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Chairman Back at Work DL Wins Hypercom Project Post Finance in Team Building Mode INMARSAT Visit Purushottam Shines at Whitepaper Contest Six Sigma Gears Up
April 2007
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Nirmalendu Jajodia Senior Vice President BFSI
Issue XI
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Dear Friends, When Enzo Ferrari set up Scuderia Ferrari in 1929, he would have hardly known that ‘high-performance’ would extend beyond his cars to the lives of people, nearly eighty years later. Ferrari cars are not only status symbols, but are synonymous to everlasting success on the F1 circuits across the world. Over the years, the champions that have won driving Ferrari include Frenchman Alain Prost and German Michael Schumacher. Why Ferrari means high performance and success is not a trade secret. It continuously innovated with its engines, ensuring more power per cylinder, and its style and models. Ferrari cars are often considered “cars from another planet”, and the name ‘Ferrari’ often conjures up images of winners spraying champagne on the podium. But if you have been avidly following every Ferrari triumph, the TV camera always pans to the elated team, hugging and waving huge team flags. Always, the winning driver says, “The team did a great job in terms of the strategy and the car set-up and everything else.” The team matters not just for one race, but the entire championship spanning 12 months. It’s not just about changing tyres or refueling. It’s about excelling in the execution – both as individuals and as a team. It’s about a culture of zero tolerance, building trust, making each accountable and an approach with a mission. If we have to learn a way of life from Ferrari, so be it!
Regards,
Corporate Communications April 2007 Click on the symbol
Editorial Head Brian Lobo
Editorial Team Bijesh Kamath Sebrina Viegas Jayashree Pillai
Designed by Sunil Trivedi
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Corporate Communications
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DL Wins Hypercom Project INMARSAT Visit
Chairman Back at Work Our Chairman, Dr Lalit Kanodia, after a brief stay in hospital for open heart surgery, resumed work at his office in Knowledge Centre in the first week of April.
DL Events
Datamatics is participating in two major events in the United States of America in May. The StarEast (Software Testing & Analysis Review) Event on 16-17 May is being held in Orlando, Florida. ACORD-LOMA Insurance Systems Forum on 20-22 May is being held at Lake Buena Vista, Florida.
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Datamatics has won the Blade Acceleration project from Hypercom, a global electronic payment solutions provider. The project involves porting four host payment services in the SPOS32 application to M4100 terminals, supporting Wi-fi and GPRS communication interfaces, development of the COMSTAR host payment service module, porting of the Valutec Gift and Loyalty application to M4100 and development of pay-by-customer feature. The Datamatics team of five will put in over 1,320 person hours of effort on the project.
Post Finance in Team Building Mode A 20-member team, mostly from the Post Finance project, went outdoors for a team-building exercise. The team climbed rocks, rappelled down cliffs and crossed swirling rivers with self-made rafts.
Senior Managers of INMARSAT, Alison Chappell and Mohsin Meghji, are visiting Datamatics on 9-11 May. They are here to discuss new project requirements.
Cubic Brisbane Closes Cubic Brisbane Project closed in March & the team celebrated with an end of project party at Malad.
Purushottam Shines at Whitepaper Contest Purushottam Nawle of TES (SDF V) made Datamatics proud when he won the first prize in the Western Regional round of the recently held IT Youth Whitepaper contest. The contest was organized by the Computer Society of India, a premier body of IT professionals set up in 1965.
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Six Sigma Gears Up When Professor Prasad Chakrabarti wrapped up his final training session on Six Sigma at our Bangalore office in the first week of April, 600 Datamaticians had completed their Six Sigma training. The training will continue as an induction / refresher course once every month, and will be open to all new employees as well as existing employees who wish to sharpen their Six Sigma knowledge.
All Datamaticians can now avail of expert advice on Six Sigma through consultation sessions with Dr Prasad Ramanathan, Professor Vinod Garg and Chandrakiran Pakar. The sessions will be held between 10 and 11 am on all week days. In addition to the personal advice, a tool has also been created to register Six Sigma projects, view status of all registered projects, and resolve issues.
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Each of us need to fill in details of the Green Belt Project Charter like Problem Statement, Goal Statement and Team Members. The tool will be enhanced with additional features over the next several weeks. The organization has also set up an Apex Committee to create guidelines on Six Sigma implementation in Datamatics Limited and Datamatics Technologies, and ensure processes are followed. The Apex Committee comprises S V Mokashi, Professor Prasad Chakrabarti, Dr Prasad Ramanathan, T N Ganesh, Rajesh Agarwal and Chandrakiran Parkar.
Coming soon... HOME
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Buzz Mate He smokes a pipe, has the entire collection of the Modesty Blaise series (except the final
have tried to empower my team members and support them in any new initiatives that they have embarked upon. In short , Excellence resides in an excellent team, and not in any one individual.
one) & hates driving. Meet Nirmalendu Jajodia, Senior Vice President, BFSI.
First day at Datamatics
Your ideal team
I introduced myself to all the heads of departments. I went about doing this wearing a blazer in the heat of peak summer. I realized my mistake, which I would never repeat, after finding out the number of locations that we were spread out.
Energized, risk-taking, with a keen eye for detail and open-minded to ideas.
Your mantra for customer satisfaction
Why did you choose to join Datamatics? After a nearly two-decade long career, I was longing for a change. I have always enjoyed setting up businesses, as seen in my track record. Managing day-to-day operations is not my forte. Also, I wanted to work for a smaller company where I would have greater influence on the future of the company.
Your journey to Datamatics I began my career with Voltas in 1980 following which I set up my own software services company and ran it for almost six years. I then moved on to the Stock Holding Corporation of India. This was probably the most exciting part of my career, when we redesigned the complete securities processing scenario for India. This contributed to the setting up of the depositories system. Later, I was part of the team that set up the Central Depository Services Limited. After this success, I was invited by
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Nirmalendu Jajodia Senior Vice President BFSI L&T Infotech to set up its financial services practice. And now I am at Datamatics.
Your philosophy I have learnt that the only way to succeed is by doing something new everyday, without the fear of making mistakes. The only way to avoid mistakes is by not doing anything. Remember not to repeat them.
Your idea of excellence An important thing about excellence is that it's not about a manager of a team or any individual. Excellence is about the team itself. A leader merely provides the facilities to the team to excel. In fact, I
We need to do much more to be aligned to customer needs. We are still too inward focused. This can be easily corrected by focusing on revenue & profitability than on costs. Increasing revenue will cover fixed costs at the very least besides generating higher profits. For a mid-sized company like ours, recovering fixed costs alone makes a significant impact.
Any trends in technology or business we need to prepare ourselves for? Programming is slowly going to take the backseat and software will become more of an assembly of pre-built components. This will require us to understand the customer's business rather than just technology. At the same time, there will be a need for software engineers who will need to demonstrate great depth of knowledge in a particular technology.
Your message to Datamaticians If you are not learning something new everyday, then you need to introspect. Find out whether the fault lies in the environment or within yourself.
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Up Close and Personal Education
B. Tech (Mechanical Engineering), IIT Mumbai
Literature Modesty Blaise, British mysteries, American Private-Eye novels, South American novelists
Favorite Cuisine All, except dried fish
Favorite Wheels "I hate driving!"
Favorite Holiday Kerala & Goa for their beaches
Interests Buying & reading books, 60s/70s Rock & Jazz music
Family Wife Nilum, a "serial entrepreneur" who is currently running a kindergarten school. Son Mihir is an engineering graduate.
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Legal & Secretarial Team Meet our small, young and vibrant Legal and Secretarial Team, based in SDF VI, Unit 172. In a nutshell, the team contributes to the growth of the organization by providing the best legal solutions and by ensuring no delay in statutory compliances. The team tries to make available timely solutions to the existing legal problems of the company and plans for issues that may come up in the future. Among the various activities carried out by the team are drafting, vetting and reviewing commercial contracts; initiating legal proceedings in the best interests of the
organization and tackling proceedings if any initiated against the organization; liaison with government departments and agencies; arranging summary of Agreements; maintaining records of agreements, statutory forms, returns and other documents; and ensuring statutory compliance. To the team’s credit are a few recent successes. These are settlement of a protracted dispute with MIDC who then released our funds. The team succeeded through persistent negotiations and follow-ups. It also helped incorporate new companies, cleared many important Agreements and Contracts, which were crucial for business acceleration and completed the Tenancy Agreement process with SEEPZ. What makes the Legal team’s work challenging is the dynamic nature of the legal field, and team members
have to ensure they keep pace with all developements. As for team bonding, the team follows Henry Ford’s golden words: “Coming together is a beginning; keeping together is progress; working together is success”. There are brain storming sessions on legal issues, where each team member wears the thinking and creative hats, and arrive at a conclusion which is logical, legal and most suitable. This in turn creates bonding within the team and a sense of belonging to the department and organization as a whole. The team intends to live the departmental mission by constantly updating itself on the various legal issues that may concern our organization, and the regulatory amendments. This is done mainly by reading up books and articles written by eminent lawyers and judges.
Our Mission
“ Timely delivery of comprehensive & meticulous legal advice, & ensuring legal compliance.” April 2007 Click on the symbol
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his new education, he saw woodcutting as an exciting and profitable future. He chalked out a strategy of an integrated engineering approach to woodcutting. Together with fellow woodcutters, he created a good business presentation and succeeded in getting venture funding.
A woodcutter in Timberland once got a job he sought at a timber mill. Finding the pay and work conditions really good, he determined to do his best. His boss gave him an axe and showed him his workplace. The first day, the woodcutter brought down 18 trees. Impressed, the boss said, "Congratulations, keep it up!" Motivated by the words of the boss, the woodcutter tried harder the next day, but he only could cut 15 trees. As days passed, the woodcutter’s productivity reduced further. "I must be losing strength,” the woodcutter thought to himself. He went to the boss, apologized, and said that he could not understand what was going on. "When was the last time you sharpened your axe?" the boss asked. "Sharpen? I had no time to sharpen my axe. I have been busy cutting trees…”
Moral of the story We are sometimes so busy that we don't
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take time to sharpen our axe. Most of us never update our skills. We feel whatever we have learned is enough. But good is not good when better is expected. Sharpening our skills from time to time is the key to success. We should not get so busy working hard that we do not find time to learn and grow. We need to think about ways by which we could do our job more effectively and add value. To get optimal results we need to sharpen our skills consistently. Being adept at our job can help us achieve our targets. But the story does not end there. This woodcutter took the moral to heart and sharpened his axe. He was able to bring down far more trees in a shorter time. He now thought of growing rich and decided to upgrade his skills in the evenings and weekends. Armed with
He then entered a joint venture with a chainsaw company and was able to broker a deal with many timber mills. The woodcutter was now earning a percentage of the profits. He was able to cut down hundreds of trees a week and started many other ventures with the money earned to keep the cash flows pouring in. He retired early.
New Moral In life we are in autopilot mode, day after day, year after year. We tend to lose our faculty of thinking, become a warehouse of facts and retire broke. All because we simply never sharpened our minds and exploited cash flow opportunities that were present all along. Life is short. Let’s not waste our lives waiting for the weekends to enjoy. Let’s train ourselves for a better tomorrow. Cheers!
Contributed by Rahul Mangale, SDF 5
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GOT IT ? naah! Galat Jawab...
There are TWO faces in this picture, not ONE.
SPOT the ? FACES April 2007 Click on the symbol
March 07 Issue Answer Mini H Reshma Chandnani
Name the TWO & win a prize! Winner Vishal Jain Send your answers to dlbuzznews@datamatics.com and win an attractive prize! *Mention the word Buzz Bender in the subject line of your mail along with your complete contact details.
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Each king in a deck of playing cards represents a great king from History.
Buzz Word
King David
“Bite the Bullet”
Charlemagne Alexander the Great Julius Caesar
Buzz Fact
Buzz Special The BUPA team celebrated Vishu with a puja at the office
Buzz Tip Relax your face: The body has an effect on the mind and vice versa. If the body is relaxed, the mind also follows suit. And the face leads the way for the body. If the face is tense, the muscles in other regions of the body tend to tense up as well. So whenever you feel stressed, begin by relaxing your facial expressions, get rid of the frown and smile. Take frequent breaks throughout the day. It will help clear your mind and relieve pressure. Something as simple as going to the water cooler for a drink may do the trick.
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Meaning - Endure pain with fortitude. Origin: In the days before effective anesthetics, soldiers were given bullets to bite on to help them endure pain. Improvement in battlefield medicine has seen the real act of biting bullets being relegated into a metaphor, although it might be happening occasionally.
“A Dark Horse”
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Meaning - Someone who emerges to prominence; being previously little known. Origin: This was originally horse-racing parlance. A dark horse was one that wasn't known to the punters and was difficult to place odds on. The figurative use later spread to other fields and has come to apply to anyone who comes under scrutiny but is previously little known.
The TES team went on a day-long self-funded picnic to Alibagh.
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