Be a Better Person…

Mr.D.Sriramkumar, Professor, SIMS

Living a happy life and being a better person is becoming a toughest job in today’s scenario. The point of becoming a better person includes leading a successful life, taking care our family, contributions to the society based on talent, skills, wealth, etc.,. Here we have some more points to become a better person and succeed in your corporate career.

• Avoiding Bad Relationships

Having a relationship with bad person’s leads to do wrong things in life and make you cripple in doing good things to ourselves. To travel in a successful path, evaluate the persons that we meet in our life journey.

• Being Fearless Person

Challenging every moment makes us to be a strong person in life. It might be Job, achieving our goal, learning things, planning your career, guiding the family. If a person faces failures, it means he is getting into right path to achieve what he want to do.

• Physical Fitness

We often hear health is more important than anything. Yes! It’s true. Being fit, keeps us, in a constructive path, as we plan our goals and built confidence to achieve our results. It includes what we eat, how we live, our lifestyle and how we maintain our body. It creates lot of Positivity in ourselves and makes us a complete person.

• Mental Fitness

Right mindset for Right situation is need of the today’s competitive world. Keeping the mind calm and cool helps to take important decision’s in our day to day life. While talking about cool, our national hero, Cricketer M.S. Dhoni comes to our mind. He is a live example of handling tensed moments and changing into exciting moment. Mental health is more important after physical health.

 

 

Tax Deducted at Source (TDS)

SARAVANAN.S

Assistant Professor, SIMS

      TDS is a system introduced by income tax department where the person responsible for making the specified payment such as salary, commission, professional fees, interest, rent etc, is liable to deduct a certain percentage of tax in advance  by making payment in full to the receiver of the sum. The concept of TDS is based on a simple principle that tax is to be deducted at the time of payment getting due or at the time of actual payment whichever is earlier. The Person responsible for paying salary is liable to deduct tax on estimated salary at prescribed of 15% with an exempted limit such as House rent allowance, conveyance, traveling expenses.

The minimum salary one should have for TDS to be deducted by the employer is based on the tax range. For salary up to 2,50,000 no tax, income from 2,50,000 – 5,00,000 is 5% tax, income from 5,00,000 – 10,00,000 is 20%, above 10,00,000 is 30%.

    For Example Mr. Ram makes payment of 100000 towards professional fees to building planner, Ram can deduct tax of 10,000( 10% of payment) and pay the net of 90,000 to the planner. The deducted amount of 10,000 by ram will be directly deposited to the credit of the government.

The TDS certificate is issued by the deductor are;

• Form 16 : Is issued by the employer to an employee on tax deducted for the year
• Form 16A: Is issued other than salary TDS.

Payment of TDS each month and filling of quarterly return of TDs are two separate processes. Due dates for the payment of deducted TDS is to be done on or before 7^th of every month. Due dates are applicable to all non-government assesses and government assesses who deposits tax to income tax department.

If I have an opportunity to change one thing in education, what would it be?

Dr.S.Sundararajan

SIMS

 

Quality of Teachers:

Unless we find committed, qualified, sincere, intelligent individuals to work in Primary Education level, nothing else stands any chance for contribution at later stages. Put restriction on lateral entry in the field of higher education especially for people who claim suddenly to be educationalists due to ICT without rigorous academic work or orientation.

It would be reservations in education system.Mindset (about the concept of education, its need, importance and role in future of youth and society) of all those concerned with education, via Teachers, Parents, Government, Policy makers, Educationists, Institutions, Universities, Students and society at large.Quality of an educational institution can never be better than quality of its teachers. It’s true for all levels. After all, more than 50% Management/Business graduates turn out to be unemployable. National highest (liberal) investment for quality teachers; worth the name or salt; and minimum (miserly) investment for only academically qualified teachers!

• School Education – Eliminate Private Tutoring Mafia
• Higher Education – Promote e-Learning at all levels
• Change the Business Model. Make it earn and learn trimester pattern fully residential program with one trimester in industry of the sponsor.
• “CAST Block” during filling any admission/ academic forms.  From where a kid or student starts recognizing castizm.
• Change the attitude of Stake Holders.

As academician I would like  to develop my student ward’s

Prepared to be self-employed

Personal interest – It is require to starting any work.

Thinking – Positive attitude. Before start believe it is possible.

Business Idea: believe, people need to think, research and work for different business Ideas

No need to seek job or work to start new business/firm.

Start business for not only own benefits. Start it as long term investment for family futures.

 

 

Social Media and Privacy

-K.Thirugnana Sambanthan, Asst.Professor, SIMS

In this current technological era there are many things which are affecting our privacy.  There are many spywares, hacking technologies behind this.  How many of us know that our mobile camera can be controlled by software and hackers can record all your actions.

If you search for a particular product in any search engine, you can see promotional advertisement in other social media. How this is done, most of these sites have access to our cookies data. When we browse the web you can view Share buttons of social media on all pages, from news outlets to shopping sites. If those buttons are on the page, regardless of whether you touch them or not, those websites will be collecting your data. Facebook filed the first patent titled Techniques for Emotion Detection and Content Delivery in February 2014 and the second one called Dynamic Eye Tracking Calibration in October 2017. If Facebook uses this technology it can use our computer or mobile camera and store data of our feelings. Similarly whatsapp can track our calls based on keywords.  Social Media deal in data, communicate using data, analyze markets and build their business models using our data. Data is the bread and butter of social media.Google uses Location to build up a picture of your everyday movements. Location data can be combined with other data and pooled to create a very detailed picture of an individual’s life and habits.

What can be done to eliminate online tracking?

1. Use different Browsers for different websites.
2. Use different email ids for different social media sites
3. Install ad blockers in your system
4. Install anti tracking software’s in your system
5. Don’t share much personal details on Social media.

Corporate expectation – Education Vs Experience

Dr.S.Sundararajan, Associate Professor, SIMS

Since ages Organisations have had to take a tough call in terms of hiring manpower-whether to hire well-qualified candidates or well-experience ones. While some industry experts vouch for well-educated minds, some argue in favour of experienced individuals, as they are the ones who know the ropes.

Human capital forms the base for every organization. In this information age, companies are ready to go an extra mile to hire the best candidate like Microsoft who hired a student from IIT through campus recruitment at a yearly package of a whopping Rs1.39 crores.

Education shapes peoples concepts and forms their knowledge bank. Many companies believe that candidates with a strong educational foundation are required to perform a job exceptionally well. In HR terminology such candidates are referred to as good pedigree. They come from top B-school/tier 1 institutes, are consistent performers and have high intellectual quotient. “New-age organisations mostly look for qualifications. The intention is to bring in fresh blood and more creativity to the table. If the fundamental understanding of philosophies is clear, life become easier in terms of learnability”, says Anil Mishra, chief human resources officer at magicbricks.com.

Many a time, candidates from premiere institute have a lot of unlearning and relearning to do. Hiring them may not necessarily yield positive results always. However, there is a flip side to every coin. Fresh minds lack long-term vision. They are unable to foresee upcoming challenges and are aggressive in nature. “Many a time, candidates from premiere institutes have a lot of unlearning and relearning to do. Hiring them may not necessarily yield positive results always. Much depends on their attitude and openness to learn, and that varies for individuals, opines Ajay MK, head-HR for Colgate-Palmolive, South Asia.

While qualified candidates have a sharper learning curve, experienced professionals bring insight, vision and years of industry knowledge. Organisations look up to experienced professionals especially for leadership positions, which require critical decision making and manpower-management skills. “A person who comes with experience can easily align himself to the company’s goals and start delivering immediately”, says Haresh Chaturvedi, Vice president-HR, Reliance Industries.

Many organisations feel that experienced candidates are often corrupted by past knowledge. They have predefined methods of executing tasks and are resistant to change. The world is changing at an alarming rate.What has worked for you earlier will not work for you in future. Hence, irrespective of the years of experience, one should always be open to experimentation, says Ajay MK.

The trend of hiring younger generations at leadership positions is catching up. Organisations are looking at hiring youngsters to bring in innovation and stay competitive. Manu Kumar Jain, aged 37, currently serving as the managing director of Xiaomi India and Vice president-Xiaomi is one such example.

In the race to hire the best candidates, organisations are losing out by narrowing it to education of experience. Be it start-ups or big companies, organisations need to determine ‘why they are hiring’ before devising their parameters and strategy. Instead of concentrating on education or experience, hiring managers should challenge the status quo and focus on hiring the right candidate.

Block Chain

Dr.B.Sudhakar, Director, SIMS

A block chain is a continuous growing list of records, called blocks. The blocks are linked using cryptography. It is “a distributed ledger which is open that can record transactions between two parties efficiently which can be verified”. Once recorded, the data in any given block chain cannot be altered without alteration of all subsequent blocks, which requires the consensus of all in the network or the majority in the network.

The invention of the block chain was by Satoshi Nakamoto in 2008. He created it to serve as the public transaction ledger of the crypto-currency bit-coin then.  The crypto-currency bit coin the first digital currency helped to solve the double-spending problem without the need of a trusted authority or central server. The block chain technology can be integrated into different areas as well the bit coin design has also inspired lot of other applications. The block chains are used today primarily as a distributed ledger for crypto currencies, in the form of bit coin. Smart contracts which are based on block chain technology reduce moral hazards and optimize the use of contracts in general. Banking sector are interested in this technology as it has the potential to speed up the back office processes. According to a report by IBM in September 2016, majority of financial industry players are using distributed ledgers for banking which is growing at an alarming pace.

Block chain technology can also be used to create a permanent, public, transparent ledger system for compiling business data on sales, tracking digital use and payments to content creators, such as wireless users. Block Chain technology has created a new distribution method for the insurance industry such as peer-to-peer insurance, parametric insurance and micro insurance. Internet of things (IOT) will also get benefitted from block chains as they involve many collaborating peers. Understanding the new concept will help the management graduates to have a competitive edge in the market.

 

LEARNING IS DIFFERENT THAN EDUCATION

Dr.S.Sundararajan,

Associate Professor-SIMS

Knowledge and experience are always cumulative. Education is one of the important vehicle for learning.  Life is about learning more about ourselves, our strengths and weaknesses.  As time passes, we start filtering out the non-essential from the essential. Some of the academicians call this as an experience; others call it wisdom or enlightenment.

We know by making the following statement we have re-emphasized the ultimate goal of education: Liberalization, Salvation, realization, Nirvan, Mukti, Enlightenment, the day of Judgement, Wisdom, etc.  As age and experience grows, we learn to leave the non-essential and focus our mental and motor energy on the essential and self-satisfaction is enhanced.

Grasping or Quick Grasping is equally important in the Learning Process. And the grasping is quicker when the mind is blooming – a younger age. We will find that youngsters (even 5th & 6th Graders) through experiments are able to know many functions and features of Mobile Phones, Laptops & I-pads. Also a person who takes Learning Classes for Driving a 4 Wheeler would have slower reflexes compared to youngsters. We, ourselves started Learning to Drive a 4 Wheeler when we received new car. We got the delivery of the first Lot and had to urgently enroll to learn driving. At the same time our elders who was in higher studies – they took driving lessons within our campus from Government Vehicle drivers whereas we were having a 45 minutes lesson in a Private Driving School. Our Children had to wait for 4 years to get his very own License but they were already a better driver than me and my navigator prompting me when we were on road. So it is true that to grasp and learn quickly we need quick mind reflexes. Wisdom will come at a later stage which will help in drafting the will. Learning is a process that goes within the mind, grasping, understanding, consolidation, etc., may be considered either the components of learning or synonymous with learning. Training and education, the external agencies, man-made, are hopefully expected to promote learning. The faster one learns better. Of course the speed of learning is a function of age, diet, culture, etc.

Does giving Negative performance feedback turn negative?

Dr. Priya Kalyanasundaram

Professor, Sankara Institute of Management Science

Why negative feedback to be avoided?

Negative feedback – though not a bad practice certainly it is a challenging one especially in a culture like ours, where we emphasis more on relationship building, negative feedback can affect our interpersonal relationship. Who wants to bell the cat? That is why there is a reluctance to give feedback. As it calls for an effort to tell a person that one has not performed well. Many of us fear of the reaction of the recipients, which can result in misrepresentation of performance review. Experts are cautious from calling it ‘negative’ instead of that they use words such as constructive or developmental feedback as the term negative may create a negative impact on the humanitarian principles, so positive feedback has been used as the best tool for performance management. However contrary to our assumptions and beliefs, negative feedback helps to deal with performance by creating different alternatives, also helps us in expanding our mental map and to maintain high task standards.

Regular feedback:

In today’s cut throat competition all organizations have aggressively started following a performance driven work culture, where employees have to think out of the box and to improve their competency level. Nowadays organisations are doing away with the annual performance system and are shifting towards continuous performance review process. Major companies like Accenture, KPMG, Dell have scrapped their once in a year ranking mechanism and started focussing on giving instant feedback after the completion of a task. The idea behind this is to foster a culture of continuous learning. The boss plays a major role by being more responsible while giving feedback to their subordinates. Here negative feedback becomes an important instrument to bring out their best performance. It is like a coaching process wherein task gaps are identified and suggestions are given to improve on them.

Positive impact of negative feedback:

Many researches in the field of feedback have revealed that negative feedback is more beneficial than positive feedback. It was also found that individuals with high self- efficacy and who believed in their abilities, negative feedback did not appear negative at all. The belief that one is able to improve performance helps in accepting a negative feedback. Though negative feedback appears to be a trump card in performance management, it also has its own limitations. When self becomes the measure of performance standard, negative feedback can thwart one’s self -image.

Fintech for future services

Mr.S.Saravanan, Professor ,SIMS.

When we use debt card for online purchase or when use Paytm for recharging our mobile phone, or when we make money transfer using digital wallet or when global banks do currency transfer – everyone are using fin tech.

What is Fintech?

Fintech is application of technology in delivering customer service with reduced cost and time.

There are four major areas Fintech has changed the traditional business

1. Fintech in Payment
2. Fintech in Debt Market
3. Fintech in Investment
4. Fintech in Business to Business
5. Fintech in Payment:

PayPal was the first company to make payment solution simple for online shopping. Today Fintech startup companies are pushing payment to next level. Startups in tech fields have reduced the cost of moving money across the globe with close to zero percentage with ease and fast. The middlemen (Banks) monopoly in transfer of money has gone because of the digital wallets, Whatsapp money, PayTM etc.

2. Fintech in Debt Market:

In 2008 financial crisis started because of non availability of information in credit and the customer. Now new Fintech companies have used peer to peer technology platform where customer and lender meet with open information for better debt markets.

3. Fintech in Investment:

Investment has been the prime factors for any financial companies. The companies who control the investment instruments had huge control over the markets. This investment instruments were traditional in nature and had very little scope for growth, but with the invention of crypto currency like Bitcoin, Ethereum, Litecoin had changed the way individual investment and return are made in coin exchanges. (Digital currency investment are not encouraged by RBI in India)

4. Fintech in Business to Business:

B2B financial companies were mainly focusing on upgrading the backend information technology infrastructure for better maintaining existing business. But the focus has changed to front end digital technology enabled customer services. The new technology like big data, machine learning has transformed the businesses.

Fintech has wider scope for future financial services companies and customers for better delivery with reduced cost and time.