Salim Ghauri, President NetSol Technologies

CIO Pakistan recently had the pleasure of talking to Salim Ghauri, President of NetSol Technologies in Pakistan. The conversation shed some light on the day to day challenges that a CEO of a high profile company faces, and how challenging it really is to be at the top.

NetSol was founded 13 years ago and is a worldwide provider of global business services and enterprise application solutions. Since its inception in 1995, NetSol has used its BestShoring practices and highly experienced resources in analysis, development, quality assurance, and implementation to deliver high-quality, cost-effective solutions.

Specialized by industry, Netsol’s product and service offerings include credit and finance portfolio management systems, hospital/healthcare information management systems (HIMS), SAP consulting and services, custom development, systems integration, and technical services for the global Financial, Healthcare, Insurance, Energy, and Technology markets. NetSol’s commitment to quality is demonstrated by its achievement of the ISO 9001, ISO 27001, and SEI (Software Engineering Institute) CMMI (Capability Maturity Model) Maturity Level 5 assessments, a distinction shared by fewer than 100 companies worldwide. Read more

Big Decisions in Global Economies Staying Alive

Hello and welcome to another issue of the quarterly CEO, put together so that the chief decision makers have easy access to relevant reading and thought provoking articles.

This issue features an in depth interview with Salim Ghauri, the founder and CEO of NetSol Technologies. Salim talks about the consistency needed to stay at the top, especially at a time when the environment is uncertain and customers tend to think twice about all decisions. Salim also sheds light on how being flexible is vital in order to stay ahead of the competition.

We also take a look into the consistently changing and evolving profile of the CEO, and how it impacts the companies that these decision makers lead. Evolution is all about embracing change and striving for improvement, and that is a recurring theme in this current economic scenario. Needless to say, certain attributes will always remain the same in order for a CEO to be successful!

We are geared up for a happening month of May here at CEO with the World Telecom Day fast approaching, so keep watching this space! Well, the CIO-Bandwidth Summit ad campaign in the May issue of CIO Pakistan to be precise.

But for now, sit back and enjoy the essential CEO! As always, your comments and feedback are most important to us, and will help us better ourselves and give you the content that you want. So drop us a line, or leave a comment at our website.

Cheers!
Umair Naeem

The Stay-At-Home CEO: Maryam Nasim

When we talk about the Chief Executive Officer of an organization, regardless of the fact that it is a one-person company, we often talk the corporate talk that fits the suit. It’s the startup and the hard working, young men and women who move mountains to make that contract or sign the million dollar deal. And often while focusing on the suit, we tend to ignore a whole segment of leaders who manage their business as a natural extension of what they were meant to do.

If you look at the enrollment rate of women into engineering programs across universities in Pakistan, the numbers are actually higher than they are for men. Unfortunately we’re losing this trained, skilled HR because of several reasons. Could be societal pressures or something else, but few women make it into the workforce. And if they make it that far, even fewer make it up the hierarchy into the decision-making positions.
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Stakeholders get together for Business Policy Roundtable By Jehan Ara

I got up on Thursday morning wondering how I would get to the Sheraton (or even if I should try). But it was “our” event. How could I not go? So I got myself geared up and off I went. It took me all of 20 minutes to get to Sheraton whereas usually it takes about 45 minutes. Traffic was thin, to say the least.

I reached the hotel early to find that our partners from CIPE were already there. They had organized tea and coffee and some delicious snacks which people could have while they networked before the Roundtable actually began. We were hoping that around 30 people would show up - 45 people actually did.
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Gifts Your CEO Might Just Like

It helps to have the team leader in a good mood! Here are a few ways to boost the morale and demonstrate your commitment!

Of course if you ask, you’ll be told that the best gift to give a CEO is a sale or contract on a deal you’ve been running after. But then, everyone needs a little TLC to give them a little pick-me-up. Take it from someone who has experienced the wrath of a disgruntled boss – it isn’t fun! Here are a few pointers and tips of websites you can visit and send something to the higher powers, with the click of a button… or almost!
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Getting to the Top and Staying There

A Brave New World!
This has been a strange month and there is definitely a hint of movement in the air. With two more events under our belt, the CIO Pakistan team is getting a lot of hopeful feedback from people talking about change and progress. That’s always a good change of scenery.

Business is still slow with an economy that is still somewhat sluggish which is why we’re so excited about Salim Ghauri being on the cover of CEO Pakistan. Read more

5 Strategies That Backfire By David Taber

[CIO.COM] Your company knows that it wants a serious CRM system. But the CFO, nervous about the costs, starts to suggest strategies that could keep things under control.

Meanwhile, you know the implementation team has some ideas that go in a completely different direction.

How can you manage executive expectations that may be based on misinformation? This two-part article will cover common traps that you should avoid, followed by advice on the best ways to save some real money. Although the article focuses on Salesforce.com, nearly all of the advice applies to any modern SaaS CRM or SFA system.

Bad Strategy #1: Believe the Illusion of Forever In your computer science studies, the focus was on building industrial strength systems that would stand the test of time. This perspective is totally inappropriate for a CRM system and leads to a series of progressively expensive mistakes.

The reason: the business requirements for a CRM system are likely to change so radically over time that the system design life will be less than 5 years. In some industries, the tenure of a VP of Sales or a CMO is only 18 months, and even a CEO change is likely every few years. With each new leadership change will come shifts in market strategy, sales tactics, and product line emphasis. New regulations come into play, and new partnerships become important (or not).

Everything you “designed in” the system at the outset is likely to become irrelevant or counterproductive years later. Even if you were to stay with the same CRM platform over time, there are good reasons to re-implement the system from scratch after 5 years.

This short design life means you need to get the business payoff out of the system quickly. The payback for the investment should be less than 18 months in most cases-and any benefits projected beyond 5 years should be discounted almost entirely.

Of course, you don’t want to have a throw-away system that is too fragile to survive the inevitable revisions. But it’s a big mistake to over-engineer your CRM system, the scope of data to be imported, and the range of external system integrations. Perfectionism doesn’t pay.

Bad Strategy #2: Too Many Goals When you’re an IT pro selling the organization on the need for the potential benefits of a CRM system, it’s easy to fall into the trap of “happy ears.” Everyone hears what they want to, and the expectations for the system ratchet skyward. Even if you could delver on all the individual expectations, the total cost of the project will be laden with waste.

The problem here is a cacophony of goals-unprioritized, politicized, often contradictory or even impossible-that leads to a project that is ill-defined and hard to execute. Expensive areas of the project aren’t well enough defined in terms of business process or business champion, so the project team flounders. Other areas of the project may not be well enough defined in terms of the economic payoff, so there’s nothing in the numerator of the benefit-to-cost ratio.

Better to have a very small number of goals for the system, each with a clear owner, metric of success, and deadline. Every goal should be prioritized, with no ties. After you’ve registered some quick wins that demonstrate results and get users committed to the system, add the next one or two goals as you build the system out incrementally.

Bad Strategy #3: Wrong Yardstick When evaluating CRM system success and progress, it’s all too common to measure the wrong factors, or measure the wrong way.

At the project level, progress shouldn’t be judged by how much system functionality you deploy. The system features by themselves are an empty shell with no business value. Instead, you should be measuring the value of the data asset that the system contains. What proportion of your current business is represented there, and how often are users accessing the customer relationship information? The first order of business is user adoption: how quickly and deeply are they using the system? The second order of business is the value of the orders flowing through the system per month.

At a more fundamental level, make sure that the success metrics you’re using are clear, coherent, and agreed to on all sides. Watch out for the Great Expectations problem described above-it gives you a set of metrics that are confused, ambiguous, or working at cross-purposes.

Bad Strategy #4: Build Rome in a Day The story is as old as the computer industry itself. Fred Brooks’ classic The Mythical Man Month described how the larger the systems project, the more likely it was to be late and over budget. The complete-system launch, sometimes called a Big Bang project, just doesn’t work very well for software. The warning signs of Big-Bang thinking include: Infrequent project milestones; large, complex, monolithic project deliverables; little consideration of political or change-management issues; fake, vague, or overstated requirements, particularly for scope of system integration or historical data; scope creep.

Better to deliver incrementally, deploying something of value to the business at least once a quarter. This results in support from both the grass roots and the executive champion, so you can win the vote of confidence for the next increment of system expansion budget.

Bad Strategy #5: Focus on Costs, Not Business Impact It’s easy to focus on cost, because there are fairly clear data and familiar tools for analysis. When you do the cost analysis, focus on TCO (initial cost, particularly for SaaS CRM, is completely misleading). As mentioned above, this cost analysis should look at a 3 to 5 year time horizon: anything longer is unrealistic, and anything shorter is foolish.

But cost analysis should only be done to ensure the proper budgetary allocation, not drive the system scoping decision. The business results of doing a proper CRM system should totally trump costs (they’d better!). The goal of your CRM system should be to raise the profitability of revenues: Lowering the cost of customer acquisition, increasing customer lifetime value, and reducing waste in sales, marketing, support, and service delivery.

These business results may be tough predict, but you should have a model of the kinds of improvements you’re shooting for, by answering questions such as:

1. How much more revenue could you realistically get if you could close the trickiest 1 percent of customer deals?

2. What would be the impact of shortening the sales cycle by one week?

3. What would it mean to the bottom line if marketing could divert 10 percent of its programs from people who aren’t likely to buy and instead spend on people who were more likely to buy?

4. What would it mean for customer support costs if you could handle each customer issue with one less phone call?

Focusing on this type of business benefit helps prioritize your requirements, understand the business drivers, and avoid “requirements” with a questionable payoff.

After this list of “don’ts,” in the second part of this article we’ll be going into five strategies that will lower the costs of implementation and long run operation for your CRM system. For more details on how to do the business case for a CRM system, scope the project, and run the implementation teams, check out chapters 1 through 5 of “Salesforce.com Secrets of Success.”

David Taber is the author of the new Prentice Hall book, ” Salesforce.com Secrets of Success” and is the CEO of SalesLogistix, a certified Salesforce.com consultancy focused on business process improvement through use of CRM systems. SalesLogistix clients are in North America, Europe, Israel, and India, and David has over 25 years experience in high tech, including 10 years at the VP level or above.

Satyam’s Loss is Pakistan’s Gain?

In the wake of the recent fall from grace of Indian based Satyam Computer Services, there is without a doubt a gap that has been created for all of Satyam’s clients. This gap creates an unstable future for all the companies who had looked to the giant for continued business support through various services that were outsource to them. Is this uncertainty a potential boon for Pakistan based IT companies?

Salim Ghauri, Chairman and President of NetSol Technologies, most adamantly voiced the sentiment in a recent IT Policy meet-up. “This is an opportunity for us to capitalize on all of the jobs that were with Satyam,” he said. “By leveraging our resources, we can certainly open up the door for Pakistani companies,” he continued. In the case of Satyam, the Indian Government has taken over the business, and an apparent shift of Satyam clients has happened to other Indian based companies. Salim remains convinced that the Indian Government can’t run Satyam, and hence the opportunity for Pakistan.

To question remains though, with 5000 – 10,000 Call center seats in Pakistan, we are but a small market compared to India. This fact was voiced by the participants in the said meet-up, but according to Salim, this very fact should be able to bring us together. “Even if we get 2% of India’s business, imagine the boom we could have,” he said. “The key is to take this opportunity,” he urged.

Although potentially true, the fact that Pakistan is a smaller market, creates the question of trust and stability for potential clients. As things stand, Pakistan is not a natural replacement market after India, and there would be few clients who would be waiting to go to Pakistan with their business. As the participants pointed out, Satyam’s loss might be a few companies’ gain, but not the Pakistani IT market’s gain as a whole. What then, can the solution be?

‘Synergy’ is a term that describes the collective being greater than the sum of the individuals, and that is exactly how the Pakistan IT Sector needs to position itself. The question of a collective long term strategy which encompasses the entire IT sector of the country, and culminates in a synergetic relationship where smaller IT firms can benefit by leveraging larger IT firms to gain business, was a proposition that was put forward by the participants in the forum, who included Jehan Ara, President of PASHA and Awab Alwi (AKA Teeth Maestro). Until companies and consortiums are unable to collaborate and pitch for projects as larger units, the small window of opportunity now, will close quickly.

The potential for consortiums and forums was also touched upon, but the onus needs to be on moving towards execution rather than discussion. The problems and the limitations of our sector is something that everyone is aware, but to work together in a way to minimize the limitations and gain the trust of a global clientele to get more business is something that needs to be seriously worked towards. As one participant pointed out when asked about the quality of service that Pakistan can provide: “We are not there, but can certainly get there.” There is no doubting the potential that exists in the country, but the key has to be to work towards delivering the promise rather than simply talking about it.

Industry Outlook: Zahid Mahmood

Industry Outlook: Zahid Mahmood, Country Sales Manager, Pakistan for Acer Computers Middle East

The global financial crisis has had its impact on all industries, and hardware multinationals have certainly not been exempt. If anything, such companies can potentially be even more severely hit as they are viewed as a major cost investment during any solution. But the fact of the matter is this: any business that relies on a large network of channel partners and distributors can potentially be effective in enabling hundreds of job opportunities. And there’s more – you need hardware in order to be able to enable businesses to run. It wouldn’t be far from the mark claim that hardware has become part of the economic fabric that empowers people.
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The CEO and the Layoff Decision By Umair Naeem

It’s something that’s been in the financial climate ever since the global recession began to entrench itself back in November 2007. A rollercoaster 2008, which saw unstable commodity and oil prices, coupled with devaluing currency and rising inflation, has done little to move away company decision makers and strategists from looking towards layoffs as a means of stabilizing their company’s future.
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