The ethical Path

Another GMAT essay.. 

When you are faced with a decision, often you face choices where you are not sure which one of them is lesser evil. You stand at a crossroads of following your conscience and being ethical or being dishonest for personal gains and treading the path which you know is wrong.

I was faced with such a situation during the inter college table tennis championship where I captained the team to the championship victory. The championship however was achieved only making a tough decision that challenged my ethics.

Our team had reached the quarter- finals and we needed to win the next match by a huge margin to be able to face the weaker team in the semi-finals. However the player who had to play the match got injured and being captain, I had to choose the player to play the match. The first thing that crossed mind was to play myself or choose one of the players close to me. It would have made me look good as well improved my chances of making to the State level table tennis team. However I decided that this would be ethically wrong. The interest of the team was before my self interest and I had to set examples for others and our team had better players who could help us win with a greater margin.  Finally after brainstorming and discussions with the whole team, I chose the best player in the team. As expected our team won by a huge margin. There were a lot of positives that I achieved by taking the righteous path. My team’s confidence in me saw a drastic jump and we went on to become the champions. Though not selected for the state team, I was made captain of the next tournament as well.

My one decision could have affected the entire team’s reputation. Such situations make you realize the importance of including the team in making important decisions. I understood that important decisions should always be made using the consent of everyone who is being affected by it. Considering everyone’s opinion helped me reach a conclusion and take a decisive action. With different minds working on the same problem, there was a possibility that the team might have chosen me. In such a case I would have played the game with confidence of the team backing me without facing the ethical dilemma.

That day, I learned important lessons of life and I am proud of the decision I made whose consequences I can still experience. Even today my professors and my team members commend me for my decision and have trust in me. Personally I learned that being dishonest might bring to you short term gains; it is the ethical path which keeps you in the lead in the long run. A difficult ethical path leads to freedom. The guilt of a wrong choice can imprison you for your whole life, I chose to be free.

Significant Event

A Part of GMAT essays for Boston University

In any field in life one of the most difficult things to do is to bring about a change. It is human nature to resist change and same was the case with my family who were shocked with my decision to pursue Bachelor of Technology after I finished class XII. Essentially, I had the option to either take up Engineering and follow my dreams or take up Bachelor of Arts and take the commonly followed way. It was a difficult decision as it greatly affected how my career would shape in the years to come. Taking the wrong decision would have meant that I spend years in wilderness searching for my identity.

One reason that made the decision more difficult was people’s opinions. Not surprisingly, most of them advised me to follow the “proven” path as was followed by my sisters before and was an easy thing to do. It was difficult to go against the family decisions and follow my dreams. Of course, the advices offered were sincere and meant to help me, but it made me difficult to follow my heart. While I was open to people’s advice, finally I decided to follow my heart. To do that, first I tuned out the outside noise which just contributed more to the already existing dilemma.

I decided to follow my heart and pursue my passion. In cases where different passions conflict with each other and make it difficult to reach a decision, we should go where our passions unify. This lesson helped me make my decision. By pursuing my dream, I was able to go into the technical depth and explore new avenues, while if I would have chosen the other option, I might not have been able to make use of my technical and analytical abilities. I have learnt that if you do something which you like no one can stop you from excelling in the field. 

People who dare to take risk and be different are those who change the world. They are the ones who make history. There is always the fear of the unknown, and it’s not easy to overcome it. I did not want to take up something just to meet other people’s expectations. The situation demanded me to take risk, be different and prove my worth. Sometimes the events in our life give us an opportunity to follow our dreams. I had the percentage and the school curriculum which gave me the extra edge to get admitted to a good Engineering college. I had the opportunity to make a change in my life, and I seized it.

After struggling for some time, I finally made the decision: I took the risk and pursued my dream. It was a difficult decision, but I learned a great deal about making such decisions in life. Following the path never tread before and doing so against your family wishes was a big step I took, but I proved my worth and passed Engineering with flying colours.

Strategies to penetrate the Medical Device Industry in India

Abbott Healthcare is a leading provider of medical devices for interventional cardiology. Its major competitors in the field are Johnson & Johnson, Medtronic and Boston Scientific with the 4 companies capturing about 60% of the market.

With the expansion of the hospital industry and increased competition in the medical industry, the purchase decisions shifted from the doctors to the hospital administration. The final decision makers considered cost and quality as the major factors to make their decisions. Abbott has till now focused on building relationship with the doctors. With the recent changes Abbott realized the need to concentrate on the administration staff and gain their confidence. The strategies of its other competitors being; Johnson & Johnson focuses on building relationship with the doctors while Medtronic and Boston Scientific focus on nurturing their relationship with the distributors who supply their products to the hospitals.

With increase in government taxes and stringent rules on product quality through TRAI, these companies faced huge increase in their operating costs leading to a reduction in the margins. Thus, cost became a major factor while selling any medical product to the hospitals. Companies are thus aiming for such activities and programs which can help build company trust with the hospital and capture the market.

The research project aims to focus on the above issues namely understand the purchase process of hospitals to understand its target audience and build relationship with them. Secondly, being a highly competitive market each product has a substitute with equivalent quality and reduced cost, thus to survive in this market, Abbott needs additional programs and services which are valued by the hospitals and its administration. Impact of administration and doctors on driving the purchase and usage of newer medical devices. Identify bottlenecks and factors that drive the purchase decisions

An exploratory research is conducted to understand the above facts from the hospital purchase department and the catheterization lab doctors and technicians. This involved a face to face interaction with the sample from hospitals across Delhi/NCR, Chennai, Bangalore, Hyderabad and Mumbai. The sample consisted of all the hospital purchase managers and head technicians across 52 hospitals.

The results conclude that a standardized purchase process is followed across all hospitals. Doctors still play an important role in recommending the right quality product but their decision is both questioned and verified by the administration and top management. Thus, the autonomy of doctors has reduced. Secondly, the activities most valued by hospital administration are training programs and seminars of product launches and latest technology in the market to the hospital staff including doctors, nurses and technicians. They also value funds received for sponsoring poor patients and other hospital programs.

Next step would be to complete the interviews across all the cities and compile the data gathered from the various hospitals to come out with a strategic plan for Abbott on how to build relationship with the hospital purchase decision makers and the key activities to be performed as the first step towards this plan.

Our way to success

You must have heard many people say things like “failures are a part of life and its the one who stands up again is the winner”, “never give in”, “failures are stepping stones to success”, the story of the spider, etc. Excellent suggestions but these things are easier said than done. Life at MDI has taught me the practicality of these sayings.

Started with the Mahindra War Room, all excited and charged up to crack the first competition that we have registered for, we started the work but the excitement died down within 2 weeks. All of us in the team were back to our usual schedule and the thought of the War Room was long lost. We never submitted our entry.

Second came the Avalon case study, this time we did submit our presentation. The idea however (what we thought) lacked in depth investigation and clarity. We did not stand a chance and as predicted we were not selected for the next round.

The breakthrough however came in the form of KPMG International Case study competition. Worked hard for the first elimination round and got selected to present ourselves before the KPMG panellists.4 teams selected for the 2nd round were given a case study to solve in 3 hours which had to be later presented before the KPMG judges. We were well prepared but we did not clear the round, however we learned several things which I can definitely say are the stepping stones for our success. Firstly, the importance of delegation and team work when you have to deliver in a limited time. Secondly, be clear of whatever you are presenting: one idea can define your destiny. Thirdly, telling WHAT to do is easy but it is HOW you plan to do it which is more important (this has become our motto for all future analysis!). The rejection was a setback and it definitely is difficult to accept failures and move on but we did and we actually never lost hope!

Next came Avaya, our first move towards success. We have not looked back thereafter. We were the second runners up and climbing the ladder of success, we stood first runners up in our next competition organized by Schneider (GoGreenInTheCity).

The climb up the ladder has been slow but it has made us learn the best we could in our MBA life. Analysing a problem from all angles and providing the most optimum solution keeping into consideration all the company stakeholders is a very important aspect of any study. Next comes the competitor analysis. Thus, starting from ground zero we have come a long way.

Targeting our next competitions, we are sure to bag the winner’s title this time!!

Fusion: AOL-TW

America Online - Time Warner was and is the largest merger in the American business history. It is, however, also believed to be the biggest mistake in the corporate history by Time Warner chief Jeff Bewkes. I have written the below article as part of the Strategist Club at MDI trying to identify the basic facts of the deal.

	AOL	TW
Products	online software suite called AOL, Internet service provider, AOL video, AOL local, AOL News, etc and other AOL security services	New Line Cinema, Time Inc., HBO, Turner Broadcasting System, TheWB.com, Warner Bros., Cartoon Network, Boomerang, CNN, DC Comics, Hanna-Barbera, Cartoon Network Studios and Castle Rock Entertainment.
Features	American global Internet services and media company headquartered at New York. At its prime, AOL's membership was over 30 million members worldwide.	One of the world's largest media companies, headquartered at New York city. Formerly two separate companies, Warner Communications, Inc. and Time Inc., (along with the assets of Turner Broadcasting System, Inc.) form the current Time Warner, with major operations in film, television and publishing.
Recent Happenings	The company’s revenue dropped 26% YoY in 2010 Q4.  AOL’s subscription revenues for the quarter also showed a 23% decline in subscribers YoY.It also acquired two companies in Q4 2010, Pictela and About.me, for an aggregate amount of $31.4 million.	In 2010 post spin off,Time Warner's Latin American division bought Chilean nationwide terrestrial television station Chilevisión. Time Warner already operates in the country with CNN Chile.
Why Deal	Time Warner would reach deep into the homes of tens of millions of new customers of AOL.	AOL would use Time Warner's high-speed cable lines to deliver to its subscribers Time Warner's branded magazines, books, music, and movies creating 130 million subscription relationships.

Valuation: AOL purchased Time Warner for US$164 billion. The terms of the deal called for AOL shareholders to own 55% of the new combined company.

Regulatory Approvals: Federal Trade Commission, Federal Communications Commission, and European Commission.

Outcome:The merger was not fruitful and the growth and profitability of the AOL division stalled due to advertising and subscriber slowdowns in part caused by the burst of the dot-com bubble and the economic recession after September 2001. The value of the America Online division dropped significantly. The total value of AOL stock went from $226 billion to about $20 billion. Its customer base also decreased to 10.1 million subscribers as of November 2007 and to 4.4 million by 2009.

Lack of synergies between AOL and the other Time Warner were also a cause of the demerger. Most Time Warner divisions were independent fiefs who were uncooperative in the merger deals.

In 2009, AOL announced that it wouldspin off Time Warner into a separate public companyending the eight year relationship between the two companies.

Role of Digital Channel in the changing Insurance marketplace in India

I worked on a live project with Pricewaterhouse Coopers on the Role of Digital Channel in the changing Insurance marketplace in India. Below is my submission for the initial participant selection.


Insurance is a US $60.5 billion market with CAGR of over 25%. Considering this with the fact that Insurance penetration in India ranks outside the top 100 nations and is lowest amongst the BRIC nations, no wonder there has been a huge entry of private players with 12 licenses issued since 2009, 8 in the life insurance sector and 4 in the non-life insurance sector.

This leaves a lot of potential for growth in the Insurance sector in the Indian market:

• Although Life Insurance Penetration (4%) is close to World average (4.4%), General insurance business (0.6%) yet to be penetrated as world average is 5 times higher (3.1%) 
• Economic growth in country is leading to increase in income levels which would propel life insurance growth. 
• Almost 50% of Indian population is below 25 years of age. 
• India’s growing middle class is a target of several international insurance players 

Widespread digital channel penetration in India provides an irreplaceable medium to connect and communicate. India ranks 4th in terms of internet users and 2nd in terms of mobile phone users in the world. Also the target middle class consumer is fairly active on such forums.

Role of Digital Channel in the changing Insurance marketplace in India

Mobile:

• Regular SMS service for educating consumers, offering new schemes and discounts about the benefits of Insurance; the service should be valuable for the users so that they are motivated to opt-in.
• GPRS games to create consumer awareness about the Insurance products and their benefits. Each game will have an insurance service attached to it.
• Tie ups with service providers to provide Value Added Services and increase penetration
• Provision of latest updates on insurance marketplace in regional languages through Value Added Services of service providers in the area. People can be made aware of new trends of insuring Events like IPL, movies and terror damages
• Provision of Mobile banking for premium payments, quick provision of the insurance approval and claim

Internet

• Develop micro-sites for involvement with consumers.
• Develop socially intriguing promotions which have the potential to go viral on sites like Facebook, YouTube, etc.
• Discussion forum on sites where people can participate and air their views.
• Creation of groups specific to insurance marketplace and initiating discussions on it.
• Advertise using Adwords on the search engines over Internet; use flash and interactive ads targeting different user groups; advertise on social media sites like Facebook and Twitter.

E-Governance: Issues and Challenges in India

I have taken up E-Governance as a Course of Independent Study and have been studying the various projects being undertaken by the Government of India under NeGP (National E-Governance Plan) along with evaluation of the impact assessment parameters for these projects. I am also working on a paper elaborating the issues and challenges being faced by the E-Governance initiatives in India. Below is an abstract for the paper.

 “E-Governnce: Issues and Challenges in India”

The E-Governance implementation and acceptance has achieved tremendous growth since its inception in India. Several E-Governance projects have been initiated globally across countries and have been successful in introducing transparency within the system. India however has still not been able to get the due benefits of its E-governance projects even though a huge amount of investment has been done in this direction. There still exist several roadblocks to the successful execution of these projects. The paper will primarily focus on the various issues and challenges being faced by the E-Governance projects in the Indian perspective. The issues will include challenges like E-Governance projects planning, government process re-engineering, security issues, usage of emerging technologies, project evaluation and funding issues. The existing structures, processes and regulations of the Indian system have a strong effect on a project’s success. A fundamental change to the model is difficult and unacceptable across the Indian bureaucracy. Also, the integration of new technologies with the “legacy” system is another important issue impacting the E-Governance success in India. Through this paper I am trying to identify the various obstacles to the success of these projects and what can be done to tackle these issues for the common good. Leadership failures across the diversified Indian geography and lack of co-ordination between the government machinery hold back the benefits of E-Governance projects. As per studies, only 15% of E-Governance projects implemented in developing countries are a success. In India, this percentage is further low. E-Bhoomi is an example of such project which had great prospects of building transparency and improving the lives of the people but faced initial complications because of several issues related to effective planning and implementation. The project was an attempt to computerize the Records of Rights Tenancy & Crops for the Indian farmers. The implementation however was affected due to two factors; firstly fraudulent land records went online and secondly the kiosks were located at places which implied additional costs in terms of time and money for the farmer. Thus, though a good initiative, it did not meet initial success because of negligence on the part of the authorities. There are several examples of successful E-Governance projects in India like Gyandoot, Lokmitra, MCA21, etc but each suffers the impact of corruption, neglect, illiteracy, infrastructure and inaccessibility amongst the various other factors which are inherent part of India. Through this paper I will try to unfold the various E-Governance projects in India which have not been able to meet their objectives, the issues and challenges faced by them in the various stages of the project and the action that can be taken to improve the success rate of these projects.

White Paper: Transactional Replication

I had written the below paper as a solution to a problem faced during SQL 2000 issue analysis at Microsoft. This white paper will help provide real time data availability to the users by skipping the large transaction which is blocking subsequent replication transactions and thus adding to the data latency. Below is a part of the paper, detailed solution is posted in the Microsoft internal website.

 

Introduction

Replication is a set of technologies for copying and distributing data and database objects from one database to another and then synchronizing between databases for consistency.

This white paper discusses about the Transactional Replication. Merge and Snapshot replication are not in scope of this white paper.

With transactional replication, an initial snapshot of data is applied at Subscribers, and then when data modifications are made at the Publisher, the individual transactions are captured and propagated to Subscribers. A minimum of three server roles are required for transactional replication:

• Publisher, hosting the publication database 
• Distributor, hosting the distribution database 
• Subscriber, hosting the subscription database 

For in depth details please refer URL:http://blogs.msdn.com/chrissk/archive/2009/05/25/transactional-replication-conversations.aspx

CRMPublish Case Study:

CRMPublish Overview
CRMPublish is a subscriber (replicated database) of the CRM Ecosystem and is a data source for ~120 downstream applications. There are almost 162 objects which are being replicated from the CRM Ecosystem into the CRMPublish DB.

Large Number of Commands in a Single Transaction
In a transactional replication, it is expected to have near real time data availability in the Subscriber database. If there is a delay in replicating the data on the subscriber, we call it as replication latency. There are multiple causes for latency and one of them is due to the large number of commands in a single transaction.

We experienced a similar issue in our application CRM Publish. Following were the observations during the incident:

• The replication slowed down on CRM Publish increasing the latency.
• A single transaction with 6.2 Million commands resulted in the issue.
• The transaction was introduced into the publisher through a bulk upload. 
• Adding to the above transaction, the replication from Distributor to Subscriber further slowed down due to the subsequent transactions flowing from the publisher and getting piled up on the distributor. 

During the event, the replication monitor showed as “Delivering Replicated Transactions”(see below). It continued to display this message until the commands within the transactions are delivered.

If the commands are more than a million and is followed by subsequent large number of commands pending to be replicated and is adding to huge latency, you may opt for the below to avoid latency.

One of the ways to surmount this problem is:
Skipping a LSN – which means skipping the transaction having large number of commands and later applying the skipped data contained in the LSN manually over the Subscriber. This is applicable to one way transactional replication


Skipping a LSN (XACT_SEQNO) or a Transaction in a replication environment

This section presents the steps and code required to skip a single transaction. STEP 1 is specific for the transaction with large number of commands but in all cases involving a transaction skip, first we need to identify the transaction which has to be skipped (STEP 1) and then check if the transaction is currently being replicated (STEP 2).

This paper talks about a single transaction having large number of commands. There could be multiple such transactions having large number of commands and it does not describe about this scenario.

STEP 1: Identify the LSN which has large number of commands

STEP 2: Check if the above noted LSN (XACT_SEQNO) is the same as being currently replicated in Subscriber

STEP 3: To find article(s) involved in the large single transaction under replication

STEP 4: To skip the transaction from replication
a) Skip the transaction
b) Skip a table from the transaction

STEP 5: Apply the Data on the Subscriber database

STEP 6: Restart the Distribution Agent job

STEP 7: To confirm if the transaction has been skipped


Conclusion
This whitepaper shows how a replication transaction with huge number of commands can be skipped from being replicated.

We may decide to skip the transaction because of the following reasons:

1. The transaction takes a long time to commit increasing the replication latency.
2. Other transactions are waiting in the queue for the completion of this batch of transaction. This increases the load on the server further slowing down the server performance.
3. If the transaction rolls back before committing the complete batch of commands, it will restart the process of replication. This will lead to phenomenal increase in the data latency.

GoGreenInTheCity

The day had come when the efforts of all 50 of us since the past 6 months would be realized. I had never thought that a simple thought can be built into a complete business solution for a world leader in active energy management solutions, Schneider Electric.

It started in January, 2011; we received a mail for GoGreenInTheCity by Schneider Electric, another case study competition though with a difference. This time we had to give our own idea of how to conserve or preserve energy in our city. Such competitions have usually excited us and the incentive was too much to be ignored (the winners get a world tour). I think many people thought on the same lines as the 2 of us because more than 500 teams participated in the competition globally.

It was the most difficult to clear the first round with the amount of competition and with the best brains in the world. We sent our submission and named it “Green Walk”. The idea clicked; we were amongst the top 100 from the world to be selected. The feeling changed from a shock to happiness to excitement to exhilaration. We had always worked hard for any competition we had put our hands on; it finally bore fruit.

The stakes were high in round 2 but we also had a better chance of getting to round 3 with 25 teams from 100 to be selected. Our team was assigned a mentor from Schneider Electric, France office who later commented, “I had always been excited to listen to what you would have done next. I always looked forward to our weekly meetings and you always did more than what I expected.” She was the best mentor we would have ever got and the prime reason for giving a structure to our thoughts. Our 2^nd round submission was a 800 word document on the idea we had submitted in the 1^st round. We prepared this in the form of a story and the title read “The GreenWalk Journey”.

Our simplicity and creativity (as commented by our mentor) clicked yet again and we cleared round 2. It was time to pack our bags for PARIS!!! It was the best that could have happened to us and our preparations for 3^rd round couldn’t be less. It was big and coming this far we had to crack it now! We now had 2 mentors, one from France and the other from China. With their help we further built our idea taking into account the drawbacks and the strengths of our product, the different stakeholders involved, product competition, its benefit to the society and amount of energy generation through the product. We submitted our 15 minute presentation incorporating the details.

We arrived in Paris and the show started. Our presentations were scheduled on 23^rd June, 2011. The judges were impressed and we were able to answer all their questions. They liked our presentation and the detailed work that we had done. The afternoon attraction was the t-shirts we had designed and worn for the GreenWalk launch. There were clapping in the room when we presented them our t-shirts. It was overall a satisfactory presentation and the rest of the day went in networking with the other 48 event finalists.

24^th June, 2011: the day when the winners had to be announced. It started with internship interviews followed by workshops while we became more and more excited for the evening results. They started with announcing the winners and the first name was “The GreenWalk Journey”; we were announced the competition runners up. It was the best moment ever, congratulations poured in from all sides followed by an interview and photoshoot. Visiting Paris was a memorable journey in itself and the runners up position was like an icing on the cake. I will never forget the 6 months that we were on this project and the unforgettable experience in Paris. The competitions are still on and hopefully the trend continues!