Friday, September 3, 2010

Project Profile

It’s time we compile our thoughts together. I have made my first attempt to draft a high level project profile – I should rather call it project concept.
The Product: We propose to offer complete solution to Indian Business Schools for introducing the "Doing" part of education in their courses. ("Doing" as defined by Harvard Business School in the book "Rethinking the MBA"). "Doing" education primarily consists of training in efficient use of the Technologies that are essential for any modern business manager in their day-to-day activities of managing. Based on our analysis of 2 year MBA curriculum and what the businesses will need in next 5 to 10 years, the following courses are proposed to supplement existing courses.
First Year: (1) Collaboration Technologies (2) Essentials of Business Processes (ERP Core)  and (3) Business Intelligence
Second Year: Specialization courses ERP for Operations, Finance, HR; CRM and Social Media Marketing for marketing and sales; Project Management and Research Technologies for all streams.
With this being the main product, we will provide customized solutions to MBA Schools in improvement of the quality of the education and management of the school operations.
Organization: To deliver the solutions as stated above, we need organizational capabilities in 4 areas.
(A) Faculty Resourcing: We need dedicated and competent faculty resources for course development and delivery of courses to BSchools. We propose to leverage our IIT and IIM brand and contacts to create a steady resource stream. This organization for Facuty resourcing will be named "Aa Ab Laut Chalen" to attract NRI alumni and to make it attractive to Indian BSchools.
(B) Infrastructure: All these courses are Technology oriented and Indian BSchools do not have data center management capabilities as well as resources for inhouse development. We therefore propose to develop cloud based infrastructure service. These cloud based Technology Labs will enable the BSchools to consume services on per use basis. We will try to aggregate such existing services from other service providers but in some cases we may require to host on our own. This organization will be named "ERPLabs"
(C) Course Development: Define the solution architecture, design course profiles, develop training material, train the trainers and all such activities until the marketable product is handed over for field sales will be managed by this organization.
(D) School Management Applications: In addition to teaching these technologies to students, these BSchools also have a need to improve their own School Management Information Systems. If the Schools are using these technologies in the day-to-day operations then students automatically develop very good familiarity with these technologies.
(E) CIMTECH: Additional organizational area identified is the Canadian Operations, where we will develop Global MBA program with collaboaration from an Indian Management School.

Marketing: BSchools in India have seen an explosive growth in the last decade. From 1986 to 2010 the number of BSchools in India have increased from about 200 to more than 2000. This has seriously affected the quality of training imparted. As a reaction, the students have become very selective in their choice of BSchool. The low end of the Bschools have seen very low enrollment and hence face the threat of closure. All Bschools are very seriouslythinking how they can improve the quality. The solution proposed by AALC/ERPLabs is finding strong interest. A market survey is required to assess the market potential.

Project Status:  A pilot program is launched at the first client, Birla Institute of Management Technology (BIMTECH), starting December 2009. First year courses are already being offered by AALC faculty members. By 2012, the entire program consisting of all courses for both years will be operational. Marketing services of Prof Sunil Garg of IKN are being utilized to promote this concept in BSchools in National Capital Region of India. Leadeship team has been identified. Canadian operations are also initiated.
Project Phases:
Phase 1 (2009-10): Faculty Resourcing activities are already started. This activity does not require much out of pocket expenses. Already about 10 faculty members are identified and 3 faculty members are already engaged at the pilot site at BIMTECH. This activity will continue to grow even if there is no new capital introduction. These phase 1 activities are being managed on a co-operative model with all revenues directly going to the faculty. The phase 1 will result into a very clearly defined product concept, a reference client and bringing together the like mided team members.
Phase 2 (2011-12): In phase 2, we will consolidate the activities and form operating organizations to support the business development and delivery at multiple Business Schools.  Investment in market development and resourcing will help us to achieve quick growth.  Orgaanizational capabilities will be developed for Infrastructure cloud, Course Development and School Management Applications. Within a period of 2 years, we should be able to get about a dozen organizations to adopt our solutions, evolve a fully integrated solution, have trained team members who will be ready for reapid growth in the following years.
Phase 3 (2013-2018): This period will witness the cash-cow stage of project. Rapid expansion with well controlled cost structure, limited competionj and high profit margins.

Organization: The management of the organization will have key leadership positions to lead each operation area (Faculty resourcing, Infrastructure Cloud, Course Development and School Management Apps) and 3 functional leadership positions for Finance, marketing and Corporate Affairs.
During phase 1, each leader of the operational area will prepare detailed investment and business plans for approval of the investors. Ahigh level project profile will be presented to the potential investors in the last week of September. If the high level proposal has tentative approval then the operational leaders will develop detailed proposals.
Ashok Ranade is co-ordinating the Faculty Development organization.
Upal Chakravarty is leading the efforts of organizing the cloud infrastrucxture development
Pradeep Srivastava is co-ordinating the Training course material and resource development activities.
Timir Ghosh is developing the marketing starategy and organization.
Rajiv Gupte will lead the School Management Applications delivery organization.
There is a need to fill the responsibility positions to lead Financial management and Canadian Operations.

As you will notice, in the next 6 months we should primarily focus on bringing the Pilot to it's apprpriate level of completion, bring on board more faculty at additional new client locations. We can all start particpating in phase 1 in our capacity as faculty which will also provide some income but a lot more of an opportunity to consolidate our team and defining and understanding of our product.