Lake Villa Home, IL, USA : Thu, Jan 14th ,2010 : 11:15 pm

It's been a while since I send any updates to my blog....well there's no particular reason, except I don't have any real content to write except the same work that I've been doing.

 

As I mentioned in my previous blog, one of the most important business issue that keeps me awake is: so called the "referral bonus/fee"....this is very nasty.And you can't believe, this amount ranges any where from 25% to 75% of the price you charge in the market.

 

To my small business mind, any business that needs to give ~50% as a referral bonus, is doomed to fail....how in the world does any business  can afford to give this huge amounts and survive ?? And what it looks to me, majority of our competition in the market does is, compromise on the quality they give.

And TOP QUALITY being  my absolute ground that Sneha Diagnostics  should always stand on, it's very brutal for us to keep the show going on since we started....but I see a ray of hope that after all these years, people slowly but surely start recognizing our uncompromising quality....they're slowly trickling down hearing from their friends/relatives etc.

I feel absolutely proud when I personally hear the stories that they've been very impressed with our quality and very happy with what we're able to give them in these markets. When I'm there working on the ground, I absolutely make sure that each and every patient leaves our center satisfied.

 

And I believe there's still lot of room for us to bring in more quality and more customer care.

 

One of the major areas I see we're failing is, at the reception desk.

 

We've been taking very inexperienced persons and they don't have a clue what a customer service means. While I was on the ground, I spent lot of my time educating these people at the reception and making sure they treat the patients nicely...it's been a struggle to make them realize how important their job is. Next time, when we take any receptionist we should first train them appropriately at one of our older centers ,under an  experienced receptionist for a month or two before placing them at the new center....we need to have a good game plan of 'training' the manpower, which at the very best is 'on the job from day one for eeverybody'..

 

This brings to my mind a wonderful topic about the HR activities in the business and how we've been dealing with this important activity...I will discuss in one my next blogs. 

 

Hopefully these numbers should increase, which will make us an absolute winner in this game.

 

And it's so pathetic to see and know the facts that : Doctors in all the places that we operate, if it's their own or their loved ones' sample, they send to Sneha Diagnostics and if it's their patient's, they send to where they get "good referral amount"....or if they can do it in their own shabby lab will do it there itself to enjoy 90% returns...

 

It's not that we're fighting against all the local medical community...we want to make it a fair game.

 

I'm very hopeful that these things of shadow business practices will very soon end. In this social networking and internet age...where everybody knows  everything in the world.

 

I believe we just need to keep doing what we've been doing and able to survive for a while...with a hope that Govt will also bring in quality guidelines for labs (like in most developed countires ) to protect the patient, which will help players like us who incur huge costs to maintain top quality and trying to compete with no-quality competetion.

 

That's all for now...Happy Pongal !

 

Mohan

 

 

Lake Villa Home,IL,USA: Tuesday Jan 12th, 2010 : 10:20pm

Today, I'm enclose one of the beautiful articles written by Mrs. Neerja Birla (wife of Kumar Mangalam Birla, whose Grasim industries I worked for almost 5 yrs while I was in India, whose family business life is always a true inspiration for me ). I totally agree with each and every line that's been mentioned here ...as I would always truly practice them.

 

Mrs. Neerja Birla
Vice Chairperson, Education Projects of the Aditya Birla Group

Sunday Times of India
Mind over matter
15 November 2009

Everyone constantly faces challenges — at home with our spouse, children or other family members; at work with our peers and
bosses. Sometimes life itself seems a challenge because it throws up so many relationship-based and situational challenges.

But the biggest challenge of them all is one's mind. Often, it is possible to control everything else but one's mind. Being master of the mind is no less than mastery of the world. Chapter 6 of the Bhagavad Gita says "our mind is our best friend and our worst enemy. If we know how to manage our mind, we can manage our time, our relationships, our life, everything.

"This is where spirituality comes in. Swami Chinmayanand said, "spirituality is not a way to look at certain things, it is a certain way to look at all things." It is the path to a mentally decluttered value-based life. It is also about managing relationships in different sorts of challenging situations. Spirituality teaches us control of our thoughts, emotions and desires. It is actually the science of managing one's mind.

The result: A sense of well being, tranquillity and inner peace. It also creates the feeling that one is on top of the situation and in control of it, rather than the other way round. Spirituality is not bound by the confines of religion because it's not about chanting prayers, undertaking pilgrimages or charitable work. It's about much more than that. Contrary to what we all believe, spirituality is not just for mystics or old people.It is meant for everyone.

Life is beautiful but only if you really want it to be that way. This needs you to make a conscious decision to achieve your full potential and give your life greater meaning. Many of us are not aware of our potential. One must never let life slide by. Inspiration, curiosity, love, knowledge and enthusiasm give life its true meaning.We are said to be "living" life only when we experience happiness,
love and fearlessness, not stress, anxiety, boredom and a sense of aimlessness.

It is possible to illustrate this from personal experience. Nearly 10 years ago, our family started to perform satsang. I was increasingly drawn to it after my interest was kindled by self-help books. The knowledge we acquire from scripture helps us grow as individuals. The beauty of scripture is that it imparts universal knowledge,which is relevant to each of us and possible to apply
to our daily lives.

The truth is we need sincerely to try to enjoy every step of this journey called life. One is always waiting for something to happen to be happy. Alternatively,
we wait to complete the job at hand and then enjoy the fruits of it. But that means we are always postponing happiness. Happiness is in the journey, not the destination.

It is important to do things we value because only then can we give 100 per cent of ourselves to it. Chapter Three of the Bhagavad Gita explains that this is about the concept of swadharma, or finding one's true calling and following it sincerely. Once we value what we do, we start feeling good about ourselves. The self-esteem goes up. It also gives a sense of purpose and meaning to our lives.

Once we start to have some control over our actions and become more positive in our outlook, we may also find the law of attraction coming into play. Inexplicable events occur and we find things falling into place for us. They seem to be coincidence but that's the law of attraction working for you. You attract what you think.We can align our inner world with the strong belief that whatever we wish for will happen. When you think positive, you get positive results. Let
the power of positive affirmation take over. It was well said that what you visualise is that you realise.

That brings me to another interesting thought. The capacity to sacrifice is something we must all reckon with. It is sacrifice that enables one to appreciate the real worth of what one does because it takes a great deal of effort, introspection and prioritisation to give away something. Sacrifice always brings joy and growth. An important aspect of sacrifice is that it requires you to go beyond your comfort zone, which creates a physical, emotional and intellectual blanket around us and prevents us thinking new thoughts.

We become prisoners of our selfcreated comfort zones.We don't open up to new people and become averse to criticism. We cling to the emotional crutches we have created.

At the intellectual level also, we become stubborn. "It's either my way or no way" is the constantly nagging feeling.

On the other hand, when we sacrifice something, seek something else and transcend our comfort zone, we are no longer scared of change and grow as individuals.

In real terms, most of us are averse to change and resist it.We fail to realise that everything is changing anyway, whatever comes has to go and it is pointless to cling to it. That's when one can start to come to terms with life's ultimate truth, that is, that change is the only constant.

The Bhagavad Gita says "when we live in this world, we experience the pairs of opposites — hot and cold, joy and sorrow, success and failure. They come and they go. And even while they are here, they are temporary."

Most of the times, it is resistance to a changing situation, rather than the situation itself that creates conflict. Instead, one should face a situation as it is and refrain from colouring it with biases. Lapsing into "why me" or "why did it have to happen" makes for mental turmoil.

Through acceptance of a situation as it is, one automatically starts focusing on finding a solution rather than on the problem itself. And sure enough, one does come up with a sensible solution.

As Harivansh Rai Bachchan said, "Apne man ka ho to achha. Na ho to aur bhi achha. (If we get what we want, it's good. If we don't get it, it's even better)."

Lake Villa Home,IL,USA : Friday Jan 08th, 2010 : 13:30 pm

It's a challenge to efficiently manage the sales activities from nearly 5000 Doctors/Rmps/labs and the huge customer base without having a very good business intelligent software like Cognos....but for now I've been working and struggling to get a clear handle to manage them via the good old spread sheets.

 

Though we've doctors/rmps/labs listed in isolated systems located at each individual center, we don't have a consolidated picture of everything in easily manageable way. For now, I'm almost close to putting them in a manner that I clearly understand and guide and control the Sales/Marketing team where they should focus their efforts on a day-to-day/weekly/bi-monthly/monthly/yearly fashion.

 

Though the list of potential drs/rmps/labs is very high, I believe 90% of our current business gets generated by only 10% of the doctors/rmps/labs....so there's a huge potential to increase our sales.

 

It's been a problem to keep track of some of these doctors/labs/rmps who starts sending us business and then drops on the way after a month or 2 or 3..this is very dangerous as we should know the reason and rectify any issues with them and see why they're leaving us and get them on board before they make a permanent decision not to send us in future.

Now, I've given our sales/marketing team a very clear message that under any circumstance we can't afford to lose the business from existing drs/rmps/labs and we should identify any of those who don't send us a  single sample in a week's period and immediately escalate to me so we can discuss the issue and rectify them immediately.

 

It looks very simple telling them : 1. Don't lose the existing business 2. Improve upon the existing business by adding new drs and / or increasing samples from current dr.

 

I informed the sales/marketing team, severe actions will be enforced on those sales team who lose business from existing drs,including terminating the employment.

 

Now, I've almost consolidated the complete list of most of doctors/rmps/labs as per sales person and center wise and going to keep a tab on each individual sales rep performance on a daly basis. I definitely would like to keep a tab on not to lose business from existing drs under any circumstance.

 

Called upon Chirala and discussed about the issues of consistently losing business since Nov 2009 and going to daily review with them how to increase the sales above it's peak in Nov.

 

I don't remember writing about one of the major inherent bottle-necks of running this business...( some call it referral and I call it xxxxx....I don't want to say it !! ) , which keeps me awake all the time...I will discuss about this issue next time..

 

Personal side: It snowed a lot here since yestreday and the kids schools are closed yesterday and today......not sure if the kids ever go to school here..they're off since before Christmas ...and how they'll compete with the kids who goes to school 6 days a week......it's white every where ! Sunita was off yesterday and working today.

 

See you next time !

 

Mohan Raju

Lake Villa Home, IL, USA : Tuesday, Jan 05, 2010 : 11:10pm

I guess in every dynamic/growing business, there'll always be new surprises/shocks,changes which keeps you on the hook......without change we/business may die and I believe change is a way of life ! It's more so in a business like ours !

 

As I told you in my earlier blog that a new sales/marketing head (Regional Manager) joined during the last week of Nov and I've been making all the daily calls and planning and preparations and thought he's going to be the one I will be most dependent on.....guess what ? Day before yesterday was his last day.....!!!

 

I never worked with this guy but from his talk in the interview earlier he seemed to be very sincere,hardworking and go-getter but didn't show any of that while actually started working, which I was able to guess working with him remotely....and our MD was totally uptset with his work performance since almost 45 days he worked with him. He couldn't get a simple thing done on time (that's true as he never submitted any reports that I've been asking either !!) but I thought he will continue till I join in Feb...but somethings happen so fast....that fellow asked our MD that he can't perform, if his reporting can't cooperate with him and our MD took that chance and asked him to leave !!

 

So, I'm back to sqaure one with sales/marketing ! ! Not really, but  lot of time wasted talking with this guy and making plans etc...!

 

I guess everything happens for good...and we  just need to move on !

 

The current strategy is not to recruit any new person in his place and myself and our MD will directly coordinate with the 3 AMs and work with them direectly ....the good thing is, we saved one senior person salary , in this financial crisis !!

 

And since last 2 days, I've been constantly on the phone with all our 3 RMs and our MD and the Nellore and VJA center-in-charges , revewing last months performance and plans and targets for this month....

 

With all my own analysis since all these days and my experience in sales/marketing dealing with all these people, we (my self and our MD) are all in a confused state to focus on our sales/marketing working..most of the people are getting escaped with the current 'revenue' based target system.....I've been very confused all the time, how to make accountable each of the sales person by giving 'revenue' as sales target.....we've been arbitrarly giving 'revenue' figures as their monthly targets....

 

With revenue as target, we don't know where we should stress on them each day and how we can guide them every day

 

Finally after much deliberations, I came to a conclusion that instead of 'monthly revenue' , we should start 'number of patient registrations per each doctor/rmp/lab' as our monthly targets, with basic target  of 1. Never lose any existing doctors/rmps/labs 2. Add certain number of doctors/rmps/labs each month 3. Add few % of new patient registrations from each doctor.

With this new target strategy I believe, it's very easy to keep track of the number of cases each doctor/rmp/lab sends us and we will know how many number of new doctors are coming on board and how many are getting dropped and which doctor is sending what and which area we need to put special emphasis and on which doctor......

 

Though I came up with this idea earlier, I don't know why I delayed implementing this idea from so long ! Now, I'm taking all my time, explaining this new strategy to each of the marketing people (remotely !!) and make sure they understand this new process and get into their minds...

 

I guess, we're learning very hard lessons experimenting with each idea /strategy in every area of the business...(sales/marketing/hr/production/process/finance etc ) and educating all the staff and abandoning when it doesn't work....looks too expensive on the time and resources....but I don't see any other way.....I don't know if every CEO goes through the same painful process in every company.......I wish I had a simple formula of having one sure successfull strategy/plan/idea....

 

All this is consuming my mind and energy....thinking through each simple item... and the fear of failure of each new idea... each new hire ,who may turn to be good/bad/lazy/hardworking/useful/notuseful.....

 

I still can clearly see lot of holes that we need to fill in each depatment and each area of the business process......once I'm through with all these operational probelms (until the financial burden is over...) , I need to focus my energy on how to get more money and build new centers and keep the expansion humming !!!

 

There's looks no time, not having anything on my ever growing to-do list !!

 

It's my dream to hire more hard-working, more intelligent,  more dedicated people than me into this business, when I can delegate some of my work...hopefully during the next phase of expansion, when we get more money from outside, until then, I need to continue doing what I'm doing now !

 

Looks, it's only me and our MD (though he can be more dedicated and hard-working than  me...he's still able to put only part-time efforts because of his other commitments  ) .

 

Good night !

 

Mohan Raju

 

 

Lake Villa Homw,IL,USA : Sunday, January 3rd, 2010 : 10:50pm

Get back into the groove of work after the holidays...

 

Spent time working on the web-site and called Nellore Lab-in-charge and discussed about the work activities.

 

In my absence in India,every Sunday our MD has been visting Nellore and Vijayawada centers alternatively to review the work items and meet with people, so today he visited Nellore center.

 

There's lot of positive energy in most of our centers and I've been extremely optimistic seeing the progress we made by looking at the practical example of the turn around our team has made at our Kavali center ( we increased the revenue by almost 6 times by the end of Dec 2009 when compared to  May 2009 ) by identifying the cause and taking appropriate action.

 

This particular example of our Kavali center gives lot of faith and true confidence in our people,in our strategy and plan and execution capabilities to run this business as a true success from a near failure one.

 

To give you the background about our Kavali center: This center was opened around March 2008 and until the end of May 2009 , it has been running barely at break-even. There was no progress in the revenue and it seems to be declining slowly from month to month since after 3/4 month's of it's opening and the confidence in the center was very low among everybody because our earlier Director believed that there's huge competetion in the local market (well established big player like Bollineni Group ) and so many other reasons he used to mention with us all the time and in his openion it will be very difficult for this center to run in profits....thankGod,fortunately this Director is nolonger with us since June 2009 after I started working in India...but the true reason was EVERYTHING WAS CAUSED BY US ....operational issues...our inability to recruit a reliable bio-chemist who can give confidence and timely results to patients and consultants, because of which this center lost it's confidence among consultants and patients...

 

Since we recruited a senior and confident bio-chemist in May 2009 and myself along with others at Kavali making rounds to all the consultants and apolozing our earlier mistakes and promised them that we will deliver timely and quality results from now on, we made a real turn-around month after month...

 

This truly is a wonderful example of the lack of confidence in this business of a senior level person in the organization and in our operational inefficiency and how we should identify the real problems and work towards rectifying them, which I believe will definitely improve business.

 

There're no gimmicks...It's plain and simple that we should do everything possible to deliver good quality results along with best services, consistently and timely at reasonably competetive rates.

 

There's been progress in all our centers when compared to the previous months (except Chirala and Vijayawada ). Vijayawada could be because of Telenga agitations...but I believe there's a tremendous scope to improve the business month after month, inspite of the odds, if we can execute our services/products efficiently with good marketing and sales strategies...I still don't have faith on our sales/marketing execution capabilites...I see there's a tremendous scope for improvement in this area

 

I need to work on them one at a time ......

 

I should start doing my Yoga regularly as I haven't been consistent since I'm here at home.

 

Since was working today and I'm at home with kids.

 

Good night !

 

Mohan Raju

Lake Villa Home, IL, USA : Friday Jan 01, 2010

Happy New Year - 2010 !

 

I was not updating my blog on a regular basis, because I was lazy and there was nothing much I can update, except the routine activities..

 

Finally was able to complete the sales team spreadsheet, which can give a complete picture of the sales activites of each sales person. I've completed entering the Dec info for Nellore. I still need to get info for Vijayawada center.

 

Google has moved the web hosting to it's 'sites' and because of it http://www.snehadiagnostics.com has lost all the original formatting.

Worked since last 2 days to re format most of the website, which kept me busy.

 

Kavali center has done a good business during December. VJA has not done as expected because of the strikes etc.

 

Hope this New Year we will streamline most of the marketing activities and internal lab processes and manpower and bring the business into a very good shape !

 

Today called as many  team members who has TATA internal phone and conveyed my New Year wishes !

 

I should work towards keeping in touch with as many of our team members as possible at every occassion to bring all to-gether as a united team....one of the challenges of this business running at different locations with small team members is to keep a constant communication  and make them feel that they are part of an organization of a bigger team !! And they're not alone ! As we grow we need to bring in many HR best practices to make them feel comfortable and satisfied with what they're doing and make sure we (those people at higher ranks ) are always listening to their problems and issues....I believe I should meet them personally with each memeber and as teams and should listen more to what they wanted to convey to us in this New Year

 

Enjoying the holidays since last 3 days at home with family as Sunita has 3 days off ! We had a New Year night get to-gether at our home with 3 other families.

 

Happy New Year and Good night !

 

Mohan Raju

 

 

Lake Villa Home, IL,USA Dt: Thursday 24th Dec 2009

Sorry, I missed writing the blog on 22nd and 23rd, partly because there's nothing very specific and partly because I was lazy.

 

Last two days and today I spoke at length with

A. Vijayawada center in-charge

B. Marketing head

C. MD

D. Chief bio-chemist  and reviewed the pending work and various issues.

 

With VJA in-charge:  He is my relative and a B.Tech (Comp science ) graduate with no prior experience joined in June while I was in India. He's sincere and hard-working hopefully will be of great help once he learns and understands the nuances of this business as we move along in this business,

 

While I was in India, the VJA server hard disk failed in September and the data was lost....and we had only backup upto April. The data couldn't be recovered....we needed to key in all the data (fortunately we've manual records also ) which was finished...but the data needs to be massaged. This work was given to the center-in-charge and it's still not finished. Stressed the need to finish this task asap...

We're about to start doing all the Microbiology related tests at VJA center and all the machinery and material is now available and there looks a part-time Microbiologist available and hopefully will start in a day or two.

 

A small issue between a senior Marketing executive and the new Marketing in-charge was discussed with a conference call with them and hopefully it's been resolved now...the new Mkt in-charge don't have faith on this fellow but as I know this marketing fellow seems to be genuine...but let's see how this goes.

 

Discussed about the manpower requirement and various jobs which needs to be streamlined in all the labs with the Lab's chief. The important one being to streamline all processes inside VJA lab with the new Sr. Bio-chemist joining next month after our earlier sr. bio-chemist left....

 

We got to have sufficient well trained man-power to run the show at all the labs even when one or two sr.people leave....we always (as the number of centers have grown now ..we're clearly seeing the need to keep a std.by )  have been struggling with this ...not keeping a buffer but with thie new Sr. Bio-chemist joining and with our Chief being in std.by we should be able to resolve this issue to most part. And all these manpower should be well trained and experienced..

 

At each lab we always should have one Sr.Chemist and one Sr.Tech and among all 5 labs there should be one Sr.Bio-chemist stad.by and 2 Sr. Tech std.by 

 

Explained to the marketing in-charge to send me the list of each PROs responsibilities and their areas and targets.Sales and marketing also should be much streamlined starting from Jan so I can make each marketing person accountable to their work....now I don't have much handle on each of these 25/30 people what they're doing....

 

Also I've created a new excel for the Nellore coordinaor to fill in daily, which will give us a complete daily picture of the business. Once this is implemented at Nellore, will move to other centers also.

 

It all looks to me, running a business is also a mind-game....the success to the most part (apart from being all the external factors are favourable ) depend on how focused the in-charge (CEO) is and how much familiarity he has with the day-to-day operations and work activities....otherwise, there looks a very good danger the ship may run aimless without clear focus...as he's chief anchor and his energy is utmost important for the team and to keep the business active and with energy...

 

Today is Sunita's off and we watched Telugu movie 'Anjaneyulu'...our passtime and orderd a pizza and went for shopping at Khols and OldNavy to get some bargain rates...

 

Good night !

 

Mohan Raju