Dilemma of Pakistani Software Industry: The Business Model+Human Resources -1

 Well about the locally incorporated companies, I have mostly observed, closely and factually, that rewards and retention have no clearly defined or SERIOUSLY practiced policies. The reasons range from preferential treatment for favorites to project limited vision (dukaan wali approach). I would however categorize these outcomes against the following core reasons:

1. Business Model: Weaknesses in system design, targeted business (mostly follow the crowd).

2. Product Design: Weak or no product differentiation, weak understanding of client/industry needs.

3. Road Map: Literally no road map for the business and products for growth in a competitive reference.

4. R&D: Absence of R&D from almost all setups.

5. Marketing & Demos: Never heard of demos from most of the local companies. They have presumed that they have the right product for everyone and anyone.

The outcomes are that a few favorite or dependable employees are loaded (burnt, depreciated) with most of the workload or project mgmt. This creates a big gap between the ladder from junior to middle mgmt positions. What ends up happening is that when a middle manager leaves for a better job due to similar reasons elsewhere .

The owners get someone take a leap from the lower end of the void to the vacant middle mgmt position with a fat increment. This effects professional commitment of the team, hurts their morale, distorts and unrealistically increases pay raise expectations, disturbs financial mgmt., challenges continuity in both the momentum and quality of products.

The need is to have strong regulatory and business model support and back stopping from the association of the industry and the regulatory govt. bodies to help prevent such corps from turning into corpse! The industry needs to share and learn a lot. This is a mis-fortune with most of the Pakistani economy; we just do not share and learn and avoid making the same old thrashed tested and tried repeat result yielding exercises that are called mistakes blunder and crashes.

Integration for Organizations – The Concept – Part 1

Recently, as early as some 2-4 years at most, the MNCs in Pakistan had started introducing and developing a new function of the organization; Organizational Development. More popularly known among practitioners and students as O.D.

Various aspects of O.D were always there in shape of TQM, TQCI, Process Re-engineering and Project Management etc. All focused to bring more efficiency through harmonization of multi-functional behaviors of an organization. O.D is now a formal, wholesome setup of skills, processes, theories and models that focus on aligning, developing and engaging all the functions of an organization to achive the organizational goals in the most effective fashion.

O.D is thus essentially the design of integrating various organizational functions to give the best results, with the best efficiency against set business objectives. It is important to notice here that integration, and I mean and use integration in a positive sense only, shall always give a produce, a result.

Taking it to departmental level we see how integration of various processes in a factory setup for example results in the production of a product item such as shoes, cars, cameras etc.

Taking the same integration approach to an organizational level shall produce and thus help achieve the organizational objectives of being the pioneer in the industry and making the ultmate profits.

 Integration is thus a concept, a design that creates “intended produce” oriented systems and setups.

The Part 2 of this string shall more closely look at the integrative aspects of an organization and the performance indicators associated with it.

Till then take care and Allah Hafiz.