Technology Adoption

I was promoted to be a front line manager in CIBA in September 1986 and transferred to Hyderabad from Eluru where I was working as a Medical Representative. I was responsible for sales in Telangana and Rayalaseema regions of the then Andhra Pradesh State.  

Technology adoption is a term that refers to the acceptance, integration and use of new technology. Persons who can identify technology trends, can adopt technology earlier than competitors. This will often result in a competitive advantage for one's success. I do not know when your fingers first touched the keyboard of a computer. But my fingers first danced on it in 1990, that too on a computer that I owned ! During and upto the end of 80s, macro level computerisation was happening in big Organizations and Corporates since the cost of computers was very high. But with the initiative taken by Rajiv Gandhi, the cost of these started to fall sharply bringing them into the affordability limits of individuals. In 1990, ET&T (Electronics Trade and Technology Development Corporation Limited, a Govt. of India Enterprise popularly known as ET&T) introduced PCs (Personal Computers) at low cost. I purchased a PC-XT (Extended Technology) desktop computer for my use with hard disk drive of 20MB (megabytes) The system worked on DOS operating system with 2 floppy drives. The 5¼ inch floppy had a storage capacity of 1.2MB The computer came with 3 softwares for data management. SOFTCALC (Lotus 1-2-3 or Excel like spreadsheet program) SOFTWORD (word processor like Word or WordStar or Word Perfect) and SOFTBASE (data base programme like dBase III Plus) My wife and I self learnt the operations by reading the books on these softwares provided with the system. The softwares were primitive in those days requiring you to by heart and remember specific commands to perform any data manipulation. USE, REPLACE, LIST ALL, Assist, List, Display Structure, Append, Edit, CREATE FILE are some of those commands. They were not menu driven like now.

I was the first line manager to own a computer in the company. I was very successful in turning my home office as paperless by keeping all records in soft format by computerising all my communications, sales data, doctor profile records, and doctor visit records. Making the best use of technology, for the first time profiling was done determining the relative importance of doctor to each product as also his total usefulness to the Company. This paved the way for assisting each medical representative in planning his work to maximise productivity.

Mr.K.B.Sarma, my Regional Sales Manager in the 80s, was the first amongt 4 RSMs to initiate computerisation of sales figures in the 4 southern states. Based on the sales figures provided by his initiative and the direction provided by me using doctor profiling data, micro planning became possible to enhance sales and attain targeted sales objectives. Our team won the No.1 position in the country (bagging the coveted Basel Cup) as a result of this.

For many of the visitors those days, computer at my home provided first opportunity to use the same in their lives, albeit for a few minutes. Many children too got the chance to operate my computer. Parents used to desist children from operating the gadget for fear of causing damage. But I used to encourage them and help them to overcome the fear of the unknown. The joy seen on their faces was truly worth all that encouragement. I remember a few of them who grew up to be highly successful in their jobs. They still remember that first "encounter" with my computer and tell that the feeling of thrill and adventure they felt always encouraged them in their later life to try new things without fear.