Star looks for glory, fumbles at the stands

Sports on TV over the last ten years, says the Nielsen State of the Sports Media Report 2015, has undergone a dramatic transformation. "There is an enormous amount of sports content to choose from and a shocking amount of hours viewed." This was perhaps one of the many reports that the team at Star India pored over as it decided to go all out for the Rio 2016 Olympics, currently being telecast on eight channels (four HD and four non HD) and its digital platform, Hotstar. But as the Games get underway and the channel raises the pitch with #billioncheersforIndia campaign

Business Operations Analysis

Once a business is established, and particularly after a growth spurt, it’s important to periodically assess and analyze business operations to identify inefficiencies and improve communication. Comparisons with industry benchmarks and best practices can help a company make sure its business operations are optimum.

Business Operations Elements

Business operations vary according to business type, industry, size, and so on. Operations for a brick-and-mortar store, for example, will look different from operations for an online retailer. The former will need point of sale terminals to process purchases, for example, while the latter will need e-commerce software that provides electronic shopping cart services.

Business operations for most businesses, though, take into account the following elements:

• Process
• Staffing
• Location
• Equipment or technology

Process is important because of its impact on productivity and efficiency. Processes done manually that can be done quicker with software or that duplicate work done by other departments can cost a business time and money. Business operations processes should be documented department by department so that operations managers can study them to find areas for improvement, consolidation, or cost-savings. Documentation also helps companies train new employees.

Staffing is determined by the processes. Who needs to do the work outlined in the work processes and how many of them are needed? A small business might need a few people who are generalists while a large company will need many more people who are specialists.

Location is more important to certain types of businesses than to others – and the reason for the location will vary. A solopreneur consultant might only need room for a desk at home, a pet groomer will need a location with parking, and a software developer will need to be located in a region with access to appropriate talent.

The equipment or technology needed for optimum business operations will often have an impact on location. The pet groomer with a staff and several grooming bays will need more space and different equipment from the mobile groomer who offers services provided at the pet’s home. A carpet cleaning business won’t need a storefront, but it will need a garage to store its trucks plus office space for business operations management.

What is a Business Process?

Most people intuitively understand a business process to be a procedure or eventwith the purpose of reaching a goal. When looking at our UML Airport we can find many different business processes and goals:

• The goal of our passenger is to go on vacation. To achieve this goal, he has to book a flight and hotel, pack his bags, drive to the UML Airport, check in and board his airplane, exit the plane at his destination airport, go to the hotel, move into his room, and unpack his bags.
• The owner of the newsstand at the UML Airport wants to sell her goods. For this, she buys items inexpensively and sells them to her customers at a higher price.
• In order for passengers to check in at the UML Airport, an employee of passenger services accepts their tickets and luggage, inquires about their seat preferences, and uses an IT system. By the end of the procedure, the passengers receive their boarding passes on which their reserved seats and the appropriate gates are marked.

As you can see, business processes are often completed in several steps. These steps are also referred to as activities, and have to be completed in a predetermined order. The newsstand owner cannot sell any goods unless she has purchased them beforehand.

A passenger packs his or her suitcase before he or she drives to the airport. The employee of passenger services at the check-in counter can only issue a boarding pass after check-in is completed

A short note on Human Resources of India

India is the seventh largest country in the world. Our country is blessed with many natural resources. But all these resources cannot help our country unless they are tapped, handled and used in a planned way. This can be done only by the people. Man can develop the resources only when he is wise, healthy, educated and properly trained. Thus, the real resources of our country are its people. They are our human resources.

The total population of our country is now more than 100 cores. India is the second most populous country in the world, after China. Today, every seventh man in the world is an Indian. Our country’s population is increasing at a rapid rate. It has doubled over the last 45 years. This is the creating many problems.

Three out of every four Indians live in villages. They earn their living from farming, forestry, fishing and cattle rising. People are now leaving villages and coming to cities in search of work. This is putting a great pressure on the civil amenities and other facilities in cities.

The rapid rise in our population is creating many problems such as shortage of food, clothing, housing, health, education and employment. This has affected our standard of living. We can solve this problem if we have small families. If there were fewer people, we would be able to provide enough food, houses, clothes and jobs for almost everyone.

The living conditions of the people can be improved by providing enough food, better education and health conditions. We have achieved great deal since independence, but a lot remains to be done. If we want to make our human resources useful, we will have to improve the quality of our people.

The quality of its people is more important than their number for the development and progress of the country. With improvement in the quality of our human resources, we can make better use of our natural resources. We must all work to improve our own lives and the lives of those around us.

India defying global slowdown, poised to seize opportunity: Finance Minister Jaitley

Giving credit to an aspirational society for forcing politicians to support reforms, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley on Sunday said Indian economy has defied global slowdown and geo-political tensions and is now poised to seize the opportunity to grow faster. He, however, regretted that while the developed world has been able to control population surge, India has been missing on its population stabilisation target.

Noting that India has missed the bus because of its conventional thinking when it came to industrial and technology revolutions, Jaitley said Indians have now become aspirational, which is putting pressure on politicians to support reforms initiatives. He said the whole world is in a slowdown mode in which if a country is growing by 1.5-2 per cent, it has a sense of satisfaction that it is not in a negative zone.

“India, of course, is defying that trend. While we are defying that trend, for the first time in history, we are coming out much better than the rest of the world, having missed so many historical opportunities,” he said at the convocation ceremony of the O P Jindal Global University.

Globally, Jaitley said, countries are resorting to desperate measures like negative or negligible interest rates, competitive devaluation of currencies. While some are facing job losses, other parts of the world are affected bygeo-political crises – refugees and terrorism.

“India because of conventional thinking has occasionally lost the opportunity, we missed the bus when it came to the industrial revolution – the Americans and Europeans grabbed the opportunity. When the technology revolution took place, we missed the bus,” he said. According to the finance minister, there is a strong public opinion in India that the country needs to grow.

“Both two landmark legislations back to back — the bankruptcy and GST — have been passed unanimously and one of the factors why these laws have passed unanimously is that there is a very strong public opinion which has been inflicted upon politicians that we don’t want now to go slow and miss this opportunity,” he explained.

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) had last month cut global growth forecast for 2017 by 0.1 percentage point to 3.4 per cent. It projected India to grow at 7.4 per cent in 2016 and 2017. Jaitley highlighted services sector as the main strength of the economy while India tries to increase its manufacturing output.

Indian Consumer Market

Consumer durables revenues have been growing at a healthy pace

• The consumer durables sector revenues reached US$ 9.7 billion in FY15 and is expected to reach US$ 12.5 billion in FY16

• Consumer durable market expected to grow at CAGR of 13 per cent from FY05 to FY20

• Around two third of the total revenue is generated from urban population and rest is generated from rural population

• Samsung has emerged as the market leader in the consumer durable segment followed by the Indian giant Videocon