Letter to Khamis Muammar al Gaddafi

Dear Khamis,

I hope this letter reaches you well, reaches you not too late and, above all, I hope it comes across with the sincerity I have in my heart.

I wish I was sending this letter in better circumstances and Libya was not going through the unrest that it is going through now. At the same time, maybe this is when a letter like this is the most needed.

It's difficult not to be influenced by the news, by the images and by the violence. It is difficult not to take sides, not to “judge” but...

God judges, History judges, your people judges, you judge... I don't judge.

It is in the hour of darkness that we need our friends the most and, I hope, I can be of a voice that makes a change in this hour of darkness that Libya is going through.

Had the troubles in Libya not happened I would have been proud to say that once we sat in the same class and studied the same books, listened to the same ideas and dreamt of changing the world. I'm writing here because I know you can and I know you will do the right thing and, as you do, I can repeat that I am still proud to have known you!

What I have seen so far on the news are only violent actions and brutal reactions. Is that all that is on the table? One party eliminating the other instead of achieving together?

What do your people want? Who in Libya has stopped and asked this question? Who has the trust of the people to ask this question and is that person trusted enough to see the will of the people realized?

Who is the one in Libya that will stand and say: I refuse to accept that violence is the way and retaliation is the answer!

Who is the one in Libya that will stand and say: I am going to be the change?

Are the people asking for more than freedom, equality, pride and self respect? Is this impossible to achieve in ways other than one side eliminating the other and fighting to the last bullet?

The Libyan people are drunk... yes! But they are drunk on freedom and equality. The Libyan people just witnessed two revolutions where the authorities ran over people with tanks and yet, at the end, the will of the people prevailed. The Libyan people are empowered by the belief that freedom and equality can be achieved if they face the government long enough. They expect violence and so far, from the speeches that I have heard, this is what the Libyan regime has delivered. Not only are you giving the revolution what they expect, you are fueling their rage and destroying future chances for peaceful agreements.

What is more important to you?

We are all dying and what is left is our legacy. What do you want your legacy to be? Do you want it to be marked with destruction and death or do you want it to be marked by Greatness... greatness comes from building not destroying, greatness comes from giving life not taking it.

You are the one: no one knows Libya better than a Libyan, no one knows Libya better than you. And no one has the resources that you have. No one is in a better position to to make a difference. No one in these troubled times can achieve greatness.

At IE we are part of an elite and we pride ourselves with the genius to turn obstacles into opportunities, and crisis to resolutions. Where every body else fails we manage to stand for what is right; for what is a leader other than a student, as you are, that can look at his people in the darkest hour and lead them into the light? I am at your disposal to help you achieve your greatness.

May God be with you and guide you in this time

Antonios

Apple Bar

I mean guys you have to see this... I know that a couple of you.... yes you and you :) are already considering it. sorry someone stole your idea...

this is just a tease... this is not real (I feel the heat got to the brains of some people so I have to explain my jokes these days).

I'll be back soon to discuss the Amazing Rad winning the game and some highlights of what I've seen on the street.

enjoy the lovely weather and no one tells me it's hot... if it is take of your cloths

Casa Del Libro

From my previous experience all I need to solve such a case is to draw a decision tree evaluating the different possibilities and the amount of money allocated to each decision. then I'll estimate the probability of each decision multiplied by the amount required to execute such decision. the tree will give us the cost of every decision and the allocated probability.
I use Palisade products because they were recommended by my Quantitative analysis professor but there are a lot of other programs that can give you the same service and are for free. to be successful in the world of business one should not be afraid of using all the tools available. for such an application we will need the estimated cost of each action. (1- redesigning the old platform. 2- buying, installing the new platform, 3- not doing anything) keeping in mind the probability of success of each platform.

the situation in 2001 is not so far from the situation that we are experiencing these days. the future is uncertain and any company in this situation will face 2 decisions: either invest and expect the bad wave to pass and u'll harvest what you have planted. or you just hide not invest and keep the status quo until the storm passes.

historically as we have learned from the burst of the internet bubble in the beginning of the 21st century, during bad times big financially comfortable companies invest heavily so they can ride the wave from the beginning when things start getting better (off course they would they can afford it), while small companies stop all investments and keep all planes on the tarmac until things get better.

therefore my opinion a good decision considering that the online business of casadellibro.com was not that strong and not that known it is not wise to invest more and occur more expenses while we don't know if the result is going to be positive. based on this analysis I will not advise the new CEO to make any decision neither to invest in a new platform nor to invest in redeveloping the existing one.

for sure the CEO will not come up with such a noble decision that will most probably risk his career but in my opinion that is what should be done. keep the old system and not invest even in modifications until the economic overview is better.

On the other hand the Criteria that the company defined for the Platform performance were:

high performance: as defined by wikipedia, it is the amount of useful work that is executed with in a give time and using a given resources. usually high performance is measured with a computer's Short response time for a given piece of work High throughput (rate of processing work), Low utilization of computing resource, Fast (or highly compact) data compression and decompression, High bandwidth / short data transmission time


security: the systems ability to stop attacks, viruses hackers… from intentionally disrupting the process of the work as seen previously this can be done by software means (Antivirus, Firewall…) or by physical means (update policies…)

availability: the time where the system is available for utilization. the system theoretically is supposed to work 24/7. while it is more common with smaller systems PC's, laptops… to have system errors these errors are (should be) fewer in a bigger capacity system: Server...

scalability: again our friends in wikipedia indicate the following about scalability the ability to either handle growing amounts of work in a graceful manner or to be readily enlarged.

on the other hand I would add the following criteria:

General Economic forecast: if the CEO keeps on focused on the informational details without considering the future market forecasts and evaluating future risk then he should not be a CEO. it is the the job of department managers to worry about technical details while it is the job of the CEO to look at all the other details especially the environment where the company is operating to back his decisions.

Cost of change: a criterion that was rightfully not discussed (since a lot of organizations discard it, and only few institutions like Instituto de Empresa make sure to pass it to their students) is the cost of change and the time and money that it will take to develop the new program (in the case the company will adopt the new program) and the time and cost that it will take people to adapt to it. from different experiences we can get that this is a very high cost that most of the time if ignored leeds to organizational failure.

Tesco

Some one said it and I don't have time to check the reference so I hope the ethics committee will turn a blind eye in this hot day while the games are going on and I have to sit here and write a report about TESCO….

Some one said it: "if you are not online you do not exist"

Off course I'm not going to write regarding an IS topic and say… you know what TESCO would have been as competitive if they were not investing in their IT systems.

but NO I know for sure they could not have been so competitive and yes IT did give them a competitive edge!

but it is not only important to make a decision to implement one system or the other. the most important step that TESCO did is explore all the potential that the system they implemented had to offer. (this requires a full integration and adoption of any system in the company from top to bottom). This might sound not so important for the case but whether from personal opinion or from analyzing the culture of the other competitors when they were applying the fidelity card system I know that you don't just implement a system because others did.

from my personal experience I was in charge of setting in place a fidelity card system (not anywhere close to the electronic card system that TESCO has in place, since I was designing it for an african market) after the customers showing a considerable enthusiasm for the idea it was shortly stopped after launch particularly because the top management was not convinced that the system will bring any added value. For them it was just a new fresh graduate in a managerial position that needs to come up with new ideas to show he is worth his salary and this has translated into the project being discarded at the lower levels of the companies even if it was adopted by the clients.

I might be sharing this story just to vent or to blame others for my failure but for a reason I felt that this has a lot in common with TESCO's competitors. not only were they late to adapt to the system they as well adopted it for the wrong reasons… they adapted it because others did.

which leads to my main point TESCO invested heavily in their loyalty card system, and after implementing it they used the data collected to improve their business model and profitability (ie: by using the data to adjust the basket of products on sale). Had they not been aware of the potential of such a system and had they not been planing carefully to use the benefits, this system would have been a huge loss!

not only going on line and having a loyalty card system will not give you a competitive advantage but rather using the valuable data that these systems allow you to collect and being ready to trust your systems enough to change your business according to the analysis you derive from them is what give you a competitive advantage.

Apple security!

Yeah Yeah! I should be working on the graded homework, specially in this over saturated closer to exam period.

but since I'm a new appleno (apple user in Spanish accent) and I care about my compadres I thought to share this news about apple systems becoming more prone to attacks.

watch out guys and happy reading

wish you all the best with your exams.


Antonios

Enterprise Ressource Planing

Ok! so we invented the numbers, then some people created abacus to account for them, then we decided it is easier to spread a 0123456789 (+), (/), (-), (x). and we chose a paper to save it, then we started keeping books and then, was the calculator, followed by the computer, programing languages, excel sheets, Stand alone business systems then ERP.

I don't know why I had difficulties explaining this to John my Previous accountant:

well I know why:

ERP: Enterprise Resource Planing as it's name suggests, is in short a platform that treats the data coming from different areas of the business.

it is preferable to get the definition from Wikipedia (or this website) but to see why John couldn't understand this it is necessary to look at the difficulties that arise when implementing the the ERP.

when you use an ERP you basically centralize the database and you save time and cost, you reduce data entry redundancy , easier inter department communication… so we know all the benefits

off course for John who spent 3 months to figure out that the printer is not a paper dispenser the concept of the ERP is difficult but for different reasons it is also difficult for most of us.

- ERP's are generally complicated and even when they are not, people take a lot of time to adapt to the change they bring
- ERP Implementation, very costly (consultancy fees) and eventually when people don't adapt the company needs more consultants to let people adopt the change.
- not Flexible at all: any change in the process you need more consultants to adapt the systems…

you get the trend ERPs sounds more like something that consultants came up with rather than what companies need.

Sounds familiar… I just can't remember when was the last time I had something that complicated… Anh yes….. it's my last PC. I had the same feeling about Windows® Vista® but now I have a MAC and soon I'll be trying the new Google Chrome OS.

as Apple alway states Technology should make people lives easier in other words the business should not at any time be limited to the tools it has.

it's not a question of if but rather when will ERP systems just become an other open source, free program that every company can download and use for free.

My Spanish hardship

ok before I start my serious Blog this was this week end:

A Spanish friend visiting from Dubai (imagine that!!! visiting me in Madrid)... made 7 grown up MBA's practice Spanish on a Friday night with each holding a banana in his hand and singing:

el unico fruto del amor; es la banana, es la banana!!!

This is the price that I have to pay to learn Spanish (or in a Spanish Speaking Country)

but that's not the worst I have been through!

I'm sure this ranks way below me ordering insalada de pollo(a) I thought if I use the a it's a matter of accent.

this does not even compare to me having to finish a dish of callos, or ordering a cola con limon in chueca! but it comes close.

From PR Stunt to better Customer Satisfaction

Hola!

and hope you enjoyed this lovely sunny day as much as I did. with my lovely friend and my beloved sister who was visiting.

if you were following my Blog, (I feel sorry for you, don't you have anything better to do??) but I hope you like the new changes, it's a bit empty on the left but will find something interesting to fill it.

Mean while without any due delay I'll carry on with our topic for the day!

what was the effect of Dell Hell on the general Laptop ranking for Dell. and how could have dell prevented it.

well I'll start with a short example from my old job. I used to be part of a family business that was Samsung Electronics Dealer for West Africa (mainly Ivory Coast and Ghana)

even though I must admit that the client base is different from anywhere else in the world, the main focus of the manager _and I could only understand why after I experienced it personally_ was to keep the after sales service center as far as possible from the sales show rooms. even though it didn't make (financial or logistical sense) all the time... but it shows the effect that the technical quality (and not the promoted features) of a product had on it's all performance.

The sales were oblivious to the troubles the after sales service would go through. on the other hand the after sales had the liberty to even replace the whole product in case of a "lemon" (in these cases the client will get freebies on top of the replaced item). this was considered not only the strategic thing to do (ensure repeated purchase) it was the most economical thing to do.


I assume that what is relevant in the Buzz machine/ Jeff Jarvis/Dell Hell case is that it is not enough anymore to separate the After sales from the Show rooms.

hail the strength of the blogosphere. this shift in power still amazes me.

this loyal customer tried to explain how to avoid such outcomes in the future and I would agree with few points:

1- it's people who are important not systems
2- communicate with your customers don't try to silence them.
3-Address any form of dissatisfaction head on.

and I would add as our Jeff from one row behind me slightly suggested, bring them on board. yes it sounds like asking the devil if they are accepting job applications but it's not.

the way I see it if some one gathers momentum and people (bloggers) converge around the same idea... that's an indication of a substantial issue. instead of spending huge investment on market research, R&D and collecting customer surveys, here is the chance for a company to get all this for free and in real time.

every product developer now has his personalized, by product Wikipedia. open source hardware platform (well not exactly the engineers still have to come up with the assembling).

I believe we are in an era where we have to embrace the changes and by "changing how the company adapts to the world of the Internet" reach a win win situation where all parties benefit and not only make it a P.R stunt.