Over a total customer cohort (group), the magnitude of this decision begins to show up. And it impacts the profitability of the organization in significant ways.

However there is an inherent paucity of trained Customer Experience Professionals. As more and more companies focus on the customer experience, the demand for good Customer Experience Professionals will continue to grow. As the subject is comparatively new, there are few people with relevant track record.Companies that want to produce a high-quality customer experience also need to routinely perform a set of sound and standard practices. The measurement of these practices have to be carefully designed such that organizations can put a number to customer experience in a consistent manner across the enterprise and deliver critical action points to employees and to stakeholders. Unless this is done, the uniformity in understanding customer experience will be lost. For example, the customer experience team at technology giant EMC has a sophisticated measurement framework. It first identifies the aspects of the customer  experience that drive loyalty, like ease of doing business. It then prioritizes those drivers based on customers satisfaction with each driver and the impact of each driver on the overall experience. That tells EMC which things to fix immediately, which to improve over time, which to maintain at current levels, and which to promote as strengths.

Now or never 

In this age where a customer is faced with choices, companies cannot succeed through manufacturing strength, distribution power, or information mastery.What should be important is the thought of becoming irrelevant to your customers, which is what will happen if you don't take action. Despite some of this thinking and practice, one of the reasons customer experience is in danger of dying is because it is not fully understood. A lot needs to be done in this area -by educationalists and management professionals alike.

K. Rajeshwari
Professor and Head of Department-
Marketing and Retail Varsity
Chennai Business School
Studied at IIMA
Worked for 14 years as a Marketing professional in
Unilever, Cavinkare and Nippon Paint
Pursuing Ph.D. at IIT Chennai
Written a book “MY LIFE MY CHOICE”

E-Mail: rajeshwarivictor@gmail.com 

Cloud Computing - A Panel Discussion

The stage was set for the 1st industry interaction of the year and it started with a panel discussion which is the latest topic " Cloud Computing"

Prof.Sangeetha welcomed the guests

This discussion was attended by employees of Novatium along with our students from Marketing and IT
varsity. 

Discussion started with a guest lecture by Mr.Ashok ( MD - Futurenet)

Mr.Ashok provided the indepth knowledge on cloud computing with very interesting points which was helpful to understand what cloud computing is all about

Next Mr.Vinod ( CTO-Novatium) put forth his view points from Industry perspective

Then we had a research perspective from Mr.Venkataraghavan ( Research Scholar - Phd Programme IIT) discussing his viewpoints

Last but not least, we had invited Mr.Ramachandran N ( MD - Melsystems) to deliver his insights on cloud computing from a end user perspective.

Post the individual lecture we had a panel discussion on the topics with Q&A from the audience. Prof.Palanivelu was the moderator for the discussion.

Post the discussion - Prof.Rajeshwari presented mementos to the guests.

Overall, It was a great learning experience for all on cloud computing and its application in the future.

Regards
Rahman

Induction Program for the 7th Batch @Chennai Business School

The induction program for the batch of 2013 was kick started by Mr. Amrolia, CEO, Chennai Business School

The start of the Induction Programme saw a spirited discussion between the students and Mr. Amrolia on the current facets of the Indian Economy and the relationship and implication on the students.  The discussion witnessed a fair amount of numbers and statistics which were being related to actual scenarios, Mr. Amrolia tactfully conducted the discussion and emphasized on the fact that students must be aware of the current business scenario on a global scale.

Mr Satish Kumar, ex MD Henkel

It was 11^th of July 2012 when Mr.Satish Kumar, MD Henkel India shared with us his Success story through his failures.  His enriching and thought-provoking speech led the students to admire his career path. As a supporter of primary education to illiterate girl children, he took us through many facets of his life journey. His work experience states that he had created many market strategies for brands which in turn were lost as the competitors had grabbed his strategies before they implemented.

The discussion leads us into some forms of management including:

a)    The speed of decision making

b)    The difference in the culture of markets

c)     Effects of differences in the internal structure of the company.

Mr Sadasivam, Governing Council Member,CBS

Mr.Sadasivam, a chartered accountant with over 25 years of experience and also a member of Governing Council of Chennai Business School, addressed the gathering on 6^th day of our induction program.  He emphasized that newspapers are an important tool which aids in the learning process for students and advised us to read newspapers to enhance their knowledge and keep abreast of the on-going developments in various fields like politics, economics, science, sports or art and culture.

In addition, he spoke on various issues causing global concerns like sub-prime crisis, European Union and the unfolding Euro zone debt crisis and their impact on Global and Indian economy. He also focused on stability of market and the issues arising out of programs like NREGS and freebies and subsidiaries from the Government to the common man due to problems in implementation.

He made us realize that we should be constantly updating ourselves on issues of Global and domestic importance as many nations today are going through economic and political turbulence.

Mr. Shekar Arora, Executive Director Hr strategy at Ashok Leyland.

Armed with a Post Graduate in Personnel Management with specialization in Personnel Management and Industrial Relations, Mr. Arora joined Ashok Leyland in 1981. He has had considerable exposure to international academics and practices with more than 30 years of executive experience spanning a spectrum of industries: textile, chemical, steel and automobile. He has been contributing in areas of enhancing capabilities at both the organizational and individual levels and has introduced best practices in the area of industrial relations. He was awarded scholarship by George Warren Brown School of Social work, Washington University.

He also attended an Advanced Program in HRM at University of California, USA in the year 1996.

The session was very interactive with Mr. Shekar jotting down views expressed by students which formed the crux of his session.

He gave us an insight on how the various functions (HR, Marketing, Finance, IT) work and what impact each function has on business and emphasized on the USP of various functions.

He gave us a very detailed explanation on how a (automobile) company is started and what are the various factors and contingencies that need to be taken into account to start and later expand it. This was a very enlightening experience for us, since it gave us a look into start-ups from a very experienced person.

In short his session gave us in-depth knowledge about starting a business and the impact each function has on the success of it.

Alok Singh talks about cloud computing

Mr Alok Singh is the Chief executive Officer and Managing Director at Novatium Solutions Pvt ltd. His lecture focused on the various opportunities in the field of Information Technology and related emerging issues. He immediately struck a chord with the audience. He gave detailed insights on cloud computing. He told us about how the gadget world will simplify itself and most machines would depend on cloud. The various issues covered in the discussion were Decision Making, Emergence of new Business Models and people participating in masses. He shared his experiences as to how cloud had already made a small but significant inroads in our lives. Above all the session was intellectually enlightening.

The middle of induction program had a session with Mr Ramakrishnan, MARG properties, leading the students into the chasm of balance.The session was a discussion for following the essential way in balancing work and personal life often stressing on truth and visibility both in terms with work teams and with family teams.

The session also saw some brilliant splitting of prefixes and suffixes by Mr Ramakrishnan in the process of explaining the states that ought to be achieved if one were to focus on attaining balance in their lives.

The end of the session saw Mr Ramakrishnan giving out a meditation exercise complete, with a background soundtrack, which refreshed the students and pushed them into a promising mood for their time in CBS.

Pradipto Mohapatro, Chairman CBS

Pradipta Mohapatra, Chairman & Co-founder of Coaching Foundation India, addressed the students by kickstarting the session by comparing us with totems. Every individual’s characteristic can be related to an animal or a totem, wherein our potentials, self-analysis, intellectual personality were noticed. Through his experiences in mentoring an coaching CEOs he enriched us to know “where we are and where we want to go”. He also shared his high school memories which lead our way to perseverance. It was a knowledge-based interesting session which lasted to 120 minutes.