Don’t Throw The Baby Out With The Bathwater

Many people have reacted vehemently against the government’s move to regulate the creation, distribution and usage of Indian maps under the proposed Geospatial Information Regulation bill. Some have even insinuated that the move is a veiled threat to police Google Maps and amounts to “throwing out the baby with the bathwater”. I don’t know whether … Read more

Introducing “Multiply UI” To Reduce Churn Caused By Software’s 95% Problem

In The IT Industry’s 95% Problem, Gartner Research VP Brian Prentice notes that an average user of a software uses only 5% of the product’s features. In other words, 95% of the features in a software create no value for the overall customer audience. While you could quibble about the exact percentages, no one will deny that … Read more

Why Do Software Companies Outsource Product Management?

The typical tech startup’s backstory goes as follows: Founders observe a problem in the real world, find a way to use technology to solve the problem, and build a product around the technology. According to common wisdom, product management is the foundation of any startup. Sales, marketing, HR, finance and other functions can come in … Read more

Perils Of Blind Retargeting

Since the time I published Retargeted Ads or Retarded Ads, I’ve come across many more retargeted ads exhibiting retarded behavior. Take for example the ones from Cleartrip. Well after I’d booked my tickets on its portal, I kept seeing its retargeted ads. I hinted to the OTA that it could try setting frequency caps on … Read more

Scoping Can Make Or Break A Deal

Whenever they’re asked to sweeten a deal, most vendors respond with a discount. They don’t have to. In Five Ways To Sweeten A Deal – Apart From Discount, we gave several alternative tactics for sweetening a deal without dropping the price. We illustrated some of them with our interactions with the following vendors: Acme Accounting: … Read more

How To Really Kill Cash

They said cash is costly. It didn’t work with merchants. They launched one mobile wallet after the other to drive cashless behavior. It didn’t work with consumers. They scared people away from currency notes, claiming they contain all kinds of germs, bacteria and viruses. It didn’t work with anyone. Today: 85% of world’s transactions happen … Read more

How Banks Can Boost Branch Sales

In his blog post titled The Power of Location-Based Offers in Financial Services, Jim Marous, Co-Publisher of The Financial Brand, highlights how banks can leverage the proliferation of smartphones to make location based offers (LBOs) for cross-selling of banking and other third-party products at their branches. Let’s say a bank implements LBOs and an existing … Read more

Seller Power In Online Marketplaces

Buyer power in online marketplaces is obvious. Choice of platforms, sales returns, seller rating and venting on social media are among the many ways in which buyer is king in online marketplaces. Platform power is also fairly obvious: Blacklisting errant sellers and withholding payments to them are some of the tools available to the platform to flex its … Read more