IT-Aug 2007

Fame drives web contribution: Mc Kinsey

The biggest motivation for Internet contributions is fame and not financial considerations, says a recent McKinsey study. It suggests that online companies would do well to nurture these contributors with money and other motivators. The study conducted by Jacques R. Bughin, a director of McKinsey in Brussels, combines the results of other McKinsey research activities to reach its conclusions. Bughin says that a small number of participants still contribute the bulk of popular items on contributory web portals.

Websites that thrive on video uploads and Wikipedia-type of contributory content need to hook the small percentage of contributors who bring in quality content. It does admit that while people come in driven by the urge to achieve fame or share something within their community financial considerations can lead them to contribute regularly Bughin says: "Visitors under 25 years of age made up the bulk of the video-viewing audience we measured, but members in the 25- to 44year-old age group contributed equally to postings -suggesting that working-age people would be open to participation in enterprise settings." He says the presence of tools like ones that show a most viewed list that make it easy for users to see what's popular or to send favourite videos to friends corresponded, by as much as 30 percent, with more downloads for popular videos.

The study found that in video sites, around three to six percent of the contributors accounted for 75 percent of the videos up- loaded and two percent of the contributors accounted for half of all the popular videos uploaded. Bughin suggests that in companies where there is an effort to build up internal content through contributions from employees, the manager must identify the employees with the best networking within the company He suggests that a track of the internal mails will help executives find out the best net-workers within the company "Companies should make sure that their employees can access collaborative tools with a minimum of bureaucratic hassle," he writes.

ITC e-Choupal to focus on product traceability
ITC Ltd through e-Choupals is working on traceability of farm produce aimed at providing buyers products of their choice.

Traceability is the ability to track the origin of a product and its attributes.

Speaking here at The Custommerce meet on Friday, Sivakumar said that ITC had planned to invest about Rs 5,000 crore in e-Choupals by 2012. From 6,450 kiosks in 38,000 villages touching about four million farmers, it is proposed to enhance this to about 20,000 kiosks, spread across 1,00,000 villages to serve around 10 million farmers by 2010.

Compuware ties up with HCL Tech
Compuware has announced a partnership agreement with HCL Technologies. The partnership would focus on India's fast growing IT governance opportunities, combining Compuware's IT portfolio Management, Application Development Management and IT service Management solutions capabilities with advisory and implementation services capabilities of HCL's IT Transformation practice, Bob Donald, V-P, Partner Business Development, has said. Compuware also announced the expansion of its management team in India with the appointment of Hariharan Ganesan as Managing Director for India and SAARC.

Wipro weighs funding options for buyouts

Wipro Technologies is on the prowl for more buyouts — especially in Germany and Canada — and is ready to look at acquisition modes other than all-cash deals.

“We generate over $100-million reserves every quarter and all-cash deals are not the only mode. Funding is not a problem. We can look at equity, joint ventures or any mode that suits us best,” Sudip Banerjee, president — enterprise solutions and chief strategist — Wipro Technologies, said.

Banerjee added that cash reserves till June 30, 2007, amounting to Rs 3,200 crore, would be used for the Infocrossing deal worth $600 million (Rs 2,460 crore). Over the years, Wipro has gradually increased the value of its acquisitions.
The company started with the $10-million computer-aided design company Quantech and went on to buy the $246-million FMCG company Unza.

Its latest acquisition is the $600-million Infocrossing. The Infocrossing deal will help Wipro expand its infrastructure management solutions business. The company plans to increase combined revenues to $1 billion from $0.5 billion in two to three years.

New centres

Wipro Technologies is also planning to set up centres at university towns in the West. The first such centre in the US will be in Georgia.

“This will give us access to a ready talent pool. Such towns surround a renowned university and therefore there will be students wanting to work in the vicinity,” Banerjee said.