Where is money?

It is not in the banks.
Not in your wallet.
Definitely not in the stock markets.

Take out the piece of paper you call money from your wallet and you will find this written.
"I promise to pay the bearer the sum of X rupees" - Governor RBI.

If money was money, you already have it and then why is Governor of RBI promising you to "pay it"? Well it turns out what it means is that in normal circumstances people will trust these pieces of paper, but even if they don't, I promise I will pay you something of value worth these pieces of paper.

Money is the promise we make to each other and the only species which honors promises is humans. You are money. Your wife, your kids, your parents, your neighbors, people in your office, people on the road, the shopkeepers, the drivers, the plumber ...

EVERYONE is money and NOT EVERYTHING.

Things don't have value, people see value in things. This is simple stuff, one less indirection. The billions of dollars/rupees (pick your currency) is paper in the hands of few individuals or corporations, is nothing if the rest of world doesn't honors their promise to be of value to those who have this paper with them. I have no idea what RBI Governor will give to such a guy whose money no one accepts.

It is people who produce something valuable and it is other people who appreciate that value and pay for it. Money is not what you have in the bank, wallet or in stocks, the value of that piece of paper is in the people around you and their willingness to do something of value for you for that piece of paper. The value of money is in the people. Anything that stops other people from producing value, is decreasing the value of that paper you hold so dear. And many times what is stopping people is that they don't have that paper with them. Richest companies in the world are mostly monopolies (Oil and Gas, Infrastructure, Public Sector). The next richest are banks. Somehow capitalism fails to bring efficiency in banking even with private sector. Everyone of them seems to be making money. Give 5% interest for deposits and charge 15% for giving loans. Stupid regulations.

People seem to trust money more than they trust in people and paradoxically, trust in money is nothing but trust in people.  

Sanitary Napkin

What could be more honest than "It Sucks". 

"Periodically Yours" also sounds alright.

Bean Bag

Spineless.

A little something for faber

Do yourself a faber

Alternative Implementation of Call Center

Most call centers needs sophisticated call management software to distribute calls among the call center workers. Asterix and openpbx are few open source alternatives.  Basically the core design in based on proxy/middleware architecture. I am sure this is expensive.

An alternative way to implement the same functionality would be to use say smartphone based apps. Instead of putting your switching logic on the server, the same can be accomplished via the client. The idea is instead of pushing logic into the IVR or call proxy, use the internet connection and the computing power of the smart phone and your normal webserver (in your favorite langauge) handle the logic aspect of the call and then just make the app call the right number for the job. The approach has multiple benefits.

• Use phone to store the answers to most stupid questions asked like name of the customer, address of the customer, even phone number of the customer, his choice of language and customer specific ids like account number or customer identification number or may be the receipt number etc. No need to waste time. 
• Even if the stored information is insufficient, you could let the customer enter it on his mobile device instead of doing it over the IVR.
• Customer can talk to the same guy he talked to earlier and save time. This helps the customer by skipping the context and generates faster response time.
• No need to buy a special number. Just expose a web API which tells the phone app which number to call based on the information stored in the phone. Put whatever logic you need to put into that web API like .... if customer has called 5 times and the issue is not yet resolved, automatically route the call to the manager. The numbers could be regular mobile numbers or desk phone numbers of the employees. 
• Very easy for the customer to give feedback. You have complete power of the webapp at your disposal. 
• Very easy to implement say a work queue....customer simply presses a button and says call me back. Why wait.

Most "customers" already have smartphones and the ones that don't have are going to have them in next few years. By using the internet connection on phones and their computing power, it is possible to build much better customer management solution at fraction of the cost by offloading the "logic" to the app and webapi and use usual phone number to do the actual talking. Somehow we are still stuck in pushing logic into the phone line.