(f)AXED

HCL was the group and Network was a group company. We knew that Network could not get sell any of the products that HCL sold through its other group companies. The “Office Automation” space was getting restricted and Network started looking out. Strategic Consultants were brought in and a few of our HEADS went on foreign sojourns to Exhibitions and Fairs to select relevant products. People even started research on unconnected areas like BIO-TECH. It was then that they realized that Medical Diagnostics was perhaps an area worth looking and within a year we had two tie ups. The first one was with Picker and the other with Medison of Korea, for MRIs and UltraSound Machines respectively.

The market was good and it was novel concept of having a slow moving high value product combined with a potentially faster moving item. What we also knew that was that the Maintenance Revenue earned through the Office Automation was business was being diverted to these new businesses leaving the OA population to start thinking about migration to the new avatar – Telecom.

That was the time when OA business needed a push. The push came in different ways. The first one was in terms of attacking a different market segment and the second one was about picking a new product to sell.

The margins on service contracts were good and we were getting cash rich with the multiple year schemes. This made us greedy and quality started to fall since fair investments were not being done on the maintenance infrastructure. You had the medical business team coming in at higher salaries and suddenly the traditional OA people felt left out. The revered marketing team of Network had no more ideas left for Electronic typewriters or the likes.

It was depressing all right for the OA group when our Connection resulted in a spark idea of Network getting into Facsimile Machines(FAX). The product was gaining popularity and was largely sold by small time traders. Faxes were mostly used in STD booths or retail business centers. Organized companies were still in the process of shifting from traditional teleprinters and telexes to these machines. The market as such had to grow since if you own a fax machine you cannot necessarily use it unless your counterpart on the other side has one!

The other concept of selling Typewriters through dealers were already put in place albeit with their own sets of problems of unclear territories, poor quality of machines, lack of training and support, etc. But we were chugging along and then came the fax for both the selling arms. Direct Sales and the dealer community were both excited with the product but did not know how to counter the small time sellers and the grey market.

Himanshu Kapania the product manager for fax had created this elaborate paper on fax but that was not useful for the field. For some reason, sales training sort of fell onto my head too and I started creating the training material on faxes. We were basically losing deals all over the country and stocks were piling up at head office.

That was the scenario when we created thsi elaborate schedule of travesring the length and breadth of the country, visiting all locations and taking sessions with the sales people on usage of the machine, the technical points that was required for selling and of course handling competition. It was a price sensitive market and we had to tread carefully in terms of deiscounts or promotions.

The fax honeymoon lasted for a file, newer models were introduced but now the organisation itself was plagued with cancer. The Cancer hads started earlier in terms of over confidence at the top. Irrelevant dreams supported by "YES" men and women at the top and of course there was the arrogance of a brother who wanted to be larger than the group!!

Telecom was the new sunrise sector and scores of people left the organisation. The management of Network went into a downward spiral and just could not recover from market presuures and more of course from internal group pressures.

It does pain to write about the downfall about an enterprise that had managed to give a lot. It gave a lot to the market, its employees and general society. Would like to talk about that in the next episode!!

The Indigenous Era - 1990-92

DJFM is where Network Salespeople suddenly saw Incentives as the main source of money. The trend was changing unlike the past where the focus was on the quality of sale. The thrill in the past was on how to convince customers and crack deals and minds. We were now at the peak of our product life cycle. Customers needed the machines, We were supplying them in an extreme competitive environment and incentive was the driver. Margins were shrinking. Network and its competitors were paying more attention to deals rather than products. Personal Computers were slowly and steadily creeping in to the business space and it was perhaps time for the Network think tank to innovate on survival strategies.

It was a classic normal curve where we were making merry of our existence on the peak. In the meantime I was personally getting sick of Kolkata Office with the atmosphere. People were leaving and I sensed a bit of downfall for that place, socially that is.

Then one fine day WKH informed me that I was needed at Delhi for two weeks. As usual, he was not clear in his communication and I finally reached Delhi where Sunil Kishore gave me the dope. I was to act as the Host/Trainer/Interface or in Army Terms - a Subedar Major for the new cadets(management trainees) that were to join that year. I spent about two weeks in Head Office preparing myself with the Course Material, arranging Guest Lectures if required and so on and so forth.

It was a 7 day program where we were holed up in Sofitel Surya in Friends Colony(Now Best Western I think) and I had a gruelling schedule ahead with the guys and gals. I am still trying to search and get connected to them but so far have not been able to accomplish my target. Anyway, we had a great time and think it was a productive 7 days given that I was from the "field" and could bring in life experiences rather than theoretical ones. This program while I am sure helped the participants, it also helped me in terms of Training techniques and my own improvement.

Then came the news that I was to be posted at Pune. So I was still maintaining the record of being in different locations every year so far with Network. Pune was a great city to be in for a young couple. The weather, the surroundings, the picinic and short visits and the people in Pune Office were all a delight. Our machines were selling and more than talking about capabilities we were on this dicsount binge. The market had degenerated to be so and Network was trying to get some value out of it though its Letracomp. The Letracomp was a glorified Electronic Typewriter with some added Fonts and minute adjustements so that it could serve the printer's market in terms of publishing. It could not survive the onslaight of DTP and it had to die rather prematurely.

The Typerwiters were still going great guns but then margins were less. So a major strategic shift happened in Network. Overnight our Service Engineers were turned into salesmen. They were now primarily judged in terms of Service Contracts they could win for the machines. They were 2 years, 3 years, 5 years schemes and a lot of customers did fall for it only to realise their folly later.(Will cover that in later posts).

My Pune stint was for a year and I landed up in Head office in charge of Sales Control reporting to S.Guha. Head Ofiice I realised was far removed from on the ground relaities especially with the people who never worked in our branches. I figured that unlike when Network started off our schemes or promotions were customer focused albeit push strategies but now we were changing over to our own priorities. So stocks, profit targets(nothing derogatory if based on market needs) were the key drivers. We also had a most sort of whimsical production plan exercise month after month.

We were also reeling from the after shocks of our indigenous electronic typewriters in terms of more service calls, not enough resources, service engineers spending time on sales calls, faulty spare parts, local repairs leading to more faults, etc. We were now on the post maturity stage on the Product lIfe cycle.

Network then started looking at the Russian Market. Nishat Khan was the spearheader(incidentally he stood for Parliamentary Elections from Park Street, Kolkata and lost his deposit) and was in that country eating bread for about 2-3 years. Along with him was our dear friend BALA. The russian machines did sell but then again sales forecasts were wrong and we had plenty of these machines to be converted and sold in the domestic market.

One year had passed and again it was time for a change of role. Head office had this New Installtion Group(NIG) led by the efficeint and competent Devesh Nayel who was now transferred to Finance and I took over his responsibilities too. So it was sales control, Distribution, NIG and Collections that I was spending time on.

Devesh under Subhas Guha had brought about a radical change in our "Collection" thought process. There were major outstandings and sales people were often not bothered with recoveries. DN and his team scrupulously got about clearing out this major mess and frankly speaking it was always the Governemnt and LAM guys who were the worst offenders.

In this scheme of things my earlier learnings of corporate sins were polished a bit further. Blank boxes being transported out of Duty paid godowns in order to have inflated sales figures were one of them. Trucks vanishing into thin air to accomodate stock shortfalls and insurance claims(that never fructified obviously).

Head office work was a bit different from branches. The Daily Sales Report was an important adrenalin rush tool for the management. This entailed daily telephone calls to all branches to report their sales and collection figures, etc. Then we had the finance figures on the same subject and like in most corporates all over the world they never matched. So we did reconcile the differences every day. And so on and so forth, as Murphy says, that unimportant apparently creative work fills up the void. So we were busy all right!!

The bad report use to go later in the day. The actual sales day book was actually negative, what with all the over invoicing being done during the year and quarter ends. HCL Group - ishtyle!!!

PCs as mentioned earlier were becoming popular and prices were crashing every month. PCL our closest comptetitor closed shop for tyerwiters and started focusing on Computers. Network was at cross roads. They started looking out for "other ventures". Talk about that and myself next time.

DJFM 89

The last night of Srinagar positively created chaos in the minds of the sales guys. It was postive chaos!! The incentive scheme that was quite different in nature had created the excitement. For every sale there were points to be earned and there werr variations depending upon models and quantities. Based on the points there were attractive prizes on offer and I remember the bumper was a Red Maruti 800 or atleast that's what the brochure depicted.


While "Networker" was a new word that was coined depicting all and sundry belonging to Network, in the conference almost everything that we did had this underlining mindset of us being a Networker. Actually the concept started a few months back with some other regional conferences but then Network with its innovative ways even capitalised the concept to woo in people through India Today Pull Outs (Recruitment Ads).



The incentive scheme ran from December 88 to Mar 89 and that's the reason for coining the term DJFM 89. The incentive schemes of Network were heavily bent on sales rather than completion of the sale. Many, in fact most salespeople did take advantage of this and I am sure in many ways I was also party to the this whole concept of somehow making that money.

We reached Howrah statiion in the morning and as usual the team that was extremely cohesive just dispersed in different directions. Some had their family members with vehicles awaiting them while others had to wait in the queue for a cab. I had this simple solution of taking a Mini Bus direct from Howrah to Salt Lake at my door step. I did't really give a damn about people thinking that the manager was travelling a bus. Who cared! The 3 day journey on the floor of a slow train in 3rd class sleeper was humbling enough. Networkers after all!



A few of the office members looked at us with jealous eyes and I reckon the eyes popped even more when the looked at the incentive schemes. The sales guys were the stars of the show after all while the support and administration could only fiddle their thumbs.



The typcial target meetings were done with and everybody was more or less charged up. There were these habitual liars in my sales team and surprisingly the incentive call even motivated them enough to make genuine sales calls. Prospective list of prospects were made and called on and orders started trickling in. The canpaigns in the newspapers helped our cause and enquiries, in an otherwise dull Kolkata market, did start to flow in. In all this the never ending debate of Govt vs LAM (the glorified national team created for covering Govt and Public Sector Corps) started for enquiries received. That was some fun. Hoodwinking the LAM team that is in their own game. Recently I watched the movie Rocket Singh, and beyond doubt it brought back a lot of memories!!


Coming from Hyderabad and Mumbai office to Kolkata was of course a sea chnage in terms of office culture. The offc was divided into three. The Air Force guys, The SKJ people and independents like me who became another group by default. False Conveyance bills, chemist bills showing anti biotics against toothpaste and so on and so forth was the order of the day. It was you could say a kingdom of sorts and you needed to be the King's own in order to do well. But we survived and all this came to an end when WKH joined. But then we could not fathom whether the new era was for better or worse. On hind sight looks like it was the seond situation!!



Now we had these Monday meetings explained in my blog earlier and we also learnt that Chicken Curry and Chapati was the best lunch in the world. Take it or leave it. We left it at that.



DJFM89 was on. Sales were good. Not much of sales convincing was required. Prices were good. But something was missing. Excuse me asked the customer, "Where the F...K is my machine? You Delhi companies. Taken in money in advance. 3 months passed. No machine. Who is your RM". Saar, he is never available. He is always what we say in Bong - URU URU. Flying Flying!!



It was the same situation all over the country. Money collected in advance from o2C clients. And LOIs collected from Government!! But since we indegenised so much, I guess the supply chain had choked. Also there started a dip in sales. Murmurs started that reached Delhi i no time. Network think tank were not idle. The situation was sensitive and could mean dangerous and as usual competition were already reacting to these news and managed to even convert some orders.



So what was the prescription of Network think tank. Call all the Managers all over the country to Delhi for a picnic at the Factory!! We all landed up in Delhi and were put in the Govt sponsored Lodi Hotel in Qutub Institutional Area very near the Head Office. We were hoarded into couple of buses and taken to the factory where we were shown some new auto soldering machines for PCBs and then taken to the assembly where we finally SAW that machines were REALLY getting assembled. Nobody told us that they wer still having some software bugs. At the end of fixing line there was a big presentation ceremony of a Typewriter carton being presented to one of the King's XI from Delhi!! We were all very thrilled. We were conquered. We were convinced. Now we would all go back to our respective offfices with photographs to prove that machines would now come in no time. They did eventually. But let me tell you that the typewriter box that was made ready at NOIDA had only thermocol in it!!! We were serious Sales CONsultants!

The PICNIC AT NOIDA -

(I am the first guy standing on the right, while Ashim Dasgupta is at the other end)

(In this one from Left -DP Chaudhuri(LAM), Inderjit Singh(Chandigarh), Prithwish Bose, Myself)

The Cover UP captured for posterity.

The Sales Picked up. People started seriously calculating incentives. March was a pressure cooker. Orders, Follow Ups, Tension, WKH, Competition, HO Calls, etc etc etc. We were nearing the end. The end of DJFM89 I mean. In the meantime a Guwahati sales person started making unknown trips to Kolkata to meet a Kolkata Senorita(thankfully not in my team).

I did have a girl in my team. But she was hardly a girl. She was always in this shirts and trousers with tie, riding a bike on Kolkata streets and used to speak like a tomboy and was in backslapping terms with most of the other guys. Not me though. I was the Manager you see!!

But then we had gone to Sikkim on tour and Sharmishtha(that was her name) casually asked the recepotion for one double room. I was so thankful that she did not ask for a queen bed!! I had to clarify...No err...we need two rooms . That was a serious surprise for her. That was she. I wonder where is the girl now, would love to renew contacts!!

Srinagar - A prelude to DJFM89

I am always fond of five star hotel breakfasts, and I like it when I am perhaps one of the first ones to start sampling the food on display. The new trays of undisturbed food is a turn on for me and thats a sort of fetish you could say. The scrambled eggs were perfect and along with them the soft croissants was a perfect combination to start the day. Slowly the restaurant started filling up with people from all over the country wearing the doled out Blue Network Pullovers. The conversations in different tables were either about the long haul journey or about what the day had in store for us. The Head Office Marketing Teams and some other Seniors perhaps were suffering from their own tension of making sure that the program was a success. After all its all about hype and the sales team needed the injection.

We were all shunted into the audi and after the mandatory speeches we were told that the new machines that would be introduced were kept in a separate hall. Before that we were explained about the new range coming up. A lot of parts in the machines were locally sourced now. The bilingual features were more prominent and now available in the 14" segment too. We were also explained the logic behind the numbering of each machine. Now instead of three digits we would have four and iun case of bilibguals 5. For example a 1252 would mean a 14" carriage machine with 5 Line Backlit display with a memory of 16Kb. When you add a H to that, it would mean with bilingual capability too.

Some us were quickly trying to master the logic of the machine numbers, while others were gorging on the sumptuous menu of features and already making plans of beating PCL and Godrej. Whatever the feelings, we were all united and focused and excited about the immediate future.

Before we came in for the conference the sole job in the field we had was ensuring that customers do not cancel orders. Given that many customers do pay up advances, it was a tough call. When we saw the machines the honest opinion was ofcourse pretty mixed. Suddenly we could see the difference between imported vs indigenous stuff. The quality of the plastics, the feeling of the keys. Surely the environment was compelling us to decrease prices and increase features...as Russel Peters says - Somebody will get hurt. So here I guess it was the quality of the parts that went in.

For a moment we forgot all that and got busy learning the machines. Different classrooms, many teachers and a lot of students all eagerly using their fingers and brains to figure out these new animals. Back Lit Puke Green displays, keys that would go in and not come out (Tactile Feedback theories went out of the window), we were getting used to the bright future. Price was the only driver and I was a kind of weary of what might be in store for us. Maybe Production had made friends with Service to ensure that we earn a lot on Maintenance. As managers we were huddled into some other rooms and dished out Targets and very attractive incentive schemes. The quarter was named DJFM 89 and it was a pretty historic one.

Calcutta Office in any case compared to a Delhi or Mumbai is low profile and given the typical condascending attitude of Northerners regarding work in West Bengal, it was these smaller offices making friends together while the bigger offices were quite busy with themselves!! I knew it, since I was myself part of Mumbai earlier!! Plus SKJ was too protective about his own people from Cal and that was surely an obstacle for some in terms of mixing with others. Thankfully, I was not part of his scheme of things and was saved from such ordeals.

The food was good and the weather was excellent and lunch breaks were welcome. We trained on the machines and were ready for demonstrations armed with pitches against competition. Prices were extremely competitive. So sales would surely happen, but I was a bit circumspect about deliveries given some insider information I had from my friends in the Factory!!

A week went by just like that. The evenings wer full of booze and meat and some suspicious encounters too by opposite genders. From Cal office one of the "couples" even got married later. I understand that she is no more having left the world on her own will!!

This was also a time when the Cal Office guards were changing. SKJ was transferred to Head Office to look after Consumables(Ribbons, DWs, etc) while Wg Cdr Hazra(WCH) of Central Zone fame took charge of Calcutta Office. Later he used to be called Monday Uncle by one of our colleagues sons since that's the day when in the evening he used to keep us all occupied with booze in New Kenilworth Hotel for strategic(sic) discussions which were pure waste of time!!

One of the evenings at Centaur I also met Subhas Guha who had just about joined Network to look after new projects - Letracomp being one of them. Letracomp was a hyped typewriter that could sort of meet printers needs on elementary composition, I met Mr. Guha under entirely different circumstances in Network later in life.

The conference was coming to an end and while we had all come in style the return was chaotic post Delhi. The flight from Srinagar to Delhi was cool and from the airport I took some of my colleagues to my sister's apartment in Green Park for a freshen up. We were given to understand that our journey to Kolkata would be in Third Class Sleeper in the worst train possible from Old Delhi station. From the train I saw WCH coming to distribute some blankets. Me and DP(a colleague) went in search of some coke that would be required for the cocktails. Jai Sri Rum!!! I did not have a berth on my name and so made my bed in the space between the two lower bunks. It was chaotic and there was no excuse. In the midst of these chaos the seniors vanished and we were fending for ourselves. No problem surely, we were the pride of the company - sales guys!!!

The 36 hourrs journey was fun. We sang a lot and I remember these daily passenger college girls who played antakshari with us. In fact I thought Prodipto had a good inclination towards one of them.

DJFM 89...Here we come!!!