Innovation Management

Assignment - 1

Innovation in my previous organization

Examples of innovation: Investment in Liquid Funds I was working with IT company where cost + mark-up was followed for monthly invoicing. Since the organisational commenced operations, we were using a current account for keeping funds. In initial days, there were many projects were going on, so very minimal balance was in account. After 3 years of operations, there was a sizable amount of balance in the account. We used to invoice client at the end of every month which was basically total cost and mark-up. And within next 15 days, we were receiving inward remittance from client which was credited to current account. Every month there was a surplus of funds comprising of mark-up amount and depreciation being non-cash item. It was kept in current account. After end of 6 months, the fund accumulated to an amount of Rs 6 crores. In current account, there is no interest. I proposed to invest amount this surplus amount. Options were equity, Mutual Funds, Fixed Deposits. After deliberation and convincing with Treasury Department of Home Office, we crystallised with Liquid Funds offered by Fund Houses. Treasury Department helped to choose Fund House. Evolution of handsome earnings from zero returns: 1) We chose a fund house and opened an account. Every month we started depositing surplus equal to mark-up and depreciation. It yield very good amount of returns. Benefits: Good return on investment Zero risk We chose Debt Funds with Liquid Fund where principal is total risk free Dividend is tax free in the hands of recipient

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It gave higher post tax returns as compared with Fixed Deposits. is called as Fixed Maturity Plan. We decided to invest some of the funds for long term. Benefits:

2) There were some long-term funds for a period of one year + 4 days. It

Higher returns as compared with Liquid Funds as discussed in para 1 because of long tenure with lock-in. Lower tax burden as the scheme was for 1 + year, so there is long term capital gain with two year indexation benefit ultimately very minimal tax as compared to above.

3) We started investing entire amount of inward remittance and started closely monitoring working capital requirements. Even funds required for salary payment also invested as those are required at the end of month and not within the month. We kept only amount which will be utilised during a week. Every week we used to redeem units of mutual fund as per requirement of week. And in last week amount was bigger so as to meet salary & tax payment. Benefits: We also earned good return on working capital

We actually used this mutual fund account as a current account. Another example is of technological innovation Another example of same organisation, where I was working as Company Secretary and taking care of legal department. It includes overseeing the compliances pertaining to: a) secretarial b) FEMA c) STPI d) Labour laws e) Customs f) Administration laws Governance:

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Every Functional Head is responsible for the compliances under their respective area. A compliance committee was formed and CEO, CS and each functional head are members. This report basically spells out any noncompliances and any Show Cause Notices received during the month. Another agenda point is to discuss updates during the month applicable to the organization. I used to collate all the reports. Apart from that, each department is keeping compliance matrix in excel with a compliance date. We were facing challenges towards updation of the spread-sheet, internalization of updates, back-up documents traceability as each department was a water tight compartment, finding out non-compliances, track of Show Cause Notices and list goes on. I suggested an idea to automate the complete exercise and additional benefits with the help of IT. I took in-principal approval from CEO before talking to IT Head in US. IT laid down their constraints like: alien software into secured environment, and its authenticity/reliability vendor core competence and their support system uploading patches on-line support from home office and Platform required for installation

I took this project as a challenge and explained these to CEO. He supported to go ahead provided we comply with all the requirements of IT. We suggested to do a due diligence before going live. Simultaneously, a demo was presented to Home office through video conference and gave actual software for lab testing. IT suggested many changes to the software and also asked about version control document. We estimated three months timelines but actually to go live on server it took nine months. There was a stage that everybody left hope to go live considering the efforts for co-ordination and time required. I still forced the senior management not to leave this half baked cake. And finally, the day began with good news with an email stating URL for web application.
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It gave immense pleasure to explore the application. With this technological innovation we capitalized on below points: 1. Auto pop-ups to user no miss outs a. well in advance b. Escalation to manager in case no action is taken c. Second escalation to functional Head before due date 2. Capturing amendment in law a. Patch updation b. User identification in upload file 3. Real time updation of records 4. Reference documents / incorporation certificates available to CS & MD at a central place 5. No dependency on user to refer back-up document 6. Report generation at any point of time without any person dependency 7. Assign task temporary to another user in case of vacation 8. No alteration to data as less manual intervention except for updating compliance date. Technology made my life easier. It was also appreciated at Home Office level.

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