Category Archives: Talent

Top 12 Challenges Facing India in the Decades Ahead – 07 – Education and Opportunity

If you remember our last post on poverty, you will note that we said that when India is compared to the 16 countries outside of sub-saharan Africa that are poorer than it, it doesn’t do well in any social indicator, with social indicators for Education being one of those indicators. In particular, it’s literacy rate among Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Burma, Cambodia, Haiti, Krygyzstan, Laos, Moldova, Nepal, Pakistan, Papua, New Guinea, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Vietnam, and Yemen ranks 9th for Males and 11th for Females (at 82.1% and 65.5%)! Not good. In comparison, the literacy rates in China (at 97.5% and 92.7%), Brazil (at 90.1% and 90.7%), and Russia (at 99.7% and 99.5%) are much higher in comparison, as are the literacy rates of most of its Asian neighbours.

But it’s educational challenges are not just limited to its literacy rate. The challenges also stem to the perception of the importance of education, especially at an early age, as a whole. In their newly published book, An Uncertain Glory, Dreze and Sen do a great job of outlining some of the significant challenges facing India in terms of education and literacy, challenges which start with the first five year plan created by the newly independent India back in 1951.

The first five year plan in 1951, even though sympathetic to the need for University education which it strongly supported, argued against regular schooling at the elementary level, favouring instead a so-called ‘basic education’ system, built on the hugely romantic and rather eccentric idea that children should lean through self-financing handcraft. It went on to say that ‘the tendency to open new primary schools should not be encouraged and, as far as possible, resources should be concentrated on basic education and the improvement and remodelling of existing primary schools on basic lines’. Other than an outright banning of education for the lower castes and Dalit, SI does not think one would find a better prescription for a return to the middle ages. (And what makes this especially sad is that India, in the 4th Century AD, more than 600 years before the first European University was founded in Bologna, had one of the first big Universities at Nalanda. This University, run by a Buddhist foundation and supported by Hindu kings, drew students from all over Asia, and, at its peak in the seventh century had over 10,000 students in its dormitories.)

But it’s not just the outlook on education that’s the problem, it’s the delivery. In a nation-wide school survey conducted by the PROBE (Public Report On Basic Education) team in 2006, only two thirds of the students were present on the day of the survey (according to the school registrars) and even fewer according to the field investigators’ direct observations. In addition, there was considerable absenteeism of teachers as well, in addition to widespread late arrival and early departure problems. Given that 12% of schools had only 1 appointed teacher at the time of the survey, any teacher absenteeism at all is a huge problem. Furthermore, on the day of the survey, 21% of the schools were operating as single teacher schools and, to make matters worse, half of the schools had no teaching activity at all at the time of the investigators’ unannounced visit! (Why? Due to the relatively high salaries accorded to appointed teachers, there is a reluctance to make appointments. In addition, appointed teachers typically have the equivalent of tenure and there is little oversight.)

Officially, there are supposed to be about 200 school days per year. But with a teacher absenteeism rate that was found to be about 20%, a pupil absenteeism rate of about 33%, the chance of both a pupil and a teacher being present on the same day is about 50%. Then there is the chronic problem of a lack of teaching activity and the fact that a given student only gets taught about half the time the student and teacher are both present on a teaching day. The net result is that the average student gets about 50 teaching days per year, or one fourth of what the student would get in a well-functioning school system!

For a considerable portion of the population, the words of Nobel Laureate Rabindranath Tagore (1913, Literature), spoken in an interview with Izvestia in 1930, still ring true. In my view the imposing tower of misery which today rests on the heart of India has its sole foundation in the absence of education. Because, as Dreze and Sen point out in their work, in a society, particularly in the modern world, where so much depends on the written medium, being illiterate is like being imprisoned, and school education opens a door through with people can escape incarceration.

This lack of education is a big contributor to the Unemployment problem in India. (After all, how can you even apply for any meaningful work in our modern economy if you can’t even read and write?) While the official unemployment rate is 9.9% (as per a press release from the Labour Bureau of the Government of India), the problem is much, much worse than that. (How can it not be when over two thirds of your population has to survive on less than $2 US dollars a day?) Consider the recent example of SBI, the nation’s biggest bank, who in April of last year decided they wanted to recruit 1,500 employees and received over 1,700,000 applications?

While the Indian economy did create approximately 60 Million jobs between 2000 and 2005, during the forefront of the outsourcing craze, it did not create more than 2.8 Million between 2005 and 2010 (as per the Institute of Applied Manpower [IAM]). And while the loss of jobs in the agricultural sector was absorbed in the construction sector, the IAM estimates that 5 Million construction jobs were lost between 2005 and 2010. In addition, 93% of the Indian workforce is interim or informal and receive no health insurance, retirement pension, or basic benefits. As a result, the real unemployment statistic is estimated by experts (Source: WorldCrunch) to be around 20% and doesn’t include the interim or informal workers, especially in rural areas or employed in season sectors, who are underemployed.

And the problem is likely to get even worse. The population in India is still increasing, and in order to maintain the current levels of employment, India needs to add about one million jobs a month, but only managed to add about 50,000 a month between 2005 and 2010, one twentieth of the required number! An educated population could at least try to seek work elsewhere, or, like the services sector, compete to bring more work in. An uneducated population, on the other hand … well, ask South Sudan, Afghanistan, or Niger how an utter lack of literacy is working out for them! (Or even Belize, Bangladesh, or Syria — with slightly higher literacy rates, but still quite low with respect to the developed world.)

Supply Chain 2020 – What Will It Take to Get There?

I’ve been noticing an uptick in Supply Chain 2020 discussion and blogging lately, despite the fact that 2020 is only 7 years away. Why do I say only? While 2020 may be 28 years away in ‘Net Time, given the pace at which the average Supply Management Organization moves, that’s breakneck speed! (It shouldn’t be, but it is. That’s why, despite the fact that it’s 2013 and e-Invoicing is old enough to drink, approximately 90% of invoices are still paper-based.) Furthermore, most prognosticators want to make predictions that are far enough away that either their prediction will almost guaranteed to be a reality by that time or everyone will have forgotten completely about their prediction by then. (Given the rate of increase in ADD/ADHD in recent years, that might be long enough for all of us to have forgotten everything from today, but I’d like to think that some of us may still have a long-term focus, and a longer-term memory, in 2020.)

A lot of these discussions are focussing on what the Supply Chain is going to look like in 2020, what technologies are going to drive it, and how the Supply Chain is going to run. These discussions are interesting, because we all want to know what tomorrow is going to look like today, but it’s not 2020 — it’s 2013. And whatever vision you have of 2020 is not going to become a reality without a plan to get there. That plan will, of course, depend on your vision and your end goal, but regardless of the plan you choose, there are three elements that will be required to get there.

What are these three elements? The Three Ts of Strategic Supply Management, of course!

  1. Talent
  2. Technology
  3. Transition

No innovation, or renovation, will succeed without these 3T’s, and an alignment thereof.

Despite the need for transportation, Supply Chains don’t run on trucks and trains — they run on Talent. Talented people identify potential suppliers. Talented people run strategic sourcing events. Talented people negotiate and execute contracts. Talented people collaborate with supplier personnel to ensure quality, on-time delivery, and quick issue resolution. Talented people deliver to Sales and Marketing what the consumers want.

And what do these talented people use to accomplish their tasks? Technology. Real-time communication with suppliers around the globe requires modern technology. Value-generating strategic sourcing events require good strategic sourcing technology. Contract generation, management, and supplier performance management requires good collaboration technology. And the list of technological needs goes on.

However, the technology that is required, for most organizations, is not the technology that the organization currently has. In order to acquire and implement this technology, the organization will have to transition appropriately. This will involve mapping current processes, mapping desired processes, identifying technologies that can appropriately support the desired processes, and putting together a transition plan, that takes into account the needs (but not necessarily the wants) of all of the stakeholders and that is supported by the appropriate executive(s) in the C-Suite, that will get the organization there.

So if you want to get to 2020 in style, first get to 2014 in-style and focus on the 3Ts. This is one best-practice that is year-independent.

Fieldglass: Adapting to Every Contingency, Part I

FieldGlass, which was first covered on SI back in 2008 by the Sourcing Maniacs* in their historic vendor tour, was originally founded in 1999 to provide technology solutions for staffing and contingent workforce management. As per the Maniacs’ historic post and our review in 2010 (on how FieldGlass is Determined to Take Off In the Tens), they built a great solution to solve this problem. But the problem was not a static one, it continued to evolve as organizations shifted more and more work into the contingent domain and outsourced more and more projects to outsource providers who would provide temporary labour. As a result, FieldGlass needed to continue to evolve its platform as well. And it did. Since our last review in 2010 it has

  • improved its rate guidance,
  • extended its rate structure capability,
  • streamlined it’s job posting (which can be as quick as two-clicks),
  • implemented easy e-mail approvals,
  • developed an “Ask An Expert” recommendation engine to help managers determine the right classification and labour providers for a position,
  • built a powerful timesheet manager in conjunction with Google, and
  • added extensive Statement of Work support.

Today we’ll cover the first three improvements to the FieldGlass platform and tomorrow, in Part II, we’ll address the next three. Then, in Part III, we’ll address the new Statement of Work module which is a revolutionary improvement to the platform.

Improved Rate Guidance
The rate guidance application uses current benchmark data and current spending history to display to the user the low, median, and high-end rates paid for the contingent or service position over the last 6 or 12 months in the service so the manager has up to date insight on the rate they should be expecting to pay.

Rate Structure
When it comes to contingent, temporary, and service worker rates and taxes, it’s never easy, especially if you support customers in 80 different countries. In addition to base hourly rates, you can also have per diems, special bonuses, hazard and isolation pay, vacation pay, etc., and it’s often the case that only some of these are taxed, and sometimes they are taxed using different tax structures. For example, the base hourly rate could be subject to a government employment tax and the per diem could be subject to a government value added tax, etc. The application supports just about any rate structure you can imagine, and each component can be associated with zero or more taxes.

Job Posting Process
From a manager’s point of view, the posting process, can be as simple as a three-click requisition. If (a template for) the position has already been defined in the system, all the manager has to do is select (the template for) the position, select a desired starting date, select an expected ending date, and submit the requisition for approval. Once the approver has approved the position, it is automatically posted and distributed. (Then, once the initial posting time has passed, the program office will be notified to shortlist job seekers for the requestor, who will review, and make his [rank ordered] selections. When a candidate, or the temporary/contingent labour provider, has indicated a willingness to accept the position, a work order will be created, the approver will accept, the supplier will accept, and the onboarding process will begin.)

Tomorrow we’ll discuss the next three improvements to the FieldGlass platform: e-mail approvals, the “As an Expert” recommendation engine, and the new Timesheet module.

*Here at SI we sure hope the Sourcing Maniacs are okay as we haven’t heard a peep from them since they took off for their European vacation on January 1, 2010 (over 3 years ago) by ship (as Wakko is on the No Fly list). The were supposed to be doing a European tour in the summer of 2010, but they seem to have fallen off the map!

Are You Prepared for a Transient-Advantage Economy?

In our three-part series this week on The End of Competitive Advantage, we described the reality facing many companies in industries where the concept of a sustainable competitive advantage has went the way of the dodo. We also noted that for these companies to survive, they had to learn to adapt to a new model where they competed in arenas, built up and tore down opportunity teams as the need arose, and gave up on the classical idea of persistent organizational structure. However, what we didn’t note was what it meant for you.

The last chapter of Rita Gunther McGrath’s book addressed the issue of what transient advantage means for you, personally, and it’s probably the most important chapter of the book for those of you where your working world is turning upside down.

What it means for you is that if you cannot adapt, you are vulnerable to losing not only your job, but your livelihood as your job might disappear. It happens. When was the last time you saw an elevator operator OUTSIDE of a classic-era hollywood movie? In order to help you figure out if you are vulnerable, and your level of vulnerability, the chapter presents you with 10 questions. If you answer no to any of them, you have some degree of vulnerability. If you answer no to five or more, look out – as the times they are a-changin’ for you!

If my current employer let me go, it would be relatively easy for me to find a similar role in another organization for equivalent compensation.
If the demand for your job is shrinking, then it might be the market is shrinking, or going away entirely, like the demand for physical film.

If I lost my job today, I am well prepared and know immediately what I would do next.
Even if you’re in the perfect job, are secure in that job, and have nothing to fear – disruptive innovations that eliminate entire industries pop up more often than you think.

I’ve worked in some meaningful capacity with at least five different organizations within the last two years.
This doesn’t have to be five different companies, but could be five different departments in your company. Adaptability is key.

I’ve learned a meaningful new skill that I didn’t have before in the last two years, whether it is work related or not.
The world is changing faster and faster and data is being produced at an unparalleled rate. A recent EMC study projects a nearly 45-Fold annual data growth rate by 2020. If you are not attempting to keep up, you will not keep up.

I’ve attended a course or training program within the last two years, either in person or virtually.
Training and education can expedite your learning process.

I could name, off the top of my head, at least ten people who would be good leads for new opportunities.
Networking is more than making, and poking, friends on Facebook.

I actively engage with at least two professional or personal networks.
Just like sole source is a recipe for supply chain disaster, a single focus could trap you in a dead-end network.

I have enough resources that I could take the time to retrain, work for a small salary, or volunteer in order to get access to a new opportunity.
Given the average amount of time to find a new job today, you should have a six month buffer. Just in case.

I can make income from a variety of activities, not just my salary.
If salaries are going away, you better have other options.

I am able to relocate or travel to find new opportunities.
You may not have to relocate permanently, but it’s a dynamic, shifting world, migrating to not just cities, but mega regions. As Richard Florida noted in Who’s Your City, talent, innovation, and creativity — are not distributed evenly across the global economy. They concentrate in specific locations. You may need to be there, at least for a time.

Now, if you answered yes to all ten (10) of these, and you aren’t already working in Supply Management – you should be, as this fits the profile of a go-getter up-and-coming Supply Management Professional. Source on!

For Lasting Results, Follow the Procurement Leaders … (Repost)

… but be sure to focus on the right characteristics first.


I posted this a year ago today, and I’m reposting because nothing has changed. This is still the right methodology, and, more importantly, the message has not sunk in yet at a large number of companies. The first three steps are absolute.

Reviewing a recent summary of A.T. Kearney’s 2011 “Assessment of Excellence in Procurement Study” over on the A.T. Kearney site on why you should “Follow the Procurement Leaders” that described seven ways to lasting results, I couldn’t help but notice that they had all the right suggestions, but in reverse order. Starting from the bottom of the list, and working our way up, we see that the suggestions will transform your organization from an average performer to best in class.

  1. Win the “War for Talent”.
    This is the first T necessary for supply chain success and the most critical one. No supply chain function can be happen without someone in place to plan, manage, and execute it — and for any function to be planned, managed, and executed in an optimal manner, you need world-class talent.
  2. Adopt Technology.
    This is the second T necessary for supply chain success and the next most critical one. Once you have found the right talent to take your supply chain to the next level, you need to enable your talent with the right technology to make them as efficient and effective as possible.
  3. Transition to Category Strategies.
    As the article notes leading procurement organizations use more advanced toolkits — systematically employing more than twice as many methods as the followers — to tailor their approaches to each situation. That’s why leading e-Sourcing / e-Procurement providers are now offering platforms with category templates / workflow management capabilities to allow platform customization to each organizational category and support the third T of supply chain success.
  4. Use Supplier Relationship Management.
    Suppliers are key to supply chain success, and leaders manage the relationship to get the most out of it. They use suppliers to improve innovation and growth, monitor compliance and risk management, and improve capabilities across the supply chain.
  5. Manage Risk Systematically.
    Leaders use risk-impact analysis, financial risk management, and disaster planning as ways to protect against, and mitigate the effects, of disruptions — unlike the risk management “followers” that constitute 80% of companies that are a single natural disaster away from a major supply disruption.
  6. Contribute to Top and Bottom Lines.
    It’s not just about cost reduction, but about value generation. Good Supply Management doesn’t just stop at cost reduction, but goes onto demand reduction, component innovation, product innovation, and even market innovation. This is done by managing risks, managing supplier relations, applying category strategies, using technology, and using all of the skills your talent possesses.
  7. Align with the Business.
    Leading supply management organizations support the business strategy. And while this is the most important goal from the viewpoint of Supply Management, as the goal is to increase the image of Supply Management in the organization, this can not be accomplished until all of the pieces of the puzzle, described in the first six steps, are in place.