Introduction                                                                                                         (top) 

The BbyB Beacon is an electronic publication to keep the members of Bit by Bit informed about the current affairs of the company. It contains announcements of important events like training programmes, Management Review Meetings, etc.

Contact Information

Any contribution to the newsletter in the form of technical articles, or items of general interest, are welcome. Please send them to pratima@bbyb.com or sreedhar@bbyb.com

From the Management

The financial year has just come to a close and I am happy to inform you that BbyB had a turn over of Rs. 1.68 crores exceeding our target of 1.5 crores. This has given us a growth of about 35% over last years turn over and this is coming at a time when the dollar has fallen to record lows against the rupee! This result is due to all your efforts and I thank each and every one of you for your efforts in BbyB's growth. Given the rate at which the dollar is falling setting growth targets for next year are extremely difficult but I would like to set an ambitious target of 2.0 crores for next year.

I would like to just touch upon something that I believe very strongly in - standing by one's word. Once I have given my word to somebody I will try my utmost to make sure that I stand by it. Breaking your promise may lead to short term gains but in the long run sticking to your word always pays off. I would like to remind you of BbyB's relationship with BHP, which is based on a single handshake that John and I shared 7 years ago. There are no contracts binding the two companies and I don't think we need one because John has my word and I have his.

Regards,

Raghu.

From The Editor

Defining Job Roles

A business must organise its employees so that they are best able to carry out their roles. This includes making sure that they are each clear who their superior is and who they are in charge of. Employees must also be given clear job descriptions to provide them with a clear outline of their role within the business.

The organisational structure shows the way the employees are organised. Listed below are various organisational structures pertinent to different businesses.

Entrepreneurial Structure - A structure often used by small businesses wherein the employer has direct control over all of the employees.

The entrepreneurial structure generally has only one or two people at the top of the business making decisions (usually the owner/s). They have direct control and authority over all aspects of the business and its employees.

This kind of structure usually encourages the manager to give his or her workers greater responsibility to make decisions. It is appropriate where quick decision-making is needed with an element of skill and flair. However, as the business gets bigger and employs more workers it becomes difficult for the manager to maintain direct authority over all employees and a change in organisational structure becomes necessary.

Functional Structure - A traditional business structure where the business is divided into functional areas such as Marketing, Production and Finance.

These functional areas are also known as 'departments'. Each functional area has a manager and people who work below him or her, such as supervisors, then operatives and then the support staff. These are known as the different layers of hierarchy and reflect who has the responsibility and authority within the business.

This structure allows workers to specialise in the functional area in which they work, e.g., finance and marketing. The structure has clearly marked levels and lines of authority; for example, the manager is above the supervisor in the hierarchy of the business.

A functional structure can be inflexible, as it can be difficult for the business to realise that customers' requirements have changed. This may happen if the business is large and has people working on the same product in different functional areas or different parts of the world. If the workers do not see or speak to each other very often they will be able to discuss the goods or service. Therefore, a functional structure is best suited to businesses that produce only one product or a closely related group of products.

Every division will have all of the functional areas you would expect to see; this is known as structure by product.

Structure by Product - is where a business is organised into divisions that are solely responsible for a product or customer type.

Each division may also have many more functional areas. Alternatively, each division may represent one particular type of customer, such as business customers, individual consumers and international sales.

Each division is self-contained and operates as a business within a business. Within each division, the functional structure tends to be adopted - in other words, each division will have its own accounts department, marketing department, production department, etc.

Pratima

Other News                                                                                                           (top) 
Farewell to Deepak

Deepak is joining Caritor from the fifth of April 2004. Let's wish him all the success in his new endeavour.

BEST OF LUCK DEEPAK !!

Engagement Announcement

Arun got betrothed to Vidya on 7th March 2004. The wedding is going to take place on 6th June 2004.

Arun, Congratulations on Your Engagement and Best Wishes as you look forward to your Wedding Day!!

News From Abroad                                                                                              (top) 

Below are pictures from Usha's and Shenoy's trip to New Zealand.

Click on each of them to enlarge.

Programmer of the Month                                                                                    (top) 

The 'Programmer of the Month' for March 2004 is Bijo Issac for his Demonstration of the use of Microsoft Speech API for speech to text conversion.

About the Microsoft Speech API

The Microsoft Speech application programming interface (API) dramatically reduces the code overhead required for an application to use speech recognition and text-to-speech, making speech technology more accessible and robust for a wide range of applications The Microsoft Speech API provides a high-level interface between an application and speech engines. Microsoft Speech implements all the low-level details needed to control and manage the real-time operations of various speech engines. The two basic types of Microsoft Speech engines are text-to-speech (TTS) systems and speech recognizers. TTS systems synthesize text strings and files into spoken audio using synthetic voices. Speech recognizers convert human spoken audio into readable text strings and files.

New Recruits                                                                                                       (top) 

Akshatha Rai, an engineer in Computer Science, completed her course in 2000, from NMAMIT - Mangalore University.

Nisha Purushothaman, is a graduate in Fine Arts, with a specialization in Applied Arts, from Kerala University.

Prakash K Rotti, an engineer in Electrical & Electronics, from SDM College of Engineering and Technology, Dharwad.



Training & Education                                                                                            (top)

Workshop on Customer Satisfaction Measurement

A one-day workshop on Measurement of Customer Satisfaction was organised by CETE Bangalore, Department of IT, Govt. of India on the 5th March 2004. Jayaraj, our Management Representative, attended the seminar.

Seminar on Windows Server 2003 and SQL Server 2000

Vinod H, our System Administrator, attended a seminar on Windows server 2003 active directory diagnostics, troubleshooting and recovery and SQL Server 2000 security features and considerations, on the 22nd March 2004 at Le Meridien, Bangalore. This one-day event was organised by Microsoft.

Holidays                                                                                         (top)

Upcoming Birthday                                                                                                (top)

Shubha and Arun Kumar celebrate their birthdays on 20th February.