Thread by @faizansiddiqi

There is a real opportunity lurking in a host of govt entities. My current fav is the Utility Stores Corp of Pakistan. Some stats below around their makeup.

Interestingly enough their biz model is to use your and my tax rupees and subsidize products. Clearly can't expect govt to figure out a sustainable biz model. But I digress. What caught my attention was this news story. google.com/amp/s/www.dawn…

So this story came out in March and by July the utility stores corp will be digitized. I mean I'm all for it but who are the miracle workers who will usher us down this path. We'll your friendly PTCL yup u read that right. A company they can't get its own house in order.

But wait there is more. This is a joint partnership with one NRTC, National Radio and Telecommunication Corporation (NRTC). Great. I went to their website and it's not mobile responsive so that's that. I'm genuinely stumped, what's the cost of said activity?

"Around 4,881 retail stores, 124 warehouses, 64 regional offices, 9 zonal offices along with all USC business processes including supply chain, warehousing, financials, human resources, payroll, and E-commerce will be automated by July 2021"

And if they can do this in 3 months we need to apply this across all govt and even some Pvt entities. I mean sign me up bro. Hello Mckinsey Jr. This needs to be productized and we need to put 100s/1000s of ppl trained on this digital transformation program. Clearly this is great.

Also in March I read the issue of 2000+ ghost employees of said corporation. See news item at google.com/amp/s/www.dawn… hence this digital transformation story just gets more and more unique and interesting. One for the ages if u ask me. That u go from no systems to all digital.

Really don't know the audited economic numbers but it looks pretty grim. With serious financial mis appropriations ala news paper stories and sans any hard data around p&l its safe to assume utility sore is no imtiaz super market. Perhaps a better idea to give it to them to run.

Digital transformation is being done likely for all the right aspirational targets but given the losses & lack of basic operational rigor all this does is more of nothing. A fool with a tool is still a fool. I'm rooting to see positive results in July & replicate this learning.

Truth is stranger than fiction. I still can't find total number of stores & cohesive data around P&L in a single location. July can't come fast enough. @fmsheik @owaisz @Huk06 @gulraizkhan @rogueonomist @rebootdude @YusufJan @shahjahan_ch @ShahidM99 @AliSika80624812 @Ash_Kalim