First case analysis during the MBA at IE Business School

At last, we are on the verge of completing our MBA's first case analysis in Information Systems. After several rounds of introspection, online research and team discussions, we came up with a decision to do a project on "Pixazza", an innovative web business firm with focus on In-Image advertising. Pixazza was founded in 2008 and has "Google Ventures" as one of their primary investors.


We began the project with research on Pixazza and other online advertising industries and market trends. In the project, we focused mainly on the following parameters.


1. Business Model


2. Competitors


3. SWOT analysis


4. Future Trends


During the research phase, though we had access to several information about Pixazza, we felt short of deeper insights about the company. We wrote to Pixazza with brief information about our findings and assumptions. We asked for help from the Top Management to help us gather more information about the company. Finally, we were lucky to get in touch with the Chief Revenue Officer, Mr Chas Edwards who was more than willing to help us with the report. We fixed a time for the interview on December 20th, 2010, waited with excitement until  today when we finally got an opportunity to talk to him. We interviewed Mr Chas over the telephone for a good 50 minutes. Mr Chas helped us answer all our questions regarding the company. The best outcome of this interview was that we received great insights from one of the key decision maker of a growing business.

Following are the excerpts of our interview with the CRO of Pixazza.com.


IE Team: What are the main cost components for your Company?

Pixazza: The staff at Pixazza.com is the main cost component in our business. However we cannot disclose further details about the cost incurred on the staff.


IE Team: What is the reason behind your business model of having "Experts" whereas your competitor such as Gumgum.com do not?
Pixazza:  The "Digital recognition algorithm" used by several players only broadly identifies what is In-image technology. This algorithm is supplemented by an algorithm created by Pixazza which is the differentiating factor from the competitors. But this model is still difficult to get granular detail that is required for product detection and be 100% correct (e.g. brand of watch). The "Experts" on board are not professionals but instead the proficient shoppers in each product category. We do not use expensive professionals but different pool of proficient shoppers for each category. Sometimes, when it is extremely difficult to identify a brand, the experts use a special technology using attributes of the product and tag the product that looks closest to the image.


IE Team: Can you provide us information regarding the revenue and profitability of the company?
Pixazza: The information is yet to be obtained.


IE Team: How do you pay your "Experts"?
Pixazza: We pay the "Experts" upfront for his/her work on tagging images. This would avoid confusion of the "Expert" putting effort on tagging and the customer does not purchase the corresponding product.


IE Team: How do you select your "Experts"?
Pixazza: Experts apply to Pixazza and Pixazza determines if the Experts are sufficiently qualified and subscribe to thecode of professionalism. Experts are then trained to help make sure that the tagging is done in a way that follows code and the moderator will communicate guidelines to the experts (e.g. if a celebrity has recently died he/she will not be tagged).

IE Team: How do you select your Publishers?
Pixazza: Pixazza's technology is deployed to hundreds of websites. Pixazza observes which sites get right traffic and helps determine the queue of images to be tagged. The order in which they are tagged is based on the popularity of publisher's websites that are to be tagged.

IE Team: Do you have tie ups with popular brands?
Pixazza: Pixazza has relationship with a number of online retailers across the globe and is now beginning to build relationships with popular brands.  

IE Team: What in your opinion is the biggest strength in Pixazza's business process?
Pixazza: The biggest strength of Pixazza is its technology which clearly differentiates it from its competitors. Our competitors use only algorithms. However, Pixazza uses a human qualification layer to the algorithm technology.


IE Team: What is the strategy you implement in accelerating customer purchase?
Pixazza: We follow popular editorials online and during the occurrence of an event, we try to tag these latest images after the event and drive a customer purchase. For eg: After the Soccer World Cup, when a huge traffic is expected on viewing soccer images, we try to tag these images to sports products in order to drive the consumer in buying sports goods via Pixazza.


IE Team: How do you plan to establish "Pixazza" as a global firm in the future?
What can we anticipate from Pixazza in the future?
Pixazza: We are establishing tie ups with "Daily Mail"  in the UK and "Times of India" news journal in India. We are currently focusing on English speaking regions.
We have launched "Pixazza light" to give publishers the ability to add advertisements to the bottom of their images while they are in queue awaiting Pixazza's services. For eg: Working with Goal.com, small ads can be accessed from the bottom of the website's images. We plan to enrich image qualities and interaction experience rather than diversifying products.


IE Team: Who do you consider to be your main competitors?
Pixazza: Google is largest advertiser in terms of using logic to link between websites. Currently they are focused on text ads like the "AdSense" but they are investing in image space too.


IE Team: How has the company grown over the past 2 years?

Pixazza: The year 2008-09 was focused on developing a strong platform. 2010 is the first year of aggressive deployment of technology. Year by year comparison may not be that helpful. But talking about 2010, Revenue in Q2 doubled that of Q1, Q3 again doubled that of Q2 and Q4 looks to do the same over Q3.

IE Team: What is Pixazza's mechanism to improve customer satisfaction?
Pixazza: We receive direct feedback from users and from publishers who have feedback mechanisms on their own websites which are in turn passed onto us.


With this interview, we gained a deeper knowledge about the strong position of Pixazza in the online advertising industry and also obtained information that would otherwise not be found anywhere on the internet. 


I really enjoyed working with my wonderful team of seven on this project and look forward to work on more challenges together during the course. 

Innovation- From swords to snipers!!

I have now made a choice and I choose to share ideas on topics that can be related to any person irrespective of caste, creed, profession or nationality. I hope my writing reaches out to as many people as possible and makes a difference in their lives. CHANGE is a necessary criteria for happiness, better learning and improvement in personalities. Be it change in profession, environment, fashion, lifestyle, attitude, perception, goals, vehicles and so on, a good change always makes a person different from others. We all love changes as long as it is good for us. CHANGE is essential when a person has to stand out from a crowd of stereotypical people.

A good CHANGE that is entirely new is referred to as INNOVATION. Now how about being innovative in whatever you do? How about changing the life around you? If you want to be an INVENTOR, an INNOVATOR or a CREATOR, CHANGE your THOUGHTS to change the world around you. Let's begin to see the world through OUR eyes and not through other's eyes. I could think of some of the most important factors that could bring out the innovative YOU.

• Make a CHOICE

• Think BIG and DIFFERENT

• Research while creating NEW ideas

• Be FEARLESS
  

• DEVELOP the idea

Make a CHOICE about what you want to create. Remember, ANYTHING is possible to create out of the resources available around us. As you take a brisk morning walk or sip a cup of coffee at a nearby coffee shop, notice the people around you. As you watch the sweeper cleaning the roads in the morning, does it strike to you about ways that can make a sweeper's work easier in cleaning the roads? Can you think of making a broom that can sweep the entire road at one sweep? I am sure most of us keep getting such beautiful thoughts in our minds as we notice things around us. But all that matters is, how REAL can you make your idea! Choose what you want to bring into the world and use the resources effectively.

Think BIG and DIFFERENT when an idea strikes your mind. Perhaps this is the most important factor that can foster innovation. When an idea strikes you, think again whether this idea can make a big difference to others or whether it is short lived. I would reiterate, lets think BIG and beyond the common imagination. Let's not limit our life to going on a world tour. Let us start thinking of visiting the entire galaxy of stars and planets in our lifetime. Would you think of a family trip to Venus or Venice? :)



Always RESEARCH for more information about your idea. Perhaps you are unaware that the idea is already in place. Long ago, an idea struck to me about starting a services based firm that could cater the needs of busy middle-class society and alternatively transform the lives of people from backward classes. However after a thorough research, I discovered that such a firm already existed and was already successful.  Perhaps you may add more ideas to your already existing idea. Eg:- If an idea of starting a toy manufacturing firm that manufactures toys for children struck to you, you may probably tune your idea and think of making toys for old men/women aged above 70. Toys that might help improve their physical and mental stamina or toys that would be helpful in refreshing their memories.


Be FEARLESS about your thoughts and ideas. While I was introspecting the events in my life, I recollected several incidents where I had made a choice after analyzing results of other people who made similar choices. Like them, I too succeeded in whatever I chose. I played SAFE. I had chosen to neither make my life different nor make a difference in others lives. While the events around me occurred as expected, things around me never changed. Perhaps I would already be a successful entrepreneur now had I not played SAFE then. I read many articles about the most SUCCESSful people in the world. I compared my life with them and searched for reasons that made us different. And the first call from my inner voice was "FEARLESSNESS". I realized that none of these successful men ever bothered about "FEAR OF FAILURE". This helped them focus more on their goals and helped them achieve it. They had no FEAR to chase the dream they planned to live in. I believe most of us live in FEAR in our day to day lives. FEAR of failure, rejection and loss, top the list. And the fear arises when we aspire to do something different. INVENTION cannot go hand in hand with FEAR.


Start DEVELOPing the idea once you close in on one. Discuss with the right people about your idea, approach mentors or people related to that particular industry where your idea circles around, network with great people who can guide you thereon to succeed in implementing your idea. Read a lot about the challenges that you might come across during the development phase. Plan yourself well to overcome any challenge. Take calculated risks all the way. And of course, Be FEARLESS. It is your IDEA and no one can make a better use of this idea except YOU.

Have fun during the process and visualize those moments when people around you are already using your idea that has made a difference in their lives. As you constantly focus on these thoughts, I am sure there is more desperateness to put your ideas into action!!

Time Management- Be the pilot and fly the time!

Time Management is one of the biggest challenge that we professionals are facing in our daily life. It has become such an important entity that maximizing personal efficiency has become impossible without it. Time management is extremely important to meet the goals we set in our daily lives. But it is only WE who can make this happen. WE are the pilots on the aircraft called TIME. We many a times wish that a day comprised of more than 24 hours. And we follow our mind that tells us "Oh boy, it was a hectic day today.. I had no time for anything else". Well wait a minute, did the interaction with your mind end in this manner? The answer was YES. Now let's take a step backward and list all the activities we were involved with throughout the day. Surprised to see a lot of time was wasted? Now do you feel your day was very hectic? How about minimizing the time spent on unproductive activities? In my opinion, there are six important factors responsible for effective time management.

• Being present or aware of the "tasks for the day"
• Setting priorities
• Motivation
• Maintaining integrity
• Planning
• Be thankful

By being present to a situation and aware of the tasks for the day, one would be conscious that there are lot of tasks to be completed. Writing down a TASK LIST would be the best way to be conscious of the pending work. Imagine the joy of tearing the list sheet after striking out all the tasks at the end of the day!! And imagine doing this EVERYDAY!! I am sure you would feel you are The EMPEROR of this entire UNIVERSE..

Setting priorities is another important aspect to complete the most important tasks on time. When we are flooded with information, requests and committments, it is nice to peel away all of the excess and just focus on the priority tasks. It is easy to turn into a ball and start bouncing from one thought to another. A good reason for failure in life. It is important to concentrate the most on priority tasks and concentrate until these tasks are completed at the earliest. I was once startled after reading an article about Sarah Palin, the former Vice Presidential candidate of United States who wrote the most important tasks for the day on her palm!! I am sure that she would have concentrated real hard on fulfilling the tasks written on her palm. I felt this habit was truly inspiring. I wonder whether getting a tattoo done on your body stating the two most important goals of your life would keep you inspired until you achieve them one day!

Motivating yourself until completion of a task is important so that you have ample time for other tasks. Understanding how important each task is for you is a critical factor to keep the motivation high. Do not let the motivation go down by bouncing on other activities when a task is on hand. I strongly feel that you tend to get highly motivated when you complete the most important tasks on time thus helping you complete the other simpler tasks much sooner. Always visualize and imagine yourself screaming with joy and feeling ontop of the world when the task is complete. Expecting to experience this moment would keep you going and would in turn avoid procrastinating your work.

Maintain integrity and honor your deadline after you decide the deadline for each task. Affirm to yourself that if you don't keep up the committment to meet your deadline, then you will never be committed to complete any other deadline and that you are unreliable! Declaring a deadline and announcing it aloud to others is in a way very helpful to complete the task on time. It helps in pricking your mind often that there are others observing you working on it and thus helps you in working effectively on it in order to "LOOK GOOD" infront of them. As told by Paulo Coelho "When you really want something, all the universe conspires in helping you to achieve it" in The Alchemist, if you really want the task to be complete, integrity will follow you and you will fulfill your goal. Once you are passionate and focused on the task, integrity is taken care of.

Planning your work on a task from the beginning is the backbone for its successful completion. When you have a task in hand, be realistic in setting a deadline. Spend good time when writing the list and planning a deadline. Setting unrealistic goals and not meeting them can really hamper your self confidence. I once heard about Merlin's principle at a personality development seminar that I attended. According to this principle, a goal is better achieved when you plan the tasks backward and ahead of time. For example, if you plan to deliver a project by the end of next month, start planning from the moment you have delievered the product to the client. Starting from this order- date to deliver the product, date of final presentation, date to test the project case and so on until you choose a date to kick start the project. I personally tried this during my GMAT preparation and found it to be extremely effective.

Be thankful to yourself and to others after every accomplishment. Ensure that you feel that you are a very important person and without you the task couldn't have been completed. We humans are always hungry to receive praise for whatever we do. Hence it is important that we honestly acknowledge the people around who helped you in successfully completing the task. Make sure you sincerely appreciate them and make them feel very important.

I believe these factors can be applied to reach any personal or professional goals. Be motivated and be inspired. Use your time effectively with a plan and a purpose.


For reference, I am sharing a tool (Time Management Grid) that was shared by one of my good friend. We may want to use to this tool effectively here on. Below is the link to access this tool.


http://www.teal.org.uk/sv/timemgnt.htm