Can you guys hear me? OK. Actually, it's my first time to speak in DevFest. It's my channel? OK. How about now? OK. Hello, everyone. Good afternoon. Welcome to Google Developer Space. My name is Dan Bo-ren. I'm the customer engineer from Google Cloud team. For the people first time heard about my name, you probably feel like very interesting name. I normally make some joke about my name at the beginning, especially Saturday afternoon. You probably heard about my brother, the muscle man, the rumble, and the people staying in Singapore. You definitely heard about my sister's business in the East Coast. Anyone get it? Yeah, jumbo seafood. OK. So I work in Google almost for three years, but I feel like seven, eight years already. So I passed some of the certification around the cloud architect, data engineer, developer, and also the G Suite. I hope that one enough make me qualified to speak here. So today, I'm going to talk about Answers. How many of you guys heard about it before? OK, almost one third. So that's great. I have two t-shirts here. By the end of my session, probably I'll ask you a few questions. Who are the people first? Raise your hand. I got it right. You got the t-shirt. But sorry to say, my human intelligence cannot predict what size the people answered. But you can take it or you can share with your friend. OK, let's do it. I think working in the cloud world, technology world, is really challenging now. Because we had to understand the infrastructure, storage, compute, data analytics, machine learning, devices, oh my god, a lot of the same. But still not enough. You still now had to think about learn some great language. I read some great mythologies. The terminology, I think most people know it. Community is to tighten Answers. The book I put here, actually the on the left one is one of my favorite book, My Son, with the teenager already. So I always have some trouble to deal with him now. So now I feel like more and more common language with him. So I talk about some great terminology and he also understands. But for the people familiar with Google Cloud, they have different meanings. Community is orchestration for container. Istio is for service mesh. Titan is our chip, you know, security chip. And also the security keys, which I'm carrying out, two-factor authentication. And then we'll talk about Answers today. And this will be the operating platform for hybrid and multi cloud. And don't ask me why we named product with this one. I have no idea. In within Google, we have something called stop using great God to name our product. And we hope there are no more great God from Google Cloud platform anymore. Since we talked about the Greek mythology, I will use the terminology of the book. So like I'm using prelog, talk about some of the fundamental before I talk about Answers. I believe everyone know familiar with container. Yes? QB90? OK, Istio? Wow, OK. So probably I can quickly go through the first one. Now we talk about the main story about Answers introduction, the technical building blocks, and what is the component and what they do. And also, we will be focused on the GKE Young Prime, which is the key component for Answers. Last but not least, I will share with you guys some of the technical requirements when you plan to start the journey. And also, think about some of the resources or documentations, OK? Great, let's talk about Google's innovation around container technology. I would like to use this one started. I think for the people who stay in Singapore, we are no stranger for container, right? This is famous for trading lots of very close to here, right? Tundra bugger pod. You will see a lot of container over there, right? If you, anyone know the interlaces, the condo around here? Yeah, this is the best design in 2018. I don't understand why, OK? But this is all container, right? But we talk about different containers. Google also no stranger for container, right? So think about the service we provided by Google, right? We had to manage at scale. So every week, actually, this number not accurate anymore. Now it's 6 billion. Every week, we had to launch the container in our platform. And turn out to be, everyone know it's open source project. Google came from Google internal project called Borg. And we make it open source. Now all the community, even our friends, they can benefit from this technology. And how many of you think the container technology came from Docker? Could you read the end? Anyone think about Docker started the container technology? Yeah, OK, I see someone say no, OK. That's great. That's actually, Google is starting internally first. You think about the scale of Google how to manage the services. So very early state, we started to think about how we can isolate different resources and how we can control different process, what kind of resources it can access. So that's the reason we come out with something called C group, control group, which can define what kind of resources the process can access, so resource isolation. Then we have something called RMC TFI. Anyone want to try this one? I will give you a T-shirt. Anyone want to try? What's meaning? RMC TFI. OK, yes, please. What's the answer? Super. OK, later you can click on one shirt from here. Let me container that for you. So simple, right? Disappointed? So that's Google internal term. So basically, this is the Google version of a container. Then 2014 Docker release. And then Google adopt it. The reason why Google not using our standard versus using container, because we don't want to be disrupted in the industries. Better using something already people accept it. Then the rest of the history is everyone new already, right? So we make it open source. Everyone can benefit from it. OK, then after that, we'll talk about Google QB9 engine and Google service match, which is managed version of these two. I will make it very quick on this area. I believe most people knew already. So in nutshell, Google QB9 engine is managed version of QB9. And QB9, as I said earlier, is origin from Google. We call it Borg. So basically, you have master to help you to manage your API, traffic, and configuration. Also, provide a mechanism for you to orchestrate all your process. And then you have one or more not running your Qubelet. It's a proxy. It's a turnkey. It's an open source project. As I said earlier, anyone, you can run it in your data center, in Google Cloud, in our friends' cloud. No problem. Anyone can benefit from it. Then you say, hey, since it opens source, why I need a manager service from Google? I'm not sure how many of you once managed QB9 in your data center. Could you raise your hand? No? OK. So you knew the pain, right? The challenge, how you can maintain, operate the Qminity. It's not an easy task. So this is a turnkey solution, which meaning Google has become your operation team. For the people you're familiar with, Google, SRE, Site Reliability Engineering Technology, basically Google have a bunch of the team to help you to manage Qminity service. And you only focus on deploy application, manage traffic, control the securities. So focus on most important thing for you and for your organization. Another benefit is you can integrate with Google other cloud-native service, like CI, CD, security controls, right? Monitoring, lodging, telemetry, all this kind of service, you will get out of the box from the platform. This is very high-level architect looks like when you're running GKE on Google Cloud Platform. So the master, which is managed service, it's transparent for you. You don't need to worry about it, it's Google managed. And most important thing, we don't charge you, OK? When I say don't charge you, it's meaning our friend will charge you. Then the not. The not is one or more server we're running. Then we provide option in auto everything. Later, I'll explain what's meaning auto everything. So basically, if you're familiar with the Google Cloud, you can use gcloud command SDK to prevent in the cluster. Then you can use Qubit Kato to deploy or capture all your applications.  Later, I explain what kind of auto scale we provided. We also have the beta version called auto provision. Actually, when we say auto scale, we have different levels. No level, poor level, vertical, horizontal, then application levels. So you have different levels of the auto scale. Some of the highlight features like a private cluster for the enterprise customer, because by default, your cluster is have public IP, which make enterprise customer feel scary. So you have the option now you can disable the public IP, then make your workload within your private network. Another one is Google innovation around the Qubin ID core. You can call it container native load balancer or call it network endpoint group, which meaning traditional load balancer, but never traffic coming in. The traffic was sent through the VM level using IP table to raw to the port levels. When we're using the container native load balancer, we'll get rid of the IP table. Your traffic will be right away from the load balancer directly reach out to the containers. So you reduce one hop of your traffic. So this is really great technology. And now it's GA already. OK, then we talk about the cloud service match, which is managed version of Istio. So Istio, I believe everyone heard about it, or some of you. It's service match. It's open service platform for you to manage all your service traffic, and manage security, and policy configurations. And not only support container-based application, but also VM-based. So Istio is a great combination with QB90. So this is a typical architect high-level diagram. Decoupled different components Istio. Istio origin from Lyft. And Google and Red Hat is the main contributor for this open source project. So different people use different terminology. So it's basically decoupled your service and your service control. So it's called Sidecar. Someone call Proceed and someone call Envoy. So for the people to be developer, you probably understand the pain. So hey, when I code my program, I don't want to care about security, service control, configuration. It's not my job. My job is coding. And I hope I can also enjoy writing documentation. So but this way, you can decouple your service and your service controls. And also have three major components, pilot, mixer, and Citadel. It take care about pilot, take care about traffic control, mixer, take care about telemetry, lodging, monitoring. Then last, not least, Citadel. Take care about your security, your authentication, and authorizations. Then again, if you manage Istio yourself, that take a lot of effort and a lot of operation overhead. So that's the reason Google provide our managed service core cloud service match. So we provide managed component for pilot. We call Traffic Director. So it's a global load balancer to direct traffic to VM-based, to container-based, and Hashtag, and auto scale based on the traffic. Then we provide a managed CA, Google identity, certificate management, and IAP. And last, not least, for the mixture, we didn't replace it. We just provide a managed service for your telemetry and lodging monitoring. For the people familiar with Google Cloud, actually it's called Stackdriver. So I love you guys to lodging, monitoring, tracing, even debugging. Talk about debugging. It's amazing capability. I like Stackdriver. You can debug your code in cloud, in production environment. That's really amazing capability. When I'd be programmer, which is 12 years ago. But that's capability really amazing for developers. OK, so give you a screenshot of how the service match looks like. You can monitor all the traffic. Most important thing, we put Google's SRE. For the people familiar with Google SRE, we allow you to define some error budget, service level objectives. So you can define this kind of SRO for your service. OK, I think enough for build out the foundation about, hey, talk about Qminity is still before we talk about Answers. So Answers will talk about two parts, give you introduction, what the different building, technical building blocks, and what they do, and what's the value for the customer. And then we zoom into GKE on Prime, which is the key component for the hybrid cloud. Answers, we call it say, hey, operating system for hybrid and multi-cloud environment. And Google in the first, usually we also say Google in the first, and only one provider for the platform for hybrid cloud and multi-cloud. And the change, it changed actually three days ago. And our friend also come out something similar. Anyone heard about it? So core Azure Arc. So it's, you did the same standard based on open source technology. So it's made in open source, so someone also follows. You think about it, just think about Answers like Linux for cloud platforms. So across different platform, different environment, all based on the open source technology. So Answers allow you to manage your workload application on your data center, on Google Cloud platform, even on our friend platforms, as long as it's based on the same standard. We provide you a kind of control plan to provide a uniform monitor UI for you to look at all your application running. You can deploy application on different environment. And also we provide a marketplace for the people using open source stack. It's very painful. You have to be signed different contract. When you have problem, you have to talk to different vendors. But Google tried to unify your open source stack, whether it's on prime or in cloud. Last but not least, you still can continue to leverage Google's native cloud-based services. As I mentioned earlier, I will talk about more in the later slide. So this is what I call the technical building block of Answers platform. So of course, based on the open source technology, Qminity is still. You can leverage all the Google service, telemetry, lodging, monitoring, configuration management, marketplace, and also Google other service. Then we also provide you a kind of service. So for the people heard about Knative, we provide a manager version called Cloud Run. Cloud Run, it's a Google manager version for Knative. Then we provide you CI-CD using Cloud Build, other components like container registry, source, repository. And last but not least, also, you can do AI machine learning on the Qminity and Istio platform. So we call it QBflow. So that allows you to train your machine learning model, whether it's on prime or in cloud. So this is a high level of different technical building block of Answers. Then we go a little bit down to the technical detail level. By the way, some people may feel disappointed when we talk about Answers, because they always think, hey, where is the product Answers? Where it is? But sometimes I feel like, oh, I'm going to disappoint you because there are no product called Answers. It's just like software platform stack. So different open source technology and different components are put under one umbrella. So having said that, you can see different technical building blocks within the Answers stack. So of course, the critical thing will be Qminity, Qminity in cloud, Qminity on prime. So you can expect the consistent experiences, whether it's on prime or in cloud, whether it's Google Cloud or other cloud. About level will be the container. We talk about it. The container, we are still using the Docker, but now we can allow people using different container runtime, now called OCI, which is a more open container standard. Then we have the monitoring and Stackdriver for your logic monitoring. And we have configuration policy management, service management and GKE Connect. We'll talk about it more later. And don't forget, we also provide you the CI CD toolings, Cloud Build, which is managed version equivalent like Jenkins. And also, we have private host git to manage your source code and your container image. And we have the marketplace for you to deploy your open software stack. So you can deploy OSS stack, whether it's on prime or in cloud. Let's go through one by one each of the components and how the function it is. The first one is GKE on prime. So basically, we bring Google managed Qminity service to customer data center. Allow you to deploy application no matter where they are. So even you can bring your hardware. So by the way, Unsource is 100% software stack. You can reuse your existing hardware, protect your investment. And also, we provide a kind of managed service for your Qminity in your data center. And we provide a kind of auto scale capabilities for your on prime workload. We also provide you auto upgrade software, which is validated and patched by Google. So you can expect that Google provide a kind of managed service for your GKE in your data center. And the second one is the configuration management. For the people, if you have experiences to manage multiple cluster configuration, security control, policy control, you can imagine how painful managed multiple cluster control and multiple environment. But Unsource provides a single place which is called configuration management. Allow you to define all your configuration in one single source in YAML file. Later I'll talk about more. And it automatically sync to your cloud environment to on prime environments, which keep a single source of truth in the Git repositories. And third one, as I mentioned earlier, Google provide a managed service for Istio. So allow you to build up a macro service-based architect. And to allow you to control your traffic, authentication, and authorization in a single platform. And you can monitor all the traffic among your different macro service, whether it's container-based or it's VM-based workload. And one more new feature I didn't put in the slide is called workload identity. For the people, should you have external application call any services host on container, you know something called service account. You have to download this key. You have to rotate, archive this one. It's so painful. I have so many customers, they forgot to get rid of this key when they commit the code to GitHub. Then someone can use your service account to provision VM, even do the Bitcoin mining under your account. That will be a disaster. With workload identity, you don't need to worry about downloading any key anymore. It's federated authentication. Even your workload running on our friend cloud like AWS, you can use AWS EC2 instance ID to authenticate the workload access to services in Google Cloud. So this is something called workload identity ID. Yes? Any question? The CI solution or the SX? You mean the service mesh between your on-prime environment to cloud? OK, so currently, it will still be separated deployment. So your service. So basically, later I'll talk about the GKE Connect. It's more like a central UI to control all your configuration, your policy, your workload deployment. But the service on-prime and on-cloud how they interact with each other, it depending on your first your network design. You have to build out connectivity between your on-prime environment to cloud environment. And also, they can communicate each other. But through the load balancer, the traffic director I mentioned earlier, that's one will allow you to divert the traffic between different environments. I hope answer your question or later offline we can talk about it. So this GKE Hub and Connect allow you to readjust the cluster through the different environments. Should you use GKE on-prime whenever you create a cluster? Your cluster automatically readjust through this GKE Connect. So that's allow you a single place to manage all the clusters through a different environment. So again, this is two heroes behind the scene for unsolved platform. So GKE, we talked about earlier. And GKE on-prime is we call it turnkey solution to put managed Kubernetes into customer data centers. So Google provides a kind of managed service for you. And also, you can integrate with Google's CICD tooling and also other telemetry capability like Stack Drivers. So I will talk about a little bit detail about GKE on-prime. For the people familiar with Kubernetes, you know, Cubicado, you will continue using it. We have new command called GKE-Cato. So that's one will be happy to create a domain control plane in your data center and also your user control plane. Then after that, you can use in Cubicado to deploy application through the Google's G Cloud command line. One more thing I want to mention about it. So far, we support the F5 for local traffic management. You can expect it more load balancer we supported, but currently only support the F5. For the VR, we support the VM where vSphere 6.5. In the roadmap, we'll talk about more like KVM was supported in the coming years. OK, so by this way, you can see from the cloud environment, you can gain the single visibility about your on-prime and cloud environment. And also, you can preview the cluster. You can preview the application onto your on-prime environments. When we talk about, hey, there are one platform managing your on-prime environment on also cloud, you will have concerns say, hey, should I have public IP to allow you connected to the cloud? Actually, you don't need to necessarily to have public IP to connect it to the Google Cloud platform. So basically, it's using through the Net Gateway and also Firewall. So we build up secure tunnel between your environment to Google Cloud. And also, the physical layer part, you have different options. You can build up a kind of dedicated interconnect between your data center to Google Cloud data center. Or you can use the partner interconnect or using VPN. This is how it looks like for GKE Connect. So basically, how we can get visibility about application running in your environment is all through the GKE Connect. So basically, it's a process running in every service running in your environment. So that way, we can collect all the telemetry data, mental data, and also can send out the command and can deploy applications. Since we talk about telemetry, you can also have the option to install the Stackdriver agent in your data center. So by this way, you can centralize manage all your telemetry information. Again, we talk about configuration management or policy management. So this is an example to show you using Git as a single source to manage all your policy and configurations. You can define your policy configuration in the organization level or cluster level or workload levels or user levels. And everything, you define just a YAML file. And every time you change, automatically will be synced up to multiple environments. So that will simplify your operation overhead when you talk about policy control and the configuration management. Okay, with that, we have still two minutes. I'm on time. So we'll talk about technical requirement. Actually, I covered more or less already than talk about some of the resources. Should you want to get further understanding about Un-Source platform? So first, it's so far we support vSphere 6.5. It's under roadmap. We are going to support more other virtualization platform for the load balancer, as I mentioned earlier. Now support at five. You can expect that we're going to support more like Cisco or Palo Alto. This is some of the resources or documentation. It's always right back to cloud.google.com. You can find out more information and technical overview and Un-Source components. For the people, should you want to try Un-Source? It would be a little bit, not something like simple, like you know, GKE, you want to enable it on cloud quickly, you can try it. You had to talk to Google's representative team and they will reach out to you to qualify your user case, your environment, should you match this kind of user case, then we can think about give you three months trial license. So far it's more for enterprise customer, especially for highly regulated customer like financial service or government, you know, or the customer, they have their own community environment. They want to build up a kind of orchestration across multiple environments. With that, I go into my session. I think that gentlemen got one shot already. Probably have one questions for you guys because I only have two shirts. Should they have two guys? I can come up to one more floor up to get one more. I want to ask you guys, anyone can share with me the two or three values of Un-Source. You want to try? It's about the consistent platform of management of the public as well as on-prem environment. Yeah, consistent. Consistency, it's a software stack, right? It can run on anything on-prem. Yeah, software stack. It's don't need to refresh your hardware. Yeah, perfect. Thank you. It's a good summarizer for my session as well. So it's an open source. It consists of user experiences, whether it's on-prime or cloud and it's 100% software stack. You don't need refresh your hardware. And the beauty for me to me is the beauty is open source technology, you know? You never worry about vendor lock-in, right? You can, anytime you can move out should you didn't feel advantage or value from it. So with that, thank you very much. I enjoyed the session. I will reach out to you guys for the shirt. Thank you.


The Great Search brought to you by Digikey and Adafruit. Digikey, every single weekly data user, Power of Engineering to help you, yes, you find the things on digikey.com. Later, what are you looking for this week? I'm glad you asked. So last week, we talked about UFL to SMA adapters because we've got this RFM feather and actually, let me pull up the design. One second. People can see how many folders I have on my computer. OK, RFM. OK, so let's go to the computer and I'll show off the design. Hold on, waiting for EagleCad to load up. You can do it. EagleCad, my computer, I replaced the fan on my computer so it should be a little faster. Let me slow it down. OK, so this is the RFM feather. And if you all remember, last week, we talked about this design. So this is a UFL connector. I'm going to put it on the TDoCU so you can see. Long one second. There's so many layers. OK, so this is the antenna using the UFL connector. UFL connectors allow quick attachment to a tiny surface mount component and then it would go to an SMA connector. And so last week on the Great Search, we talked about UFL to SMA adapters, SMA versus RP SMA. But now it's time to actually get an antenna. And I had, hold on, let me get my ginormous antenna because people like this ginormous antenna. So I've got a couple antennas. OK, so we've got this ginormous antenna here. And then I've got attached to a UFL adapter. And what I like about this antenna is it's got this tilt and swivel. So it can be sticking up or it can be tilted to the right or it can be tilted angularly, like 45 degrees. There's a little clicker there. This is an antenna that is not tilt and swivel. It's just like it goes on the top. Here's another tilt and swivel. This one is, I don't know what this is. I think this is a Wi-Fi antenna. So this is common. People get routers. You have a little Wi-Fi antenna sticking out. Again, you could have it be 45, 90 degrees or straight out. And so, yeah, this antenna, which is this enormous Laura when antenna, I thought I'd show how to find antennas because you can get any kind of antenna on Digikey. They stock thousands and thousands of different ones. So maybe show people what to look for and some of the specifications when getting antennas. So let's go to Digikey. OK, so let's look for, let's just type an antenna. Let's start with that. And then last week, remember, we did the coaxial cables or the RF accessories. The image event is the thing that we want. Well, yeah, I want a UFO or SMA or a PSMA adapter, but we want a RF antenna. So let's look for a single band and we're going to look for an antenna. OK, so active as well. So let's start with that. And then there's like so many specifications to look for, but the first thing we want to do is like, OK, we want the frequency band. So we're going to be finding an antenna that's used for Laura or packet radio in the 915 megahertz ISM band, and that's in the US. In Japan, I think it's 868, and in parts of Europe, it's 433. Very similar, but let's just do 900 megahertz for us. So there's a couple of places actually where you can do the frequency. You can do the center, the frequency group, but actually like frequency range, because I can get, you know, the 10 of the range usually like I'm generalizing a lot here because again, there's 1000, 1000 of antennas. But in general, you want kind of like a tight range around 900. So maybe like 858 to 950 megahertz. So let's go down here. OK, so a lot of options. So like I said, you know, if you're in Japan, you might want 868. Let's kind of like just pick out a bunch that go from like about 870 and are at least 915, 920, 960, 950, 925. Because it's, you know, you don't need to be too specific. You want to have like, you want to have a range of options. 915, there's a lot. And I'm just option clicking all of these. And 900, keep going, keep going, keep going. OK, and now we're actually kind of getting to the end because this is past 915. OK, so let's apply. And let's also only look for ones that are in stock right now. OK, so there's a lot of options. So there's actually some antennas that already have a UFL connector. And like these are actually pretty good. Like if it's inside of an enclosure, again, this isn't weatherproof. But inside an enclosure, this is a perfectly good antenna. So a couple of those, this is like a whip antenna. Some of these are like pretty huge, just like a metal, gigantic antenna. You're going to have high gain antennas. What we want, and some surface mount antennas, what we want is a, and this is called a whip antenna. Because you can whip it through the air, I guess. I don't know.  So go to whip and we will whip, tilt, and swivel. There are other antennas. The basic trade-offs you're going to get with antennas without going into five years of antenna education, which I don't have, is there's directionality and the matchingness of the game, of the gain. So directionality is actually called the gain of the antenna.  These antennas are not active antennas. Unless you're purchasing an active antenna, the gain isn't, like it doesn't give you more. It just means how much more directional it is. So if you're doing a project where you're trying to, you have an antenna and you're pointing it at the moon or you're pointing it at another building or you're pointing it at a warehouse or something and you want to transfer data back and forth, you want a high gain antenna, because you want to be able to reach just in that one direction. So that's high gain. If you are just trying to like radiate and get data from all over the place because you have like a mesh network or you don't know where the nodes are or you're doing like a Laura setup where your nodes could be traveling all around, you want a low gain antenna. The lowest gain is one, because it's like a unit circle. And then the matchingness of the antenna is the VSWR. And that, it's like the, something virtual standing wave ratio, I think. I don't remember the V stands for. Basically you want it as low as possible. The lower the number, and basically you're gonna get like two or less. That's normal is how efficient the antenna is at converting the electrical into RF energy. I, again, I can't get into a huge antenna tutorial right now. There's lots of good videos online on YouTube. Okay, so let's pick something with like a VSWR of two or less. Again, that's considered good. Other than that, you know, in general, and then the gain, remember the gain is how directional it is. It's not how much more power you're getting. And then we have a lot of good options. So I do like, you know, there's really long ones and there's short ones. A lot of options here actually, which is kind of good. This one's nice. I kind of want like a huge one, which would be kind of cool. So, you know, I could do by price. You can see what's going on here. This one's kind of short. This one is like this, this length. This one is so long, but this one looks good. I think this one is kind of the next one because I want like a nice big antenna because what I'm gonna do is I'm going to use this antenna to do range testing. I wanna see like how far can we go with this Laura or RFM packet radio. So, this one is my pick, the ANT916OCLG. And this is by Lynx. And like I've been using Lynx antennas since like college in there. They've always been really good. They're very reliable. And they've got excellent data sheets, which tell you like they'll give you the VSWR and they'll give you specifications. And they're very reliable. So I think this is gonna be my pick, 10 bucks. That's a great search. That's a great search. Where in the world


So today we're taking another step forward, saying another yes to creating jobs for working people. The Sightseed Clean Energy Project has awarded its $470 million turbines and generators contract to Voith Hydro who is here today. That includes the design, the supply, the insulation of six vertical turbines, six generators and all of the associated equipment that go along with that. Following a multi-year competitive selection process Voith was selected because of its very strong track record with similar complex projects and its proposal offered BC Hydro the highest value design within budget. As many as 150 employees are planned onsite during peak installation in 2022 of our equipment. Additionally we will continue and expand relationships with local businesses and suppliers by relying on local subcontractors for a variety of the site work. We are also committed to utilizing union labour throughout the project. This is all part of what BC Hydro has put forward in its very ambitious capital plan to renew our infrastructure for another generation of British Columbians investing $2.4 billion creating 12,000 jobs per year for the next 10 years and that's in addition to the $7 billion that government is spending on capital projects that are out there in the field right now creating tens of thousands of jobs for working people in every corner of the province.


So let's take a look at something that's similar to problem 1.6. So this is to draw circles representing sets where a certain group of conditions has to be met. And in this particular case, let's suppose I'm going to take something where every element of A is an element of B, but no element of A is an element of C. So we might experiment by drawing different circles for the sets A and B first and seeing if we can find a circle that's appropriate for set C. Again, once you've been shown how to solve a problem, you will never again have the opportunity to solve the problem. And this doesn't apply to this problem here. Only it applies to every problem that arises that's in any way shape or form similar to this. So if you continue to watch the video without trying to solve the problem first, you will never get another chance to solve this or any other problem that's similar to it. The best you'll be able to do is to copy somebody else's solution. So try to experiment with some possibilities before continuing to watch the video. So maybe I'll draw some circles and, well, that doesn't work. So I draw some circles and, well, if I draw the circles this way, some elements of A might actually be elements of B. And I need every element of A to be an element of B. So it's possible for some elements of A to not be an element of B. Well, maybe I'll draw the circles this way. And again, this doesn't work because no element of A can be an element of B. And so every element of A has to be an element of B. This doesn't work. So how about this? So here, everything in A has to be in B as well. So every element of A is an element of B. That's exactly what we want. Well, we need that third set C. So let's see if I can draw a third circle. So let's try and draw C. And again, I'll try some random drawings of that set C and C where it fits. So maybe I'll draw something like this. And, well, I need to make sure that no element of A is an element of C. And here, I can have something that is an element of A and also an element of C. So this circle doesn't work. Maybe I'll try to draw the circle there. Well, here, no element of A can be an element of C. So that works, except there is something we've added here, which is that we've also added that no element of B can also be an element of C. And that isn't required. We don't require that. And it also means that because it's not required, this picture is not a sufficiently generic picture. So we're going to slide C over here. So now we still have no element of A can possibly be an element of C, but we're allowing for the possibility that B and C might have some elements in common. And so there's our picture.


Hi everyone, Joe for Jaspy's casebreaks.com coming at you with another four box break of 2023 Panini Phoenix football This is pick your team number seven Number eight will be the final four boxes of the case big. Thanks to this group for making it happen here on a Tuesday a true Tuesday Pick your team seven if you have prism 94 next your name that means you won those One of those teams in that filler So I guess it's Kevin you got official last spot mojo with the Jaguars Now we've seen some solid stuff out of here. I feel like we have not seen any of the Sort of big names just yet, but let's see what we find in these four here Now as I've been doing in previous breaks in the interest of time just for the video I will not be leaving the numbered cards as we usually do I'm just gonna set those aside and sleeve them after we finish the video.  Well, not Not breaking news There's Davante Adams to 125 For my Raiders, there's Isaiah Pacheco. Davante will go to Ryan Travis Etienne to 175 it goes to the Jaguars Kevin I did see that not super significant news, but Justin Turner signing a one-year deal with the Blue Jays Jameer Gibbs going to on hell and the And the Lions there's Jaden Reed to 99 Green Bay, that's for Adam to out of 250 DJ Turner and Gino Smith that I did not know that is news Once Corey Seager getting hernia surgery and there's Tank Bigsby last Bob Mojo strikes again dual relic and autograph How long is how long is Corey Seager gonna be out? Was that an injury he was careless They knew about that injury after the World Series. I feel like they would have done that right away Or did he already have the surgery and then they're and then they're just announcing it now I need answers Rex. There's Mark Andrews to 25 Raven Steve Steve H with that one You got TJ Hawkinson To 99 eight out of 99 that'll be for the Vikings Douglas He got that surgery today out of 150 Gino Smith for the Seahawks. It's for Jared Tom I Wonder if they it's interesting. It's Lamar Jackson out of 199. I wonder if it's more of a recent injury There's Stetson Bennett to color relic for the Rams that it's going to go to On hell with the Rams You think it's something they discovered recently? I mean if they knew that he needed surgery, I would imagine they would have done it immediately That leads me to believe it's something they they found more found out more recently 31 out of 99 That's a turn one sleep. You see all these later. That's two under the to the dolphin's a Patrick It's out of force. I have it and then an Anthony Richardson autograph Wesley with the Colts won the Colts in the filler and Gets the Anthony Richardson autograph. This is a This is definitely what the kind of stuff we want to see not numbered But still nice and there's Sydney Brown to 150 for the Eagles. There's Michael Parsons Nice way to start the first box of this four box break All right onwards Young explain to Jeff Wilson the Rangers had a see your first over there during the postseason At the time. Oh, I see it was agreed upon that the best course of action was for him to get some rest And then what after rest they're like, oh, that's not working And they get the option for surgery. That's interesting I feel like you try to avoid going under the knife as much as possible I don't know. I feel like that's an evaluation. They could have made a Month ago, maybe they did. I don't know. Well, that is actually pretty big news You know because essentially you're gonna miss Corey seager. Obviously a very key player for the Rangers You know Terry McLauren to 99 for Alan It's gonna miss a spring train. You kind of need that to ramp yourself back up into the season There's Drake London to 125 Falcons Evan it's much harder to do while you're playing regular season games Out of 250 cam Smith for the Dolphins that'll be for Patrick Although maybe aside from the Astros, maybe the Rangers are figuring Division's not too scary. They'll make do it's a great iron greats Roy Williams. Nice Eric Leal with Dallas got the Cowboys straight up Jameer Gibbs There's Byron young for my Raiders to 35 Ryan Heights And there's a CJ Stroud contours of 35 That's gonna be for Jared and the Texans Jared look this up when you get a chance I think you might be surprised at how well some of these numbered cards have been going for him. Nice Look those around. There's Jalen Hertz to 75 Thunderbirds insert another Jalen Hertz fired up insert There's Isaiah Pacheco to 150 for the Chiefs. We'll see them in the Super Bowl Adam Adam with that one And then we got a Jackson Smith and Jigba fire fabrics That'll be for Seattle. That's gonna go out to Jared That's to 150 You got a Rishi rice to 199. We'll also see him in the Super Bowl and a Jack Lambert nice Old-school Steelers Super Bowl autograph that will be for Michael in the Steelers. He's a Steelers guy He's gonna like that one We got a Kenneth Walker to 199 Thunderbirds for Seattle for Jared won that in the filler And a T Higgins hot routes to 199 for Chad and the Bengals All right box two Box three of four onwards Pick your team eight final four boxes of the case Down a 12. Nice. Thanks to whoever got that spot You have the warm fuzzy feeling now of helping that filler be a little less expensive Phoenix eight. This is Phoenix seven Phoenix eight will be going to a filler after this so If you want to grab some teams straight up just grab them now You'll help the help the filler get a little less expensive or we might f around and accidentally fill the break straight up without a Filler you've done that a few times You can break without a filler I'd actually prefer that a lot easier. So go to Jasper's case rates.com. There's still a couple teams if you're on a budget There's still a couple teams are just 20 bucks. That's it Some of the higher-end teams still available too if you want to go big But every spot taken helps. All right. Good luck base CJ Stroud. Here's Devonta Smith to 175 That would be for the Eagles. That's gonna go to Adam Joe Mixon and A Zach Harrison to 99 for Evan and the Falcons Stroud and we got do swan rookie Jersey and autograph for Dallas and it'll be for Eric Leal Eric picking up that spot straight up Which I like. Thank you 128 out of 299 You got a Zay flowers to 50 for the Raven Steve H Buda Baker Thunderbirds card and a Tyree Wilson contours to 175 for the Raiders. That's gonna go to Ryan and the Raiders There's Christian McCaffrey 75. We'll see him in the Super Bowl. That's gonna be for Scott Maybe MVP Super Bowl MVP, there's Dorian Williams to 175 for the Bills Michael Sprock-Purdy we'll see him in action and to 10 will Anderson jr. Nice patch two-color patch That is for Jared and the Texans There it is four out of ten nice low number on that and we got Dalton Kincaid to 175 Michael with the Bills Hot route Sam Laporta playing with fire Bijan Robinson and a Jordan Addison Autograph nice a piece of the pig skin and his auto great rookie campaign for him Especially with a healthy Kirk Cousins out there That's 86 out of 99 Vikings Douglas picked up the vikes straight up nice Nick Bosa to 150 CD lamb hot routes There it is number right there to 150 for Dallas Eric and Dallas And a CJ Stroud rookie rising aqua, that's Jared with the Texans That's to 150 Think a different insert of his to 150 Maybe the n-fuego. I don't know. I'm sure I'm sure the prices differ per depending on the insert and there's Luke's goon maker But I think a different answer. Maybe it was the fired up Maybe the insert was a little short printed, but an out of 150 was going for like 60 bucks Pretty awesome. It's got a cover. I mean the Jared won that in a filler. That's got to cover the spot of the filler at least Yeah, I thought that was old news wrecks. Is that new news? I feel like the Orioles like Months ago. We're exploring options to sell the team. So What's the what's what makes this new news today? I wonder maybe candidates to To buy the team I guess I thought that was already reported. All right final box I got I'll do my research Maybe there's maybe there's some new information there. There's to 75 fired up Justin Jefferson for Douglas and the Vikings Another fired up Justin Jefferson not numbered beyond to form it a 150 for the Bears. I'll be for Jerry Kenny Walker Not numbered but different parallel back there another CJ Stroud We've got a demarvying Overshaw to 199 for Eric and the Cowboys And then we got a Terry McLauren autograph nice one Allen and the Commanders They're looking for a new new quarterback out there. Nice low number as well seven out of ten Nice Jamiro Gibbs fired up to 99. He had a nice NFC championship game a nice rookie campaign. It was Brock Purdy Let's see what he can do this week not this weekend, but on Super Bowl weekend Super Bowl Sunday to 150 Scott with the Niners There's Nick Chubb contours We got Nolan Smith to 150 for the Eagles. That's for Adam Got a Deshaun Watson to 175. That's for Cleveland. This is for you. That's for John a Jackson Smith in jigba fire fabrics Jared and the Seattle Seahawks the Hawks of the sea to 150 Jordan Nassin for Douglas and the Vikings 99. That's a catch and a CJ Stroud contours nice Another one for Jared. Nice break for you Jared join the filler got randomized the Texans and getting all sorts of stuff And back here is great iron grates Gil Brent Cowboys a little Hall of Fame inscription there If you don't know now, you know Eric Leal with the Cowboys got a AJ Brown We got a Mack Jones to 50 We're gonna move on from Mack Jones probably right that's gonna be for the Patriots Karen with the Pats And we got a Jaden Reed orange to 99 and Gabriel Davis hot routes to close things out Not a bad break at all these gentlemen final four bucks in the store get after it jasby's case breaks.com Nice little here's quick little recap there That's nice Jordan Addison Got a nice blend between the rookie autographs and the old-school guys the Anthony Richardson, of course and that CJ Stroud contours at 35 There you go ladies and gentlemen, I'm Joe for jasby's case rakes calm and I'll see you next time for the next break. Bye. Bye


Hi, I'm Jose. When I feel overwhelmed, I play guitar. Hi, I'm Jenny. When I feel overwhelmed, I grow things. Hello, my name is Dana. When I'm overwhelmed, I go for a run. Hi, I'm Gaither. When I'm feeling angry or upset about the current time, I just teach my kids about our native language and this helps me to process my emotions. Hi, I'm Alison. And when I feel unhappy or stressed, I turn on my relaxing music and I divide 10 minutes for my self-care skin routine. I'm Axel. When I feel tired, I like to walk around my house and breathe fresh air. Thank you. Hi, I'm Julia. And when I'm feeling depressed, I reach out to someone I trust and love. It has worked for me even in the most difficult times. You're not alone. Remember, together we're stronger. These are stressful times. Mental health is a serious issue. You are important. We all belong here together.


Good afternoon, everyone and welcome. This is Melissa Arma with the Stock Swoosh, and I'm here reviewing Facebook Another huge call that I made for the options letter again I use my Golden Gap 26 point rating system to determine what options calls that I'm making as well as the day trades You can use the system for options swing trades or day trades this was a phenomenal call and And the irony is that Facebook last night was gapping down Talked about this in the room this morning on the earnings last night. It was gapping down to a right about here in this area and then Late last night it gapped up and then this morning it was up here and then it opened here So it was what a wild ride for Facebook again. I don't trade the post and pre market. Thank god It's it's too wild and I like to wait till the gap sets up The day of okay, I like to wait till after 9 30 This was a great great call So I called the 192 50 calls out for Facebook to next Friday So because tomorrow was too soon, but actually that would have worked as well It was more than a hundred percent in the move from where you would have bought it on the call this morning The letter ran up to 195 32 just a huge call Depending on what the market does tomorrow and in the next week depending on how Amazon google and apple report tonight This could have some more leg in it in the next day in the next couple of days Really, if you did it out for the next week, you could have been out of it though today Just just an amazing move. So I you know, I'm on fire for 2018 and uh, you know The thing is that the reason is that I am so So focused so focused So honed into what I'm doing in the calls I'm making and all of the people that are trading with me in the room every day And the people that are doing the trades on the option subscription letter are 100 percent benefiting from my expertise and the calls that I've been making Um this year my my system works. I've had the business now for more than five years and I've been trading for almost 10, but I mean this year I I am on fire I mean, so I'm going to continue to get up every morning and be very very focused It is a a good year to be with the stocks wish. I will tell you that So if you're interested in signing up for the options letter email me at melissa at the stockswish.com It's $2,999 a year If you're interested in the golden gat course where you learn my system How to do the trades yourself day trades options, whichever you want to use the system for Then that class is february 10th and 11th And again, you can email me at melissa at the stockswish.com. Have a great day everyone


As-Salaam-Alaikum-Khawatin-oh-Hazrat. Basim Ahsan welcomes you to the virtual University of Pakistan. It is lecture number 29 of Brand Management, MKT 624. I'm going to continue my discussion on channel management, exactly from where I left it in the previous lecture. And I would like to draw your attention to the graphic illustration which I was talking about at the end of the previous lecture. If you take a good look at the illustration, you will see that Company Y has a set of mixed channels and also it is selling directly to its customers. Whereas Company X is selling directly, and while selling directly, it has two different models. Why is it that there is variation between the selling models of two companies? Not only that there are variations between the companies, if you take a look at just one company, it has a set of mixed systems to reach its customers. The one that is selling directly is more likely to make better margins than the one which is selling indirectly. This is what looks apparent. Why is it that the companies do not have identical systems? It is a question of historical backgrounds, sets of circumstances. The companies have been surrounded with initiatives that management of the two companies decided to take or not take at different points in time. So it is a mixture of all these factors which make a company decide what kinds of channels it is going to have. And it goes without saying that all these factors, meaning the historical background, the initiatives which the management of the company or the companies could have been taking or not have been taking, and the circumstances the companies have been surrounded by all are impacted by the three strategic factors that we discussed in the previous lecture. And those three factors are the profitability, sales revenues and product-market relationship, meaning whether it is a consumer consumable or a consumer durable or any other type of product that you are selling in the market. What is important is to see that all these factors have got to be viewed in a way that they improve the performance of the company. And the performance of the company is going to be improved only if we can enhance the channel performance. So channel performance enhancement is one thing. And another benefit that we look at or that we target while we decide about the channels is that we must end up deciding for something which offers competitive advantage to the company. So in other words we can say that while we enhance the performance of the channels we must also be able to gain some kind of competitive advantage. So measuring performance of channels rests upon three factors. One is the customer reach, the other is the operating efficiencies and the third one is the service quality. If a company cannot reach its potential customers it will not register sales or it will register sales which are at a lower level or a lower level and which automatically translates into lower profitability or maybe no profitability at all. If the cost to reach customers is very high then the company is compromising its profitability again because the cost is very high and the costs that pertain to reaching customers are logistics, warehousing, inventory management maybe returns also and so on and so forth. If customers are not very satisfied with the service meaning they don't like the way they are served in the marketplace that is going to affect the performance of the channels. What does it mean by not being served well? Well it could mean that the customers cannot really find your product here and there meaning everywhere they want meaning at the point of purchase of their preference and it may also mean the kind of service they expect while you deliver your product especially if it's a question of consumer durables. They may also not be satisfied with the way you offer services after sales have taken place and that's what you call after sale service. So in other words these three factors are the ones which decide for the company to what extent the company is going to be cost efficient and customer effective through the channels it has decided to put in place. I will repeat that cost efficiency and customer effectiveness are the two objectives which any company has to attain while it is going through the process of deciding what kinds of channels it should have and it is this cost efficiency and customer effectiveness which really decides whether a company should have direct channels or indirect channels. So in other words the level of optimization whether you achieve that through direct channels or through indirect channels is going to decide what is the best possible way for you to deliver your products. And it also goes without saying that whatever is happening in the marketplace by competitors meaning major players is also something that you have to take into consideration. And following the market norm is not a bad practice but that doesn't mean that you follow that without having to consider these strategic elements and all the considerations that I have been talking about. You must have very convincing answers to all the questions that we have raised so far or we have been discussing and all those questions in other words have got to be considered in the light of all the strategic factors that are the point of discussion at the moment. Meaning customer reach costs and customer service. These are the three strategic components for which any company must work in order to be effective in the marketplace and these are the ones which lead any company to achieve what you may call cost efficiency and customer effectiveness. Cost efficiency and customer effectiveness lay the very basis of the foundation for the decision whether you should go for direct or indirect. Direct channels include direct sales, telemarketing and e-marketing. Direct sales can take place in any form as long as goods are delivered directly. It has an element of telemarketing also because you receive calls and then on the basis of those calls you get into action. Something takes place on the operations side and then goods are delivered to the customers and so on and so forth. Telemarketing is very similar to what I have talked about and e-marketing is something which is gaining popularity in the western markets nowadays. There are certain companies which are really huge and there are companies which specialize only in e-marketing whereas there are companies which have their own stores meaning the traditional stores and alongside those they are also engaged in e-marketing. The interesting part of the whole thing is that the results they are getting through with e-marketing are not cannibalizing their sales that are taking place on the stores side. So in other words e-marketing in most of the cases is adding to the traditional way of selling in those markets. What is the scope of e-marketing in our country is a question that we have to consider very carefully and I am going to talk about that a little later. Let's talk about indirect channels. You have distributors, then you have wholesalers and then you have retailers. So in other words indirect channels consist of different layers and all those layers play a very important function in their respective roles. Why is it that we have to have so many layers of the distribution before we reach the final consumer is again a question of customer reach and then the profitability and then the level of service. Just look at the consumer consumables. It is not really possible to start selling consumables which are beautifully branded to each and every customer all over the country if you start selling direct. You have to have specialized companies whether that play their respective roles between your production facilities and the points where those items which happen to be convenience items are sold to ultimate consumers. Why do we have wholesalers because once we have distributors there is again a question of customer reach. Maybe there are certain markets where you cannot really appoint very effective distributors because the markets are not big enough to optimize the operation on part of an independent distributor and therefore you may have to have a wholesaler who is kind of operating as a distributor with the meaning selling to the retailers in that particular area who in turn are selling to the ultimate consumers. So these are the indirect channels which we generally have for consumer consumables and that is the case almost all over the world. The next question is how do we look at direct versus indirect in the context of operating efficiencies. Once you have decided that you are going to go either direct or indirect naturally the efficiency of operations takes the driver's seat meaning if you are not very efficient in terms of your costs then it is going to affect profitability of the company. So if you are engaged into direct selling and you think your costs are very high I think that offers you an opportunity to look into alternatives. Just in order to decide that whatever you are doing has got to be optimized in terms of cost efficiencies because the objective remains that the efficiency has not to be achieved at the cost of profitability. I mean there is no point in selling very effectively or very efficiently to your customers that while you are not making any profits at all or you are making very very meager profits and at the end of the day you find out that the operation is not viable there is no duty of conducting that kind of operation. Direct channels although they offer very high margins but then do not forget that the responsibility of cost management and of those channels rests with the company. Let me take you back to the direct selling of the sandwiches. If you are delivering at the doorstep of your customers or consumers for that matter you may find out that your costs are very high and they may be so high that you find them almost forbidding and it is there that you may start considering getting into your own restaurants where instead of selling to your customers by sending your delivery people you actuate your customers to walk to your outlets meaning restaurants where you can sell them and you still sell them directly. There is no intermediary in between so that is what I meant by cost efficiency. You still may remain direct but you have to be very clear about the costs which are involved and the level of efficiency which you are wanting to achieve at a certain level of costs. So in other words there has to be a balance between that cost efficiency and customer effectiveness. Both have got to be achieved and there should be an equilibrium between the two. E-marketing is sort of the fast becoming the norm like I pointed out earlier and I also pointed out that there are many companies that are doing this kind of business meaning the ones that are following this kind of model in addition to their traditional stores and they are quite very successful but then there are companies that started as e-marketing companies and those companies are into, for example, books they are into selling CDs and so on and so forth. Those companies in those markets have been very effective and also have been very cost efficient. They do not have any traditional stores. Now this is not to say that they must also get into traditional stores. Again the point of consideration for those companies is if they are very cost efficient and at the same time they are also achieving customer effectiveness meaning customers are satisfied and they remain loyal to that kind of buying then there is no reason for the why those companies should not further fortify that kind of business. The only question is what kind of brand extensions they should get into or what kind of range extensions they should get into. Those are the issues that we have been discussing in the previous lectures and just try to think of those in the context of your channels and the whole thing will become very interesting and very exciting for you. Potential of sales through e-marketing in our country is also I would say quite very high but circumstances may not be very ripe at the moment for the lack of proper buying and selling regulations in relation to electronic buying and selling and that's what I'm saying and the fact that not many many people in this country have credit cards although the customer base of credit cards is very multiplying exponentially but still we have to go a long way before we start considering the e-marketing on a mass scale. This is not to say that we should be inhibited into going for e-marketing but it's just to say that you've got to be very careful and very prudent before you start considering to venture into that field. And I would say you still have an opportunity and a challenge to do something electronically with the buy circle venting with the meaning by getting into some other way of getting payments from your customers. Maybe you can open accounts with certain banks where your customers can deposit money and you use your delivery people or you use courier services in the country to deliver your products. This could be very exciting and challenging but what do you think is a prerequisite? The prerequisite in this kind of a situation is that your product has got to have a very high level of differentiation and if the promise your product or your brand for that matter carries is very different from the ones that are being offered by competition then you have every chance to be successful. You are into e-marketing and you have a very interesting kind of payment procedure which may not involve credit cards if we think, I mean you and I think that the situation is not really right to carry out transactions on the basis of credit cards. Indirect channels although offer lower margins but then the channel management bears all the costs. The costs that you have to bear as a manufacturer are the margins that you dish out to the members of the channel and those margins are not very huge if you are dealing in consumer consumables in particular. The name of the game here is very high volumes. It goes without saying if you are dealing into that kind of a product line then you should register with very high levels of volumes because that is something which offers economies of scale. Other costs that you have to bear is transportation, the warehousing and inventory management but all those costs have got to be offset by the margins that you are gaining by selling very high volumes through the intermediaries that I've talked about meaning distributors, wholesalers and retailers. So this really provides you with a lot of incisive insights into the option whether you should go for direct or indirect channels and we have discussed the indirect versus direct in the context of customer reach. The objective still remains do not make any mistake about that. The objective still remains that you've got to achieve cost efficiencies and customer effectiveness. There's got to be a balance between these two. The next component that we are going to discuss relates very high level of service quality that we've got to offer while we are considering whether we should go direct or indirect. Direct marketing assures a good level of service because you are selling direct and you have a direct interface with your customer but it could be very expensive to maintain that kind of direct sales force. Let us go back to the example of the sandwiches. You may reach a point like I told you earlier where you start considering putting up your own restaurants only because the maintaining the sales force is very expensive. Not only it is very expensive, operationally it also sags the efficiency of your people because they have to counter so many different challenges in terms of traffic, in terms of time constraints, in terms of reaching difficult areas and so on and so forth. In comparison with that kind of delivery, you might be forced to think about putting up your own outlets which will require a certain level of investment to begin with but then that level of investment has got to be offset by the volumes you are going to sell in the hope that you are going to sell the very good volumes that you should make a decision in favor of those outlets to cut your direct delivery costs. Again, the objective is to maintain cost efficiency. So you have to weigh the pros and cons if the one system of delivery offers certain advantages you should consider that. If that system becomes cumbersome in terms of operations or in terms of costs then you have to consider the other one or maybe you have to consider something which is in between and that is why companies have a mix of the different systems. If we remain focused on fast food you still I think would like to maintain your direct delivery up to a certain level at the same time you also would like to have your own outlets and that is the practice at the moment not only in our country but all over the world. You have beautiful restaurants sitting here and there over the city landscapes and you also have direct delivery people who deliver the food at the ring of a telephone. Do not forget to maintain the balance between cost efficiency and customer effectiveness. Indirect marketing in terms of a high level of service offers certain disadvantages because it removes the company from the customer. There is no direct interface between the company and the customers but then if you are dealing in kind of a product which cannot be sold directly or if it can be sold directly it is not really practical and it entails very high costs and you cannot go and achieve the kind of customer reach which you must achieve then there's no way that you can ignore this. What do you do in that kind of a situation? You've got to have a very strong CRM department. If you do not have a separate CRM department you may assign this particular function to your sales people. Traditionally this function of customer relationship management was carried out and has been carried out by the sales people. Sales managers traditionally have been the very good CRM managers. So in other words we've got to make sure that we stay close to the customer meaning we've got to make up for the deficiency which a system offers meaning if the system really puts us apart from the customer only because it has to be that way then we've got to make sure that we have relationship management in place and we've got to have certain means whereby we can reach our customers and eliminate any gaps that may pop up along the line in terms of communication and in terms of relationships. Another disadvantage which the system of indirect channels offers is that companies are dependent upon so many different intermediaries who are dealing into so many different lines of products. It is not that all the intermediaries who are related to your company are dealing only in your items. So in other words their attention their finances and their priorities are all divided among so many different products. If your brand happens to be the strongest among all the ones your intermediaries are carrying that is something else but even then they still have divided attention. So this is one of the disadvantages which this system offers and it becomes challenging for the companies managers and also for the sales managers to look into this disadvantage and to make it work in the favor of the companies and you can do that through very good relationships with different intermediaries and through very good monitoring of all the developments that are taking place in the market. It is because of that that sales people are supposed to be in the market over time. It is because of that that brand managers also have got to stay in touch with the marketplace so that they also have their fingers on the pulse of the market. It is on the basis of a very practical kind of a feedback that you make better decisions and which means staying close to the customer is the name of the game. Now this doesn't mean that you may not be communicating with your consumers or customers or you may not be developing a customer relationship management system. It doesn't mean that but what it means is under one set of circumstances one component that takes on an added importance that while under another set of circumstances another component takes on added importance and it is for you to decide what is more important where so that again you can maintain the balance between cost efficiencies and customer effectiveness. I keep repeating these are the two things that you must not forget when it comes to channel management. The system of indirect channels that therefore has built in disadvantage in not being as responsive as the system of direct channels is and the reasons that we have discussed in quite very detail. It is very interesting to note that what may look like the direct channels also carries elements of indirect channels and vice versa. To give you one example your retailers nowadays are offering e-marketing to their customers. Now this is something which may not be possible for those manufacturers that are into consumer consumables. Why? Because you are dealing in just about with one product or with one product line and it may not be very viable for your company to get into the e-marketing. Whereas by the time your product reaches retailers meaning when products of so many different manufacturers from all over the market reach major customers who are wanting to get into the e-marketing they really have a good chance to get into that because they have to offer a host of different items. I mean they are going to offer you a complete basket which you need for your households which carries almost everything which may not be the case with the manufacturers. So what I am talking about is that from your company right down to the retailer it has been a case of indirect channel system. Whereas from the retailer to consumer onward it becomes very direct. Well in a way it was direct even before but then it is a way of increasing sales. It is a way of exercising another model which still remains direct but it is a different model and it offers customers convenience and this is the model for the which is being followed by a good measure of retailers even in our market. This enhances the level of service because we are talking basically in the context of enhancements of service level that is why I am talking about this model because this does carry an element of a little stepped up service you send your equipment either by telephone whatever the model is whatever the way it works you send your order and the next thing that happens is you get delivery of all the items that you wanted. So that I think is a terrific case of a very high level of service. So if it enhances the service this way you may like to follow this model. So this is the case of what you might have learned or rather what you must have learned in some other course and this is what you call B to C meaning for business to customer or the business to consumer model and this is something which you may consider whenever you get into the practical field as a model which is going to supplement what the company has been doing traditionally. So in other words whatever the system meaning indirect system of channels or indirect system of channels the system has got to fulfill the customer needs and yet it must be able to offer a high level of or a decent level of profitability to the company. So customer needs and profitability and again these two are translated into what I talked earlier meaning customer effectiveness and cost efficiency. And you make better profits. If you are customer effective you are fulfilling customers needs in a very effective way and that is what channel management is all about. We should be very clear by now whether we should be having a direct system of channels or an indirect one. After having made the decision about the nature of the system whether we should now make sure that the system offers a good value to customers and to the company as well. It builds value to the customer in three different ways. Number one it offers value through product benefits. Now how does a system do that? The system does that by making sure that the product is delivered to the ultimate consumer the way it was promised. There should be no deviation from the promise. Meaning the contract must not be broken for the while the product is delivered to the ultimate consumer. How do you do that? Or how does the system do that? That's a very interesting question. Let me try to explain that for example. Suppose you're dealing in frozen items you've got to make sure that the total line of logistics and the chain of supply is cold in nature. Meaning at every point you've got to maintain the requisite temperatures meaning very low temperatures whatever the requirement is and by the time the product reaches the retailer it still has to have the same low temperature what is dictated by the company. Whether or not a retailer does it is a weighty question. You may be selling your product through a retailer who is one of the major players in the marketplace but what if the retailer cannot maintain that temperature meaning if the retailer abuses the temperature and the customer, final consumer gets something which is abused in terms of quality what is going to be the result? A disgruntled and dissatisfied customer that is something that you've got to make sure doesn't happen and that is something which a good channel system ensures. If you take a look at different products not only frozen products meaning ice cream or meat items or even chilled items like packaged yogurt or in certain cases packaged vegetables and so on and so forth there are so many different products which you see in the marketplace nowadays all over the country which have got to be either chilled or kept frozen with the help of refrigerators or freezers and whatever the case may be it basically boils down to the effectiveness of the channel to what extent it delivers that product the way it is promised to be delivered. So in other words if a product is a frozen product it does have to be announced since it is frozen it must come to you in a frozen way but that goes without saying so it has to be a built-in feature of the channel system that the product is delivered the way it is to be delivered and that ensures the service quality that ensures the product quality and that ensures so many different things which translate into customer effectiveness inventory management is another way through which a good channel system can be very customer effective and also cost efficient and that is how a good channel system adds value to the company and offers value to the customer. This is something that we have been talking about to consume in different lectures all along the course that in order to be good professional managers in the present day's world your systems have got to be supported by the latest technology and inventory management nowadays is all computer based meaning information based you have got to have the right information in place so that you can make your decisions in a timely manner meaning your informational needs have got to be in a proper perspective for you to make the timely and rightmost decisions if you do not know the quantity of expired items in one of your warehouses and those items escape the attention of the management there and find their way into the market and eventually into the hands of the consumer what is going to happen the consequences that can be guessed as well by you as by me so this is one example of the good inventory management helping companies and helping the general systems to develop the value for the company and for the customer inventory management nowadays is not taking place only at the company level it is taking place at the level of distributors and it is taking place at the level of retailers the fact of the matter is that it is very very important at the retail level because the number of items that retailers are dealing in nowadays is astronomical and therefore their knowledge of what they have and what they do not have what they have and reserve and what is it that is lying in abundance or you see beyond the required level of inventory is something which they must know because that affects order placing and order placing affects your production planning and it becomes kind of an iterative circle in which everyone moves and everyone has got to move in a smooth way with no hiccups breaks and so on and so forth in other words a good inventory management system is the backbone of the supply chain management which has taken on and added significance in present days general management if you have done the course on supply chain management so much the better if you have not done so it is very important for you to understand the significance of that area because nowadays production taking place remotely and brand management taking place at a different place the need to coordinate the two areas of management has become much more important than it has been before and I am talking about this in reference to those marketing companies that do not have their own production facilities and they outsource those things to other manufacturers and this is something in which you are going to study for the while you go through the course of international marketing and I think there are certain marketing companies even within our country that do not have their production facilities and outsourcing is taking place as a modern concept and given that concept the management of the supply chain takes on an added significance and that is what I am saying and given that kind of a setup the importance of inventory management takes on added significance as well that is my point regardless of the system whether it is direct or indirect another thing which is very important for the system is imparting training and knowledge to your customers if you are selling the products about which information giving and imparting of knowledge is absolutely important you have got to stay very close to your customer in imparting that knowledge if you are selling industrial equipment for example you have got to give all instructions to your customers because the machinery that you have sold may be very new and modern which generally is the case and you have got to impart total instructions in their total relevance to all the people who are going to operate that machinery this is how you build value through a good channel system another factor is product assortment a good channel system allows itself to carry all the products in terms of the complete assortment if you go back to the brand extension concept you will recall that the products are extended by form by format, by ingredients by flavors by taste and so on and so forth so what I am saying is that a good channel system has got to make sure that total product assortment is available and it is available all through the intermediaries whether it is a direct channel or an indirect channel if it is direct well you as a company have got to have complete assortment and if it is indirect all the intermediaries have got to carry all the assortments so that no customers and no consumers are disappointed disappointment means shifting to a competitive item and that is something you have to keep your customers from doing because the good channel system has got to create a very good level of customer appeal if a channel system cannot create that kind of appeal the consequences again are understandable and those are going to be quite very negative no brand can afford to be missed out by any retailers because that diminishes the brand value and the diminished brand value is going to affect your customer value and it is going to affect the value which otherwise can offer to the company in a positive way we have talked about the good channel system the offering or rather the building value for the customer and for the company through products apart from products a good channel system can also get the build value for the company and also for the customers through offering services now let us try to learn how a good channel system can do that and going back to the case of selling industrial products you know the importance of after sales services to which you offer after sales and in order to be able to do that there are certain factors which you have to keep in mind and those are that you have got to have trained staff and those are that you have got to have service centers you have got to have complete technical support you have got to have a policy of easy returns meaning if you have sold certain items which have not turned out to be for the market by the customers standards that you have got to be prepared to receive those back at the service center and at the same time be able to replace that with another one which is free of any faults these are the basic factors which you have to make sure do exist before you start considering as to how a good channel system can build value for the customer and also for the company we have taken it for granted that we must have some prerequisites in the form of training facilities training centers and the technical support and once we have those we can offer these services in two different ways the one is the transaction services these are the services which you offer while you are going through the process of sales you have got to make it easy for the customer to be able to make the decision as quickly as possible in other words if you are selling a product for which a customer has to study and then analyze and then make comparisons with the competitive items it is your duty meaning it is the job of the channel member who is doing selling at any given point in time to make sure that the customer makes the final decision as soon as possible and that is possible only if you can give the customer the rightmost information and if you can convince the customer about the service at the point in time for example if somebody has come to you to buy a refrigerator or a conditioner and you are part of the total market which is selling all these items the customer can just go next door peep in and talk with the other retailer for some other brand so you have got to make sure before the customer starts thinking on those lines you give the customer so much comprehensive information and the kind of service that the customer is not actuated to go elsewhere so that is the transaction service which you have to think of while making your sales other examples I would expect you to think of in relation to transaction with services one could be delivery somebody has bought an item transporting which is a hassle you can offer that kind of service and if you offer that service as part of a company policy the word spreads around and you are known for that transaction service the other service which you can offer or which you do offer always and you have to offer is the after sale service very comprehensive starting with the 3S which we have been talking about in relation to brand management whether you have got to make sure that the spare parts are available you have got to make sure that the service centers are in shape for you to offer the right most services and you have got to make sure that the technical support is in place so in other words it is the combination of all these services which offer value to the customer and by the time you have delivered the service a customer must feel satisfied and they must have the realization that the customer has gained a certain level of good value each of the benefits meaning either through products or through services or through the benefits the important thing is where you are selling products which are to be accompanied by services the combination of the product and the service has got to be the most optimal you may be selling a product which is of very high quality and which really is much better than the ones being sold by your competition but if you are not offering a product service which must accompany that product whether a transaction service or an after sales service your product may not sell as well as competition despite the fact that competition is not as good as you are so in other words just the quality of the product is not a guarantee to a very strong competitive position the product has got to be accompanied by the requisite service that's the lesson and that is the way through a good channel system with the value for the customer and also for the company the factor is that the emergence of service centers by so many companies that offer a combination of products and services is a testimony to the realization on part of the companies that this aspect of the marketing meaning coupling service with products is so very important that without this coupling we just cannot succeed in the marketplace and we just cannot have the competitive advantage meaning the kind of competitive advantage which we must sustain in order to remain successful in the marketplace so that is the lesson for today and that is all for the channels in terms of what kind of channels we should have what are the strategic considerations for the right most channel system and how a good channel system builds value for the company and offers value to the customer because we must not forget that brand management is all about customers and these are the two basic components around which brand management revolves so much for today and we are going to pick up the threads from where we are leaving today the topic of channel management has not come to an end yet and I will be talking about channel management a little more in the next lecture Allah Hafiz until then


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