The Amazon of India?

Ever since I started e-shopping, like most out there, Amazon.com was my default choice. They are way ahead of the competition in brining innovative ways of shopping experience for the customers. Having used Amazon.com while in US, I was thinking that they have a similar global reach. In US, they ship most of the articles without any shipping and handling fee. I was in doubt about their plans for international shipping strategy before I set out to order right from India. I was ready to pay up for a minimal S&H fee for the International Shipping and of course, I was ready to wait and let Amazon take their sweat time dispatching the product. Unfortunately, I realized that the S&H cost was much higher than the article itself that I was planning to order.

That is when I googled for the same product with "India" suffix and the first hit was http://www.fabmall.com/. I had an experience with fabmall in the past trying to order a house hold appliance from US destined for delivery in India. That was, by far, one of the worst online shopping experience I ever had. Even after collecting the payment, they took about 2 months before they delivered the product. And, for the worst part, they shipped an alternate model than the one I ordered citing reason that thye ran out of stock of the previous item. Okay, enough to have them black-listed in my list of shopping sites.


However, I recently checked out their service again. I had to order for a book urgently and they seemed to be the only store carrying it. And the experience was not bad. They shipped the item on time. Unfortunately, this time their courier service failed to deliver the product on time. I logged a compliant with fabmall, and at the same time tried to get in touch with the local courier agency. The courier folks finally made it to deliver, of course after a delay. By then, fabmall shipped a replacement for the item lost in transit. I was embarrassed and acknowledged them that I already received the order. Then comes the final twist! They shipped the replacement order after a month and asked me to accept the replacement and ship back the original. The ultimate climax! Of course, they charge you for S&H (I paid Rs.25 for a book that costs Rs. 500/-)


Following are certain other sites out there are that you may want to check out!
http://www.ndtvshopping.com/
http://www.futurebazaar.com/
http://shopping.indiatimes.com/

For Books, you may want to check out the following.
http://books.rediff.com/
http://www.firstandsecond.com/
http://www.booksatbahri.com/
http://gobookshopping.com/
http://www.kithabay.com
http://www.bookshopofindia.com/


Rediff books ste is pretty responsive and they offers most of the latest books on print. Some of these sites claim that they have free S&H service. So, whom do you think is poised to become the Amazon.com of India?

Why they say Bigger Projects always fail...

http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/chi-0612170278dec17,0,61792.story?track=rss ...just a perfect example of why they say bigger projects have one sure fate; "to fail" more often than not. interestingly, this could be a perfect case study for anyone in the industry; just enough failures to keep every discipline get a handful of learnings...software version control or change control failure, absence of a technology assessment board, lack of agility in process, One-shot approach..let me explain some of them in little more detail:

Absence of a Technology Assessment Board
As per the best practice, every organization should maintain an approved "Technology Stack" at the enterprise level. The "approved technology Stack" contains the list of softwares (or hardwares may be) and their "Version Numbers" that can be used by any projects going on in the firm. Any entity in the organization, be it an SBU (Strategic Business Unit), suppliers in the extended enterpise, partners who associate with the project or any individuals or contractors should adhere to the compliance standards of this stack. Having established a stack, the owner of the stack should be resposible for scheduling a periodic audit or review of the project to ensure the compliance.

Lack of Agility

If turbulence and turmoil define the problem, then agility is key to the solution http://www.awprofessional.com/articles/article.asp?p=25930&rl=1 . Agility is a hot word in IT these days. However, it is a must and can be very easily deployed in such a "Jumbo" project like that of A380. Just look at the number of problems this approach could have solved for Airbus. The "progressive elaboration" can only go in perfect blend with a phase-wise approach.

Theory of Constraints

Theory of constraints (TOC) is an overall management philosophy that aims to continually achieve more of the goal of a system. If that system is a for-profit business, then the goal becomes one of making more money, in the present as well as in the future http://www.goldratt.com/. The bigger the project gets higher the need for following the fundamentals.

Using the Right Software

Most OEM has a tendancy to have a "lock-in" to a particular software vendor. This is attributed to the fact that their engineers and analysts are comfortable using this software having used the same for long. However, it is not just the efficieny that matters here. OEMs have to keep re-evaluating their technology stacks at regular intervals for the emerging technologies and softwares in the industry that makes them more efective. One classic example for a revolutionary product in the Virtual Product Development industry is "SimEnterprise" suite from MSC Software http://www.mscsoftware.com/products/?Q=131