DQ Snippets: Learning Business Ethics

Bearing the Rough Weather

Will the various e-governance projects, either under deployment or in the pipeline, not be able to take an advantage of the cloud technology? Some vendors are saying that large projects, which started with an IT infrastructure from a single vendor or a team of mutually collaborating vendors that subsequently moved to different vendors (thanks to the L1 tender system), now find themselves with disparate hardware. And moving it to the cloud model is proving to be tough. Apparently, Aadhaar is running into some rough weather because of this.

Vyapar Nahi Vyavahar



Tally, a leading financial accounting cum ERP software company, is on a different trip these days. In a nationwide whirlwind of workshops called Mathematics of Happiness, its top bosses are meeting about 15,000 partners, and telling them that their aim in life should be Vyavahar (conduct) and not Vyapar (business). Apparently, it is this unexpected theme that is drawing partners in hordes. The end objective of this workshop might be to train partners how to win the hearts and minds of customers, but it is good to see a philosophical approach rather than a materialistic approach being followed even in the tough times.

A Bad Joke?

At a recent conference on 3Gservicesand what the industry needs to do to get it going (we are still at 16 mn 3G active users after 2 years of its launch), one expert offered a simple solution: Stop all 2G services, and the users will automatically be forced to move to 3G. He cited the Korean example to support his case. One conference attendee, in a lighter vein, remarked that perhaps the Supreme Court could come out with another order canceling all the remaining 2G licenses. At a time when the telecom industry has still not recovered from the shocking SC order canceling 122 2G licenses, I am not sure if this humor was appreciated.

Trust Deficit

A leading hardware vendor has set up a team of telecallers to check if their channel partners are taking them for a ride. Thanks to some smart channel partners who manage to get special pricing from the principal by claiming that the customer wants 10 machinesa large order. Ironically, they actually sell these machines at a retail price and make more margins. To curb this, the principals telecallers call up the end-customer to check if they have actually placed an order for 10 machines. IT industry is surely keeping pace with the politicians when it comes to trust.