What does the term 'Strategic Partner' actually mean

I'm in a sales job and always used to wonder the meaning of the term strategic parter. I always used to think it as more of a sales/marketing terminology, since at the end of the day we have to sell at the best profit possible. Sometime back i went into deep thought over this and I came to realise that the term 'strategic partner' has got a deep meaning.

I will start from the basics. Why an organisation is into business? In very simple terms - It is to make money. The owner/management/enterpreneaur has some money and he can get the returns by putting this into a bank. However he wants to get higher returns that what he would get be getting from the bank. So, he does some assessment and decides that investing the money into a particular business best suits his objective. Mind it, if he gets an instrument which would give similar ROI on his investment, he won't get into the hassle of business at all. But he has to because there is no other instrument available. This becomes the basic obejective of getting into a business - 'TO GET RETURNS ON HIS INVESTMENT BETTER THAN A BANK DEPOSIT'. Now her has to create the 'factory' for his business - the term is symbolical because it would mean capital equipments, people, tools, IT etc. Of this factory, he may be having few things such as few people, some IT infrastructure etc. but in all probability he won't be having everything. Hence, he has to start looking into the market for the missing components of the factory. The roles of the vendors now come into play. Now the vendors may chose to think like a vendor or a strategic partner. The act perse more or less remains same in both the cases i.e sell goods and/or services. However, what differentiates the two is the end goal that he is seeking. If the vendor thinks his end goal is making money and stops at that, then he'll just stay as a vendor. However, if the vendors choses to go further and makes the success of his customer as the end objective, then he becomes the strategic partner. In this case, he becomes an integral part of the factory which is working towards the end goal of the customer. Of course while doing that, the vendor has to take care of his KPIs because he has to remain healthy in order to continue serving the end customer. This also puts the onus on the customer to take care of the vendor in order to remain healthy so that the factory components remain healthy. This relationship is based on TRUST and the one common objective. In comparison, in the strict vendor-customer relationship, the two parties have two different objectives. The vendor in this case is not looking at the success of his customer as the end goal but shrinking its thinking just to making profits. The customer in this case is looking at squeezing the vendor to the maximum because he doesn't trust the guy. So this will always lead to 'my interest, ur interest' case and then either of the two parties will rejoice its success at the cost of the other.

This has been a big revelation for me and since then, while thinking about my products or solution, my thought automatically goes to the questions - "Is it going to make my customer successful? If yes How?"

Meditation in Igatpuri

We went to Igatpuri for a couple of days for persuing one of my passions - meditation. This was organised by Yogoda Satsanga Society.
We started at 7 am from my residence. Getting out of the city didn't take too much of time and by 7.45 we were on the Nasik Road. We took a break at Hotel Parivaar ( after Bhagat Tarachand) which was a mistake as the service was pathetic. If you're in a hurry, you should not stop here. Then got into a big jam because of a narrow bridge on which only one vehicle from each ways can go through. Finally reached Igatpuri at 10.45. There I took a left diversion after Manas Resort (after Manas Lifestyle), crossed Mahindra factorty, railway bridge, took a left turn, crossed Vipassana Institute and then reached the Ashram. The property is anything but an ashram of the tradional stories. Its a nice property with great care taken for cleanliness. The whole ambience was just brilliant and you can actually feel the silence only broken once in a while by train bugles .
The session had already started and a lecture was going on when we reached. This went on till 11.30. We had the registration after that. We had lunch at 12.30 which was organised in a tent with seating arrnagments of more than 300. The food was not lavish but tasty. The session restarted at 2.30 pm with another lecture which went on till 4.00 pm. Then we broke for tea. At 5 pm we reassembled for Energisation exercise on an open ground. This went on till 5.20. Then we went inside and had prayer, chants and then 1 hour of meditation. Meditation in such as silence was a completely different experience than doing it in Mumbai. At 7 pm, there was a video show on the visit of Guruji to India from 1935 to 1936. It had its share of technical snags but otherwise it was interesting. We had dinner at 8, again a very light dinner of khichdi and achaar. My wife's accomodation was arranged in one of the rooms in the sadhanalaya while mine was arranged in a nearby school called MBS. We went to our respective places, made the bed on the floor and quickly fell to sleep. In my hall there were 20 other people, from different places in Maharashtra and Gujarat.

The next day started with an alarm clock going off at 3 in the morning. After that there was continuous chirping of people and finally I had to kiss goodbye to my bed at 5. Of the daily chores, I would like to mention the coordination that was there for taking bath. It was cold and they had arranged a water heater operated by cooking gas. There was 2 bathrooms with each bathroom having 2 buckets. One had to be quick enough to grab hold of one of the buckets to take the hot water from the water heater while the bathroom is engaged. The time taken to fill the bucket was just about same as one was taking for taking the bath, essentially meaning very little wait-time. It was fun.

We started the session at sadhanalya with energisation exercise at 7 am which went on till 7.20 pm. It was followed by prayer, chants and mediation for 45 minutes. Mind finds the reason to get disturbed and in the silence, it found neighbours's breath to get disturbed. We had breakfast at 8.30 am. At 10 we had the session to review Haung-Sau meditation technique. At 11, we had the session to review the Aum technique. we had the lunch break at 12. After we had the lunch, we had sufficient time before the post-lunch session and hence decided to go the nearby Vipassana Institute.

We parked our vehicle just inside th campus and walked all the way to the institute. On the way we saw an under-construction Buddha Park. The institute is on a hill - the half a km climb was not too steep. There we realised we could have brought the car till that place. Unfortunate for us that on that day registration for a 10 day course was going on and hence no one was free to tell us the details. When we were reading the daily schedule of the course at one place, one gentleman politely asked us to leave the place as it was forbidded section for visitors. I was miffed and left the place.

Our session restrated at 2.30 pm and this was a review on the energisation exercise. This went on till 4 pm. Since we wanted to cross the Kasara Ghat while the daylight was still there, we left immidiately after the session. To our surprise, they have made a new road on the Kasara Ghat and we never realised that we have crossed the ghat while we were expecting it. The drive was so smooth that I didn't take any break and reached my home by 7.30 pm.

We have decided that we would go there more often as the whole environment was so entrapping. The silence, the hill, the plants.. everything is just what you long for after staying in Mumbai.

Mumbai weekend Travelog - Trip to Alibag

Had decided to go to Mahabaleshwar during the long weekend with Christmas falling on Friday. However, courtesy one customer meeting fixed on Saturday I had to cancel the trip. Instead we decided on a short one day trip to Alibag.

We started at 7.30 from our residence in Goregaon (E). Getting out of Mumbai was not a problem on the sunday morning. However I misread the map and went all the way to the toll expressway naka before realising the mistake. I should not have gone on the flyover after Mac but below it and taken the right turn towards Panvel. Anyways, once I realised the mistake, we took the old Mumbai Pune road, paid 24/- toll and took a right turn at the next junction. That road went all the way to Panvel. There I made another mistake. The silver lining of the mistake was that we stumbled upon a nice snacks shop, where we had nice vada pav and misal pav. It was unbelievably crowded. From there we took a left turn and went around 20 km in the wrong direction, towards the Panvel market (also came across an upcoming residential project of Kalpataru called Riverside Residence which actually should have been named 'Nulla'side Residence). Anyways took a U turn when I realised the mistake and came at the same spot where we had the snacks. From the snacks shop, we went to the other direction, took a right turn at the juntion and then a left turn. At the left turn was the board about Karnala Bird Scantuary which is at 10 kms from that point. From there the route was fairly straight. We crossed Karnala Bird Sanctuary, Pen, paid a couple of tolls (yet again), one before Pen and another one at Vadkal.

Fianlly reached Alibag at 12. This could have been much earlier if we hadn't made the mistakes. The beach was not impressive. Our Mumbai beaches are better than this one. So, we decided to straighaway go to the Kolaba Fort. This is a 300 years old fort of Shivaji Maharaj which has been completely ruined by the British. Since the approach to the fort was quite marshy, we decided to hire a horse carriage. He asked for 250/- for hiring the full carriage (both ways with one hr waiting time) or 80/- per person but then he would take other passengers also. So we decided to hire the full carriage. The fort has been declared a heritage site by ASI. One needs to take tickets of 5/- per head for getting inside the fort. Its not a big fort and the fort is the complete island. There are 4 temples (Bhawani temple, Shiv temple, Hanuman temple and ganpati temple) and one dargah. There were 2 Muslim courtesans in Shivaji's court and he had got this dargah made for these courtesans. There are also 2 cannons of rot iron. The whole atmosphere (temples, cannons) gives you a feeling of travelling back in time, the time when Shivaji Maharaj used to rule this part of the country.

After spending close to 75 min (and having over 40 snaps), we got back to the beach. Had lunch at Sea Glow Resort and to our great surprise, the food was very good. By that time, it was 3 pm and hence we decided to start the journey back to Mumbai (since, after a terrifying incidence of flat tyre in a ghat 2 years back after sunset, I have decided not to be on the highway after sunset). Had tea at Amantran and managed to hit Belapur by 5.30. This time I had learnt from my mistakes.

If I had more time, I would have loved to go to the nearby beaches and realx as well... probabely next time.