ZeLab

Client is king ?

An interesting article from Business Week about the call centers outsourcing in India, and how Indian companies are getting more and more upmarket, turning down basic price-cutting requests from US companies, to focus on value-added deals including global services outsourcing.

It makes me think of the China trend as well : we Western countries once believed that Chinese or Indian suppliers would fight to get our orders; well the relationship is now much more balanced - and factories / suppliers in Asia are now turning down easily deals from western companies - sometimes even after originally accepting the order - if they finally find out that other deals could be more interesting. This is almost a Darwin-like evolution scheme : in how many years will we deal with China the same way we now deal with our local suppliers ? Not so long I reckon...

Another test using Performancing add-on for Firefox

Looks great and more user-friedly than Qumana I used before... Heard about it here;

The 100 Top Brands 06

Business Week has just released their annual ranking of 100 Top Brands.

Not sure I fully understand the method, but it seems that the ranking is based on financial datas more than marketing ones (such as brand awareness...). Business Week assigns a "value" (in US$) to each brand.

Well again, there should be discussions about what the brand value is. I understand the method here is to link the value of the brand to the potential revenues it should bring 'by itself' to the company owning it. This is how Nike can be ranked 31st, while Merill Lynch is 21st.

Also interesting is the fact that these top 100 brands are all geographically dispatched between a dozen of countries only. U.S. mainly, then Europe, then a few Asian ones (Japan, S. Korea)... I bet in a few years, Chinese brands will start to be listed there...

Test Qumana

Testing this Post editing software that I was made aware of on tubbydev blog. Let's see it if it really works...

Powered by Qumana

Smash a tart !

Just learnt that Segolene Royal, who might well be our next President, has offered a summer job to a guy who had smashed a cream tart in her face few weeks ago.
What is the message ??

Lost in translation

I had to look for translation / proof-reading companies recently for my company. Having no experience in that area, I used to good old-fashioned Google search to look for solutions.
I was quite surprised to realise that whatever the language involved (I was looking for Italian, French, Spanish, German translations from English), I could find only UK / US-based companies to offer these services (well, there were a few French or Italian ones, but the websites did not exactly look convincing). I was naive enough to think that an Italian company would be the best to proof-read an Italian text - well, I was wrong.
So it seems that, not only do we all have to speak in English, but if we ever want to translate english into another language, we have to go through English-speaking companies... Quite a language-monopoly, isn't it ?
Anyway, besides this typical french bad faith, I must say I found a few good services, and especially click2translate.com, whose website is a model of user-friendliness.

Technorati widget... I give up

Well after spending 15 minutes trying to install Technorati widget on this blog, I give up. I get to a point where I am supposed to "click the button below" on my technorati account.... only the button in question is not there !
Will try again later.

LaFraise.com

A few words about what I think is a great entrepreneurial achievement (and in France, what's more!), with lafraise.com.
For those who don't know it yet (it is pretty famous in France, I don't know about its notoriety outside "l'hexagone"), this website has been launched in January 2004 as a community-based-t-shirts-design-and-delivery service. The idea being that each member can submit designs or motos to be printed on t-shirts, all the members vote, and the best ones are actually printed out and sold online.
The founder, Patrice is a self-made-entrepreneur, who just had a great idea (simple, efficient, good time-to-market) and, I think, a pretty good marketing "feeling". The site is a model of simplicity and user-friendliness, and the service is perfect (I have been client more than once).
Anyway, few days ago, 2,5 years after creating the site in his living room, Patrice has sold what has become a successfull company to a German competitor, and is now talking about "early retirement"...
Well I like the story.

Excuse my French !

Just one thing I forgot to mention : since I am French, and English is not a natural language for me, I trust you will be kind enough to forgive the few misspellings and incorrect sentences that will necessarily appear from time to time.
Spending years speaking English with non-native users (and especially asian ones) was probably not the best way to get to Oxford-style accent and writing. Here is a good (though old) post about english-speaking chinese...
Thank u-la !

Welcome

Hi there, Welcome to my Blog, in which I plan to share & discuss experiences I gained through my professional activities. I am pretty excited actually, even though I am also very much aware of being only one drop in the ocean of blogs created every day. I hope some will find interest in reading this - and if not, well, at least I will find interest in writing it !