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When, late last year, tobacco giant ITC found managing its ITC Centre building in Chennai to be an effort not worth its time, it had the task farmed out to C.B. Richard Ellis. ITC's brief to the property management company was simple: although the 68,000 sq. ft building was four years old, there was to be no disruption in day-to-day operations, the quality of facility had to be better and the cost of providing it the same, if not lower. Richard Ellis' asset services team came up with a transitional plan to take over the management of all activities and renegotiated terms with service providers. The result: at no extra cost, ITC's Chennai managers have one less thing to worry about. It's no surprise, then, that more and more corporates want to outsource management of their office facilities. Already GE's Call Centre in Gurgaon, Malaysian Airlines' office in the heart of Delhi, and even the Delhi Stock Exchange's new building in are externally managed. Notes Susheel Kaul, 28, Facilities Manager, C.B. Richard Ellis: ''The idea is to reduce both cost and headache of companies.'' GE's Call Centre, for instance, has 1,400 people working in two shifts a day. It occupies two floors and a five-acre compound. Instead of hiring help discretely for handling mail, pantry services, and housekeeping, it made sense for GE to go in for one integrated facilities manager. The tab? Rs 3.50 lakh a year. Says Manohar Pratap Singh, 35, Manager (Administration), GE Call Centre: ''It's a huge load shifted to professionals.'' Scrambling to join C.B. Richard Ellis are competitors like Jones Lang LaSalle, Knight Frank, and Cushman and Wakefield. The concept itself is not new, though. It has been around in the West for almost 10 years, and extends beyond mere floor-space management to energy conservation and asset management. Says Kaul: ''In the US, Richard Ellis even handles cash replenishment in Bank of America ATMs.'' Facilities management is one do-or-outsource question corporate India shouldn't have any trouble answering. By Angana Bharali CONSULTING ROW Who won? Conventional logic would have you believe that both parties emerge as losers when it comes to divorce. But in the much-publicised Arthur Andersen (AA) and Andersen Consulting (AC) arbitration, both are claiming to have won. Jim Wadia, the firm's retiring worldwide managing partner, claimed he had proved his point by not letting ac keep its name and ''go for free''. Meanwhile, Joe Forehand, global managing partner, ac also claimed that the verdict was a win for them as they did not have to pay any severance pay. But, as is usually the case, there are pros and cons for both. AA had asked ac to pay $14.5 billion to go its own way. The arbitrator trashed the claim. Also, the annual transfer payments made by ac to AA (15 per cent of ac's yearly earnings) will stop from now on. However, ac cannot use the name, on which it has spent $100 million in the last two years. However, if the reports of its possible merger with PricewaterhouseCoopers (PWC) come true, the loss of name won't mean much. Says Sid Khanna, 47, Managing Partner, Andersen Consulting India: ''Agreed that we have to build our identity all over again. But that is not likely to cost $14.5 billion.'' The fact that ac did not have to pay for a separation does seem to be a one-up for the consulting company. The two firms were set up as two stand-alone business units as part of a restructuring in September, 1989. Both were supposed to be operating in separate and complementary services. Relationships strained once AA started its own business consulting division to emulate ac's roaring success in the business. In fact, it is parent Andersen Worldwide that is being blamed for not meeting its material obligations in controlling the relationship between the two firms. Comments Narayan Seshadri, 43, Head (Business Consulting), AA India, 43: ''Not receiving the money does not mean that we will not grow. We are now the fastest-growing consulting practice, and our people are fully behind us.'' But the young consulting firm has more things to worry about. A Securities Exchange Commission ruling requiring audit firms to delink their consulting arms could be made soon. Already, there is a lot of churning happening among the Big Five. Ernst & Young recently sold its consulting arm to Cap Gemini. It was being rumoured that IBM was eyeing PricewaterhouseCooper's (PWC) consulting arm. But now it could be Andersen Consulting itself merging with PWC to create a $14.6 billion consultancy giant. kpmg, on the other hand, is toying with the idea of offering shares to public. Uneasy lies the head... By Seema Shukla ENTERTAINMENT On the silver screen, he was a 'one-man industry'. Now on the idiot-box, he's proving to be Bollywood's prime-time nemesis. You guessed it. The man in question is Amitabh Bachchan, whose 9 p.m. game show on star TV, Kaun Banega Crorepati, seems to have emptied out restaurants and theatres. No reliable figures are available as yet, but theatre and restaurant owners confirm drop in sales on the four days the one-hour show is on. Says Vijay Choksi, 34, owner of Naaz Cinema in downtown Mumbai and a member of the Indian Motion Picture Distributors Association: ''Sales of night shows is down by a quarter because of the show.'' There are similar complaints coming out of Delhi, Ahmedabad, Bangalore, Patna, and Calcutta. The smarter of the restaurants have saved themselves a similar fate by installing televisions. Hi-society digs like Delhi's Hilton that till recently wouldn't have been caught dead sporting a television, are religiously tuning into the show. Says Lalit Suri, 53, CEO, Bharat Hotels: ''People have stopped coming between 9 and 10 p.m. We are seriously considering putting TVs in our resturants.'' The show's ratings bear out its popularity. Between July 2 and 15, 2000, it had a tam TV rating of 4.2 per cent-historically second only to those of epic serials Ramayana and Mahabharata of the early 90s. Says S.K. Chugh, 58, Manager of New Delhi's Sangam Cinema: ''Obviously, watching others make money is more thrilling than a Bollywood flick.'' Several years ago when video made its debut, movie director Mahesh Bhatt summed up cinema's situation rather aptly. He said that cinema was like an ageing concubine, and there was a new streetwalker in town, video. As theatre owners might want to add, there's one more in town: KBC. By Ranju Sarkar PERSONAL
TECHNOLOGY Personally, I believe living a life less organised won't hurt, but if you are one of those stopwatch toting dudes who live their life by the minute, this account of my cyber-journey is recommended reading. My objective was to find the perfect on-line organiser. I'd never thought of these before, but I guess they must be popular: I found close to 15 of them in as many minutes . My first stop was an Australian site that claims to be ''your personal on-line assistant'', yourorganiser.com. You'll like this site: it's bright and cheery as most things antipodean are. The functional attributes: you can organise your day, take a dekko at how your month looks, review a to-do listing, and access your address book (as long as you have entered the details here). I don't know about you, but the fact that this organiser didn't think of providing a facility for me to just import my address file from my desktop, left me cold. But only till I moved on to dailydrill.com, which didn't even have an address book. What it did, though, was a group calendar. If you wish to create a common schedule for your virtual project group, this utility allows you do so. This group thing seems to be heavy with on-line organisers. Most sites I visited, like jointplanning.com - which, I logged on to under the mistaken assumption that it was a site where I could 'organise' my next tryst with the weed-offer this as an add-on. Hallelujah! Jointplanning allowed me the option of just importing my address book from Outlook Express. Why, I could even upload files I needed to use. Indeed, most of the sites I visited, offered comparable utilities: group scheduling, importing files and address books from your laptop or Palm, e-mail, and other value-adds. You'll find the names of these sites strewn around this page. But here they are again: bungo.com (which, offers a photo album facility); digital.daytimer.com; magicaldesk.com; when.com (a division of AOL that, apart from helping you get organised, will also tell you things like when The Other Ones will play Madison Square Garden-not particularly useful if you are in India); and anyday.com (now part of Palm Inc). Bottomline: I do not know if these will improve your productivity, but they sure are cool. By R. Sukumar CONSUMER SURVEY Notwithstanding the teeming markets and choked parking lots, the average Indian consumer is a homebody. On an average, a typical Indian male spends 28 per cent of his time cooped up at home, and just 11 per cent outside of it. Minus the time spent on sleeping and working, one-third of the rest is spent watching TV, reading, or listening to music. These are some of the interesting findings of a nation wide ''Consumer Outlook'' survey conducted by the Delhi-based retail consultant, KSA Technopak and research outfit, IMRB. The survey also reveals that while the average Indian woman spends almost half her time inside home, she's spending more time working outside. That means there will be a growing incentive to buy durables such as washing machines, microwaves, and dishwashers. Even consumption of packaged foods, and eating out could become more frequent. But there's severe competition to shopping time. The survey points out that Indian consumers spend more time socialising (6 hours per week). The nature of timespend varies from region to region. For instance, people in western India spend more time working, probably because of their long commute to and fro work; those in south India prefer watching movies, spending an average half-an-hour per week; north Indians spend the highest time on playing, excercising and socialising; and only east spends the most time on grocery shopping. That's not to say the Indian consumer is time-poor. When asked how they would like to spend their free time next year, 47 per cent of the respondents said they would like to shop for non-grocery items; 45 per cent wanted to go grocery shopping, and 29 per cent preferred to spend time eating out. Still, 35 per cent said they would like to spend time on in-house leisure activities. Notes the report: ''Indian consumer finds shopping as a fun and family outing.'' So, what is the Indian consumer spending her money on? A good 47 per cent still goes to foods, 8 per cent to consumer durables, 7 per cent to clothing and footwear, and 6 per cent to personal care items. Impressively enough, a good 12 per cent goes towards savings and investments. The why and how the Indian consumer chooses a market and the shops in it are revealing. Accessibility is a key issue, with 91 per cent of those surveyed citing it as their No. 1 reason for choosing a market. Then, availability of product variety is another thing shoppers look for. Almost three-fourths of the respondents said they prefer shopping in markets that offered entertainment and eating options. Besides, there seems to be a high degree of shop brand loyalty, more than product brand loyalty. Yet, at the end of the day, the Indian consumer is a no-frills shopper. In fact, the report states that ''there are very few brands in India that can attract the consumer solely on their pull strength.'' A sobering lesson? By Team BT
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