Inspiring Business Leaders Making a Difference 2019

Women Empower

Editor’s Desk

Dynamics of Women Participation in the Ever-changing Modern Workforce

The Journey to Self-Discovery

Chalk Talk Entrepreneurship Going Beyond the Comfort of Safety to Make Larger Impact

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September 2019

Inspiring

Business Leaders Making a Difference

2019

We are experts each of the QA service verticals, so our services aren’t just words on a screen.

Ruslan Desyatnikov When Passion and Courage Personify Altogether

EDITOR’S NOTE Exceptional Traits Possessed by every Leader

S

uccessful business leaders have a keen understanding and the ability to see the market forces affecting their industry. They are responsible for developing a team of best and the brightest minds, and together drive businesses to greater heights. And, their role is to maximize successes and to keep companies alive & thrilling through their ďŹ rm leadership. A Leader's own experiences help him to take the company to the dream vision. The magic behind achieving this success is sometimes simple appreciation, and understanding the team requirements.

A successful business leader does not need to be a creative genius, but he needs to be able to communicate and motivate the employees. Such successful leaders with the best and bright mind in inspiring business and making a difference in the world are Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Richard Branson, Steve Jobs, Susan Wojcicki, and Warren Buffett.

Be it the world of eCommerce, Real Estate, Health Care, or ERP, these leaders face a world of opportunity to evolve, with success coming from innovation.

As technology becomes more and more intrinsic in our everyday lives, increasing the value has acquired a growing relevance in modern societies. At the core, no leader or company is immune from the force of technological change.

Leaders must be open to new ideas, and innovations and communicate them to employees and peers. They must be

INSPIRING BUSINESS

L

DE S

Making a Difference 2019

creative and one that can navigate within a stressful environment without creating additional stress by reacting impulsively.

A good leader rises to the challenges of the business crisis with a good combination of teamwork, the right organization, and the appropriate style of leadership. During such a situation, a visionary leader looks for the best people available for his/her team, set priorities, and start to deal with the most important issues as they occur.

Organizations across sectors understand the importance of leadership skills in their workforce as they have the ability to help change the world for the better. It proves as a motivation for a leader to work with these responsibilities, as they are involved with people's demands and needs. With one such inspiration, CIO LOOK oversees the Global Company Leaders in “Inspiring Business Leaders Making a Difference”, who share their experiences, achievements, and challenges.

Here is the cover, featuring the Founder & CEO of QA Mentor, Ruslan Desyatnikov. The journey to success often starts with struggles accompanied by some unpredictable situations. In order to climb the ladder, one has to cope with various failures and face the inevitable circumstances. The entrepreneurial journey of Ruslan, exemplifies such a struggling dilemma. Emphasizing the courage to pursue passion, CIO Look brings to you the triumphant journey of an avid entrepreneur, Ruslan and many others.

Enjoy the read...

Sourabh More

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24

3 C O V E R S T O R Y

10

Ruslan Desyatnikov

When Passion and Courage Personify Altogether

18

24

32

Finding Exceptional Talent

Striving to Save and Improve the Lives of Diabetics

A Leader Destined to Disrupt the Digital Transformation

Elena Kyria

Marc Rippen

Mirna Sleiman

40

50

58

RedeďŹ ning the Benchmarks of Human Resource Management

A Pioneer of Anti-money Laundering and KYC domain

A Techie creating Beautiful, Functional, and Affordable Websites for Businesses

Nicole Martin

Rob Leslie

Stephanie LaTorre

20

Leader’s Take

Which should my Businesses Choose? CMMS Vs EAM?

IN THIS ISSUE A

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I

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L

E

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44

Tech Outlook

Coricraft: Transforms Customer Delight and Delivery with Trackmatic Solution

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36

54

Dynamics of Women Participation in the Everchanging Modern Workforce

Entrepreneurship Going Beyond the Comfort of Safety to Make Larger Impact

The Journey to Self-Discovery

Women Empower

40

50

58

Chalk Talk

Editor's Desk

44

K. Roy Editor-in-Chief

CONTENT

Senior Editor Alan Swann Managing Editor Bhushan Ghate Executive Editors Sourabh More

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September, 2019

Ruslan

Desyatnikov

When Passion and Courage Personify Altogether

“We are experts each of the QA service verticals, so our services aren't just words on a screen.�

Ruslan Desyatnikov Founder and CEO QA Mentor

COVER STORY

“Success is a choice. It is up to you to become successful or watch how other people become successful.

Follow your dreams and do not be afraid to make decisions.”

T

he journey to success often starts with struggles accompanied by some unpredictable situations. In order to climb the ladder, one has to cope with various failures and face the inevitable circumstances. The entrepreneurial journey of Ruslan Desyatnikov, the Founder and CEO of QA Mentor, exemplifies such a struggling dilemma.

Emphasizing the courage to pursue passion, CIO Look brings to you the triumphant journey of an avid entrepreneur, Ruslan.

Ruslan started his career 22 years ago as a junior tester. He was struggling to find his first job after graduation, while many of his college peers found their jobs very quickly. One job he was offered was in a junior tester position. At that time, he didn't have any knowledge about testing or the role of a junior tester because for the most part everybody was going into development programming. He took this job because he had no other choices.

And since that time, he has never regretted his choice because he it led to something he loved.

Throughout these 22 years, Ruslan spent much of his time stepping into leadership roles in the quality assurance and testing field, up to and including the start of his entrepreneurial journey back in 2010. Prior to starting his own company, he was working in different capacities and at different organizations and companies, such as HSBC and Citibank, where he held a senior

management role managing several teams of over 100 people.

After that, he felt he could help other companies around the world to improve quality by starting his own company. And that is how QA Mentor, a leading QA provider, was conceived.

QA Mentor supports various industries and technologies. In order to make its offerings appealing, the company has a number of unique services. It offers 32 different quality assurance testing services in the quality assurance domain and covers nearly all angles of the service offerings. In order to attract its potential customers and clients, it offers a number of ondemand services which allow its customers to utilize the company only when they need it. For instance, companies don't need to have a long-term contract or many resources billable throughout the whole year. QA Mentor has options where if there is no requirement, it can stop, pause the engagement, and then re-engage when the work is there. This allows its customers and clients to save a lot of resources.

In addition, the company is unique in its own space in terms of providing strategic directions and consultations. So basically, it is not a body shop where many organizations just provide resources to do the tasks. QA Mentor provides coaching, training, guidance, and that's how the name 'QA Mentor' came about. QA is all about mentorship,

guidance, and strategic support. It is not only about testing but also providing recommendations on how to establish better, more streamlined processes, and how to take an immature QA organization to the next level.

Along with the service offerings, QA mentor also provides expertise and expert services which can help the company to build a QA department from scratch. It can build a very big testing center of excellence, which it has done for many Fortune 500 companies. It can also provide cost effective testing solutions in order for its customers to save money. The company provides on-demand solutions and various other automation testing solutions to save on the cost of the manual testers. In other words, instead of executing thousands of test cases manually, the company can automate them and can provide those solutions to its customers.

Fundraising is always a challenging component when starting a business. Ruslan started his business without any investment money. He didn't want to borrow any money from investors or from the bank. He utilized his own money, and thus it was challenging in the beginning. Ruslan believes that the initial stage is extremely important and difďŹ cult, when you're starting from scratch and don't have any clients yet. It becomes very important to invest into the right marketing and advertising strategy to attract customers and clients. So, initial

challenges with funds were always there to begin with for him. At one point, it became difďŹ cult for him even to pay salaries. Occasionally he had to delay some salaries by two, maybe three months, but always with the promise that he'd pay everyone everything they were owed. Fortunately, his team was on his side, trusted his strategies, and that's why they didn't leave him high and dry.

Though this dilemma, Ruslan learned a valuable lesson - it's very important to have a backup plan.

Something will likely go wrong, and you need to plan the budget accordingly so that if certain projects are not there, you can still survive for the six months at least.

One needs to be very aggressive in terms of identifying customers and clients and establish very strong marketing strategies and techniques. According to him, without a proper go-to market strategy and sales strategy, one won't be successful as one will not ďŹ nd any clients or customers.

Hence, strategic investment into the marketing and advertising and sales are extremely important for the business.

Secondly, it also became complicated for Ruslan initially when everything did start taking off. QA Mentor started growing exponentially. It also acquired other companies along the journey. After three to four years, everything started going off rapidly. Ruslan believes, this is where businesses risk failure as they grow very fast hire people

presence in every country in the world. For that reason, it is striving to open new locations across the globe. It is already operating in seven different countries and continuing to establish its footprint in many more countries where it can help companies within that region to adapt to QA Mentor's strategies, best practices and methodologies.

Its goal is to become a global leader in testing. Many organizations are providing a combination of development and testing, but QA Mentor is strictly concentrating around testing. It is also trying to hit 1,000 employees within ďŹ ve years.

Right now, it has 274 global resources, which leaves a lot of room to grow. Through its acquisition strategies, it has acquired three companies since it started back in 2010.

quickly, and then need to sustain growth. QA mentor implemented a number of internal training and on-boarding training sessions with its new employees, where it gave them two weeks orientation in overall company strategy and methodology along with its own QA testing techniques. This helped to ensure that everybody would operate the same way, following all protocols and best practices. The company built many internal training programs which helped it to onboard new hires quickly. And not only onboard but integrate them into the teams so they can operate much quicker

and more efďŹ ciently. In the opinion of Ruslan, sustaining the growth is a good problem to deal with, but one can easily fail and leave a lot of unhappy customers in the wake of the mess created by rapidly expanding team growth that lacks any strategy. So, it's extremely important to have the right onboarding strategy, training strategy, and internal training, and that's what QA Mentor does. It has invested a lot of money to build Elearning training across the board.

QA Mentor has been growing year after year at the rate of 30%, and its global strategy is to establish its

In addition, QA Mentor also wants to continue offering more services in the latest technology space such as Internet of Things, blockchain, machine learning, and artiďŹ cial intelligence. It is continually performing its R &D in those areas so that it can be equipped to support many organizations with the latest technologies, test those technologies, and automate testing around those technologies as well.

When asked about the essential attributes every entrepreneur must possess, Ruslan emphasized the skills of decision making. According to him, as a business leader one has to be brave and bold in their decisions. While addressing young

entrepreneurs he says, “You don't have to be afraid of making mistakes with your decisions because business leaders are the ones who should make the decisions, and I've seen many business leaders who are afraid to make a mistake or to make a decision.

So in my life, in my career, I made tons of mistakes. But I learned from those mistakes, and at the same time I never was afraid to make a decision.

Whether the decision was bad or good is one thing, but I was constantly evaluating and moving forward with decisions based on that.”

He also advises business leaders to take responsibility for their decisions. He also emphasizes being disciplined, stating that it's very important to be disciplined and to follow the strategy and methodology and approach and not to deviate from the established methodologies. Also, in his opinion, being fair is an essential attribute too. He says, “Whenever you see certain things not really working well you have to explain the things that are not working, and at the same time when you see certain things getting done correctly you have to praise your guys. It's very, very important to be fair and to give constructive criticism, and at the same time continuously grow your staff, because if they're not growing, you're not going to grow and hence, the company is not going to grow. So that's extremely, extremely important to do that. It's also very important to remember that you have to appreciate and praise people for working hard and recognize them because they need that.”

In his advice to the emerging entrepreneurs, he further adds, “Don't be afraid to start your own business. Obviously, you have to think this through, you have to plan it accordingly. It helps to have some investments ready to do that, but don't wait too long. I actually regret that I started a so late. I thought that I need to gain more knowledge, more experience, and so it wasn't until after10 years that I finally decided to open my own company. But I think people should not wait too long. You'll learn as you go - we never stop learning, and it's not possible to know everything. You will be learning until your retirement. So, you have to jump in without worry and without fear. And always believe in and follow your dreams because success depends on

only you. If you want to be successful you have to follow your dreams and you have to do whatever it takes for you to succeed. Success is a choice. It's up to you to become successful or not.

You can control that success yourself.

Obviously, there are a lot of risks and failures in front of you, but you can overcome. You have got to be strong and you have got to keep going. Don't be discouraged if something is not working. And this is going to happen many times. But you still need to fight and continue and fall and stand up and move forward.”

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Elena Kyria Finding Exceptional Talent 18

| September 2019 |

To have problems is to be alive. The only people who don’t have problems live in a graveyard.

E

lena is an award winning specialist on talent attraction.

She helps companies hire exceptional talent from all over the world. She coaches and supports top talent in building up their professional brand, to maximize career possibilities. She is also specialised in sourcing, supporting and recruiting experienced professionals in Quality and Regulatory Affairs for startups, SME’s and global corporations in the Medtech industry.

Find out about her story below.

After 5 years of working for a corporate recruitment company and achieving the title of top performer, Elena decided to go it alone and she started her own business at the age of 25. Elemed is specialized in recruiting exceptional talent in the medtech industry, and works across Europe with all types of companies, Startups, Consultancies, Notified Bodies and Industry.

One of the great things about being a specialist recruiter is that the you are able to see the whole picture across the industry. When recruiting for corporates, some of the most common complaints from candidates is the complexity of the organisational structure, the time it takes to get decisions through, and not being able to have a real impact. Whilst companies can’t simply go in and flatten the organisational structure, her advice to leaders is to engage in discussions with their employees, to give them a chance to feel that their voice is being heard.

She is proud to play an instrumental role to bring companies some of the best talent in the market. The company recruits the people that solve regulatory and compliance problems so that patients from all over the world can have access to life saving and life enhancing medical devices. It is in a really pivotal moment in the medical device industry with the transition to the new regulation. “This puts a big strain on resources for a lot of companies, and our role in helping companies recruit technically competent, effective candidates in an extremely passive market is something we are great at.”

One of the main things, she has learnt about leadership is that great leaders are developed and not born.

Leadership is less about you and more about the people you are leading, their wants, their needs and their feelings. “It’s a really enjoyable yet challenging journey, but for me, one of the most rewarding things is seeing your team become more and more independent and excel.” She was once told, “a leadership success is getting your people to the point they no longer need you”.

As a business, it’s always important to be diversifying the offerings to make sure that the company is fitting well with what the clients need, but it’s also important to give back. Whilst recruitment is its core business, there is a huge demand for information on the new medical device regulation, especially in the medical device market where Elemed recruit. She recently had the idea to create a community among her Linkedin Network. The EU MDR/IVDR update forum was created as a place to share ideas, questions, updates and support. The idea has taken off really well- this online community currently stands at 3,500 people!

Elena thinks and believes flexibility is important, as is a certain fearlessness to not be afraid to make mistakes.

Leadership today is very much about empathy. Finally, the concept of the servant leader is something she aspires to be. This is the idea that you work for your team, they don’t work for you. Your job as leader is all about facilitating their success.

Elena likes to read, alot! We are living in such a fascinating time. The internet has completely changed how we live our lives and how we interact as humans. She is really interested in personal growth and development, topics like the millennial generation in the workplace, how machine learning will impact us, and how the future of healthcare will look. As a company, it is a very exciting moment for Elena and her team, with the launch of their new website happening very soon. They have had a serious facelift. Stay tuned!

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| September 2019 |

WHICH SHOULD MY BUSINESSES CHOOSE?

CMMS W

hen it comes to the right software for tracking your asset’s maintenance history, you have a few options ahead of you. There are several powerful tools across the board, however, the two most common you’ll encounter are a CMMS and an EAM. These programs are an essential piece for a growing business to track their maintenance and asset’s span, so choosing the correct one can mean all the difference for your business.

At its core, a CMMS (Computerized Maintenance Management System) is a system used to track work orders, maintenance history, and preventive maintenance schedules for assets related to your businesses.

Maintenance teams use a CMMS to quickly discover everything about an asset, from where it is located to knowing who has work on it and when. This insight helps centralize all maintenance information in one system helping teams improve their productivity. A CMMS also helps streamline maintenance processes by providing visibility to all parties involved.

Maintenance managers can view and track work order statuses assigned to technicians, as well as quickly notifying technicians of new tasks.

In contrast to the primary maintenance tracking a CMMS provides, an EAM’s (Enterprise Asset Management) primary function is to focus on uptime, planning, and asset workflow for all devices across a large-scale company. It is used to track every part of an asset’s life cycle, from procurement to disposal, combining both the features of a CMMS with powerful utilities covering accounting, asset’s cost and profits, and operations. With an EAM, your business can see exactly how much an asset both produces and costs, allowing you to make accurate projections while simultaneously seeing where certain assets need more focus to ensure profitability. Downtime, a dreaded occurrence on all high-value assets, can even be accurately tracked within the tools it provides.

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| September 2019 |

Leader’s Take

EAM

?

About the Author Ryan Chan is CEO and Founder at UpKeep Maintenance Management.

He is a Chemical Engineer from UC Berkeley, was named one of Forbes 30 Under 30 for Manufacturing in 2018 and is part of the Official Forbes Technology Council. Ryan started UpKeep out of passion and frustration by the lack of mobility in today’s maintenance management software. UpKeep has now been deployed to over 10,000 businesses and is a leader in mobile-first maintenance management software.

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| September 2019 |

EAM software also adds the benefit of streamlined financial reports, allowing you to see a breakdown of all costs incurred by your appliances. These reports can be a blessing during an audit and allow your financial team an easy look at your current assets without having to train them in the full use of your EAM software. If you’re only using a CMMS software, integrations with accounting software may be limited. Most EAMs will automatically integrate with accounting software like QuickBooks, allowing the reports to be automatically generated and transferred at the push of a button.

CMMS and EAM sound quite similar, don’t they? While superficially they may appear to show the same function, the improvements of an EAM’s additional features on top of CMMS present an attractive option for businesses that have grown beyond one or two locations. How do you determine if you need a CMMS or an EAM software? Here are a few key questions to ask when determining which software is right for your business.

With an EAM, every team can take control of their particular specialty, from your finance and production teams to your maintenance and compliance team. An EAM allows them each to utilize their own workflow, optimizing the time spent scrutinizing your assets to look for cost savings and improvements. Your financial team, production team, and especially your compliance team all benefit from the EAM’s ability to segment specialized tools for their tasks, making the cost of the system and training much more efficient than each team doing it by hand.

How large is your maintenance team?

If you are currently at a few locations with less than ten technicians on duty, a CMMS software is usually more than sufficient to track each of your asset’s maintenance history. The proximity allows your maintenance team to easily see and track when assets are purchased or on the verge of breaking down, allowing a more hands-on approach to tracking their life cycle. You will also likely have no issue handling the financial aspect and budget tracking with your repairs until you begin to expand.

So which should you choose for your business?

Despite the similarities of the products, the true difference between an EAM and a CMMS comes down to the scale of your business. While large businesses may find themselves in the position of an EAM suite being necessary, most small business owners can breathe easy knowing a CMMS will likely suit their needs just fine. Small businesses often can justify using multiple programs in conjunction with a CMMS to both save on budget, while the complexities of owning thousands of assets can make the EAM a must for management to have the all-in-one solution at their fingertips.

If you have a multitude of locations and a sizable team, the power of an EAM software allows your teams to see an eagle-eye view of all of your appliances without having to visit each location or contact that location’s supervisor for updates. Over all, if your maintenance teams are not split into more than a handful of locations while only having a maintenance team size of less than ten, the use of a CMMS would be more cost effective than transitioning to an EAM. Do you own and manage 500+ assets?

Eventually there comes a time when it becomes too time consuming for you to personally manage each asset over multiple programs. This tipping point can occur at various times in a business’s lifespan. Once you reach near the 500+ asset mark, you’re going to have more eyes on your assets than just your maintenance teams. Your financial team may be looking at an asset to determine if it’s still profitable, while your compliance team will be concerned with the asset’s safety through its lifespan.

Moving from CMMS to EAM is not one to be undertaken lightly, but not as difficult as many business owners imagine. Owners will start to plan for the change when their assets begin to pass the thousand mark over multiple locations. Consult with your core team of your asset manager, maintenance manager, maintenance technician, and CMMS vendor to determine when the upgrade is optimal for your business and your future profits.

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| September 2019 |

Marc Rippen, President & Founder, Alertgy

MARC RIPPEN Striving to Save and Improve the Lives of Diabetics 24

| September 2019 |

Alertgy

L

eadership role involves influencing group activities and coping with change. Healthcare leadership is often associated with improvements in patient care or organizational outcomes applied in the healthcare industry. A healthcare leader must adopt a suitable approach for handling conflict at all stages to create a positive outcome for all. It emphasizes in establishing the leadership role that facilitates effective and efficient healthcare provision. Alertgy provides the world’s first real-time wearable non- invasive continuous glucose monitor and alert system. Marc Rippen is Alertgy’s President and Founder. He is a visionary leader, highly skilled engineer, scientists, technical sales and marketing professional with a proven track record in product development, program management and sales related to the application of high technology to solve what people thought were impossible problems.

Give a person a sh, and he will eat well for a day, show a person how to sh, and he will eat for the rest of his life.

With over 30 years of experience, Marc has worked for multiple fortune 500 companies, Department of Defense (DOD), NASA, SOCOM, and DARPA commercializing dozens of ground-breaking and revolutionary technologies. He holds various degrees across multiple interrelated disciplines including Microbiological Sciences and Immunology, Biophysics, Analytical Chemistry, Masters of Aeronautical Science, Management of Engineering and Technology. These skills have allowed him to support the transition of technology from the lab into startup businesses, and then to publicly traded corporations.

Transformational Leader Marc began to learn leadership skills as a teenager, first as an explorer scout, then as a volunteer in a program called Amigo’s De Las America’s where he was trained to administer vaccinations to small children and then actually did that for thousands of children when he applied his hiking skills in reaching them in remote plantations in the Highlands of Guatemala in the summer of 1974. From there he joined ROTC in college and was trained to be an officer in the United States Army. He was commissioned as a second lieutenant in 1978. He trained and served initially as an Armor Officer and

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| September 2019 |

Solution-oriented Vision

later in Special Forces, Combat Engineers and finally as a Technical Project Officer. In his civilian profession as a materials engineer at United Technologies Corporation, he quickly advanced into program management. Over several decades he directed advanced applied research and development programs for the NASA, the Airforce, Army, DARPA, Navy, and SOCOM. In his last position, he was the Director of Engineering for SRI’s Marine and Space Technology Group.

Marc thinks every leader must be driven by a vision to provide a solution that benefits their customers better than any other existing solution. He constantly invests his time in attending industrial and technological trade shows/conferences, reading technical literature, and learning new things every day. He also is an adjunct professor of Aeronautical Science at Embry Riddle Aeronautical University and finds that in teaching one has to learn the most to be properly prepared for class and in answering the many great questions that students give you.

Difficulties and its Effective Strategies The biggest challenge is that in the United States, everything is driven by short term goals. This makes it difficult for public corporations to compete globally as they can not use long term strategies effectively. They are judged by analysts who are focused on short term analytics, and that can devalue a company’s worth overnight based upon their opinion. Marc thinks that companies are more able to compete if they are privately held by investors that can think in terms of long term strategic goals. He also thinks that many U.S. companies do not have enough technologists /engineers in high enough levels, this combined with their aversion to risk hurts the ability of companies to take advantage of applying emerging technologies before they become obvious to the competition.

Improving Health through Innovation Alertgy saves the lives of diabetic patients, by dramatically improving their quality of life, increasing their lifespan and by easing the burden to their loved ones and caretakers mostly by providing the world’s first real-time wearable non-invasive continuous glucose monitor and alert system. The company was founded by a small team of innovators who have collaborated on challenging technical programs over the years. Marc founded the company as a result of saving his wife from entering a diabetic coma in 2016. It was then he realized the existing unmet need for this technology to measure blood sugar levels with an external wearable sensor device.

He put together an “A-Team” of professionals whom he has worked with over the last decades in taking technical laboratory concepts to proof of principal demonstrations and scaling to global commercialization in several industries. Ironically Marc saved his own life using his first prototype which when he tested it indicated that he was a hyperglycemic type 2 diabetic, with a blood sugar reading of 650 mg/dl (>150 is bad). His a1c was 12.8 (>7 is bad). Over 9 million people in America are unaware that they are diabetic and only find out when they are hospitalized as the disease progresses.

Ethical and Diversified Offerings Alertgy uses social media, focus groups, pilot studies, and other outreach techniques to diversify its offering to create an appeal in-front of its target audiences. Marc would like to sponsor applied research programs to further applications for the company’s technology at Universities. He sees himself running a technology skunkworks and mentoring young engineers & scientists to apply their knowledge and research and development skills to address all the technical challenges that exist in the medical, energy, food and environment that can benefit mankind as a whole while building strong technology-based industries in the United States.

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| September 2019 |

Dynamics of

Participation in the Ever-changing Modern Workforce

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| September 2019 |

Women Empower

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possibility can be attained by combining efforts from different resources, channels and departments.

Further, collaborating products with consumer experience are enormously important. It leads to crafting the best solutions for customer’s pain points and compelling value propositions that reflect their overall business objectives.

one are the days when women were stereotyped to a certain set of skills and professions, restricting them from exploring the world of endless opportunities. Today, women have announced their arrival in many fields of the business world. Therefore, it seems more important than ever before to recognize female contributions in every profession.

Multiple studies have found that women prefer to work in teams, while men prefer to work alone. An unfaltering affinity towards collaboration primes women to garner success in different fields of business which gives them an edge over others.

Fighting through biased work culture in favour of male dominance, women have conquered the unconquered on the account of their distinct calibre and predilections. In the times when the world female participation rate is to the dispiriting levels of around 67% and pay-off rate of about 63%, achievements by women go-getters are praiseworthy.

Increased profitability can be a motivating factor for many firms to hire more pool of female talents as many studies support the fact. Statistical research shows that Fortune 500 companies with the highest representation of women on boards financially outperform companies with the lowest representation of women on boards. Moreover, gender-diverse teams have higher sales and profits compared to maledominated teams, and a recent Gallup study found that gender-diverse business units have higher average revenue than less diverse business units.

Listening capabilities is one of the distinguishing aspects of feminine species as compared to their male counterparts. Instilling and pursuing ones thoughts is undoubtedly important for effective working. But being a better listener is something that can make a difference as studies show that the customer values and trusts the firms if they perceive that they are being listened to by the firms. With inherent caring and affectionate traits, women outclass men when it comes to understanding critical demands of the customers.

Trust over female leaders is an attribute which needs to be reciprocated while making the choice. More American workers perceive female executives as honest and ethical than male executives. Pew’s “Women and Leadership” surveyed Americans in 2015 and found that 34% say women are better at this, while only 3% say men are better at it (64% say there’s no difference).

Emotional Intelligence (EI) - the ability to identify and manage one’s own emotions as well as the emotions of others - is an essential skill when it comes to dealing with a diverse class of consumers. Women are naturally gifted with higher EI making them better suited for pressure situations and avoiding counter-productive decisions while keeping emotions in check.

While it’s unclear whether this means women are actually more honest, it’s a subtle reminder of how tangled some business decisions can be. Leaders are often tasked with choosing between options that aren’t black and white, ethically speaking, and the capacity to lead honestly is important to the entire company’s success and job satisfaction.

Emotional Intelligence encompasses two major dimensions – awareness of one’s self and awareness of others. Both the attributes are very much significant for the survival and success of any organisation. Selfawareness involves being familiar with trigger points and behavioural traits when put to the test. This, in turn, helps to modulate impulses avoiding conclusions which are harmful for the welfare of business. In addition to self-awareness, an awareness of others is equally critical in business. Analysing and decoding non-verbal communication – that amounts to 93% of the message – eventually benefits in convincing and converting a lead into a client.

Not to mention, increased job satisfaction and organizational dedication to cite positive and meaningful business culture are the added advantages feminine employees carry to the organisation.

However, the journey is not all merry go round every time. Hindrances – seen, unseen – are there to check the unrelenting zeal of women aspirants to thrive in the industry. These obstructions need to be pointed out and rectified to create an environment that fuels women empowerment.

Collaboration, and not the cutthroat competition, is the modern era’s principle virtue to achieve success. Many endeavours which seem to be beyond the bounds of

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Lack of confidence, according to many experts, is one prime reason women tend to question themselves and doubt their worthiness. In order to advance, they must coach their inner critics.

While proving value, women tend to overcompensate in order to demonstrate that they are adding value.

Instead of doing it all alone, change the paradigm and track to encourage others to take on more responsibility, thus enabling them to scale and multiply their own impact.

Out-speak and define what women want professionally if they want to get succeeded. Too often they don’t know or rely upon others to define it for them.

Not to forget, biased work culture and regional barriers are the crucial obstacles in the road of women work participation. But, today women are breaking these shackles and coming out boldly to be a part of economic processes shouldering their male counterparts.

“Building relationships with those in positions of leadership is critical,” Susan Brady, executive vice president of Linkage Inc. says. “Put down the to-do list long enough to connect with decision makers across the organization, and help them understand who you are and what you bring to the table.”

There has been obvious progress in achieving gender equality around the world over the past two decades: more girls are attending school, more women are working and are being elected to public offices, more women hold management positions, and the situation involving women’s legal as well as social rights have also improved.

Women are generally uneasy about asking for what they want. They must stop thinking about what they need as a self-serving request. They must develop the courage and fortitude to stand up and ask for what they want.

However, a great deal still remains to be done to achieve equal outcomes for women and men.

Recognizing women’s abilities, the values they bring to the organisation, the transformation they achieve as far as work environment is concerned, and considering monetary benefits associated with the female work participation, corporate sector need to welcome their emergence with open arms. No future is far where male-dominated workplaces will be a tale of extinct, we believe.

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Mirna Sleiman A Leader Destined to Disrupt the Digital Transformation

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guilty, and to dream big. Women are braver than they believe, stronger than they seem and smarter than they think. Success is never achieved alone and wisdom is sweeter when shared. The world needs more women who believe in their own power and are bold enough to speak about their ambitions.

ith the 'Making a difference' edition, CIO Look attempts on spreading opinions of some exceptionally talented women leaders who have keenly contributed their share in evolving business aspects.

Meet one such result-driven leader, Mirna Sleiman, the Founder and CEO of Fintech Galaxy, who singlehandedly brought a disruption in the traditional order of marketing for businesses. Her commendable business sense and distinctive social skills drove her into obtaining some remarkable achievements in the world of business. Her authentic way of assisting various organizations in attaining digital transformation, is more often an inspiration for aspirants, entering into the digitization business.

We at Fintech Galaxy connect the fintech ecosystem and cater to the needs of financial institutions, startups and investors. And for each type of customer we offer a solution to their most pressing needs. Banks want to innovate and we help them connect with bright minds in a very efficient and cost effective way. Startups want to scale and need funding; we help them with business development and fund raising. Investors are hungry for a healthy deal flow, and we provide that.

Learning never ends, and Fintech is a fast evolving industry. Banks are being disrupted by all types of technologies. It's important to read, take certificates and stay connected with brains at conferences and social media.

Following is the story of Mirna, a proficient forerunner with a vision to transform business digitally, in her own words: I have spent most of my career rubbing shoulders with leaders. As a journalist, I've interviewed central bank governors, ministers and heads of states. I've lived through the boom and bust of financial markets and learned a great deal from CEOs, high net-worth individuals and successful entrepreneurs.

I compete with myself. I keep an eye on market competition but I only benchmark with my vision. It's simple—I imagine my company 10 years from now and I charge forward.

I mentor entrepreneurs and support them wherever I can. I'm a mother of three, entrepreneur and just finished my EMBA. There's no tradeoff and there's no balance. One feeds the other success at work means happiness at home. The best I do is to present myself as a role model to my kids and to other women out there. I don't really fight for equality, but I definitely encourage diversity in all its forms and shapes.

Talking about leadership, I firmly believe that a leader must possess the qualities of curiosity, humility and empathy. The rest you learn in a business school. I'm still taking baby steps. I have a big dream and I will never stop until I see the region we live in, enjoys the empowerment of youth, women and financial inclusion.

About the Leader Mirna Sleiman is an experienced executive with 15+ years of proficiency in government relations, business strategy, digital communications and journalism, mostly within the MENA region. Driven by passion for

Women have themselves as the biggest enemy; their own limitations, their own fears. Women have everything it takes to lead and create impact because they're driven by compassion and emotional intelligence. My advice to women is to have self-belief, to stop feeling 32

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Fintech Galaxy

Mirna Sleiman Founder & CEO

Fintech Galaxy

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empowers fintech entrepreneurs and connects them to financial institutions, consultants, tech companies, mentors and investors. It works as an open innovation marketplace for organizations based in the MENA region to post challenges for its global network of startups to take a crack at solving them in order to gain business contracts or cash rewards. The company advises startups on fund raising, operational growth and business development. The platform also brings to the MENA market, a network of global fintech experts in disciplines like blockchain, AI, payments, robotics and data science.

innovation and creating a positive impact, Mirna has a track record in leading digital transformation projects, marketing communications strategies and global partnerships with public and private entities, focusing on knowledge economy development, regulatory infrastructure and financial markets.

Moreover, she has managed public sector business for Thomson Reuters across MENA and partnered with international organizations to promote innovation and social change. Currently, she resides on the advisory board of the Union of Arab Banks and MENA Research Partners.

With a wealth of content and a virtual gallery of the best success case studies in the financial technology space, Fintech Galaxy supports the world's most promising entrepreneurs throughout their journey from inspiration to global growth.

She has spent more than 10 years as a financial journalist with Reuters, Dow Jones, The Wall Street Journal and Zawya. She has been adorned with three EMEA Dow Jones awards and a Global William Clabby Award in investigative reporting, Thomson Reuters Over And Above award for strategic relations and the IPRA trophy for the impact on the region's corporate world. Also she has been certified from MIT University in fintech and e-commerce, Columbia University in Digital Marketing and Communications, and an Executive MBA from City University of London.

About the Company Fintech Galaxy is a digital crowdsourcing platform that 34

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Chalk Talk

Entrepreneurship Going Beyond the Comfort of Safety to Make Larger Impact

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ntrepreneurship is the process of starting a new business that adds some value to the world by solving some specific problems.

Entrepreneurship is the capacity and willingness to develop, organize and manage a business venture along with any of its risks in order to make a profit. Entrepreneurship combined with land, labor, natural resources and capital can make a profit. Those who create these businesses are called entrepreneurs. Entrepreneurial spirit is characterized by innovation and risk taking and is an essential part of a nation’s ability to succeed in constantly changing and increasingly competitive global market place.

Entrepreneurship in its truest form is all about identifying a gap in the market and creating a product which can fill that hole. Entrepreneurship is not solely about making money- it is also about changing and enriching the lives for better. It is about improving people’s lives through creation of products or launching services that makes the lives of people easy. If one’s business does not add value to the lives of people then it is unlikely to survive. The business that makes nothing but money can easily be considered as a poor business.

Entrepreneurship is the act of being an entrepreneur. Entrepreneurs act as managers and oversee the launch and growth of an enterprise. It is a process by which either an individual or a team identifies a business opportunity and

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acquires and deploys the necessary tools and resources required for its utilization.

Entrepreneurship is all about being ready to go beyond the comfort zone.

It is about defining success on one’s own terms and achieving it by one’s own process and methodology. It is also about thinking outside the box or thinking like there is no box. True entrepreneurial spirit is about seeing challenges as opportunities.

Entrepreneurs should be able to shake off depression, laziness and should jump into the flowing stream of hard work in order to achieve their dream.

True Entrepreneurs understand that they can’t be great at everything they do, but they know that they can be great at something. They focus on that particular something in which they are good at with laser like focus and they are passionate to deliver the best solutions in their chosen work.

Entrepreneurs create something new, something different that solves some problems or adds value to the world.

An entrepreneur is a person who is willing and able to convert a new idea or invention into a successful innovation. Entrepreneurial journey is not always so easy. As Elon Musk Quotes “Being an entrepreneur is like eating glass and staring into the abyss of death.” Many people experience entrepreneurial journey as a rollercoaster ride filed with challenges and opportunities; ups and downs.

Entrepreneurship is about

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perseverance through all such ups and downs. The journey may be filled with crest and troughs but the journey is worth taking.

Entrepreneurs understand that seduction of safety is much more dangerous than the perception of the risk. Therefore they take calculated risks based on market trends and market estimation. Where common people see the problems entrepreneurs see the opportunities.

Entrepreneurs are driven to create solutions to those problems.

Entrepreneurs are not the part of problems but entrepreneurs are people who want to be part of the solution to those problems.

Entrepreneurs are innately programme to create solutions to the existing problems.

people as possible with full efficiency.

Entrepreneurs plan their work and work their plan. Successful entrepreneurship requires entrepreneurs who take conscious, systematic, logical and thoughtful decisions. It is about thinking deliberately and acting on the conclusion of logical thought process.

Great entrepreneurs have the ability to think decisively even in indecisive environment also. Their conscience and intuition helps them to come up with some solutions that add glory to their business. Successful entrepreneurs are also very cautious of making use of the latest technology for creating more profitable solutions.

They know how to leverage everything to create glorious business that adds value to the larger portion of the world.

Entrepreneurs roll up their sleeves every day and work hard to create solutions to the existing problems in the world in order to make profit as well as to enrich the lives of people.

They are in the game to make a difference and impact in the lives of people through offering solutions to some of the biggest problems. Money is secondary to them but making valuable contribution and adding value to the world is what they focus on. They understand that money is just a byproduct of serving as many

Entrepreneurs are here to make a valuable contribution to the world through their words and worthy actions; they just don’t want to occupy the space in the universe.

Entrepreneurs believe in making world a better place by creating something that customizes the lives of people for better. Great entrepreneurs walk their talk and talk their walk. Their lips and lives both make difference in the lives of people.

They know that world rewards those who press on. Entrepreneurship is

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about paying the price of dedication, commitment, sacrifices, hard work and putting heart and soul into the business to create something different that makes lives of people easier. The words and actions of great entrepreneurs show that they know where they are going and the world has the habit of making room for such people.

Entrepreneurship is about knowing the way, going the way and showing the way. Entrepreneurs lead by example. They use all the resources they have to make larger contribution to the world. They think of changing the world through their skills, abilities, talents and making optimum utilization of all the resources they have. Entrepreneurs build a strong network of people in their organization. The great entrepreneurs understand that one’s network determines one’s net worth.

Therefore they choose smart and pragmatic people around them that are having the ability to come up with solutions to some of the toughest problems. They are very cautious of people they associate with.

Entrepreneurship is about building bridges of success instead of creating barriers to opportunity. It is about having talented people on-board to come up with great idea and to implement that idea to make a tangible difference in the lives of people.

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Nicole Martin

“We strive to bring joy and purpose to people though their work.�

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HRBoost LLC

Redefining the Benchmarks of

Human Resource Management T

he term human resource management was first coined in the 1960s when the value of labor relations began to garner attention. Notions such as motivation, organizational behavior, and selection assessments began to take shape. In today’s scenario, organizations are often in a need of a Human Resources Management System in order to systematically organize the workforce. In this competitive world there are a few organizations which provide the best Human Resources Management System in the marketplace, and HRBoost LLC is one of them.

large-company counterparts, can often lack the time and resources to build infrastructure and processes that are beyond core business objectives. But, every business needs to have a competitive edge in today’s economy. Both small and large companies need to attract, develop and retain the best talent for their organizations while complying with the ever changing maze of state and the federal regulations. All companies need to be concerned with issues related to compensation, benefits, training, employee retention, talent attraction and generational agility. HRBoost has built its reputation on partnering with business leaders to achieve corporate goals while maintaining integrity and delivering outstanding results.

Emphasizing on the courage to pursue passion, the ability to bring out a change and redefining entrepreneurship, CIO Look brings to you the journey of an avid leader, Nicole Martin, the Founder and CEO of HRBoost LLC.

We serve businesses spanning over multiple sectors; these include Professional Services, Non-Profit Organizations, High Tech, Manufacturing, Staffing firms, Hospitality, and Healthcare. Our clients are typically from high growth business with 50-250 employees. Our model is to meet the clients wherever they are, thus we provide full-service embedded HR support, project to project support, culture design and management training, employee programs and assessments, virtual support, and phone support.

I am honored to lead a high performance team of HR leaders who partners with our business clients to meet them wherever they are on their journey, to being a best place to work. We have experienced tremendous growth and proudly nearly every client has been sourced through word of mouth. Our appeal and success is due to our personal dedication for each and every client.

Following is Nicole’s story, possessing the potential of inspiring and motivating everyone.

I am Nicole Martin. My vision, and the reason that I left the corporate world to launch HRBoost, was to help businesses to create winning workplaces through their people. We desire to bring joy and purpose to people through their work. HRBoost provides solutions with passion to individuals, groups and businesses alike. We do not operate under the philosophy that one size fits all. Every leader must align their personal values to the organizational values and define success clearly so that every person can connect their role to a transcendent organizational purpose. Our mission is to provide value added Human Resource Services that allows each business to do what it does best. When HR is aligned, HR is no longer just a partner; it is a fundamental part of the business helping to drive the human side of profitability.

The greatest concern I see for today is the talent emergency, which I address in detail in my book, “The Talent Emergency.” Generational Agility is utmost important to businesses who want to succeed and grow. It is imperative that companies look within their organizations to ensure that they have a culture which

We have specialized experience in providing values to small and middle sized companies, who, unlike their 41

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embraces diversity, not only we are speaking to gender, culture, and ethnicity, but also generational diversity. Creating a team that brings multiple views and experience to a business provides a unique perspective that will elevate the business and ensure continuing success, which in turn will lead them to be a best place to work. Retaining and attracting top talent is a sure way to maximize the human side of profitability and become THE place to work.

A Multifaceted Leader Nicole is an internationally renowned speaker and an author. She is a dynamic and empowering consultative leader, and a futurist skilled in helping organizations to meet their strategic objectives.

In recognition of her complete commitment to professional excellence as well as her community, Nicole has been honored by multiple organizations and most recently as a 2016 Enterprising Women of the Year Champion, by Enterprising Women Magazine, a 2017 Excellence in Business Award winner, and a Mirror Review enlistee of, 20 Impeccable Women in Business recognition in 2017.

As a highly regarded and sought after expert, her knowledge and advice have been featured in newspapers and magazines throughout the country.

Recent publications, in which she has been seen, include Forbes.com, the Daily Herald Business Ledger, and Fast Company.

She is the author of the books, The Talent Emergency, The Human Side of Profitability, No Fear Negotiation for Women(August 2019), and The Power of Joy and Purpose. She is also the author of the chapter “Emotionally Speaking” in the book titled Leading from the Heart. In addition, Nicole is the host of the internet show, HR in the Fast Lane.

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Coricraft: Transforms Customer Delight and Delivery with Trackmatic Solution

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leave empty handed. We needed to refine our delivery element which is one of the most difficult things for a business to do successfully and profitably.”

oricraft, South Africa’s premium quality home furniture and furnishing design and manufacturing company, contracted with Trackmatic to help tackle the challenges it was facing around fleet visibility and customer satisfaction. The company wanted to reignite the magic of the last mile, transforming how customers perceived their performance and delivery efficiency. Today, Coricraft has reduced its delivery window to less than two hours, reduced customer complaints to a record low, increased delivery drops per route, and has transformed the customer experience, all while cutting costs.

Prior to its implementation of the Trackmatic DriverLed Visibility® solution, Coricraft was experienced roughly 45 Hello Peter complaints a month. The complaints were all centered around one specific issue – customer service on delivery. The delivery window sat at a lengthy three hours and customers were left uncertain as to when their furniture would arrive, what service they would receive on delivery, and timing around the re-delivery of any incorrect or damaged items. In addition, it was impossible to proactively respond to failures in the field in real time.

Last mile logistics is becoming increasingly difficult to perfect and is evolving at a rapid rate due to the growth of e-commerce. There is a growing need to get goods to customers faster and more cost effectively. Customers are willing to pay a premium for faster delivery fulfillment and companies like Amazon are raising the bar and raising customer delivery expectations.

According to McKinsey, last mile logistics have been identified as the cornerstone to driving growth and profitability, and companies like Coricraft are under increasing pressure to create logistic strategies that align business and customer expectations.

“When we started working with Coricraft the first challenge was to address the visibility of their fleet,” says David Slotow, CEO, Trackmatic. “They needed a tool that would allow them to communicate more clearly with their customer service team by developing richer engagement with their operations team and their drivers.”

For Coricraft, it was essential that delivery fulfillment be transformed in such a way as to revolutionize customer experiences. In addition, the company also faced challenges around address capturing. Customers often provided incorrect location details or left out critical delivery information. Coricraft needed technology that helped their drivers get to the right place at the right time. The solution had to ensure that when they delivered, the destination was locationperfect to meet faster, tighter delivery windows.

Last mile logistics are troublesome, especially in South Africa. There are challenges around infrastructure, addressing accuracy and security that impact on delivery timing, fuel costs and efficiency. This is further compounded by the complexity of delivering irregular size furniture items that requires skilled unpacking and assembly upon delivery. For Coricraft, these issues were affecting its customer relationships and brand reputation.

“We could not tell customers accurately when their deliveries would take place, especially as we didn’t have an accurate measurement to easily determine the time it would take between customer deliveries,” says William Webb, Operations Executive, Coricraft. “We needed to find a way to manage the drivers to ensure that they adhered to the scheduled routes, stock on the

“In our industry, the journey doesn’t start and end in the store,” says Craig Schneeberger, Chief Operating Officer of Coricraft. “The real magic is in the last mile when we deliver to your home. Purchasing furniture is a very emotive thing and, with us, you pay money and 44

| September 2019 |

Tech Outlook

Craig Schneeberger Chief Operating OfďŹ cer

Coricraft

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truck was secure and the customer experience was pleasurable.”

Validation Tool (AVT). This allowed for a dedicated Data Integrity Team at Trackmatic to process the addresses and resolve them into GPS coordinates in real time. Any conflicts of address would be filtered through Google Maps and manually checked by a dedicated Data Integrity Agent who could shift the pin to a more accurate or relevant location, when required.

Any failures on route resulted in delays further down the line. If a customer wasn’t home or if the driver took longer than planned to find an address, the waiting times then had a knock-on effect until the last customer had waited for far longer than anticipated and the driver kicks into overtime. This often resulted in failed deliveries or high overtime expenditure for teams returning late.

“A great example of where this level of manual control excels is in gated estates,” explains Slotow. “The delivery entrance could be different from the visitor’s entrance and the vehicle has to then navigate back routes to get to the home.

That level of discretion doesn’t come from GPS, it comes from human engagement, intellect and experience. We built an entire Address Validation Tool (AVT) for Coricraft and delivered a highly targeted and elegant solution without any delay in the delivery timeline.”

“Those challenges of wasted kilometers and frustrated clients were endemic, further impacted by unknown addresses, failed deliveries and drivers wasting time and fuel driving up and down a road looking for the right place,” says Slotow. “For a company as aspirational and professional as Coricraft, these delays and challenges were impacting on the way customers perceived their service and professionalism.”

The AVT solution is cloud-based and fully integrated, taking the address from point of sale to the front door.

It provides an incredibly high level of accuracy and has transformed delivery operations. It has also changed the way the drivers engage with technology.

Coricraft wanted a white-glove delivery process that was as slick as its in-store experience. It needed the same efficiencies at the point of fulfillment as it had at point of sale. To start, Trackmatic integrated the Coricraft point of sale system into their Address

“Getting drivers to take their mobile device into the vehicle and navigate with trust and confidence was a major achievement,” says Slotow. “When the shift happened, it was magic. They felt empowered as they could now resolve issues independently without impacting on operations when there were delays on the customer side. The integrated voice solution allows them to contact customers and let them know they are outside or their estimated time of arrival. Trackmatic’s solution also stores all recordings in the cloud to use in the driver debrief process and in case of any issues. This process of continuous learning and improvement has had a significant and positive impact on results.”

Trackmatic believes in empowering the drivers, providing them with the tools they need to deal with frustrated customers in real time. Using this level of engagement with the customer has meant that drivers can relay issues around damaged items or poorly filled orders and give the customer insight into when these issues will be resolved. This availability of information has seen a significant reduction in customer complaints 46

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About

as most understand that there can be delays, but want these delays communicated clearly and on time.

Coricraft

For more than 20 years, Coricraft has been the easy choice for exceptional value on top-quality furniture. From just one store in Cape Town, we have grown to a chain of almost 50 stores in South Africa, Namibia and Botswana.

Creating a platform for real-time engagement and communication has enhanced Coricraft’s relationship with its customers as customers trust that they will be kept informed of the progress of their delivery.

“Coricraft hasn’t done anything differently to achieve this goal, they haven’t changed their manufacturing process or their product range,” adds Slotow. “All it took was them knowing that a customer was unhappy and having a strategy in place to deal with them. This could be as simple as sending out a manager to look at the product or ensuring that any missing items were delivered straight away. This level of customer engagement has made an instant, massive difference.”

We have factories in Cape Town and Johannesburg, where we manufacture all our couches ourselves. Beyond this large manufacturing presence lies a sophisticated retail infrastructure, with Coricraft stores across all South Africa’s major towns and cities. For customers, this means there is always a Coricraft nearby.

Coricraft can better plan and fine-tune deliveries, optimize operations and redefine customer engagement. Each challenge around visibility, communication, control and timing has been addressed using Trackmatic’s innovative and disruptive technology solutions.

“The results speak for themselves,” adds Slotow.

“Customers have left positive feedback around the professionalism of the delivery service and Coricraft has grown their deliveries without having to expand on their fleet or their teams. They have created capacity to scale without increasing costs or infrastructure and, as benefits go, that’s one that hits the bottom line.”

chance, it takes the right client that is willing to collaborate, experiment and trust us with their business.”

Trackmatic is currently working with Coricraft to expand its solution which includes the Trackmatic Insight analytic dashboards that will give Coricraft the means to measure key performance metrics and provide even more meaningful data for richer last mile and customer delight deliverables.

The company has seen delivery accuracies increase by 27%, the leave on time by 33%, (while shifting the start time by an hour earlier) return on time by 36% and overtime bills reduced by 15%. In addition, the time to delivery has been reduced from three hours to 32 minutes and there has been an 80% increase in customer service. Even more stats point to significant increases in route efficiency (86%), turnaround adherence time (94%) and a rise from 34 to 43 trucks a day leaving the depots nationally each day.

Schneeberger concludes: “Trackmatic has given us visibility into driver behavior so we can ensure we are as efficient as we can be in terms of delivering our furniture.

Because we have this level of visibility, we can give our customers visibility, and this allows us to proactively engage with them and exceed their expectations.”

“We are proud of the work that has been achieved at Coricraft,” says Slotow. “Success does not happen by 47

| September 2019 |

Rob Leslie A Pioneer of Anti-money Laundering and KYC domain

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information is never exchanged without explicit data owner consent. Sedicii’s key differentiator is our focus on privacy using our patented application of the zero knowledge proof protocol. With an unwavering focus on adding value to clients, we are constantly exploring innovative ventures.

igitalization has taken an active pace since its inception. Integrating digital technology with business aspects has turned out to be an art rather than ‘a do’. This acknowledgement as an art, led many innovations to flourish in the respective industries. One with such comprehension is Rob Leslie.

Kindly take us through your journey on becoming a leader.

Becoming a leader isn’t something you aim for. I believe leaders evolve, partly by accident over a period. It’s a blend of ideas, circumstances and a determination and drive to bring ideas to life and bring people together that makes a leader in my view. It’s not about knowing everything, in fact it’s quite the opposite -it’s about gathering and inspiring a team of experts and collaborators to achieve common goals. That’s the challenge, something I truly relish! It might well be the engineer in me, but where others may see problems to be avoided, I see opportunities and challenge, and am rarely content until they are fixed.

In an interview with CIO Look, Rob Leslie, Founder and CEO of Sedicii, shares valuable insights from the experiences he gained on his entrepreneurial journey. Moreover, he broadly discusses the services offered by the company.

Below are the highlights of the interview conducted between Rob and CIO Look: How do you diversify your organization’s offerings to appeal to the target audience?

We take a collaborative approach to problem solving with our clients, to deliver industry specific, cutting edge eKYC and AML transaction monitoring solutions to achieve their particular goals. Our target audiences operate across banking & financial services, governments and enterprise – where regulatory requirements mandate high levels of customer due diligence. We help reduce the burden of responsibility and improve efficiencies for our clients and enable them to preserve the privacy of their customers.

I whet my appetite with Dell Japan as part of a management team that established and grew the business to almost 300 employees and $300M turnover in 4 years. Since then I have grown a number of businesses to considerable scale. My background is in the Anti-Money Laundering / Know Your Customer (KYC) domain. I co-founded Kyckr, a company which specializes in corporate identity and AML compliance solutions. (Kyckr is now listed on the Australian Stock Exchange (ASX:KYK)). This opened up a whole new world of possibilities for privacy protection and preservation of our identity.

At Sedicii, we provide a portfolio of solutions which appeal to our target audiences. We help secure identities and provide unique authentication and identity verification services where personal 50

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Sedicii

“

Good leaders drive their people forward with energy, excitement, vision, inspiration and trust. When you lead by example, it is the creation of the art of the possible.

“

Rob Leslie Founder & CEO

Sedicii

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What will be your future endeavors and/or where do you see yourself in the near future?

We are working on some very interesting global projects at present. Our AML transaction monitoring service is one which is creating waves internationally as it allows two banks to mutually assess risk by gaining insight on all parties to a payment transaction using a cryptographic protocol that never exposes any private information about one party to the other party’s bank. Sedicii’s AML solution reduces false positives, identifies risks in real-time, in full compliance with Banking Secrecy and the strictest data privacy legislation.

In 2015 the World Economic Forum named me as a global Technology Pioneer - that was a significant step on my leadership journey and was instrumental in building a network of like-minded thought leaders who inspire me to drive on and to explore innovative opportunities and solutions to crucial challenges of securing our current and future global economies.

What are the crucial traits which every business leader must possess?

The role of a business leader, in my view is to inspire the people around them to push themselves and in turn the company, to excel in everything they do.

Good leaders drive their people forward with energy, excitement, vision, inspiration, good communication and trust. Leading by example, by walking the walk and talking the talk builds that trust.

As a leading expert in Zero Knowledge Proof Protocol, what is your contribution in evolving the digital sector?

Fragmented and unreliable digital identity mechanisms are limiting growth in the global economy and adding to the costs of doing business.

Experts are in agreement that securing identities is critical, especially where the stakes are high.

Powered by Sedicii’s patented Zero-knowledge proof (ZKP) technology, two parties can now prove to each other that they both have the same piece of information without the need to expose the information that each has in their possession, or under their control, to the other. Combining this capability with efficient and easy-to-use consent management, we can change the digital world as we know it and simultaneously secure the privacy and security of personal information (PII) throughout the world. We see ourselves best placed to ‘Fix’ what we call the ‘Identity Problem’ to enable the quantum leap required to drive the next wave of business innovation.

Warren Bennis was an American scholar and organizational consultant. He is widely regarded as a pioneer of the contemporary field of leadership studies and is known to have created the famous quote “Managers are people who do things right; leaders are people who do the right thing.” As the leader, you know that keeping your team together, working towards a common goal, getting them to support and help each other is your job. If you succeed, they will succeed; morale will rise and more success will follow.

As per your opinion, what roadblocks or challenges are faced by a business in a corporate business?

And what is your advice to overcome them?

The challenges come from many angles, not always from the direction you expect. Sometimes you need eyes in the back of your head to keep ahead of the game. Building the right team with the right skillset is a challenge at the beginning, one we were fortunate to do right from the start. With Sedicii, our unique offering is our technology. Our tech team includes experts in cutting edge machine learning, cryptography and blockchain and they are constantly challenging the status Quo with innovative ways to tackle global issues related to privacy and identity.

Roadblocks often represent potential forks in the road where decisions need to be made quickly and being flexible in your approach is important.

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The Journey to Self-Discovery

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ntrepreneurs set up their new ventures with a new and unique vision, goal, and its future. These entrepreneurs face many challenges over the course of their journey. However, financial challenge is the most painful ones they have to face. Making a list of all the financial challenges can aid a business and a new starting player in attaining sustainability and economic stability.

working capital, which can help them in engaging new customers and create a productive business pipeline.

Players can also avoid inadequate working capital by cutting-costs up to twenty percent and set the cut out as the working capital. For the startups that are yet to make profits, should make sure that they are adequately financed before taking any harsh decision, which can affect their survival in the industry.

The Small Business Association estimates that around forty-four percent of startups and small business survive at least for four years only. Others cite that poor capital management, overspending, and the lack of reserve funds are some of the common reasons behind a business closure. All these three terms come under the finances of a company.

Non-consistent Cash Flow Issue Most of the project-based business relies on their cash flow, which further relies on the flow of the project and the services rendered. It is therefore important for the company to have a good business team ready to connect new and reliable clients and projects. For the company that does not rely on the cash flow, must construct a flow of consistent cash flow at the proper time. If the client is unavailable to pay on-time, the businesses should think newer methods of client engagement. They should be patient and make decisions that would help them while dealing with the clients in the future.

One way to address the financial problems is to use the 4R formula i.e. Review, Revamp, Research, and Rewrite the company’s business plans. By using this formula, they can take action against the things that are not working out.

Another way of improving the cash flow is to get a down payment for the product and the services provided. This down payment will aid the companies in

Working Capital Issue Startups have to wait for their big clients to pay up so that they can manage their expenses. Entrepreneurs must save at least the expenses of six months as its

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Editor’s Desk

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covering the expenses associated with the project sales and profit margins. Firms can also set a day in the week to go through the accounts, payables, and checks.

Hiring Issue Hiring a good staff is not an easy task. A decision like over-hiring can create additional costs for the company in contracts and long-term employee liabilities. The employer is responsible for its employees and they have to provide them with the employee benefits that increase the costs. The key solution lies in hiring the term-based employees, freelancers, and independent contractors as they will provide services only for the time worked and employer do not have to add payroll costs in paying them. These independent contractors are paid only for their time spent on the work.

Depending upon the job, firms can easily find out that whether these are perfect for the job or not. In return, these can absorb the work-related wages and can add the benefit of costs.

Book-keeping Issue Corporations can hire organized bookkeepers, which can save a lot of time. If they cannot find one, they can give this responsibility to one of its team member. The firm can improve by distinguishing the discretion and non-discretion spending. These include rent, office overhead, inventory purchases, and wages. The companies can even save further by polishing their overall marketing plans. Identifying and creating a larger clientele that can develop marketing strategies can help in promoting the service and products. Firms must set goals and expectations for marketing initiatives and develop the tools to improve the revenue outcomes.

In eliminating the conundrums, the mind-power and descision-making of the entrepreneurs is important.

They can seek loans and grants which are specifically tailored towards boosting the company's finances. Even some of the vendors allow the company to offer their assistance and can refine the business debts. The players should not haste in making a decision. They should be thoughtful and intellectual for deciding the expenses. It is important for them to think strategically.

They should be aware of their decisions and should seek guidance in decision-making and in expenses.

Wrong Predictions and Revenue Issue Businesses on a day-to-day basis have to predict the company’s revenues. This is even truer for the businesses that are dynamic in nature. Most of the predictions can be measured on a month-to-month basis. Although a lot of factors that are dependent upon the revenue prediction, but mostly it rely on the relevancy of the business. By foreseeing accurately, the firms can generate good revenue that is crucial for the cash flow statements. By paying attention to the seasoned fluctuations and affected timelines, they can predict the revenues accurately.

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STEPHANIE LaTORRE A TECHIE CREATING BEAUTIFUL, FUNCTIONAL, AND AFFORDABLE WEBSITES FOR BUSINESSES

Stephanie LaTorre Owner & Founder EG Management Consultant

‘‘

Your website can be the best employee you ever had, is it?

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EG Management Consultant

A

sound leadership demands specific skills set and those skills, when learned at right time, can certainly create a difference. An entrepreneurial journey of an avid leader, Stephanie LaTorre, aptly exemplifies this. Her journey to become leader started as a child. She had parents who were leaders. They showed her the way. They taught her to read before she entered grade school. They gave her books much more advanced then she was supposed to be reading. They used technology that others were only just starting to think about using. They also taught her how to inspire others and get a project complete. Stephanie use to spend hours and hours watching them work at their offices. In short, it was infused into her brain before the age of 6.

announce them in the future. She through her company will be continuing to help entrepreneurs for years and years to come.

Since childhood, Stephanie was surrounded by technology. Since she was a child, she has had a computer. She was one of the first to get a cell phone and later a smart phone. She believes, technology is our future and anyone who refuses to keep up with the technology will be left behind. Every 3 to 4 years, she gets a new cell phone and computer. She considers it as an investment that allows her to live a life that others don't.

Stephanie prides herself on making the technology simple. Being a WordPress Expert and Digital Marketing Mentor, she believes that WordPress is a big monster that when learned properly can be the best tool for businesses. As marketing has changed rapidly in the last 10 years, there is so much to know and understand. At the end of the day, all she does all day long is click buttons on a computer. The only difference she considers between herself and the people she works with is she know where all the buttons are. Her biggest contribution then is helping people know the right buttons to push.

This continued as she started working. When Stephanie was 8, she was the best local babysitter one could find on their block. She would come over and play with the babies so their moms could do normal things like shower and fold laundry in peace. It wasn't until she was older that she realised that how valuable this service she was providing truly was. Once she was of legal age to work, she went and got a job in a law firm.

Opportunities came to her at such young ages and she kept on grabbing them. Once she left school, this all continued. She would interview for an entry level position and be hired as an assistant manager. She never shied away from the opportunities. She took the challenge head on and with confidence.

Describing today's business scenario, Stephanie mentions that some of the biggest roadblocks she sees in business today is people giving up too soon. This happens when someone does not have the confidence in their idea, or they are driven by a fear of failure. Thus, in order to inspire other leaders, she says, "If you have truly created something wonderful, there is nothing in the world that can stop you from making it a huge success. You find a way. You don't give up. You might change things along the way, but you never ever give up.”

It was this confidence that showed her how strong her leadership abilities had become. She has spent years and will continue to spend years learning to become always a better leader and inspiration for others.

Currently, Stephanie is the Owner and Founder of EG Management Consultant. She helps people create websites that work for them. Initially, it took her years to get to know her target audience. At first, she tried to assume things about them. She assumed their fears and likes and dislikes. This did not get her very far. It wasn't until she really started going out and talk to her audience and see them face to face that she really got to know them. This was probably the most important research she ever could have done to help mould her offerings to help her audience. At first, she tested and tried different models until she found the one that gave them the best results.

When asked about crucial traits every leader must possess, Stephanie emphasized on the quality of inspiring. According to her, in order to be a leader, one must be able to inspire. In order to inspire, one must have confidence. In order to have confidence, a leader must know how to be themselves. This requires spending time with yourself. It requires really understanding who you are without the influence of others around you. Stephanie spent six months alone in Rome to get to know herself. Most of her life, she allowed her decisions and preferences to be swayed by others including family and friends. By removing those influences, she was given an opportunity to really understand who she was and what she liked. Knowing this much gives one a confidence that others can see and feel inspired to be led by.

There have been several big developments in her business recently including wonderful new partnerships that will allow her business to help many more people in an even bigger way. While many of these developments are still in their beginning stages, their potential for greatness is on a bigger scale then she could have ever dreamed. She can't wait to begin to 59

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