The 10 Most Innovative Companies in 2019

The Most

in 2019 Future-Bots From Editor’s Desk Catching-up With The Robotics For Better Future

A Sustainable Shift

............ ..... .. . ..

.. .......... ..... .. ...

............ ..... .. ...

VOL 4 April 2019 ISSUE 2

.. .

............ ..... ..

E Innovate to Climb the Ladder

T

he contemporary world is encircled by innovations. People continuously look for new breakthroughs, new ideas, and new experiences that could smartly modify their standard of living. We have witnessed a ground breaking impact of the evolving technologies on individuals as well as businesses such as blockchain technology creating a digital record that verifies any transaction at a certain time and sequence, and AI enabling new ways to interact with consumers via chat bots and artificial personal assistants.

Previously, companies had to compete within their respective localities. Now, this competition is on a global scale and this increasing competition, due to evolution of new technologies, has brought along with it the need to inculcate innovation for businesses. Creating a different version of things or ideas that already exists is therefore significant for businesses to evolve in their respective segments.

As businesses are continually coming up with new and improved experiences, customer’s expectations are getting higher and they are demanding more. Living up to those expectations becomes the utmost responsibility of organizations. However, sustaining that innovation becomes significant for them to survive in the long run. Hence, they are getting involved in a continual process of invention, reinvention, and discovery.

Innovation is one of the core elements of organizations which acts as a value-added feature and enables them to stay ahead of the curve. Many companies have understood the importance of innovation and are thus, constantly reinventing themselves and reevaluating their processes to come up with better solutions. By practicing innovation, they are also contributing to the growth of economy. While some are improving or upgrading their existing products or services, others are replacing their existing business model with an entirely new one. Their ultimate goal is to deliver unpredictable and enticing experiences to their customers.

“

“

Innovation is the most important ingredient for the recipe of success of an organization.

Hitesh Dhamani

In order to emphasize the innovative approaches of such businesses, Insights Success has enlisted “The 10 Most Innovative Companies in 2019”, which are driving customer’s experiences by smartly incorporating the intersection of innovation and evolving technologies and thereby, delivering novel solutions.

This edition features companies such as Anheuser-Busch InBev, the largest beer producer in the world and is amongst the world’s biggest consumer goods companies; Evolving Solutions, a leading company which offers expertise primarily in the areas of IT infrastructure, cloud and software solutions; Park Place Technologies, which provides a cost-effective servicefirst alternative to post-warranty maintenance for storage, server and networking hardware; Fastenal, a company that helps its customers shorten and simplify their supply chain so they can focus more resources on what they do best; ComplianceQuest Inc., a highly flexible 100% cloud based EQMS built using the Salesforce platform.

Also, make sure to scroll through the articles written by our editorial team and CXO standpoints of some of the leading industry experts to have a brief taste of the sector.

Let’s start reading!

Maestro’s Opinion 10 Develop Your Innovation Culture For A Future-ready Organization

22 Tech Evolution How VideoAmp Evolved the Company Culture and Process to Increase the Number of Engineers Employed

Expert’s Advice 38 The Missing Piece in HR Suites

Articles

16

From Editor’s Desk A Sustainable Shift

Future-Bots Catching-up With The Robotics For Better Future

30

Anheuser-Busch InBev Serving Happiness across the Globe

14

ComplianceQuest

26

Building Next Generation Compliance and Quality Solutions for Progressive Customers

Evolving Solutions A Technological Expertise with Exceptional Data Center Technology

28

Fastenal

34

Helping Great Companies Simplify Their Supply Chains

Park Place Technologies Delivering Exceptional Maintenance Services

36

Editor-in-Chief Pooja M. Bansal Managing Editor Anish Miller

Executive Editor

Assistant Editors

Hitesh Dhamani

Jenny Fernandes Shubham Khampariya

Visualizer

Art & Design Director

Associate Designer

David King

Amol Kamble

Kushagra Gupta

Co-designer Rahul Kavnekar

Senior Sales Manager

Business Development Manager

Passi D.

Peter Collins

Marketing Manager

Sales Executives

John Matthew

David, Kevin, Mark, Prasad

Technical Head

Business Development Executives

Jacob Smile

Steve, Joe, Alan, Vishal

Technical Specialist Aditya

Digital Marketing Manager Marry D'Souza

SME-SMO Executive Prashant Chevale

Research Analyst Patrick James

Database Management Stella Andrew

Circulation Manager Robert Brown

Technology Consultant David Stokes

sales@insightssuccess.com April, 2019 Insights Success Media Tech LLC 555 Metro Place North, Suite 100, Dublin, OH 43017, United States Phone - (614)-602-1754 Email: info@insightssuccess.com For Subscription: www.insightssuccess.com

Follow us on :

www.facebook.com/insightssuccess/

Insights Success Media and Technology Pvt. Ltd. Off. No. 513 & 510, 5th Flr., Rainbow Plaza, Shivar Chowk, Pimple Saudagar, Pune, Maharashtra 411017 Phone - India: +91 7410079881/ 82/ 83/ 84/ 85 Email: info@insightssuccess.in For Subscription: www.insightssuccess.in

www.twitter.com/insightssuccess

We are also available on : Copyright Š 2019 Insights Success, All rights reserved. The content and images used in this magazine should not be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior permission from Insights Success.

Reprint rights remain solely with Insights Success.

SUBSCRIBE

READ IT FIRST

TODAY Never Miss an

Issue

Yes, I would like to subscribe to Insights Success Magazine.

Global Subscription Date :

Name : Address :

Telephone : Email :

City :

State :

Zip :

Country :

Check should be drawn in favor of: INSIGHTS SUCCESS MEDIA TECH LLC

CORPORATE OFFICE Insights Success Media Tech LLC 555 Metro Place North, Suite 100, Dublin, OH 43017, United States Phone: (614)-602-1754,(302)-319-9947 Email: info@insightssuccess.com For Subscription: www.insightssuccess.com

Develop Your About the Author Natalie Turner is a Keynote speaker and Author of the book Yes, You Can Innovate. Discover your innovation strengths and develop your creative potential which was selected as book of the month in both the UK and Singapore earlier this year.

She is the Founder and CEO of The Entheo Network, a global innovation company and has exemplary expertise in the eld of marketing, business strategy, and leadership development.

Under her leadership, the company provides a suite of innovative products and services to help individuals and organizations create new sources of value whilst building innovation skills, capabilities and culture.

She is also the inventor of the 6 ‘I’s® Innovation which measures innovation strengths of individuals and teams to unlock the innovation culture in an organization. www.6-i-innovation.com.

10

INNOVATION for CULTURE a FUTURE-READY

Organization A

s the digital landscape continues to change at a rapid pace, dismantling and disrupting the way that we do business, how can we ensure that our leadership and organisational thinking evolves at the same rate? The CEO is ultimately responsible for the success or failure of the company that they lead, which, in today’s world, means ensuring an organisation can adapt to this fast rate of change. To do this, leaders need to know how to innovate with agility and speed. This means, on the ground during day-to-day work, that each employee has a clear understanding of how they contribute to creating value out of new ideas and a common language to enable them to work together. As a CEO, part of your role is to foster a culture of innovation that can harness the often disparate skills and mindsets required to successfully innovate. The key is to understand that innovation is a journey, which includes spotting trends and discontinuities and generating new ideas, through to investing and implementing those ideas that can potentially have the most impact. The skill is to know how to match people’s strengths to the right part.

How do employees currently react to innovation conversations?

Often, the first people to embrace innovation tend to love ideas and can identify trends, patterns and opportunities. They are curious and fit the classic stereotype of creativity – playful, open-minded and attracted to

April 2019|

Maestro’s Opinion

Natalie Turner Founder & CEO

April 2019|

11

novelty. Innovation, truly deep and sustainable innovation, combines both creativity and discipline, which are curious bedfellows. It is a considered process that requires a raft of different skills and ways of thinking, combined towards creating a common outcome. In fact, the innovation journey is more like a cycle that can start at any point, not just in the playful and curious spaces.

There are probably many employees in your organisation who do not identify with this sense of curiosity, or think that they have light bulb moments, but who are nonetheless crucial to the success of innovation as an outcome. You will not embed an agile innovation culture without showing employees of all stripes and skillsets where they fit in. The innovation culture needs a common framework and language. Within this shared understanding, different styles are more likely to interact with, and appreciate, the contribution of others. Creating the best environment for each stage of the journey, so that people are empowered to contribute their strengths will improve the likelihood of success.

Understanding the innovation journey Start with aligning teams around PURPOSE, what are they trying to achieve and why? Then move to how they can identify opportunities through understanding trends and patterns, often related to changes in human behaviour. Then move to the creative space where people ignite ideas, through practices such as brainstorming and value proposition design. After you have an array of ideas, submit them to analysis and experimentation, separating the good ones from the bad, investigating whether they are useful, not just novel. The interrelationship between these three spaces is often where you see design thinking processes in action. Now, if you have a few really good ideas that have a high chance of working, start to think through how to best make them work. If not, revisit the original-identified opportunity or generate alternative ideas and solutions.

When ready for investment, innovation leadership is really critical. This is often the graveyard of ideas. Here demonstrate courage; assign resources, whether it is people, time or money. Once ideas are funded, find people who are great at implementation and getting things done. Once the idea is starting to get traction and have an impact, harness the skills of improvement and optimisation to scale and leverage the ideas into other areas of opportunity.

There are no straight roads. This is why innovating is often so difficult. Not only are you trying to do something new,

12

you have to harness diversity towards an often unknown outcome. Creating the best environment for each stage of the journey, so that people are empowered to contribute their strengths, will help to create a successful outcome.

This means teaching people when to contribute and when to pass the baton on to someone else. This is true collaboration, anchored in a clear purpose that is focused on the success of the idea.

Give each of your employees a proactive role in the innovation journey Culture could be termed “how we do things around here” and part of what contributes towards this is how leaders act and behave towards the people that they manage and lead.

Even more so when it comes to innovating. If people understand their contribution, they will have the confidence and courage to start thinking of themselves as innovators.

They will also understand when they will have the most impact. The innovation journey needs a different culture at different points; a culture that allows for ideas to be generated is not the same as one needed to investigate those ideas.

Innovation and the CEO Lead by example. Understand the part of the innovation journey that you are best at, and be aware of the bias that you will have because of that. Increase the awareness of yourself and others,so that you can empower everyone to cultivate environments that allow their strengths to flourish.

Ensure that every skillset and its contribution to innovation is respected and rewarded. This can only be done by understanding the whole of the innovation journey, end-toend. Diversity is key, if you have a lot of people who are good at generating ideas, you may end up with very little that actually gets done. If you have a lot of people who are good at implementation, you may end up dealing with today’s work very well, but not have the culture of a future-ready organisation that can adapt to fast-paced change tomorrow. In empowering your leaders and employees to develop their creative potential, in the broadest sense of the word, innovation will start to seep through the whole of your organisation, embedding a culture that will increase the likelihood of you creating impactful value out of new ideas.

April 2019|

The

Most

in 2019

Anheuser-Busch InBev Serving Happiness across the Globe

C

ertainly, when we gather to celebrate the happiest moments of life, we count on various forms of liquors and alcoholic beverages to raise a toast.

Amongst those alcoholic beverages, beer is considered as the communal one, as it is a drink of moderation. A cold pint of beer becomes the adaptable option when it comes to drinking at social events. Every moment of life should be celebrated with beer, believes Anheuser-Busch InBev, a multinational drink and brewing holdings company.

Anheuser-Busch InBev is building a company to last, brewing beer, and building brands that will continue to bring people together for the next 100 years and beyond.

We want socializing with beer to be the catalyst for a more connected, happier and peaceful world. The better world part is hugely important as well. We have committed publicly to very ambitious goals around clean energy and our brands try to do well for the world, like Stella partnering with water.org, Corona helping to clean up our beaches or Leffe supporting local monasteries.

What inspired Anheuser-Busch InBev to enter into its respective segment?

Well we are amongst the oldest companies to work in this segment. But the beer industry is a really exciting place to In an interview with Insights Success, Michael Codd, the be. It plays a meaningful role in people’s lives and is less Marketing and Innovation Lead, of Anheuser-Busch turbulent than many other products. In good times, people InBev of its European operations, shares his key insights on celebrate by having a beer; in bad times they will still how the company is leveraging new technologies to better enjoy to have a good quality brew. engage with its consumers, partners, customers, colleagues, What are the cutting-edge products/services offered by and beer lovers around the world.

Anheuser-Busch InBev? Below are the highlights of an interview: We are constantly trying to innovative and reinvent the Give a brief overview of the company, its vision. way we do business across all functions. In the brewing process, we have found innovative ways to save up to We are the largest beer producer in the world and amongst 20% energy consumption, in supply we have highgates the world’s biggest consumer goods companies. We live by optimizing warehouse space, on the road we are a huge the motto “Bringing people together, for a better world.” investor in electric trucks and testing blockchain. For our You can break this down in its two components. We see customers we try to provide an Amazon-like web portal beer as the heart and soul of social gatherings; it features in service and for the consumer we are developing mixed some of the best moments in history and in people’s lives. reality solutions and digitally printed bottles.

14

April 2019|

“

We have a portfolio of alcoholic and non-alcohol beers that sell all across the world with a big local focus.

—Michael Codd Marketing and Innovation Lead

What strategies has AnheuserBusch InBev undertaken to stay ahead of the competition?

In many countries in the West, the beer industry has been flat for several years now. As such, we have been segmenting the market to see which segment have strong growth and really shifting our focus towards that.

As a result, we have a strong focus on premium and non-alcoholic beverages, to name two.

The most important thing we inherit with joining forces is the people that come with it. New colleagues have brought fresh ideas, different perspective and healthy debates about how to continue improving.

Where does Anheuser-Busch InBev sees itself in the long run and what are its future goals?

Describe the experiences, achievements or lessons learnt that has shaped the journey of the company.

We want to continue performing well and being a responsible corporate citizen. Only by doing good for the world will you survive to live the next 100+ years and we would to make our contribution to a better world.

We have historically done very well with our organic growth but we have also achieved a portion of our growth through M&A. We have learned that it’s advantageous to be able to enter new markets or gain new brands, but that is not the most important thing.

About the Leader Michael Codd is leading the innovative projects of AnheuserBusch InBev of its European operations. Meanwhile, he also helps some technology start-ups in Belgium and UK. He is responsible

April 2019|

for the IT strategy for Marketing in Zone Europe and is working on some innovation projects that will help transform his company into the digital age and contribute to its exponential growth.

Prior to Anheuser-Busch InBev, Michael has spent his career in getting a better understanding of large corporations in consumer goods during his time as a consultant. At the same time, he was also working together with some startups with a focus on their sales and marketing.

15

16

April 2019|

From Editor’s Desk

A

Sustainable Shift

I

ndustries in their true essence are the systems driven by technical excellence and customer satisfaction.

These two variables are the vital ingredients for any organisation to thrive in this competitive domain.

Unfortunately, not all the time these dimensions prove to be absolutely fruitful. Contingencies do strike! The Automotive sector is no exception to that.

One such history-defining challenge in the form emission norms had entered into the market back in 90s and its latest version has caused automotive industry to disrupt.

Constantly rising air pollution made lawmakers to establish few amendments for restoring the nature's balance. These amendments or regulations impose constraints in front of the firms making them to upgrade and update their tools.

To survive and succeed, automakers need to revise policies and strategies on different fronts including technology, infrastructure, recapitalization and

April 2019|

marketing. This difficult balancing act where they have to enhance their expertise on the account of billions of dollars to be invested, and minimising the pass-on effect to customers, has sparked vigorous discussions in recent times.

An industry which has evolved astonishingly with passing time will evidently respond to this universal call towards Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Euro Standards, the first and foremost emission regulation ever formulated in the wake of astronomically growing pollution across the globe, were initiated in 1991. On its basis, California Air Resource Board (CARB), a primary institute which governs all emission related rules in US was made. CARB which works in tandem with Environmental Protection Agency (EPAs) is known for its stringent regulations which are adopted by most states in the country.

Ultimately, the issue which remains is how are the current automotive companies going to amend

17

themselves to match these norms and appeal customers without tightening their budget at the same time? Thus, they are analysing keyways to adopting these strict emission norms and not losing their beloved customers as well.

1.Technological Innovations In the history of automobile, many revolutionary changes have been made. Be it the discovery of Spark Ignition or Compression Ignition engines, or the development of Electronic Traction Control system which employed a smooth integration of machine intelligence into mechanical power.

In this need of the hour, technical perfection has to stand up once again if automotive industries have to retain their title of change-makers. Thanks to many bright engineering minds, such ideas are kept surfacing which will help to reduce emissions from automobiles and simultaneously enhance fuel efficiency too. Higher mileage eventually helps to achieve lesser vehicular emissions.

Mechanisms like Exhaust Gas Recirculation (EGR), Three Way Catalytic converter (TWC), Selective Catalytic Reduction (SCR), Gasoline Direct Injection (GDI), Variable Valve Train (VVT), Continuous Variable Transmission (CVT), Turbochargers, Diesel Particulate Filter (DPF), On-Board Diagnostics with oxygen sensors and transmission-systems-provided-with-many gears can help to trap and reduce Nitrous oxides (NOx), Hydrocarbons(HC), carbon monoxide(CO) and particulate matter (PM). Additionally they have proved their prowess in enhancing mileage, realizing the dream of highly fuel efficient futuristic vehicles with zero or least emissions.

One more important aspect of these add-on systems is that they operate with a prerequisite condition of high graded fuel. Fuel quality of present days can hinder the flawless working of above mentioned equipment. Fuel with any amount of sulphur greater than 10 parts-permillion is considered ill-suited for the current infrastructure. Therefore, fuel refineries have to upgrade their machinery to achieve the desired quality. Good news is that Oil Marketing Companies have already gear up the process to upgrade their refinery infrastructure.

18

2. Down-weighting is the key!

Many organisations employ a method where they opt for unconventional size accompanied with lightweight structure to fit in the regulations. For instance, instead of hunk sized SUVs, companies nowadays launch many SUVs having smaller sizes and much lighter in weight.

This can give them advantage in two ways. Firstly, with less intrinsic load to propel, vehicles achieve better mileage which is the most appealing factor for many of the buyers. Second thing is, production costs associated with shrunk size vehicles are proportionally smaller, further shrinking the actual cost a consumer has to bear.

Needless to say, reduction in size and weight together is merely a dream without materials having desired properties. Fortunately modern material science has blessed us with materials like Carbon fiber, Aluminium Alloy, Magnesium Alloy, Hybrid material and Polymer Composites which not only flaunt their lightweight characteristics but also their durability and wear resistance.

3. Green fuel powered vehicles Automobile fraternity is facing a paramount shift in terms of propelling power as newer, cleaner and cheaper alternatives are being introduced. From its introduction of SI and CI engines in late 19th century, they are a popular choice among mass and technocrats. But their environmental demerits are slowly pushing them towards extinction. Solar vehicles, electric vehicles, hybrid vehicles and gas powered vehicles can be the solutions for growing environmental pollution and depleting crude oil sources. As a wise has man said, “change is the only permanent thing in this world”, automakers have no choice than embracing these changes despite of their higher initial cost. However, the advantages it offers are countless and unquestionable.

4. Unorthodox Designs Until now people have used automobiles for connectivity, comfort and the means of carrying goods.

Time has come to rethink over our expectations from them since we are employing vehicle designs which serve purposes commonly. An example where a vehicle April 2019|

widely used for intra-city connectivity is also equipped with larger trunk spaces which could have been avoided helping in reduction of overall weight and size.

Dedicated category of vehicles for dedicated purposes employing unique shapes seems a distant dream for now but certainly not impossible.

5. Spread the word!

Customers tend to have a problem in paying extra cash unless they know the long-term benefits and payback time of these accessories. A study shows that a EURO VI norm car which costs about $1000 more than its EURO V counterparts retrieves the investment within 2-3 years for enhanced fuel efficiency.

Protecting our mother Earth from harmful effects of pollution is a responsibility of every single individual to assure a healthier and greener environment to our future generations. Despite of initial investments which these amendments demand, they are essential for the very existence of this planet. An intensive marketing strategy about making people aware of the benefits received at the core can instil an appreciation of value over cost.

This can make the job easier for manufacturers.

6. Credit System: A tool for rectification Credit system is a depository system where if an automaker exceeds standards in early years, it can bank credits to use in future years with stringer standards. An interesting statistics revealed that last year, many automobile giants like Mercedes Benz, Honda could not mitigate the emissions to the level drafted by regulatory agencies. However, thanks to their previous years' credit points, they could manage to surpass the benchmark.

7. Lower profits with higher number of customers A prime hurdle while employing these technical modifications is that their cost is undoubtedly reflected in increased vehicle prices. This can discourage people from purchasing new automobiles resulting overall slowdown of the industry. After all, people pay vehicle producers for horsepower and not for environmental protection.

That being said, we should also face the reality check where bearing the whole cost isn't possible for any organisation. So, passing it on to the customers is the only way manufacturers have. But a chunk of those costs can be swallowed by lowering the profit margins. This strategy can make businesses survive without losing their customers.

Undoubtedly, emission regulations are the need of the hour with millions of vehicles rolling out in the market worsening the pollution issue globally. Conforming to them is of prime importance when considering the noble virtues of the efforts making this planet a better place to live. But succeeding and surviving in this transiently modifying world of connectivity, automobile industry has to adopt some changes and strategies. An industry with a history of marvellous inventions and a potential to shape the future will surely be on the driving seat while experiencing this sustainable awakening.

Some experts even call this credit score mechanism a daunting loophole which is compromising the serious efforts of environmental protection. However, while tightening the grip on vehicle pollutants, stricter emission standards like EURO VI, CARB and BS VI had to provide a breathing space for organisations.

Entrepreneurs can exploit this situation to some extent in case they fall marginally short of meeting the norms.

April 2019|

19

22

April 2019|

Tech Evolution

V

ideoAmp turns 4 years old this month. So many memories, and so much growth. Let’s reflect on some of the worst decisions and associated learnings that have been fundamental to our growth. Why the worst you say? Because when you accelerate your learning rate in a fail-fast environment, it then allows you to make fast decisions vs. the analysis paralysis predicament.

Ref lection One of my favorite wildcard interview questions for managers is: “Describe the failure you’re most proud of.”

This sometimes catches people off guard, so I’ll share mine first to get the conversation going. Inevitably it comes down to choosing because there are so many.

Ÿ

“Promoting out of hand” is another variation of this where you don’t put someone through the normal due diligence because they already present. In our case, individual contributor (IC) engineers don’t go through the rigorous reference checks that new managers do.

Ÿ

“Hiring under duress”, or lowering your bar simply to meet headcount goals. I strongly advise to hire fewer “full-full stack” senior engineers vs. a bunch of junior or mid-level career developers who require more time, nurturing and precious attention units from your senior staff.

Process You can’t talk about growth and success without talking about these failures. Unless you’re some kind of hybrid AIrobot-space-alien who’s absolutely perfect, there’s going to be mistakes. What’s important is that as a leader you own your mistakes and be transparent about them.

This is a moving target, and one which has definitely been an ongoing series of blogs. In the early stage, we “over prescribed scrum.” Something that a very early stage company can do, along with too much agile processes too soon.

Hiring Finding the right people is the single most important aspect of growing a startup. The biggest mistakes in hiring have been: Ÿ

“Hiring out of hand”, or short cutting the normal processes because the candidate is well known by other engineers in the group.

April 2019|

For example, prototypes and proof of concepts should not have a rigorous definition of done, with endless unit, functional, and end-to-end tests because the product’s requirements will probably zig-zag wildly.

Conversely, having too little process when you are supporting enterprise customers can also be a problem. I spent my prior days as an IC and

23

contractor retrofitting and scaling CI/CD pipelines and training engineers how to write better tests.

The challenge is right-sizing this all along the way, and the trigger points on when to change may not be obvious. I say this because we grew headcount by 22 engineers from Oct 2017 to Feb 2018, and in the process we did not modify our simplified Kanban approach to a prescribed Scrum process quickly enough. Growing pains emerged, to say the least.

Now we’re in a spot where we can withstand a magnitude scale of growth with roughly the same squad and tribe-level process.

When doing initial contact with a candidate, I often ask “why are you in market?” I have seen countless folks who are looking because their current management does not have their growth and career pathing in mind. In extreme cases, they can do a day’s work in four hours, feel like they are under-challenged, and have not learned anything in years. They work in an environment like the movie Office Space.

Taking an opposite approach is to engage in the growth and pathing of every individual. We do this by: Ÿ

aligning the growth of the individual with the company’s growth.

Ÿ

having management check in frequently on the success of this, and

Ÿ

setting up formal quarterly check-ins on measuring these goals. Google adopted this early on from John Doerr in the form of OKRs, and there are great platforms out there which can formally measure and track these objectives.

Management Riffing off rapid growth of Brains in engineering, we didn’t scale management fast enough. Almost all startup engineering orgs start very flat, with all ICs and no management. You have “tech leads” who may split their time doing light managerial functions, but they all write code and dive into the operations.

The biggest fail here in scaling the ICs was not scaling the org and management structure to follow. At ~44 engineers and data scientists, we have a duty to deliver on our mission to provide an environment where they have the opportunity to do the best work of their lives and be worth more in the marketplace.

Without this vital management structure, there is a vacuum.

Do not bolt this on later, build it as you go. We took inspiration from Spotify’s model of engineering organizational scaling.

Growth & Career Pathing We’ve talked about all of these fails, how about something that has worked well for us?

Career pathing is a longer-term concern. I ask candidates from the start “so what’s the next job after VideoAmp?” This often catches them off guard, then after careful thought most reply with a role 1-2 levels beyond where they’re at now. It’s our goal to help steer them in whatever path they currently see.

Many earlier-career engineers think management is their ultimate path, but I have found that many will stay on a tract of engineering excellence. Whether it’s a Principal Engineer or a VP of Engineering, the goal is to orient the new challenges in a manner which grows them in that direction, even if we can’t fully realize their ultimate pathing goal while at the company.

By paying careful attention to these details, we have found our annual retention rate in the high 90%.

24

April 2019|

The

Most

in 2019

ComplianceQuest Building Next Generation Compliance and Quality Solutions for Progressive Customers

T

oday, with the rapid growth in business, many manufacturing firms are looking beyond the adage of employing traditional, on-premise, legacy software that give no visibility in core areas like supply chain, quality and compliance. Besides, with the rising customer demands and business expectations, manufacturing companies cannot risk having infrastructure and data disruptions causing supply chain failures. Founded in 2013, ComplianceQuest reenergizes the industry with a modern approach to the traditional EQMS solution. ComplianceQuest offers an Enterprise Quality Management System that is built and run on the modern cloud Salesforce® platform to aid manufacturing companies to redefine quality and compliance facets of supply chain operations. The company offers unmatched compliance and other benefits with remarkable efficiency. Hence, to have a brief idea about the platform and its vision Insights Success conducted a worth read interview with the ComplianceQuest’s CTO and EVP of Software Engineering, Atulya Risal.

Below are the highlights of the interview between Insights Success and Atulya Risal: Give a brief overview of ComplianceQuest, its uniqueness and its vision.

ComplianceQuest provides a unified suite of applications in a single platform addressing quality management, manufacturing quality, supplier management, customer/field service quality and health & safety. Delivering best-in-class out-of-the-box solutions, ComplianceQuest fast-tracks an organization’s efficiency, safety and overall performance by combining enterprise quality and compliance with modern collaboration, communication and social media across the product value chain. Suitable for emerging growth companies and scalable and flexible to meet the needs of medium and global enterprises, ComplianceQuest is easy to implement, validate and use.

ComplianceQuest supports 12 core best practices driven solutions/processes out-of-the-box, integrated and ready to go.

Unlike recently introduced cloud solutions, ComplianceQuest, not only has a comprehensive breadth and depth of integrated solutions today but it’s also designed to scale to support the needs of small to global enterprises alike by redefining what a

26

next generate EQMS platform and solution should be.

Because ComplianceQuest is natively built on Salesforce, it leverages all the 100% modern cloud infrastructure and all the platform benefits including security, availability, reliability, and performance at scale.

ComplianceQuest can integrate its solution suite with traditional enterprise software solutions including ERP, MES, CRM and HR systems expanding its performance strength of quality and compliance aspects across the entire supply chain. In addition, ComplianceQuest has abilities through Salesforce for communication and collaboration through Chatter, social media like and follow, Community Cloud to include exchange of data/documents from a company’s external partners, support for mobility, artificial intelligence through Einstein Analytics and already comes with pre-validated solutions for Life Sciences customers.

Kindly brief us about your ABCD implementation methodology for small to medium businesses?

With decades of proven expertise working with small to medium businesses, we clearly understand the unique and challenging aspects of operating in a small and mediumsized, growing business as well as enterprises.

ComplianceQuest provides you with a knowledgeable solution engineer who actively works with your company’s key contacts to create a unique, highly tailored implementation plan to guarantee success. Whether you are budget conscious or simply wish to take control of the application, our Agile approach to implementation is about knowledge transfer while the systems are being implemented at a fast, but planned pace.

Agile Based ComplianceQuest Deployment (ABCD) can work two ways: 1. For SMB- provide for best practice guidance, based on our out-of-the-box workflows. We know how to implement world class QMS workflows that optimize your processes and provide for an opportunity to realize the productivity gains that you seek while embarking on this important journey for your organization.

April 2019|

“

We streamline quality, compliance, content and collaboration management workflows using the world’s most proven enterprise cloud platform from Salesforce.

—Atulya Risal CTO & EVP of Software Engineering

2. Enterprise customers- provide for a highly tailored implementation plan with the goal of establishing a center of excellence that will own business processes and the systems to support the process.

Where does ComplianceQuest see itself in the long run and what are its future goals?

ComplianceQuest’s journey is steadfast in its belief of Salesforce platform and ecosystem as a strong foundation for continuing to develop and deliver future innovative solutions and seeing rapid growth globally. Salesforce itself is also becoming a more standard platform within many companies and hence IT is looking at other Salesforce apps available to extend the value of their investment and reduce overall IT footprint. This modern cloud experience means a reduction in management of modular licenses and versions and simplifies IT issues surrounding software management.

Using the cloud, customers will always have the most updated version of the software platform. In addition, since the business application platform is continuously innovated and managed

by Salesforce, it allows ComplianceQuest to drive more innovation into its own solutions.

Because of the ease of development, ComplianceQuest can quickly create fully working prototypes, new features or customer specific capabilities to address new market or customer requirements and turn them into final production solutions.

With continued passion and dedication on this journey, ComplianceQuest is

April 2019|

well on its way to become a market and competitive disruption.

Testimonials Proving Excellence “Our experience with implementing Compliance Quest @ Flipkart has been nothing short of a wonder. As the company project lead, I have had the privilege and hands on experience in Designing the System Architecture, Configure and Deploy it across the organization and the entire experience has been nothing short of GREAT… While wearing the hat of System Admin, the most significant feature that I have experienced is the platform’s capability to design, configure/customize and deploy any workflow / module from the front end itself i.e. NO CODING REQUIRED at all.

Why ComplianceQuest? Ÿ Ÿ

Ÿ

Ÿ

Ÿ

Ÿ Ÿ

Fastest growing native Salesforce based EQMS solution Worry-free infrastructure platform - available anywhere, anytime Reliable, versatile and scalable for all size companies Single platform built by quality and compliance experts Flexible and tailorable to meet customer and industry requirements Built-in best practices and seamless processes with Salesforce and AppExchange solutions Rapid time to value by quickly getting up and running in weeks Priced reasonably and delivering incredible value for money!

The tool is so simple to use that we hardly reached out to CQ Support for any subsequent customizations and all Enhancements / Add-On’s were implemented In-House and enabled us to de-skill the System Admin role and assign it to people with good command on spreadsheet applications like MS Excel.

A true asset for the organization! 3 Cheers for team Compliance Quest”. Satish Venkataraman, Manager Quality, Flipkart “If you need an entire QMS in a Centralized Cloud-Based, 100% Salesforce Supported Platform, then go for COMPLIANCE QUEST (CQ), you will be rest assured that YOU MADE THE RIGHT DECISION FOR LIFE!” -Ron Shah, Director of Quality Assurance, Ocean Optics About the Leader As Chief Technology Officer and EVP of Software Engineering, Atulya Risal oversees ComplianceQuest’s technology and product innovation, software engineering, quality, product documentation, technical support and off-shore operations.

27

The

Most

in 2019

Evolving Solutions A Technological Expertise with Exceptional Data Center Technology

T

echnology has become the core aspect of every business. In today’s busy corporate environment, organizations need to continue to operate their systems, while freeing up time and resources to invest in transformative technologies. To do this effectively, organizations need to prioritize time and budgets, but also depend on trusted partners to advise them through the process.

Taking this need into consideration, Evolving Solutions has invested in its core to provide deep technological expertise and full-service technology solutions to organizations with its exceptional infrastructure, cloud and services solutions.

Technology is now at the heart of every business and making sure that its clients get the right technology from the right provider is exactly what Evolving Solutions helps achieve.

Co-founded by Jaime Gmach, who continues to lead the company as its President and CEO, Evolving Solutions has emerged as a leading technology solution provider to businesses throughout North America. The company does this by focusing on developing long-term relationships and building trust with their clients. The key to its purpose is helping clients simplify technology, while delivering on Evolving Solutions’ core values: do the right thing, be a team player, and be humbly confident.

A Technical Strategist and Advisor The technical strategies and directions of Evolving Solutions are led by Michael Downs, the company’s Chief Technology Officer. He brings over 18 years of experience creating architectures to solve complex business problems including big data, high performance computing, integration, automation and end user computing. His broad technology, business and industry experience provides valuable perspective to the company and its clients working to implement innovative technologies to support their success. Downs believes that

28

innovation comes from exploring a wide variety of disciplines and industries. One may find that a great way to develop a solution may come from listening to great music or going on a bike ride, as often as reading an industry whitepaper.

Serving the Technical Aspects of Industry The need for businesses to adapt quickly to new and emerging competitors resulted in a new approach to application development designed to more easily try new concepts and offerings. That new application architecture in turn spawned innovative change in the infrastructure to support those applications. For Evolving Solutions, supporting clients with the enterprise discipline they need, while delivering more agile infrastructure provided by cloud-like solutions is a key challenge today.

Organizations struggle to effectively integrate the two ends of the spectrum without disrupting business and increasing the value they offer to their clients. New applications and platforms demand a complete change in methodology and culture to become more agile within IT departments. These types of changes can be a big struggle for managing IT as the digital transformation takes a more prominent place as a competitive advantage for businesses.

Downs and the entire Evolving Solutions team believes clients must continue to optimize their existing technology while providing the capabilities their businesses need to innovate. Selecting the proper platform for workloads and determining which applications to update, rewrite or replace represent the core challenge faced today. Accomplishing this balance requires clients to transition to delivering “IT as a Service”. How foundational, transformational and new workloads are delivered is a unique challenge for each April 2019|

“

At Evolving Solutions, we will continue to ensure a job done right every time, as we transition to enable the most impactful technologies the market has to offer.

—Michael Downs Chief Technology Officer

client, requiring each one to assemble the best combination of internal and external capabilities to meet their goals. That approach must also be flexible enough to adapt to major business and technology changes that are a constant part of enterprise IT. An Incremental Approach Evolving Solutions created a process design to help itself with the rapid assessment of offering and solution opportunities to assist its clients. The company calls it BEA, or Business Enablement Approach. The process has already allowed it to launch new offerings in Automation, Orchestration and DevOps. Although it knew that there was significant interest in this solution space, it needed to validate the market opportunity in its geography and determine the specific focus of offerings. Thus, it went through a series of short “experiments” to prove or disprove its ideas. As a result, the approach worked well, but it challenged the company to balance its reputation for white glove service and flawless execution along with presenting new offerings to its clients.

This incremental approach helped Evolving Solutions strike the balance while learning, the vital aspect to be known.

April 2019|

Building Enduring Client Relationships Evolving Solutions does not just go for a sale; instead, it works hard to develop a long-term partnership with its clients.

All employees focus on building enduring relationships and ensuring a successful solution implementation.

Rather than just finishing a job and moving on, the company measures its success on the length of its client relationships. The company always sticks to its commitment of delivering quality services. It tends to turn down projects, if it knows it is unable to deliver the quality service and experience that its clients have come to expect.

platforms, and cloud-native applications. Its architects always have and will continue to construct a fullyfunctional environment and strategy that fits into the needs and requirements defined by its clients.

To know more, visit

www.evolvingsol.com

Sculpting a Fully-Functional Environment Downs leads the technology efforts to develop new solutions and offerings as Evolving Solutions continues the momentum the company has built for the past 24 years. The company is highly accomplished at architecting, configuring, and installing traditional data center technologies. Throughout 2019 and the coming years, the company is striving to expand its partnerships and strengths into more flexible and agile solutions like software-defined, open source

29

Catching-up with the

ROBOTICS for

Better

FUTURE R

obots have always been pictured as a man-made advanced technological creativity, which do and will favor the human species for future. As robotics is vibrantly globalized, soon it will be mainstreamed in various fields and sectors. Currently, there are numerous enterprises worldwide which are implementing robotics into industrial, healthcare and commercial use.

Whereas, robotics have experienced a lot of up’s and down’s during this tenure, but with the time, it held a stronghold in the digital world.

Whenever the discussion arises about the applications of robotics, the industrial sector has bespoken benefits’. Robots have become more affordable, smart and productive over the years. The sectors like agriculture, construction, warehousing and logistics, and customer services. By investing more in robots, an enterprise

30

April 2019|

Future-Bots

will be solving certain problems more accurately and efficiently. Meanwhile, utilizing robots will help enterprises to push their limits in order to fill up the productivity voids.

With each slippage of time, the technology is upgrading so does the robotics. The advancements in robotics field will be a boon to the enterprises in order to increase growth and productivity rate. There are certain parameters that should be considered while implementing robotics in the enterprise, such as Following up Parameters before Reaching the Depth of Robotics Modifying; as per the user’s need Generally, robots used to require advanced training in order to operate comfortably. It’s not an issue for the big enterprises as they acquire the skilled people to deal with, where the small enterprises are not so gifted with

April 2019|

loads of assets initially. But, with the new advances in robotics technologies, it has become easier for small ventures to invest in robots for increasing the productivity generating more revenue.

Just by giving wireless commands from an IOT, demonstrating tasks to the robots gets easier. Nowadays, there are numerous varieties of robots to carry out multitasks, thus as per the user’s need, one can invest in robots for the industrial purpose.

Easily Compatible Unlike the big manufacturing robots in huge industries, there are various collaborative robots which are specially designed to work alongside and to assist human workers in a variety of tasks. Earlier it was sort of stressful for an enterprise to allot specific man-power for certain task, but by implementing co-bots such issues are resolved. As the size and shape of co-bots are getting more

compact, it may benefit the enterprises in various terms.

Easy to Develop Earlier robots were not able to program easily due to the incompatibility between the user interface and hardware. But, now Robotic Operating System (ROS) is dominating the industry by providing solutions for varied robots in order to perform the task without lagging. It’s an opensource framework which helps developers to redirect the programming in different ways. This open-source framework is dominating the growth towards the constructive direction.

Amplifying the Range of Applied Robotics The 21st century—is the era of implementing new ideology and technologies in various sectors. While technological disruption has collectively affected every possible

31

sector, robotics is still unaffected. From past few years, the technology, as well as its implementation, has increased substantially. Have a look on such few areas for possible applications.

Obliging Enterprises through Robotics Cobot’s: Assisting Humans Unlike big manufacturing robots, collaborative robots are designed to work with employees in enterprises and corporates. The design is smart enough to assist humans and also, compact enough to handle. Generally, the small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are slightly boon by implementing co-bots in day to day life, as they are easily adaptable, easy to process and most importantly it’s affordable. According to some experts, there’s a possibility of enormous growth in the business, if Co-bots are implemented widely. The main motive of industrial robots is to the prioritized safety of employees and workers, yet the chances of accidents are always at high risk. Whereas, co-bots works as a service robot; they come in various shape and sizes easing the workability and reducing the liability of employees. In order to get sanctioned as service robots, any co-bot has to pass certain testing parameters by robot manufacturing companies, factors such as easily compatible with other devices and programs, safe in use, easy to command, and processing at a faster rate. Currently, co-bots are used for processes like machine tending, packaging, and material handling. In spite of industries, co-bots are used in various sectors such as in farming, hospitals, healthcare and facilities, and labs. It does come under robot-as-aservice format.

with personal robotics cloud which will help robots to take and give information directly. Depending on the robot, it can process various functions such as lifting, leveraging, handle vision, object recognition and other, thus certain robots acquire such skills and will provide information to the cloud. Then, this information helps other robots to get enlightened. In simple words to say, robots will teach other robots for the better good of the enterprises. On the other hand, as robots are getting more and more evolved, filtering of essential information from rest will get much easier. This will comfort both big and small enterprises to manage big data more precisely.

With the emergence of advancement in robotics, they are on the verge to touch skies already. If considering the above possible factors, this evergreen era of robotics is less likely to get saturated due to technological disruption. As the technologies are growing faster, the enterprises must to catch-up with them accordingly. It’s high time to implement new technologies especially of the robotics as its utilization is not only subjected to warehouses but also, towards the inhouse enterprise work. Hopefully, there’s a possibility of robot-oriented industries in the future.

Cloud Robotics Imagine an enterprise with robots that are totally independent to the user commands, in other words, no external programming may require in order to process robots for the various tasks. In accordance to that, a User Interface to be exact might not be needed in the future, as machine learning is already on its verge to get explored. Currently, in order to carry out certain tasks robots are been told to what to do using the interface whereas, cloud robotics directly twitch compatible code from the clouds which are required for the tasks. To work alongside with humans, robots must be deep learning the subjects simultaneously able to point out problems and provide solutions right away. Meanwhile, it will be a boon for the enterprises if the employees will get to interact with robots as a personified object rather than a machine. Soon, there

32

April 2019|

The

Most

in 2019

Fastenal Helping Great Companies Simplify Their Supply Chains

B

ack in the 1950s, when he was a kid working in his dad’s auto supply shop, a young budding entrepreneur named Bob Kierlin noticed that the fasteners came in little boxes that were about the same size as a pack of cigarettes. He figured if cigarettes can be vended, why not fasteners?

The idea stuck with him and eventually became the venture vision for Fastenal, until it became apparent that the machine design wouldn’t support the sizes and volumes of fasteners required by potential customers. Out of necessity, the decision was made to pivot to a branch-based service model with a focus on outside sales and, later, inventory management – a simple concept that, as it turned out, met a widespread market demand.

Over the ensuing 50-plus years, Fastenal has evolved into an increasingly strategic solutions provider that helps businesses shorten and simplify their supply chain for a broad range of industrial and construction products. Through leveraged purchasing and efficient inventory management, the company helps its clients shift finite resources (money, time, and energy) to focus on what they do, not the products they need to do it.

Automating and Digitizing the Supply Chain Today Fastenal offers a suite of automated supply technology to provide solutions for specific customer objectives, whether that’s to track assets throughout the facility, to automate the inventory ordering process for loose consumables, or to tie product consumption to specific employees or profiles (e.g., departments, projects, job codes, etc.).

tool, customers can view not only how much inventory they have on hand, but also exactly where that product resides in their facility, down to the specific bin stock or vending location.

Meanwhile, Fastenal’s new FAST 360° Analytics reporting portal aggregates and presents data in ways that inform purchasing decisions and strategies for cost savings opportunities – predictive and prescriptive analytics to guide future improvements.

Leading the Charge for Change Bill Drazkowski is Fastenal’s Executive Vice President, National Accounts. He leads a team of roughly 220 sales professionals and subject matter experts focused on growing and serving Fastenal’s national account customer base, which today represents a little over half of the company’s total business. He and his team consult with large multi-site companies to introduce and optimize supply chain solutions that drive their corporate goals across multiple locations, balancing national/global consistency with flexible local service. He has played a vital role in making national accounts one of Fastenal’s most powerful growth drivers, and, as a solutions provider for some of the world's most successful companies, in bringing supply chain innovation to the industrial marketplace.

Great People, Close to the Customer One thing Fastenal figured out very early on is how to operate local businesses cost-effectively. Another (related) structural advantage is its “hub and spoke” distribution system and captive transportation fleet, an outgrowth of the organization’s roots as a fastener distributor. The Fastenal’s supply chain activities produce a spectrum of data – combination – local service backed by last-mile distribution product info, locations, levels, users, pricing, frequency – – enables it to provide an extremely short, efficient supply which the company mines to give customers unique insights chain for the customer. into their business. For example, with Fastenal’s FAST 360°

34

April 2019|

“

We align with our customers to make them more successful.

—Bill Drazkowski Executive Vice President – National Accounts

Another longstanding strategy has been to invest aggressively in employee training through their corporate university, the Fastenal School of Business (FSB). Last year Fastenal employees on average received 16 hours of training from FSB, and overall there were more than 430,000 FSB course completions. This commitment to bringing out the potential of everybody in the organization is absolutely central to the organization’s success.

Fastenal’s major growth drivers, including national accounts, vending, e-business, international expansion, construction, and its onsite service model, are all predicated on these foundational elements – a local presence at 3,000-plus in-market servicing locations, a captive distribution/logistics infrastructure, and above all, Fastenal’s talented people.

Empowering People to Innovate Fastenal’s founder Bob Kierlin fostered a culture of decentralized decision-making and bottom-up innovation. His basic philosophy is that organizations succeed to the extent that they: April 2019|

Keep everyone within the organization focused on a common goal. Ÿ Bring out and use the creativity of all their members. Ÿ

Fastenal has been a proving ground for those beliefs. As the company has discovered, giving people the freedom to make local decisions can create some bumps in the road, but it unleashes incredible agility and dynamism. That’s really been the story of Fastenal – a company that’s gone from very humble beginnings to become a fast-growing $5-billion global organization. It’s not the products Fastenal provides. It’s not even how they distribute them. It’s that they’ve done a good job of not placing limits on people.

Client Feedback “Being able to manage our supply chain in partnership with Fastenal has really enabled us to deliver quality at every single point along the job. It takes one more variable out of the equation.”-Adam Rhode, Vice President - Director, Operational Excellence and Engineering, Sellen Construction

“The services Fastenal provides allow us to reallocate our personnel so that we’re not focusing on the MRO [maintenance, repair, and operations] side – the shop supplies and the things that are not our core competency. They allow us to optimize all those resources so that we’re focusing on the things that make us money: getting parts out to our customers on time.”-Billie McMillian, Program Manager, Triumph Group, Hot Springs, AR “I would estimate our Fastenal vending solution increased production within the first month by 10 to 15 percent, driving our ultimate goal here, which is to get quality product out the door as fast as possible.”-Mike Mason, Purchasing Manager, Sundowner Trailers

35

The

Most

in 2019

Park Place Technologies Delivering Exceptional Maintenance Services

I

n this digital world, most work equipment relies on framed architecture with stable storage, server and networking hardware. Understanding the complexity and evolving nature of this model, Park Place Technologies (LLC) stepped into the market to help companies realize their business goals through more effective use of technology.

Since 1991, Park Place Technologies has provided an alternative to post-warranty storage, server and networking hardware maintenance for IT data centers. As the world’s largest pure play post-warranty data center maintenance organization, the company supports more than 15,200 organizations in over 141 countries. Headquartered in Cleveland, Ohio, Park Place currently employs nearly 1,200 people, and maintains offices across the globe, including in San Diego, Denver, Boston, Toronto, London, Wiesbaden and Singapore.

Shaping the Future Taking Artificial Intelligence, digital transformation, and cybersecurity into consideration, Park Place is shaping its future in order to serve value added services to its customers.

As Artificial Intelligence continues to expand in adoption, its benefits are now being recognized at the enterprise level.

According to a recent report titled Artificial Intelligence: The Next Digital Frontier, out of 3,000 C-level executives, only 20% of respondents had adopted AI at scale in a core part of their business. This is an area where Park Place sees tremendous growth opportunity, specifically when it comes to service and support.

According to Park Place, as companies innovate, there needs to be a conscious effort to efficiently allocate budget. Third party maintenance services can go a long way in freeing up mindshare and budget for IT programs looking to shift resources towards the future. Secondly, servers that are running software application designed to detect and act on

36

cyber-attacks play a very important role in cybersecurity.

From the company’s standpoint, supporting hardware and ensuring that server hardware is available to run securitybased applications is the key for the security of its customers.

Proactive, Predictive, and Secure When Park Place says, “Smarter Data Center Support,” it is referring it to many elements of its work. Smarter Data Center Support is proactive, predictive, and secure. It is ParkView™, a revolutionary service that proactively detects equipment hardware faults 24/7 across storage, server, and networking products that are maintained by the company.

The related alerts are then securely transmitted to Park Place Technologies’ technical operations, enabling more timely and accurate failure diagnosis, part identification, and necessary repair actions. It is termed as revolutionary service due to its key features which include proactive fault detection, faster response and resolution times, accurate part identification, faster first-time fixes, extremely secure, nondisruptive, fully supported, easy implementation, and full visibility.

Smart Data Center Support is a single pane of glass, with its Central Park Portal, which allows its users to open, monitor and close tickets, and manage their Park Place relationship, all on one convenient and intuitive portal.

Smart Data Center Support is a better customer experience.

Instead of the antiquated and industry standard path of several interactions, all leading to a guess at what may be wrong, ParkView facilitates a direct, predictive, proactive method for solving issues that saves time and allows its users to allocate capital and human resources to more productive areas of their business.

Smart Data Center Support is better service. Park Place can engage with you 24/7, with on-staff support staff, triage April 2019|

“

Smarter Data Center Support.

—Chris Adams President & CEO

experts and advanced engineers, from almost any corner of the world. Park Place serves 141 countries with a “follow the sun” model that allows the company to keep clients’ critical systems up and running, from San Diego to Boston to London to Singapore.

Smart Data Center Support is saving 50%, guaranteed. Park Place delivers all of its services, across scores of OEM platforms, at a 50% savings off client costs. That’s not a promise; it’s their guarantee.

An Architect of Leadership, Innovation and Change An elite team of Park Place is led by Chris Adams. He added the role of Chief Executive Officer of Park Place Technologies to his status as President in January 2019. Chris’s most recent role was President and Chief Operating Officer for Park Place, where he oversaw global operations, finance and all Mergers & Acquisitions activity.

During his 10 years at Park Place, Chris has served in a wide range of leadership positions across operations and finance, touching all areas of Park Place. Chris was instrumental in orchestrating 10 acquisitions over the April 2019|

past two years and growing Park Place from a North American to a Global organization. Under his stewardship, Park Place has grown from fewer than 250 employees to a global employer that counts nearly 1,500 people in its family.

Chris serves as executive sponsor of the international Park Place STEM initiative as well as other communitybased programs focused on teaching computer skills in underserved schools.

His goal is to foster a culture of partnerships that makes Park Place a destination work environment focused on career growth for all associates.

Apart from this, he is an active thought leader in the tech industry, contributing bylines to many publications, and speaking at conferences around the world such as Gartner.

“You guys are fantastic!! I am really impressed with the service and really appreciate the effort. I can go away next week with peace of mind now that this power supply is functional.” – Belinda Daniel, City of Port Colborne “Great and prompt customer service.

The technician calling and the ones coming on site are very proficient and professional.” – Steven Christensen, CloudWave

Testimonials from Park Place’s Clienteles “The support and response times I received on this incident were BETTER than ALL similar incidents that I opened with the OEM maintenance support. I am extremely impressed with the service I received today.” - Ismael Hernandez, The Larson Group

37

The

M i ss i ng Piece in

HR Suites

B

eneďŹ ts of An Integrated HRIS Strategy

As many organizations undertake HR transformation initiatives, they are starting to realize the beneďŹ ts of moving to a cloudbased HR platform. They combine core HR functions with recruiting, talent management, workforce planning and learning into a single, enterprise-wide software suite.

They oer the simplicity of use, improved service and delivery model and full data integration. Topics that were traditionally separated are now coming together as part of strategy, planning, and end-user enablement.

Because HR Platforms are built on a single code line, they can link data in real-time and unify end-to-end business processes seamlessly. IT and HR teams are now able to focus on strategic business decisions instead of administrative tasks. The adoption of

38

April 2019|

Expert’s Advice cloud solutions with multiple releases a year provides agility and innovation at less cost. Companies have realized tremendous bottom-line savings from a reduction in the total cost of ownership over existing on-premise solutions.

Total Compensation Management: The Missing Piece in Any HR Suite An increasing number of organizations are taking steps to realize the benefits of moving to a SaaS-based core HR platform to support their HR transformation strategy. On their journey, many of these companies have discovered that reliance on a core HR platform for compensation management has been too restrictive, requiring them to conform their highly individualized and requisite compensation processes to their core HR system. Best in Class HR Platforms, regardless of the vendor, have proven incapable of meeting the full functional requirements of Total Compensation. To ensure that they manage rewards and compensation effectively, and without any restrictions, a dedicated compensation solution is required. beqom is a Total Compensation cloud solution that connects directly into an organization’s HR suite, saving their suite approach and saving their compensation strategy. Secure, integrated and fully configurable, the beqom solution meets the requirements and complexities that a HR core platform is unable to achieve. As requirements vary by industry, a “onesize-fits-all” approach doesn’t work.

Industry leaders typically take pride in the way they reward their people, and they want to do it “their way.” beqom has proven to be a viable approach for large global organizations to support them during their HR transformation journey. In many cases, beqom first replaced a highly April 2019|

customized on-premise compensation management solution to then integrate with a new HR (cloud) suite, removing all compensation management risks during the transformation while providing a positive transformational experience.

Driving Business Results Through Beqom: Improved Performance Based on beqom-delivered analytics, beqom customers have redefined rewards program to better align with goal achievement and career development. Companies have reported greater employee engagement for those employees whose job satisfaction was correlated with compensation.

Increased Efficiency Companies have achieved total automation of all their compensation processes including simulation of salary, STI, the salary review process and bonus management on the beqom platform. beqom eliminates all manual data manipulation across multiple sources and teams and enables total rewards teams to spend more time thinking strategically about the business by having more insight into all compensation processes.

Diversity and Inclusion By consolidating performance and compensation data in beqom, customers have been able to start more effective fair pay initiatives by taking into account indicators such as performance, attainments, performance ratings, promotion rate, and professional experience. One customer recently streamlined career path and succession planning processes for one pool of employees based on a combination of historical data and performance measures.

Compliance beqom has architected a solution compliant with data privacy and security requirements from around the globe, providing customers with full transparency and auditability into its compensation data for reporting to regulatory authorities.

Competitive Advantage beqom customers have a gainful advantage by empowering their HR teams to unify the execution of their business objectives for talent acquisition, performance management, talent retention, diversity, and inclusion. HR leaders can map their strategic objectives to compensation initiatives through continuous improvement and real-time data. This, in turn, has produced higher performing and happier teams.

Because beqom offers complete functionality for global compensation management and is ERP-HR Platform neutral, it’s customers understand that their choice of beqom is an investment that allows them to realize their vision for HR transformation.

About beqom beqom’s mission is to make your people happy because employee happiness is the best driver of success: It directly leads to better employee motivation, engagement, and retention.

But happiness doesn’t come from more money or compensation. It comes from your employees understanding: ● The link between their role and the company strategy ● How they are rewarded and recognized for achieving these goals and if it is fair Contact us today— info@beqom.com or visit www.beqom.com to learn more.

39