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You want to always remember 2009

In his first ever article in 2010 on his blog spendmatters, titled Wish you Happy New Year 2009 , Jason Buch started it with a question - "Wouldn't you like to forget 2009? " As an industry observer and analyst I will say NO.

Not lot many of you agree with me I know, as it was an upside down for many of us. But lets think - in which decade there was no such situation in one or the other front somewhere ? So this is a phenomenon continues. Whether that affects individual life or not - that person will see it as a good or bad. Now being in the big economy was bound to affect sometime - which it did. Just like a tsunami devastated many, a year prior to that.

Now lets look at what happened good in 2009 - the first and foremost - overall manufacturing, support, logistics, supply chain and IT and hundreds of ancillary sector went through a matuarity curve. The things that were irrelevant or not so critical in the chain started vanishing. Everything now is being attached with the "Value" of it not just the "Cost" of it. So the growth going forward will more to do with Value - and if you are in you are valuable. Ans I think this will carry everybody along the growth pattern.

Globalization of economy - everybody saw that what it means to be in a "global village". So if one household is affected the other is bound to affect. So nobody can just care about own thing, but also needs to be cautious about "last man in the queue". Also big powers realized that they are not so powerful as they assumed. There are slow and steady tortoise trying to win. So the heir will have to take care not to sleep. As long as its not sleeping heir doesnt have to care about somebody else winning the race.

Lessons for outsourcing nations - It was a big lesson for oursourcing destinations in the booming economies specifially in asia. They realized that just looking at somebody for business growth, working for some developed country in the night sitting at asia location for few dollars doesnt mean outsourcing. There has to be business process behind it. There is no quick "seat switching" behind offshoring- it has to go with process offshoring. Also India realized that growth needs to be within, its own infrastructure and customer base is more business opportunity than few dollars coming in.

I guess there are more pros than cons like this. So end of the day, one always will say - "I remember in 2009 we did this like ............and so on"

What do you think ?

Prashant Mendki (pmendki@gmail.com

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