Business Management has been divided into the several constituents of Businesses, and the Management Institutions try to deliver specialization in each of these constituents separately. Let us try to diagnose each of these constituents and titrate them against the real world indicators.
1) Finance Management: This has been the Talk of Town for quite some period. The perception is that either the Finance Management people or the Marketing Management people get all the gravy in a corporate Institution.
2) Management basically means managing the available resources most effectively. Our scriptures define योगः कर्मषु कौशलम् । Meaning ‘Yoga is Excellence in Action’. Hence Yoga and Management have similar domain.
3) Now let us examine Finance Management:: It would mean Broadly Managing Companies Financial Resources effectively .As per Copy Book or IIM A Financial Manager is required to Manage the Finances, ensure Statutory compliances etc., In managing finances one has to ensure proper Book Keeping, and make available finances for a company’s functioning and growth.
One hardly needs any fancy degree or elite college education for these. A Finance manager is un important when the corporate entity is doing well. Requirement of Managing skill goes down substantially when resources are plentiful..His role becomes pivotal or critical in the time of crisis or crunch.
An excellent example of an ingenious Financial manager we find in the character of Mr Ramlingam Raju of SATYAM.Computers.He needed to show a particular level of performance to justify his shareholders confidence. When the performance was below par,he cooked up books, showed higher profits than actual. To Offset the fake profit, he generated a false cash balance and got away with it for several years. He would had been able to clean the slate and balance the books, if his land deal in his Real Estate company MAYTAS had not gone sour. Yet herein the ingenuity of managing finances was remarkable. Mind it, this ingenuity needs lot of skill. He failed was a coincidence does not make the skill any less conspicuous.
Ambanis were reported to have thousands of Finance companies, which they used to prime up their share prices and inspire confidence among its share holders. This called for Marked Financial Management which no IIM teaches.
Birlas had a “PADATA” system of preparing a daily balance sheet , that helped the Patriarch G D Birla keep a watch over his interest in dozens of companies strewn all around India.Mark it, this was much before the days of computers and internet. Plain Vanila Telephone lines and Data collated on plain paper was all the hardware.
4) Marketing Management:: It is to preempt customers demand, sometimes prompt or generate a demand by repetitive suggestions/media hammering. Then service the demand.
There is a joke that exemplifies the principles underlying the Marketing Management.
One Indian approached Harrod’s Store Manager in London for a job.The Harrod’s Store Manager (HSM) asked him what sort of work experience did he posses. This chap said he had had a grocery shop back home in his native village. OK said the HSM ,” Go and man the counter no.19. Today being Friday, we do expect a surge in customers and an extra hand would be help.
In the evening when his shift was over he was summoned by the HSM to take stock of his output.
HSM: Well how many sales did you make gentleman.
Indian: One
HSM: Only on a Friday is too low. Others did at least 20 or 30 sale, BTW what was your sale value of the single sale that you did.
Indian: Sir, about 95,000 pounds.
HSM: Ghosh! 95,000 pounds to one customer. Hey man what did you sell him.
Indian: Sir, I sold him a small size fishing hook,a medium size fishing hook and a large size fishing hook.
HSM; OK and……………
Indian: Sir, and a Small size Fishing Line, Medium size Fishing Line, and a Large size Fishing Line,
HSM; OK and…………..
India::Sir, I asked him where would he like to go for fishing. He said Sea. Hence I sold him a 26 ft long double engine schooner.
HSM: That’s Great . Yet it does not add up….
Indian: Sir, Then I asked him how would he carry the boat to the sea. And I sold him an 18 wheel caterpillar truck to carry the boat to the sea.
HSM: Amazing. You sold all this to a guy who came to buy a fishing hook.
Indian: No Sir, He never came in to buy a fishing hook…Actually he came in to buy Sanitary Napkins for his wife. Thence I only suggested him that tomorrow and day after being weekend and his wife needing sanitary napkins, his weekend was finished. He may as well go fishing...
